Glenn Greenwald
Politics • Writing • Culture
House Investigates Fauci’s Covid Origins Cover-Up. Plus: Russell Brand's Expulsion from the Left
Video Transcript: System Update #51
March 10, 2023
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Some personal issues required us to take the last couple of days off. We are, as always, appreciative of your indulgence. We're excited to be back tonight for what we think is a great show and we begin with an extraordinary hearing that was held today on Capitol Hill, conducted by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic that provided all new and highly compelling evidence that Dr. Anthony Fauci deliberately manipulated the scientific investigation into – and the public debate regarding – the origins of the COVID pandemic. 

Specifically: Fauci was well aware that ample evidence existed to support the belief that COVID came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and yet he secretly worked – using the immense power he wields over budgets and scientists – to have the lab leak theory declared to be a crazy, debunked conspiracy theory, and instead claimed a scientific certainty that he knew was lacking for the view that COVID evolved naturally, meaning that it had a zoonotic origin by species leaping from non-human animals into humanity. We will show you some of the most important exchanges from today's hearing and explore the answers we now have and the ones we still need to get. 

Plus, a new article in the liberal-left British New Statesman officially expelled from the left my colleague here on Rumble, Russell Brand. The article is entitled “We have lost Russell Brand” and that article has no importance unto itself. Nobody, least of all Russell, cares if some neoliberal magazine in London considers him part of the left or not, but in arguing that he has now joined the heterodox part of the far-right –having been taken in, it argues, by the likes of Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson and myself – this article really does vividly reveal how these labels are now wielded far more as tools of coercion, conformity-enforcement and punishment, then as illuminating signifiers of substantive belief. And what it really reveals is how, in mainstream circles, the terms “left” and “right” have become so inverted as to be meaningless, largely because the most meaningful dichotomy is no longer archaic dichotomies of “Democrat versus Republican” or even “left versus right”, but rather pro or anti-establishment or, relatedly, pro or anti-authoritarianism. Since few articles make as manifestly clear how these terms are now wielded, we'll examine this one as a means of shedding light on – more broadly – how radically our discourse has changed. 

For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now. 

 

Congressional hearings on the origins of COVID

 

There was a newly created committee as part of the new Republican majority called the House Subcommittee on the COVID Pandemic. Today it held its first hearing, designed to examine what is – in my view and I think it's hard to dispute at this point – one of the most significant controversies in science and journalism in this generation, namely the obviously manipulated discourse, intentionally manipulated discourse, surrounding one of our generation's most important questions, namely, how did the COVID pandemic begin? From where did the virus, the novel coronavirus, originate? 

In order to be able to have the key context for this hearing, it's important to quickly review some of the key events that preceded not just the hearing but the most recent revelations that give real context and real fuel to this debate. Just last week, we covered in-depth, in an episode devoted to some new findings, that key parts of the U.S. government – including some of its most elite scientists and its teams – are now convinced not just that the lab leak is viable but, according to at least two key agencies – the Department of Energy and the FBI – their belief now is that the lab leak is the most likely explanation for how the COVID virus began, that it emanated or leaked intentionally or otherwise, from the Wuhan Institute of Virology

Most of these agencies are emphasizing their belief that it was unintentional, as a leak, not something that was deliberately weaponized. But they haven't really strongly opined on that as much as they have on their view, whether with low confidence or mid-level confidence, that the much more likely explanation for how COVID originated is not that it was naturally occurring in science, or that it had a zoonotic origin – that it leaked from bats or pangolins to humans. But instead, according to these key and elite scientific teams inside the U.S. government – inside the U.S. Security State – they have now concluded that the lab leak theory is the most likely explanation. 

What is so important about this news is not that it closes the debate forever – there are still agencies in the U.S. government that believe it's more likely that the virus originated naturally. The CIA continues to maintain a posture of neutrality – you know, the CIA is always eager to latch on to a theory only once they're certain it's absolutely true. That's how much integrity that agency has. 

But the fact that the Department of Energy and the FBI – and specifically this key elite team of scientists within the Department of Energy tasked with overseeing the U.S. government's own biological research labs – have concluded the lab leak theory is the most viable is so important because what it reveals is that the debate that Dr. Fauci caused to be closed, almost immediately at the beginning of the COVID pandemic, is, in fact, very open and always has been open. Specifically, with regard to the lab leak theory, that bout in secret eagerly engineered to have declared to be some crazy, deranged conspiracy theory that was so debunked, according to him and the team of scientists he assembled, that Big Tech did not even allow you to express the view that you thought COVID came from the lab, upon pain of being banned or having your post removed. That is how strong was the consensus that Fauci engineered and imposed that the U.S. government knew for sure from the start of that pandemic where COVID came from and what they said they knew for sure was that it came from a species leaping naturally occurring, zoonotic origin, and not from a lab leak. 

All along, what we know for sure – and this is the evidence we reviewed in depth last week, so we're just going to show you the highlights – from the very beginning, the question obviously, that people wanted to ask, especially leading virologists who have studied viruses like this their whole life, was where did this come from? Where did this novel coronavirus come from? And what was so remarkable about the speed with which the U.S. government declared itself certain was that, first of all, they called it a novel coronavirus because it was unlike anything science had seen before. It was novel, new and different. It needed to be studied. And so, the idea that the U.S. government was instantly able with certainty to identify where it came from in and of itself was just inherently suspect. And yet they were adamant that they were able to determine the cause right away before they knew how to test for it, before they knew how to treat it, before they knew almost anything about it, they declared that everything was off limits as a possible explanation for its origin, except the theory that Fauci claimed – baselessly – they had proven or were certain of, namely that it came from natural evolution. What made that additionally suspect is the fact that the Chinese government also declared very early on, in fact, late in 2019, rather, heading into 2020, that the debate over Covid's origin was so clear and so conclusive that no evidence needed to be examined. They refused to allow any evidence to be examined either with regard to the Wuhan Institute of Virology – to determine whether it might have led from there – or to study the data they had collected as ground zero for this pandemic. And so even if Dr. Fauci had managed to assemble a team of scientists so brilliant that they were capable of instantly concluding with so much certainty to close the debate where COVID's origins were, the fact that the Chinese had made it impossible for them to even access the data that you would need to even get started, made the idea that they had been able to prove the origins of COVID additionally suspect. And yet that's exactly what they did. They announced in various ways in a letter in Lancet, followed by an article in Nature, followed by all kinds of other press conferences and assertions they definitively declared, led by Dr. Fauci, that they had proven the origins of COVID and knew that it was natural and that anyone even questioning the possibility of a lab leak was a deranged conspiracy theorist who deserved to be excluded and shamed from decent society. And only months later did we learn that not only was there no basis for that declaration – that of course the corporate media repeated over and over, like the obedient servants to authority that they always are – not only was there no basis for it, from the beginning, Fauci knew that the most prestigious and most well-regarded virologist and other scientists told him the exact opposite, that they strongly believed, based on the available data, that it could not have been naturally occurring, but instead almost certainly came from the Wuhan lab, or at least was highly likely that it came from a leak. 

Here we can look at just one of these emails, which is from Kristian Andersen. He's a scientist who, despite having sent this letter, ended up subsequently affirming Fauci's view that it had natural origins, he then signed the Nature paper and then, after that, received a significant grant – that Fauci controlled. He also signed the Lancet letter. And in this email, dated January 31, 2020, so, very close to the beginning of the pandemic, he wrote to Fauci and said, “The unusual features of the virus make up a really small part of the genome (0.1%) so one has to look really closely at all the sequences to see that some of the features (potentially) look engineered”. Andersen went on to say that, after discussion, he and several other prominent virologists, “found the genome inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory”. 

So, at the very least, yes, one of the leading scientists on questions of the origin of viruses told Fauci, when you look closely, it's inconsistent with the view of a natural origin and far more likely to be from a lab. There were other similar emails Fauci was getting at that time as well as phone calls, and as a result, he then arranged a conference call, in an email sent the following day, February 1st, that he got that email from Kristian Andersen – he was addressing it to Jeremy Farrar and he CC’ed Kristian Andersen, in which he essentially said that he wanted there to be a call. He had gotten on a call with several other virologists to discuss his concerns that the virus was not the result of natural evolutionary biology, but instead the result of human input, namely, gain-of-function engineering, that raised the possibility of a lab leak origin – meaning that Fauci knew he had funded, indirectly, through Peter Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance, research at this exact lab, designed to manipulate the virus to make it more vulnerable for human transmission – called gain-of-function research, which is designed to make a virus more dangerous in a lab. 

He obviously did not want the public to believe that that's where it came from. Would you want the public to believe that this pandemic that was killing huge numbers of people and shutting down the world economy and terrorizing everybody came from a lab that you were funding research into? And not just funding research into, but funding research designed to make that very virus more easily contractable and transmissible for humans? If I were somebody who had funded research like that or had approved it or overseen it, I also would want the world to think that that was a deranged conspiracy theory that no one with any credentials would possibly believe, that only crazy conspiracy theorists would believe that. I would definitely want the world to believe that the U.S. government had proven they had nothing to do with that lab, that it just came through bad luck, through zoonotic processes that were naturally developing. So, what Fauci was saying here is essential that we want to make sure that we get these scientists together and instead of having this ugly, unpleasant, inconvenient debate, instead, we get a consensus where everybody gets on board – all these scientists who depend on the billions of dollars of funding that I control – with my view, that serves my interests, that this virus that was threatening the entire world and all of humanity, or at least people believed at the time, had nothing to do with the research I funded, but instead just came from nature. 

After he did that, the notes that he ended up producing from this February 1 conference call revealed that Bob Garry, who is Dr. Robert Garry, one of the leading virologists in the country, said on this call, 

“I really can't think of a plausible natural scenario where you get from the bat virus or one very similar to it to nCoV […] I just can't figure out how that gets accomplished in nature.”

So, again, here you have a leading virologist, just like Kristian Andersen, telling Fauci what he did not want to hear, namely that not only does he considered the debate open, he considers it extremely unlikely, in fact, not just impossible but unthinkable, that this virus could have occurred naturally. He again was somebody who ended up jumping on the consensus. 

Here in this next email. We see an email from Jeremy Farrar to Francis Collins, who is the head of NIH, CC’ing Dr. Fauci. And you can see they're very worried here about what's going on. This, in particular, their concerns, this is February 4 now, about the consensus they're trying to engineer. And it reads, “Being very careful in the morning wording. “Engineered” probably not. Remains very real possibility of accidental lab passage in animals to give glycans”.  And, referring to the virologist Eddie Holmes, who was a coauthor of the natural paper: “Eddie would be 60:40 lab side. I remain 50:50”. 

So, again, everything Fauci is hearing for days now is telling him that what he’s trying to convince the world of – that the debate is closed, that all the evidence proves that it was naturally occurring – is the opposite of what all of the leading scientists with whom he's speaking are telling him, namely that the debate is wide open and that apparently, from what's been produced here, at least a good number – if not a majority – believe that the far more likely explanation is that it came from the Wuhan lab. And yet, Dr. Fauci, unsurprisingly – given the power that he wields as the person who controls the gigantic budget of scientific research, without which almost no scientist or researcher can possibly find career advancement – was able to use that leverage to at least convene a large group of scientists who were willing to announce very early on in the pandemic before there was any real evidence available, let alone proof demonstrated, that they agreed with what Dr. Fauci wanted the world to believe, namely that the lab leak was some crackpot theory, and the only viable one was that it naturally occurred through nature. 

Here, as you know, is this now notorious Lancet letter from February 19 – so just two weeks after Fauci was hearing from all these experts that they believed lab leak was the more likely explanation – that incredibly said that it's essentially immoral – immoral – to assert that it might have come from a lab, that this is an attack on one's fellow colleagues in science, in China, that it's anti-Asian to even suggest this and that, instead, the debate is closed and all rational people know that the only way COVID could have originated was naturally. One of the key signers on that, in fact, the person who engineered this letter, as we now know, was Peter Daszak, who, although undisclosed in this Lancet letter, was somebody who was the head of an entity, EcoHealth Alliance, that got money from Fauci and provided that funding to the scientists in the Wuhan lab to do this exact research. He had an extraordinary financial conflict of interest, a reputational conflict of interest, in convincing the world that this occurred naturally, not through a lab leak. And they used this Lancet letter to accomplish exactly that without revealing any of those conflicts of interest that I just referenced. And this was what essentially was used to close the debate. 

 

The rapid, open and transparent sharing of data on this outbreak is now being threatened by rumors and misinformation around its origins. We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin (The Lancet. Feb. 19, 2020). 

 

Two weeks after Fauci was hearing from these leading scientists that they believe it was a lab leak, he got all these scientists on board with this announcement that anybody who does not accept the natural origin is a conspiracy theorist who deserves to be strongly condemned. And it went on: 

 

Scientists from multiple countries have published and analyzed genomes of the causative agent, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV2), and they overwhelmingly conclude that this coronavirus originated in wildlife as have so many other emerging pathogens. Conspiracy theories do nothing but create fear, rumors and prejudice that jeopardize our global collaboration in the fight against this virus. We support the call from the Director-General of WHO to promote scientific evidence and unity over misinformation and conjecture (The Lancet. Feb. 19, 2020).  

 

That is exactly what they wanted it, and what they got: it was unity and the claim that anyone questioning their consensus, their artificially hastily engineered consensus, was nothing but somebody who is spreading misinformation and threatening their scientists, and scientific colleagues in China. 

They knew very quickly that Peter Daszak involvement in this letter was going to jeopardize its credibility. So, they then arranged for a new article in Nature Magazine, in March, called “The Proximal Origins of SARS-CoV-2” that similarly asserted that it was essentially proven that it had natural origins. And there you see the names of two of the scientists, Kristian Andersen and Robert F. Garry, who, just a month earlier, in private, were telling Fauci that they strongly believed it came from the lab. Having analyzed it, it's highly improbable, they said, that it occurred naturally. And that at least a couple of the signatories of this article ended up receiving funding from Dr. Fauci. No one can prove that the funding was a quid pro quo, that it came as a result of their willingness to radically change their view. Just a month earlier, you had Robert Garry saying he's 60:40 lab leak and his colleague is 50:50; Kristian Andersen, saying he can't even imagine how it could have occurred naturally. Suddenly they changed their mind. After that, they get gigantic grants from Fauci – that we know for sure. The quid pro quo in the motive is something that is very difficult to prove and never will be proven with certainty. But what it shows for sure is the power Fauci has. If you get on his good side, if you say what he needed you to say, the money flows. Then Nature Magazine was very similar to what the Lancet letter said. It said,

Here we review what can be deduced from about the origin of SARS-CoV-2, from comparative analysis of genomic data. We offer a perspective on the notable features of the SARS-CoV-2 genome and discuss scenarios by which they could have arisen. Our analysis clearly shows that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposely manipulated virus (Nature Magazine. March 17, 2020). 

 

Amazing how rapidly they transformed. 

It took a year and a half basically for Lancet to go back and essentially retract that shameful letter that it published early on. This time it was headlined “Science, not speculation, is essential to determine how SARS-CoV-2 reached humans”. It began heavily backtracking on the certainty it purported to have at the beginning of the pandemic, that it came from natural evolution. And here you see it, in a subsequent publication which they called addendum: they disclosed competing interest in the origins of SARS-CoV-2 by specifically noting the interest that Peter Daszak had in ensuring that the public believed all of this. 

 

Again, this worked so well – the closing off of the possibility of a lab leak – that Big Tech considered it such blatant disinformation, that they banned anybody who wanted to even suggest that they believed it was true. It was only once the Biden administration announced that they no longer had confidence in these claims about COVID's origin, that they, too, were now questioning whether it came from a lab. And when investigated, only then did Big Tech, led by Facebook, reverse its policy and say, now that the government has given us permission, we're going to start allowing the question of whether it was man-made to be openly debated on the Internet. 

Here you see the article in Politico announcing this change in May 2021. So, a year and three or four months into the pandemic, finally, the debate is declared free to headline “Facebook No Longer Treating Man-Made COVID as a Crackpot Idea. Facebook's policy tweak arrives as support surges in Washington for a fuller investigation into the origins of COVID-19.”

Remember, the media and the government spent a year and three months calling any of you that even entertained the possibility that it came from that Wuhan lab, a deranged conspiracy theorist who should not be allowed to be heard on the Internet, only to then admit – a year and three months later – that not only is the debate not closed, that that same theory they declared off limits, as disinformation, as something deranged, conspiracy theories spread, was in fact a very viable theory that required investigation. As a result, 

 

Facebook will no longer take down posts claiming that COVID-19 was man-made or manufactured, a company spokesman told Politico on Wednesday, a move that acknowledges the renewed debate about the virus' origins. 

 

A narrative in flux: Facebook's policy tweak arrives as support surges in Washington for a fuller investigation into the origins of COVID-19 after The Wall Street Journal reported that three scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were hospitalized in late 2019 with symptoms consistent with the virus. The findings have reinvigorated the debate about the so-called Wuhan lab leak theory, once dismissed as a fringe conspiracy theory (Politico. May 26, 2021). 

 

Do you notice how often that happens -  the theories that the government and the media want you to disbelieve get labeled disinformation and deranged conspiracy theories and they ban you from even debating it on the Internet only then later admit that they were wrong, that they were mistaken, that what they thought was a deranged conspiracy theory, in fact, is now looking increasingly likely? That was not a change at all. Just like the media knew in October 2020 that the material on the Biden laptop was authentic and not “Russian disinformation,” that's not something they discovered later on. It was clear from the beginning .We just showed the emails that these scientists disbelieved that it occurred naturally. There was no evidence of animals having been infected by it. What they had instead was Chinese scientists in that lab, having been infected before the pandemic was even known. Pretty strong evidence that it originated in that lab. As a result, Politico concludes:

 

Shifting definitions on social media: Facebook announced in February it had expanded the list of misleading health claims that it would remove from its platforms to include those asserting that “COVID-19 is man-made or manufactured'”. The tech giant has updated its policies against false and misleading coronavirus information, including its running list of debunked claims, over the course of the pandemic in consultation with global health officials. But a Facebook spokesperson said Wednesday that the origin language had been stricken from that list due to the renewed debate about the virus's roots. 

 

In light of ongoing investigations into the origin of COVID-19 and in consultation with public health experts, we will no longer remove the claim that COVID-19 is man-made from our apps”, the spokesman said in an emailed statement. “We're continuing to work with health experts to keep pace with the evolving nature of the pandemic and regularly update our policies as new facts and trends emerge” (Politico. May 26, 2021). 

 

Consider how nefarious that is. The entire purpose of the Internet, the reason why it had promise and excited people was that it was going to remove the stranglehold of information that governments and large media corporations exerted for decades. If they wanted to make you believe something, they would assert it is true – like they did with the claim that COVID was naturally occurring – and there was no way to challenge that because you didn't own a printing press, you didn't own a studio and there was no way for you to widely disseminate views that deviated from theirs. It was an incredible power they wielded. You could go out onto this corner and stand on a soapbox and challenge it that way, and 20 people would hear you and assume you were crazy because they had legitimacy and people believed in them and they had a stranglehold, a monopoly on the flow of information. The only technology that came along that threatened it is the Internet. That's what allowed people for the first time to be heard questioning these narratives and challenging the veracity of these assertions coming from institutions of authority. It was a real threat – and is a real threat – to their ability to maintain a monopoly on the flow of information. That is exactly why it became so important to them to censor the Internet because only by censoring the Internet through Big Tech platforms could they maintain the control, a monopoly that they had for decades in the flow of information. Only by censoring the Internet could they quash the one real challenge to their information hegemony. And that's why it's so important, conversely, to fight for and defend a free Internet – free of censorship – because that's the only way we can viably challenge the disinformation they constantly disseminate while accusing everyone else of being guilty of it. 

And here you see Facebook essentially saying, ‘before when the government told us that the lab leak theory was crazy, we obeyed them and we banned it. Only now that the government itself admits that it's viable, are we going to allow it”. So, you see a complete alignment, as always, in what Big Tech allows and what the government wants you to think. So, it was only once Joe Biden and the Biden administration itself started questioning this did Facebook allow you to question it as well. 

The key blow to all of this, the thing that finally blew this all out into the open, was this February 26, 2023, report in The Wall Street Journal that reported that very significant components of the U.S. government, in particular the Department of Energy and the FBI, have now concluded that the lab leak theory not only is viable but is the more likely one. We went over this article – I'm sure you've seen it and heard it, but this is an extraordinary development, given that it is now the government itself that says that the theory they succeeded in marginalizing and banning at Dr. Fauci's insistence is in fact not debunked at all but, according to key scientists, the most likely explanation. 

So, that was the perfect setting for this new committee to hold its first hearing, which they did today. They called a group of four experts, including the former head of the CDC, as well as Nicholas Wade, the science editor of Science Magazine in The New York Times, before them – I assume, at some point, they're going to demand that Dr. Fauci appear or subpoena him, if he refuses, in order to explore exactly this question: How did this happen? How is it possible that the U.S. government succeeded in roping in a bunch of scientists who knew better into signing on to a letter asserting a scientific certainty they clearly lacked and declaring the theory that they themselves believed to be off limits from the discussion as a crazy conspiracy theory, and then got rewarded for that in the form of large grants from the very person who demanded that consensus be created. This is a gigantic scandal – that the government and the media declared off limits a theory that looks to be extremely viable, if not the most likely, and claimed the debate was closed and had been proven when in fact it was a lie all along, not on an unimportant and trivial question, but on one of the central questions of the most important political event of this generation, which is the COVID pandemic. So, let's look at a few of the key exchanges from today's hearing, because they're really quite remarkable – and what they reveal. So, let's bring up the first one. This is the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Congressman James Comer. This is a subcommittee of his oversight committee. Let's listen to this exchange here.

 

(Video 00:33:48)

Rep. James Comer: […]  Themes of the pandemic have been scientists’ use of the media to downplay the lab leak theory. Mr. Wade, in your career, you worked at Nature Magazine, Science Magazine and The New York Times. Would you agree that the scientific establishment used the media to downplay the lab leak theory? Like. 

 

Nicholas Wade:  That's a complicated issue, Mr. Comer. I think the media was used. It was used in this particular campaign to establish the natural origin theory. The scientific community is very afraid to speak up on political issues. And I think the reason is that government grants are handed out through this system of peer-to-peer review committees. So, you don't want any single scientist on your peer review committee to vote against you, therefore – because you won't get your lead so competitively. So, therefore, scientists are very reluctant to get to say anything that is politically divisive or might turn others on his off against them. 

 

That's a pretty damning admission, even though he was very reluctant to make it. He started out by saying it was a complicated question, but then answered in a way that suggests that it was anything but by saying, yes, the media was in fact, used. Like the little instrument, they are to disseminate a false consensus. If you worked at one of these media outlets that did that if you know that you are part of the effort to deceive the world and were used in this way, wouldn't you be ashamed and angry and betrayed? Do you think any of these people are going to go on to television or into their columns and talk about how they were used and how angry they are about it? Of course not. They see this as their job to disseminate what they're told. But it's also an incredible indictment of the integrity of the scientific establishment that people are afraid to dissent, even if they don't believe the consensus, because all of the money is so centralized that you'll be punished by withholding grants or by being denied tenure or other advancements if you question the consensus at all. That's an incredibly disturbing revelation about how science works, how the help policy expertise functions in this country, and that all the incentives are built in to ensure obedience to the consensus and to disincentivize dissent, especially on the questions that are most important. In other words, he just explained, without really wanting to, why these leading virologists, in private, told Fauci that they found it almost inconceivable that there was a natural origin to this pandemic, only then sign on to that very same theory that they proclaimed unthinkable and then was rewarded with grant money that Fauci controlled. Let’s listen to the rest. 

 

(Video 00:36:57)


Nicholas Wade:  This means that they cannot be relied upon in the way that I think we would like them to, to be independent and forthright and call it as they see it. 

 

Rep. James Comer: Well, we saw this first with the “Proximal Origin” paper that said, “Our analysis clearly showed that COVID-19 is not a laboratory construct or a purposely manipulated virus”. This was first published on February 17, 2020. Each witness, over a simple question, yes or no: Was there science available to make such an unequivocal statement against the possibility of a lab leak that early on in February of 2020? 

 

He's talking there about the Lancet article, as well as the Nature article, from February and March. The “Proximal origins of the pandemic” was the Nature article. The February article was Lancet. He's asking, “Is it conceivable that we had enough evidence early on to make these definitive judgments, as those two papers purported to do?

 

(Video 00:38:01)

Rep. James Comer: February 2020? 

 

Dr. Jamie Metzl, Ph.D. Senior Fellow The Atlantic Council: Absolutely no. 

 

Mr. Nicholas Wade:  I know it was not. 

 

Paul G. Auwaerter, MD, MBA (Minority Witness): I don't have sufficient frame of reference to give an answer. 

 

Dr. Robert Redfield, Former CDC Director: No. 

 

Again, I just need to emphasize how significant it is, not allowing this to be lost in kind of the casual nature of the tone that was just used there. Those papers that I showed you were the ones that formed the basis for the discourse around the world for the first year to year and a half of the pandemic. You're not allowed to even mention the lab leak, because scientists have said in the Lancet letter and in the Nature journal, in February and March, that all of these scientists had established a consensus that the data proved that it occurred naturally and that, under no circumstances, could ever come from a lab. And these experts were asked, did we have anything close to sufficient evidence to form those judgments scientifically. And three out of the four said absolutely not. And one said, I'm not sure. That is a gigantic fraud, a scientific fraud perpetrated on the public, that because Fauci was privately urging and demanding that they do so, pressuring them in all ways, they signed on to a letter that purported to have certainty without any of the available evidence that would be needed to assert that in their hands. It is really remarkable the more you think about what happened here. 

 

(Video 00:39:42)

Rep. James Comer: Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance orchestrated a letter in The Lancet, a prestigious journal, on February 19, 2020, that said, quote, “We strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin”, end quote. Each witness, yes or no, is the possibility COVID-19 leaked from a lab a conspiracy theory? 

 

Dr. Jamie Metzl, Ph.D. Senior Fellow The Atlantic Council: Absolutely not. 

 

Mr. Nicholas Wade:  No. I would say. 

 

Paul G. Auwaerter, MD, MBA (Minority Witness): No, but also it has been approached as such. 

 

Dr. Robert Redfield, Former CDC Director: No. 

 

I mean, someone should have to pay for this, shouldn't they? I mean, this is what we were told over and over: that it is a deranged conspiracy theory to suggest that the coronavirus may have leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. And then, all the adjacent questions that naturally emerge from that, such as whether that took place because of the manipulation of the virus to make it more dangerous to humans, to make it more susceptible to become a pandemic; whether the United States government paid for that research or whether Dr. Fauci, who in some way contributed funds directly or indirectly to the research of that sort, all while vehemently denying under oath for months that he ever funded gain-of-function research – how it is that Peter Daszak, who absolutely funded that kind of research, or at least research into coronaviruses in this very lab, was able to engineer this incredibly influential letter in Lancet without any disclosure of his overwhelming investment, personal conflict, and having the public believe this? So, to watch these witnesses out in the open and these are not just randomly chosen witnesses, these are the leaders in virology, the CDC, in science journalism, all affirming these extraordinary revelations, it's like a gigantic earthquake into the laps of the scientific establishment and the corporate media that endorsed what they were doing, deceiving the world for a very long time, ruining people's reputations and foreclosing any inquiry into where this pandemic came from. 

Now, let's look at the next exchange from this hearing. It's led by Congressman Jim Jordan, a person of whom I'm not always a fan, especially when it comes to his protection of Google and Facebook when it comes to antitrust legislation, but in this particular case, he does an extremely good job revealing some of the core revelations from today's hearing. Let's watch. 

 

(Video 00:42:40) 

 

Rep. Jim Jordan: Look forward, the Democrats tell us. Focus on the future. Might have started in the lab, might have, might have happened in nature. But here's the question I keep coming up with. If it may have been a lab, maybe in nature, we're supposed to look forward, then why did Dr. Fauci work so hard for just one of those theories? Why was it so important to push one over the other? Dr. Barra said, Oh, we should entertain all hypotheses, Dr. Fauci, that his hypothesis, how this started, we should entertain all of them. But that's not what happened. That is definitely not what happened. Three years ago, if you thought it came from a lab if you raised that, you were called a nut job, you got censored on Twitter, you were blacklisted on Twitter, you were even called a crackpot by the very scientist who, in late January, sent emails to Dr. Fauci and said it came from a lab. They called you crackpot, is that right, Dr. Redfield? 

 

Dr. Redfield, former CDC director: I think the most upsetting thing to me was the Baltimore Sun calling me a racist because I said this came from a Wuhan lab. 

 

 

Let's not forget that part of it, either. One of the most nefarious parts of this all. Think about how they weaponized racism and racism accusations in order to foreclose this debate. They didn't just accuse people raising the lab leak possibility of being crackpots or being anti-science, even though this particular person was the head of the CDC. They didn't just do that. They didn’t just insult their intelligence or their rationality or their judgment, they did all that too. They accused everybody suspecting a lab leak of being a racist, of being an anti-Asian racist, of trying to stimulate racial hatred against the Chinese. Do you see how readily and casually American elites weaponize racism accusations like a plaything, like their little toy to manipulate public discourse and to prevent people from dissenting upon the pain of being called a racist? 

First of all, the whole concept of racism had no role at all in the inquiry over where the COVID pandemic came from. It was a purely scientific question. It's impossible for any one theory or the other to be racist. It's either true or false. That's the only import. That's the only relevant metric. Is it true or is it false? Nor is it ethical or moral or racist. But beyond that, it was always so bizarre to me that the people who were accusing dissenters of being racists were pushing a theory that if anything – if anything – was racist. This was by far the most racist theory, which is that the Chinese have extremely filthy, primitive and unsanitary eating practices and wet markets, filled with filth and disease. They have crazy, primitive ideas, of what animals can and can't be eaten. They eat bats, they eat pangolins. The people who are pushing that theory were the ones accusing others of racism, even though there's, I don't think, any better way to stimulate anti-Asian animus than by telling the world the reason their economies are shut down, they have to stay at home and their parents are dying, they can't attend their parents’ funerals or visit them as they die in the hospital, is because the Chinese are so unsanitary and primitive and their dietary habits, that they created a global pandemic they unleashed on the world this twisted fatal virus. That was their theory. 

I personally don't care about whether any of it is racist. I care only about whether it was true but it is remarkable to watch in real-time how they do that, how they just label any view that they want marginalized: they just label it racist. I think it's very important to remember, going forward, whenever they deploy accusations of this kind, to remember what they did here because this is what they always do. They don't care about racism at all. They cynically exploit it, as they did in this case, to force people into submission to the views that they want the public to believe for their own interest. It is a self-serving tactic and if anything is racist, it is looking at racism as a toy to play with for these ends. And that's exactly what American elites do. And this was one of the most vivid cases of how they did it. Let's look at another exchange with the former CDC director. 

 

(Video 00:47:44) 

Dr. Robert Redfield, Former CDC Director:  Because it was told to me that they wanted a single narrative and then I obviously had a different point of view. 

 

Rep. N. Malliotakis:  Okay. In emails following the conference call, the 11 scientists told Fauci that they all found the genetic sequence inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory, basically is what you're saying. However, just three days later, these four scientists had drafted a paper arguing the exact opposite, and that's now the infamous “Proximal origins of SARS CoV2”. Our investigation shows, this paper was prompted by Dr. Fauci, among others, with a goal to disprove the lab leak theory. What is the likelihood that these scientists came across additional information just three days after making these statements to conclude with such certainty that COVID-19 came from nature instead of the lab leak that they thought it was three days earlier? 

 

Dr. Robert Redfield, Former CDC Director: I think it's unfortunate. Again, I've said this before, that this whole approach that was taken on February 1, and subsequently in the month of February, if you really want to be truthful, it's antithetical to science. Science has debate and they squashed any debate. 

 

Rep. N. Malliotakis:  Thank you. 

 

 

That's exactly what happened. 

Let me just remind you of the sequence of events that at the time convinced a lot of people that health experts were yet another institution of authority that didn't deserve any trust or faith, but only contempt and scorn. Which was, you remember, I'm certain, that for the first four months, five months of 2020, all we heard was your only moral obligation is to stay at home. Stay at home. Anybody who leaves their house for any reason is a sociopath willing to murder old people or sacrifice the lives of old people for their personal interests. That included wanting to go visit your parents in the hospital, wanting to go attend their funeral, wanting to take your kids to a deserted beach so they get air and sun, wanting to attend a political protest against these rules and laws that had been implemented that severely restricted our civil liberties and our ability to movement. There was no excuse of any kind that justified your leaving your home. The only moral option for any decent person was to park yourself at home and not move there unless absolutely necessary. That's what health officials told us for months. And then, we had the death of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis Police Department, and throughout the country erupted one of the most densely packed street protest movements in the history of this country. And those very same health experts – who told you that you were not allowed to leave your home morally for any reason, including to protest – switched on a dime, the minute they had a protest they liked and that aligned with their ideology, and then, said, not only is it permissible for you to leave your home but it’s also your moral obligation to do so. There was a famous or notorious letter from health experts saying that because racism was actually a greater threat to public health than COVID, it was worth risking the spread of COVID in order to combat racism. So not only was it permissible, but it was actually an obligation now, morally, to leave your home to go attend a protest that they supported ideologically, it was still immoral to go to protests they didn't like, such as the protest against lockdown laws or school closings. 

A more brazen politicization of health expertise is almost impossible to imagine. And that was a moment, an epiphany for a lot of people, including myself. I wrote about it that day at The Intercept. The fact that here we now see what they were doing behind the scenes, that they completely switched on a dime. What they actually believed signed on to a letter they didn't believe with no scientific evidence at all, is all the more reason never to trust this group of elites again. And this hearing revealed that. Let's look at this last exchange, again with the former CDC director. 

 

(Video 00:52:07) 

Rep. B. Wenstrup: Dr. Redfield has gain-of-function created any lifesaving vaccines or therapeutics, to your knowledge? 

 

Dr. Robert Redfield, Former CDC Director: Not to my knowledge. 

 

Rep. B. Wenstrup: Has gain of function stopped a pandemic? In your opinion? 

 

Dr. Robert Redfield, Former CDC Director: No. On the contrary. I think it probably caused the greatest pandemic our world has seen. 

 

So that's the CDC director who was appointed by Donald Trump and therefore, a lot of people would be inclined to dismiss. But if you look at the history of who was right and who was wrong, who acted with integrity and who did not, he comes out extremely well, certainly way better than all the heroes we were given in the scientific community, starting with Dr. Fauci. And there he's telling you that he believes that the gain-of-function research, the attempt to manipulate this virus, to make it more susceptible to human transmission that was undertaken in that lab, he believes was the cause of this pandemic, something that we were not allowed to mention, literally prohibited from suggesting, on the Internet, upon pain of being removed and banned by the world's largest Internet companies. This is the danger of allowing censorship. This is the danger of placing blind faith in these corrupt elites. This is the serious harm that always emerges whenever institutions of authority are allowed to function without scrutiny, transparency, challenge and dissent. 


Russell Brand declared right-wing.

 

So, at the top of our show, I mentioned that there was an article not very important unto itself, but very revealing in terms of the arguments it made that I do want to spend just a few minutes examining because it's one of the most vivid articulations of how political labels are now wielded, but also the incredible reversal that has been imposed on our political discourse in a very short period of time. 

Now, as you probably have seen, it went very viral, the British comedian and political analyst Russell Brand – who I now consider a colleague because he has his own daily show right here on Rumble, that is exclusive to Rumble – went on the “Bill Maher Show” and ran circles around one of the mainstays of American establishment journalism, John Heilemann, who worked for years to Mark Halperin until Mark Halperin had this MeToo scandal, he's on “Morning Joe”, seemingly every day spouting establishment tripe and Russell basically humiliated him in all kinds of ways. 

The reaction to this, the attention that Russell got through that, but also by appearing on Joe Rogan's program a couple of days earlier, was that something happened to Russell Brand. He has radically changed. He was once somebody who was clearly a leftist, somebody who made – in the words of the New Statesman, we're about to show you – communism sexy, has instead become a far-right American culture war pundit. 

There you see the article. “We have lost Russell Brand”, and this is The New Statesman. It's, I would describe it, as a formerly left-wing, now a more establishment liberal, neoliberal journal. If I wanted to use their tactics of demonizing anything I disliked, I would call it a far-right fascist journal. But I'm not going to use their tactics. We're going to examine that topic instead by looking at this article. So, it's basically a formal declaration that Russell Brand is no longer an official card-carrying member of the left – as if anyone, including him, cares. But what is amazing are their reasons for concluding this and, in particular, the arguments that they cite, which they assert are the reasons to believe he's now on the far-right. 

I wanted to pull up the first paragraph. I hope we have that. If not, I'm going to need somebody to get that for me because essentially it's the most important article in which it lists the views that he now advocates, which they claim prove that he's now a man of the far-right and no longer a man of the left, really the crux of the argument. 

I have my own experience with this. I have had plenty of newspapers and magazines under the headline “What Happened to Glenn Greenwald?” Very similar ones saying, “Oh, the beloved heroic leftist has now become a tool of the far-right, even though they can't identify a single one of my views that I've changed. And oftentimes they cite views of mine that I've held and expressed and advocated for decades that now have suddenly somehow become a signifier of being on the far-right. And that's essentially what they're doing in this article to Russell Brand. They're saying he's no longer on the left. He's moved to the far right. And his proof of that, they say he went on Bill Maher and in general been advocating a bunch of views that are views that only someone on the far-right would actually assert. 

So here it is. Listen to these arguments that they cite as proof that Russell Brand is now on the far-right: “Speaking on the comedian Bill Maher’s talk show last weekend, Brand launched into a tinny rant that encompassed every right-wing signaling trope.”

“Every right-wing signaling trope” he expressed on “Bill Maher’s Show.” What are these right-wing signaling tropes? According to the new statement: 1) the ghoulish mainstream media. So, if you dislike the mainstream media, if you don't trust them if you think they're corrupt, the corporate media, you are now expressing a right-wing trope that the media, the corporate media is bad. The next one, is “the dishonest and untrustworthy pharmaceutical industry”. If you distrust or harbor suspicion of Big Pharma, Pfizer and the rest, that is now proof that you are on the far right. You're spreading far-right tropes. The next one: “The West's shameful treatment of Julian Assange and Scarecrow American hero Edward Snowden”. So, if you believe that Edward Snowden and Julian Assange are heroic, for having revealed secrets showing that the U.S. Security State committed war crimes and lied to the public and spied on them in mass with no warrants, and if you oppose the persecution of those two whistleblowers and journalists, in the case of Julian Assange, that too means that you're somehow now on the far-right. If you like, Edward Snowden and Julian Assange and opposed their imprisonment by the West, you're now on the far right. And the last one was, “the COVID drug Ivermectin. In other words, if you question the pronouncements of the same health authorities that – we just showed you – systemically, deliberately, lied to the public, you're also now on the far-right. 

No distrusting health officials, no protecting whistleblowers who expose the crimes of the Security State, no distrust in Big Pharma and most of all, no suspicion of the corporate media: anything that you do that expresses those views according to this New Statesman article places you on the far-right. These are far-right tropes. Even though the article acknowledges, then pivoted leftward and rounded off his angry sermon with an endorsement for Bernie Sanders. That's exactly right. Russell Brand continues and always has supported Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn. They acknowledge that, and yet he's nonetheless on the far right because he dislikes the mainstream media, Big Pharma and the persecution of Edward Snowden and Julian Assange. 

Let me look at one more part of this article because, actually, we are to look at two more. Here's another one that essentially says that if you are somebody who distrusts the U.S. Security State and the U.S. posture of endless war and the motives for why the United States keeps going to war, then that two makes you on the far-right 

As for any self-styled alternative media guru, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a central theme of inquiry. Brand quotes long passages of texts from Substack about the true intentions of Tony Blair and Hillary Clinton; he suggests it is a proxy war fought with the ultimate ambition of privatizing Ukraine. When he shouts about the military-industrial complex, intentionally generating a state of perpetual crisis, he means it. Brand is not just paranoid about intervention, he's actively conspiratorial about it (The New Statesman. March 7, 2023). 

 

So if you are now somebody who opposes or questions the motives of Western wars, if you think that maybe there's an economic motive to why the U.S. continually finds reasons to fuel wars and to purchase large amounts of armaments – the way every single person on the left in 2002 was claiming about Dick Cheney's reason to go to war in Iraq, that it would help Halliburton – if you are somebody who thinks there's a military-industrial complex that generates perpetual war in order to satisfy economic motives or suspicions about the reasons they're giving – if you don't really believe that they're fighting wars to safeguard democracy and vanquish authoritarianism – then now you too are on the far right, that places you on the far right. That's another view that if you believe means you're a fascist. Now that then concludes. But look at this last one here. It says, 

 

Whatever it is, Brand has internalized assumptions generated by a brand of heterodox American Joe Rogan. Glenn Greenwald. Tucker Carlson […] 

 

These are the people who have manipulated Russell Brand and lured him out of leftism and convinced him to become a far-rightist. Like us, myself, Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson, 

[…] while clinging to a veneer of old fashioned British socialism. But perhaps that tension is not as awkward as it seems. The soul of Corbynism, for example, is the argument that a cabal of elite capitalists have manipulated the system against the everyman. 

 

They’ve stitched up our political system to protect the powerful. The former Labor leader said in early 2017, “to line the pockets of their friends”. There are few journalists in the United States who talk more about the rigged system than Tucker Carlson; it is exactly the mode of politics Brand trades in too (The New Statesman. March 7, 2023).  

 

And then here's the key revelation that they stumbled into: “Perhaps the two movements are not as uneasy bedfellows as they appear”. In other words, perhaps the way to look at this is not “left versus right” anymore, or “Republican versus Democrat” but, instead, people who trust global institutions of authority – the Pentagon, the U.S. Security State, Big Pharma, the military-industrial complex, the CIA – versus people who distrust those institutions, and that there are a lot of populists on the left and the right who now find common ground because they stand in opposition to these globalist institutions and distrust their integrity and their motives and believe that they do more harm than good. It kind of stumbles into the truth that the most important framework is no longer these archaic labels of “left” and “right”. But whether you question these global institutions of power and whether you stand in favor of – or opposed to –authoritarian measures, like having Big Tech form a union with the government to censor the Internet; or having the Pentagon in the U.S. Security State dictate to Big Tech whether dissent to wars is permitted. 

I agree that that is the much more relevant framework now that this article inadvertently stumbles into. But, of course, it can't concede that because like most traditional media outlets, this magazine only understands the world through these very labels of “left” versus “right”, “Labor” versus “Tory”, “Democrat” versus “Republican”. 

And so, they need to cling to this. And so, they end with this smearing of Brand’s reputation, this kind of very lazy way to try and discredit him. 

 

But one thing is abundantly clear: Brand is fighting the American culture wars from a shed in Oxfordshire. His demand to be taken seriously is a rather weak one (The New Statesman. March 7, 2023).

 

 It's just a very lazy way to conclude the article after essentially acknowledging that there's a good reason why people like Russell Brand now have a lot in common with right-wing populists because people on the left and right have come to the same conclusion about these gigantic institutions of authority that they're corrupt and should be opposed. They then have to just discredit him as being on the far-right, as being some rich elite who has no grounds for saying any of this, because they can't allow people to realize that they want to keep separate from these labels - that in fact, we have a lot more common ground than they want us to realize. 

So, we have been over many times the data before that shows that, in fact, people who identify as Democrats are far more supportive of Big Tech censorship and of state censorship. That opposition to the U.S. war and the U.S. role in fueling the proxy war in Ukraine comes from conservatives and not liberals, who are almost overwhelmingly, almost entirely unanimously in favor. That admiration for the CIA and the FBI is found on the left and distrust and cynicism about those agencies is found on the right. There have been real changes in the political framework and how left and right now see the world. All the data that we've shown you many times demonstrates that. But I think this attempt to try and grapple with where to place Russell Brand or Joe Rogan or Tucker Carlson or myself on the metric that is the crude and primitive one, the only one they understand, the “left versus right” – the reason it doesn't matter is that those labels don't really matter. All that matters to me is: Are you somebody who is willing to be skeptical of the institutions of authority – that we just showed you through this hearing are very willing to lie to everyone, to lie to the world for their own interest and to censor dissent from their lies, to serve their own interests. That is the most relevant question that I care about, at least, that shapes my view of the world. I don't try and decide what is the left-wing or right-wing view before or now analyzing a certain position. I don't care about ‘Does it help the Republican or the Democratic Party’? The establishment wings of each, I believe, have far more in common than difference. 

The only thing I care about is applying skepticism to these institutions of authority that I know are constructed to lie and deceive and serve their own interest at your expense. And I don't care any longer whether someone wants to claim that's a right-wing value or a left-wing value. Is it a right-wing or a left-wing value to oppose Big Tech's censorship in concert with the CIA and the FBI? Is it a right-wing or left-wing value to question the posture of endless war and whom that serves? Is it the right-wing or left-wing value to believe that Julian Assange and Edward Snowden performed a public service by revealing these hidden crimes in secret deceits and lies? Is any right-wing or left-wing value to being happy that the truth about Anthony Fauci and the COVID pandemic is finally emerging? I don't care. And I don't think there's any coherent answer because these labels don't serve to clarify these debates. They serve to keep us divided. 

And so, if you're somebody who wants to find the truth and who wants to unify as many people as possible in opposition to these institutions, you too, shouldn't care about these labels. This article reveals how bankrupt they are. The idea that Russell Brand is now on the far-right for supporting ideas he's forever supported and then has long been associated with the left they're so easily manipulated – these labels – just like the racism accusations that health authorities used to deem anyone supporting the lab leak theory as being not just a conspiracy theory but an ill-intentioned and malevolent one. So, the more these institutions do this, the more skepticism people have of them, and the more people distrust them. That applies to the corporate media, the U.S. Security State, Big Pharma, and the health authorities, and the better off we are – because these institutions are absolutely ill-intentioned, they're the ones that spread disinformation. The more skepticism, the better, and the least important and least interesting question is whether or not doing so places you on the left or the right. 

 

 

So that concludes our show for this evening. Once again, as a reminder, every episode of System Update is available in podcast form on Spotify, on Apple, and on every major podcasting platform. Simply follow System Update on Rumble. Make sure to do the System Update on Rumble. There's an old version of The Intercept that you should definitely not follow for many reasons, including the fact that it's defunct. The System Update on Rumble is the one to follow. You can listen to those episodes 12 hours after they appear first, live, here, exclusively on Rumble. 

Thank you once again for all of you have been watching. It's made our audience size grow and grow and grow, and that makes our show more and more successful.

Thank you, everybody, for watching. Have a great evening. We hope to see you back here tomorrow night and every night, at 7 p.m. EST, exclusively on Rumble. 

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IT’S WORSE THAN YOU THINK – TRUMP, THE DEVIL AND THE LAW
Why the prosecution of Donald Trump is so dangerous to everyone

In the play about the life of Sir Thomas Moore, Moore is discussing whether a heretic should be given the benefit of law with his son-in-law William Roper:

“William Roper: “So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!”

Sir Thomas More: “Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?”

William Roper: “Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!”

Sir Thomas More: “Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!” A Man for All Seasons 1966

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A Few Thoughts on Gratitude -- and Our Family's Ongoing Health Crisis

Despite the fact that my life has been dominated over the last eight months by my husband's ongoing health crisis, I have tried hard to avoid writing about it. In part it is because I'm well-aware that everyone's lives, at some point, will entail significant suffering and (except to us) there's nothing uniquely important or interesting about ours. In part it is because – especially ever since we began raising children – I have always tried to maintain at least some separation between the public and private parts of my life. In part it is because I strongly dislike the pervasive form of narcissistic "journalism" that entails little more than a desire to talk about oneself and one's feelings, dramas, and "traumas" dressed up as something more profound. And in part it is because I know that reporting and political commentary – and not personal reflections – is what my audience principally seeks, expects and desires.

Ever since David – on August 6, 2022: close to eight months ago – was very suddenly and unexpectedly hospitalized in ICU with a life-threatening illness, I have made exceptions on a couple of occasions by writing about all of this (the last article of any length that I wrote, back in November, contains details about his illness and trajectory and ours, for those interested). I had continued to post concise updates about his health online largely because I believe we owed updates to the Brazilian public about David, a then-Congressman seeking re-election, before we petitioned a court to withdraw his re-election campaign last October on health grounds. And even after we withdrew his candidacy, I have continued to post short updates because David, as an elected official, inspires a lot of love and support and people often ask about his recovery process.

But the primary reason I have also occasionally written or otherwise spoken about our family's situation (as I did with Megyn Kelly when she asked in January) is it is just impossible for me not to do so. None of us is a machine. I believe a major part of my ability to maintain a large and loyal audience for so many years is that they trust that -- even when they don't agree with particular views -- I'm speaking as honestly and authentically as I can. And there's just no way to maintain any form of authenticity if one is steadfastly concealing the singular event shaping every day and affecting essentially everything: from my sometimes-reduced work output to my energy levels to my emotional state.

But I have tried hard to avoid writing about our family's ongoing crisis unless I believe I have something worthwhile to say about it. That was what caused me to write about this the last time back in November, on the three-month anniversary of his hospitalization, when a Brazilian news outlet published a lengthy profile of how our family has navigated this deeply difficult process. I felt I had a couple of thoughts to share then that were worthwhile for others to hear. That was not because I believed these insights were unique epiphanies which I and I alone have had (they are not). It was because some core truths can really be understood – not rationally comprehended but viscerally ingested – only from an intense form of emotional suffering and pain of the kind my family and I have endured since August. 

While I have had my fair share of sad experiences of the kind most people encounter – the loss of my grandparents and parents being chief among them – the unexpected and repeated flirtation with death over the last eight months by my 37-year-old, previously healthy, and very physically fit and strong spouse is unlike anything I have ever imagined I would have to face. Nothing is close. This is a different universe of despair, fear and sadness than anything I have previously known. It continues to permeate every physical and emotional pore of my life.

And all of that is, in turn, made more difficult by the fact that I have the responsibility to do everything possible to support our children as they have had to endure the absence and contemplate the loss of a parent at time when kids of their age (now young teenagers) most need parents, all while I have to accept that there are major limits on my ability to protect them because I cannot fix the core cause of their suffering. I have not yet encountered a pain worse than having to watch your own children suffer without having the ability to stop it and I hope never to do so.

At the same time, the responsibility to do everything to support our kids through all of this has been the most potent source of motivation and energy for me. Mine and David's kids, and the responsibility to care for them, has been what has provided the most comfort and strength. The moments when I have been able to lessen their pain or when they provide to me moments of relief and levity, and when I could see our family strengthening and unifying through this and as a result of it, have been some of the most gratifying of my life.


 

I am choosing to write about this again now only because I have a couple of new thoughts from the events of the last several months that may be interesting or even helpful to others. To start with the bottom-line and relatively good progress report: each month that David has been hospitalized, his condition, on net, has improved as compared to the previous month. In other words, after arriving at the hospital on August 6 in an extremely grave condition from a suddenly inflamed and infected abdominal region that quickly spread via his blood to multiple organs, he has made some progress each month toward recovery.

But that progress is invariably slow, incremental, arduous and almost always spiked with setbacks and complications that are alarming, devastating, exhausting and at times potentially fatal. Even with all of these improvements, he is still in ICU – he has not left since his arrival almost eight months ago – and nobody can or will say that his survival is fully guaranteed. But nothing is guaranteed in life – that is most definitely one of the lessons this has forever drummed into my head – and his prognosis is now good, certainly far better than at any time since this began.

Starting in the first week, there have been three occasions when his doctors called me and told us to prepare for the worst, that his chances for survival over the next 48 to 72 hours were very low, close to impossible. That is independent of the multiple times when the news was grim but did not descend to that level. I won't even bother trying to explain what it's like to have to tell your children and your husband's family and best friends that it is time to go to the hospital for what is likely to be the last time, nor will I try to put into words what it is like to simultaneously have to endure it yourself while doing everything you can to help your kids get through moments like that. But somehow – for reasons even the best doctors in Rio de Janeiro admit they cannot explain – he navigated past each of those. And each time, he has somehow found a way to continue to improve.

The most important part of David's ongoing recovery is that he is now almost always fully awake, communicative, alert, aware, interactive and increasingly strong. Other than the first six weeks -- when he was basically in a medically induced coma – there have been some moments when he was mildly awake and communicative. But it is only in the last eight weeks when this is his normal state. Although his verbal communication is still impeded by his need to depend sometimes on a ventilator for breathing assistance, that is less and less the case. When he is off the ventilator, which is now most days, he is able to speak with the use of a device that captures enough air to allow him to be heard in his normal voice (even when he is off the ventilator, the machine remains connected to him through the tracheostomy in his windpipe, which is why he needs a device to speak). 

None of David's problems has ever been neurological or cognitive, and so I always believed he would have no impairments of that kind despite months of heavy sedation and disorientation. And that, very thankfully, has turned out to be the case. There is a mountain of studies on the long-term psychological trauma of prolonged ICU stays (which means a few weeks, not 8 months and counting), and the radical personality changes that often result. I have seen little to no evidence of that in David. His personality, his sense of humor, his recollection, even the way he playfully insults me the way only a spouse of 17 years can are all remarkably constant. While I have no doubt that all of us, but especially he, will have long-term work to do in treating the psychological impact from all of this, I don't feel, when I'm in his ICU room, that I'm speaking to an altered or partial version of David but rather to David himself, as I have always known him.


 

And that leads to the primary point I want to emphasize. Over the last four or five weeks, I have been able to spend both weekend days with David for up to twelve hours each day. I try to ensure the kids do not stay longer than an hour or two because I try to keep their lives as normalized as possible. I go there when he wakes up and is communicative and only leave to eat, exercise, and then when he falls asleep. 

There's obviously not much we can do in his ICU room. Sitting at his bedside and talking, or watching films and series together, are essentially the only two options. So that is what we do: sometimes together with our kids, usually just the two of us. And the amount of joy and happiness and gratification and fulfillment which that provides is absolutely impossible to express. It is unlike the joy anything else has ever provided me in my life. 

There were months when I was very doubtful about whether I would ever again have this simple pleasure: just sitting and talking to him. During those first particularly excruciating months, I found myself wanting nothing other than that: just the ability to sit next to him again and talk. And now I have that, at least for now.

I still do not know for sure how much longer I will have it: is it just yet another stage of the cruelty that this process has entailed of making me repeatedly believe he was getting better only to receive one gut punch after the next that made me believe the opposite was happening? Is there some new infection lurking around the corner or some virus returning that cannot be managed without a regime of toxic medication that imposes more burden than his liver and bone marrow can sustain? I do not know for how long what we have now will last.

But that was always true. We just never realized it before. Every day since 2005 that David and I woke up and went to sleep and shared and built our lives and careers together and then began raising our children together, we assumed – due to our age and health and hubris – that we would have that for decades to come, as if it were a guarantee, as if the universe had provided us with some enforceable contract that entitled us to assume this belonged to us and could not be taken away. And because we assumed it, we took it for granted. And because we took it for granted, we often ceased valuing it the way it deserved to be valued.

These days, especially on the weekends, I wake up excited and eager. That is not because I have anything exotic or glamorous or unique planned. It is because, at least for the moment, I get to do something that I – before last August – had been able to do every day for seventeen years but just treated as banal, ordinary, and thus unworthy of celebration: just sitting and talking to the person I was born to share my life with, my soul-mate, my best friend, the one love of my life. 

There is nothing anyone could offer me – no amount of money, no career opportunity, no trip, no gift, nothing – that would come close to the intensity and depth of the joy I get from just sitting for hours and talking to David about anything and everything, from recalling past memories, reminding ourselves of future plans (including adopting a girl in 2023 for our kids to have a younger sister), hearing his ample views on my Rumble program that he is only now able to see (mostly positive though with some pointed stylistic, fashion and substantive critiques), to discussing how best to handle our kids' various issues, to bickering over his grievance that I excessively praised certain films and shows I was eager for him to see and thus made him watch. There is nothing anyone could offer me that would even tempt me to consider as an alternative to spending the day with David in his ICU room - something I do not out of burden or obligation or with a sense of dread (as happened many times in the last seven months when things were so much worse and he was barely conscious and often unstable) but out of excitement and joy and connection.

It is extraordinary how often we spend so much of our lives chasing things we have been told to value and desire all while, right under our nose, the things that actually make us happiest and most fulfilled are just sitting there, often devalued because they seem too simple or too familiar or already acquired. It should not take the fear of losing something for us to take the time to realize how much we value it. 

One day, a year or so after we adopted our kids, I had spent about an hour just randomly sitting on the floor of the oldest one's room chatting and laughing aimlessly with both of them, interspersed with a few mildly serious discussions of the future. None of what was said was particularly memorable, though that is the point. As I was leaving the room to return to work, I felt a joy and fulfillment and deep purpose I had not really felt before – not despite the simplicity of what had just happened but because of it. Humans are social animals and those of us lucky enough to develop and enjoy deep and genuine human connections possess that which is most valuable in the world, even if we fail to realize the value of it.

One of the inherent, centrally defining and universal attributes of being human is that nothing in our lives is permanent. We know rationally that we will eventually lose everything – including the things and people we most love and value, culminating in our own lives on the planet –  but we never know how or when it will happen. Yet that knowledge somehow fails to prevent us from falsely assuming that the things we have that we most value – starting with life itself, our health, our family and friends – will be with us forever, and there is thus no reason to go out of our way on any given day to embrace them or honor them or feel gratitude for them or to be present to how beautiful they are.

There is an emerging body of neurological studies proving that the affirmative act of seeking gratitude – as opposed to just passively experiencing gratitude – produces positive and healthy chemical reactions in our brains. When good things happen to you – you get a new job you want or earn a raise; someone you like expresses reciprocity; you receive praise or recognition for what you have done – gratitude comes easily and passively. It is automatic: one does not need to search for it.

But even in the most difficult moments, we still have things which merit gratitude. And remembering that and then going on a hunt for them, though often hard, is immeasurably helpful.

For the first two months of David's illness, the worst part of each day was waking up. In those two to three second after awakening -- before my defenses were up, before I could even orient myself to the state of being awake -- the renewed agony washed over me as I realized what was happening. That was often immediately compounded by looking at the empty space in the bed which he had always occupied. There were many days back in August, September and October where I never recovered from the sadness and fear of the first several seconds of my day. It shaped everything that followed for the remainder of each day, including my physical and mental state.

That only changed when -- following some wise advice -- I deliberately began seeking gratitude as my first act after awakening. Instead of wallowing in despair and fixating on what was bad (David's absence and life-threatening illness), I chose instead to focus on what was good: David is alive; our kids are healthy, and they are amazing, well-adjusted, happy, loving kids; I have my health and the ability to do everything that could be done for David and our kids. When I say seeking gratitude was a choice, that's what I mean. It was something I pushed myself to do as soon as I felt that dread and misery returning. It was never easy. Defaulting to a focus on the bad parts of life is always effortless; it is where inertia and inaction will take you. Rejecting that requires force, determination and struggle. Though it is a bit cliché, it is nonetheless true that we cannot control many events in our lives but we can always choose how we interpret and view them.

When I started to do that, it changed everything. Wallowing in despair helps nobody. It weakens and depletes, prevents you from doing what you can to take all the actions possible to support those whom you most want to support. Seeking, finding and embracing gratitude for the things in my life that merit it even gave me more physical strength: I was able to work out more and more, to do more and more exercise, to pay far more attention to my diet. And all of those phsyical activities and the strength that it produced, in turn, strengthened my emotional state, for reasons now demonstrated by multiple neurological studies. None of that meant there were no more hard days. There were many, some close to unbearable. There still are. But there are no days any longer when I wonder whether I can or should be doing more for those I love most – especially David and our kids. You can't transmit positive energy and optimism and encouragement and faith and strength to someone unless you actually have and feel it yourself.

What remains most astounding to me is that – after all these years, these decades, of running and chasing and striving and reaching and grabbing and struggling and pursuing – everything that I actually need for core happiness, fulfillment and gratitude are things I already have and have had for a long time. That starts with my ability to just share moments of lucid, connected, genuine and loving conversations, whether simple or complex, with my life partner and now with our kids. 

And while I don't know how many days or weeks or months I will have this - I don't even know if I'll have it tomorrow when I wake up or whether the doctor's daily morning call will contain news of some unexpected negative development  – that's true of everything. That was true long before David was hospitalized. Nothing is guaranteed. The only difference is that while I am now painfully aware of this, I spent most of my life being unaware of it, of taking it for granted. 

And the lack of permanence of those things that provide us the greatest happiness does not make them less valuable. That is what makes them valuable. Their impermanence is the reason to grab them, hold them, appreciate them, and honor them every day that we have them and are thus able to do that.

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Who Radicalized the Nashville Shooter? Plus: New “Anti-TikTok” Law Could Censor ALL Social Media
Video Transcript: System Update #61

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Note From Glenn Greenwald: The following is the full show transcript, for subscribers only, of a recent episode of our System Update program. Watch the full episode on Rumble or listen to the podcast on Spotify

Police have identified the suspect who carried out a gruesome mass shooting spree at a private Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee. The massacre resulted in the deaths of six people, including three young children. Police say the likely killer, 28-year-old Audrey Hale, attended the school as a biological female and now identifies as a transgender male. We have repeatedly condemned the now pervasive media practice of leaping to instant conclusions before the bodies are even cold about the motives of killings of this type in order to heap blame on their political opponents, always by claiming that right-wing ideology inspired the shooter to act. We will do the same tonight - condemn that. But in order to illustrate how rotted this tactic is and in the hope that one day it will cease being used, we will apply that framework to this massacre in order to ask the following questions: who and what radicalized this shooter in Nashville to carry out such an atrocity? What ideology was responsible for it? And which advocates of that ideology tonight have blood on their hands? 

Then we'll revisit the topic we reported on last week, the Biden administration's demand that it be vested with the power to ban the social media app TikTok. We won't repeat the various arguments for and against that ban, but we will instead urge you to really consider the implications of the actual law that they are trying to enact, one that extends far, far beyond TikTok, as well as to look at the possible First Amendment implications of banning an app which 150 million Americans are voluntarily choosing to use. 

We'll also examine MSNBC's bizarre exploitation of antisemitism last week as a means of barring discussion of George Soros’ very ample political donations, as well as look at a highly revealing new video from 2014 from Jen Psaki, when she was the State Department spokesperson, about the role of the U.S. in facilitating regime change in Ukraine. 

As a reminder, every episode of System Update is now available in podcast form on Spotify, Apple and every other major podcasting platform. In order to listen to it in that forum, which airs 12 hours after our show airs live here on Rumble, simply follow us on those podcast platforms.

For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update starting right now. 


 

There was a truly horrific attack today carried out at a private school in Nashville, Tennessee. The facts are still emerging, but what is known is the following. There were six people, innocent people who were murdered by the mass shooter, three of them young children, two of them nine years old, the other eight years old, as well as three employees of the school including a custodian and a substitute teacher and apparently one of the heads of the school. According to the Nashville Police Department, they know who the killer is – who died as part of the police operation. 

From the local newspaper, The Tennessean, you have the headline, “Nashville School Shooting Updates: shooting suspect identified.” The article reads:

 

Metro Nashville police say a former student carrying two assault rifles and a handgun killed three students and three adults at the Covenant School in Nashville, Monday, March 23. The suspect, who police have identified as a 28-year-old transgender man, entered the school through a side entrance and began shooting. Shortly before 10:30 a.m., police responded to the school and were able to locate the suspect on the second floor of the school in a lobby where they fatally shot him (The Tennessean. March 27, 2023).

 

We have a video we want to show you from the chief of police of the Nashville Police Department talking about the episode, and whom they identify as the person responsible for this incredibly tragic massacre. 

 

(Video)

Nashville PD: Yes, we have identified the suspect as a 28-year-old female white, actually a Nashvillian [or who] lives in the Nashville area. We have an ongoing investigation as it pertains to her. 

 

Reporter: [Have you] located her place, where she lived? Do you have officers there?

 

Nashville PD: We have. We have.

 

Reporter: Was she wearing body armor? 

 

Nashville PD: I can’t say that far into the investigation. I don't remember saying it, but I can't say for certain if she had body armor or not. 

 

Reporter: Does she have any connection to the church?  

 

Nashville PD: From my initial findings – is that at one point she was a student at that school but unsure what year, all of that. But that's what I've been told so far. 

 

Reporter: Did she have any social media or has her media been examined at this point? 

 

Nashville PD: The investigations are still ongoing at this point. Our federal partners, our state partners, we're all looking into that to see exactly. This is still fluid at the time, but we're looking at everything. 

 

 

You notice in that clip, the police chief repeatedly referred to the killer as she and her. That appears to be what is commonly known as misgendering, because later in the press conference, the police chief acknowledged that the shooter identifies as a male, identifies as a trans male, numerous social media postings and other profiles from the person who is the shooter also identifies himself as a trans man. 

One of the most despicable media practices, which we have very often, is that every single time there's a shooting of this type, the media instantly seeks to politicize it in accordance with their own agenda. And that means one of two things happens. If there is some way to suggest that the shooter is in any way an adhering to or a believer in conservative political ideology before anything is even known about the motive, the media narrative will instantly arise that it isn't just the killer, but also people who identify or who advocate that ideology who are the people to blame for the massacre. This has happened over and over and over again to the point that we have written about it many times before. 

Here is the article – back in May of last year, you probably remember – that a white shooter went to a neighborhood in Buffalo, New York, where he knew that there was a large population of black people and walked into a grocery store and shot up the grocery store and killed several innocent people and overnight, or even before the night was over, the media had decided that the person to blame was not only the shooter but also Tucker Carlson, the Fox host, as well as a variety of other conservatives who have expressed concerns about immigration in the United States and the levels of it. And the argument, the rationale that they used was the shooter had left the manifesto in which he invoked what he referred to as “the great replacement theory”, namely the concern in his view that the United States was being radically and purposely, fundamentally altered because there was an attempt to import into the United States nonwhite immigrants in order to replace the white population. And since he believes that there is no such thing as a legitimate nonwhite American citizen, he believes he was justified in murdering those that he regards as illegitimately in the United States, namely all nonwhite people. 

What was so despicable about the attempt to keep the blame on people like Tucker Carlson and those who have expressed concerns about immigration in the past, or even people who have noted the truthful observation that Democratic Party strategists have long celebrated the fact that immigration was demographically changing the United States in the favor of the Democratic Party, as they perceived it because nonwhite voters were more likely to vote for Democrats. That was the argument of Democratic strategists. They wrote books about it.  Immigrants were replacing the prior demographic makeup of the United States, and that would lead to a permanent Democratic majority. Anybody who noted that was what Democrats were saying they wanted to do was instantly blamed for that shooting in Buffalo, even though the killer in Buffalo left a manifesto identifying by name the people who he said had influenced him in his worldview that caused him to go and do that shooting. And it was a very long list. Not one person on Fox News or any conservative in mainstream American conservative politics was on the list. The only mention of Fox News in that manifesto was one that criticized and blamed Fox for being part of the establishment, the killer in Buffalo thought was responsible for all of those problems. But none of that mattered. There was at least a weeklong coverage of an attempt to say that Tucker Carlson and those who thought like him were the actual murderers because he and those like him had radicalized the Buffalo shooter. 

So, we wrote this article, “The Demented – and Selective – Game of Instantly Blaming Political Opponents for Mass Shootings”. And the subheadline there says, “All ideologies spawn psychopaths who kill innocents of its name. Yet only some are blamed for their violent adherents: by opportunists cravenly exploiting the corpses while they still lie on the ground”. Because that's exactly what happened in Buffalo and it's what happened in many other cases. 

The reason I said it was selective is that every political faction produces people who carry out violent acts. I reviewed the case of James Hodgkinson, who, in 2017, went and deliberately shot as many Republican members of this Congress as he could, almost murdering Steve Scalise. And it turned out he was an ardent fan of Rachel Maddow and of Bernie Sanders and carried out those attacks explicitly in the name of the arguments, which both regularly advanced, that the Republican Party is racist and fascist and a white supremacist party and is connected to Russia. He left all kinds of documents

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Mask-Off: US Reveals Real Intentions in Ukraine. Plus: Reporter Anya Parampil Confirms NSA Spied on Tucker

We finally have clarity and honesty about the real motives and goals of the U.S. proxy war in Ukraine. For more than a year, Biden officials and supporters of their war – in both parties – have insisted that the decision of when to end this war and under what terms lies solely with President Zelenskyy in Ukraine; the United States has no role to play at all in that decision. Even though the U.S. and its NATO allies are providing the bulk of the arms and money to fuel this war, Biden officials have been maintaining the pretense that they have no say when or how the war ends. They're simply there to help Ukraine. But now, with opposition growing in both the world and within the Republican Party and with China increasingly playing an effort to forge a peace deal, as they just did with Saudi Arabia and Iran, U.S. officials are panicking and becoming increasingly explicit and candid that they are indeed the one driving these decisions and that their goals - which have been telegraphed for years, we will show you - that they not only oppose any efforts to end this war diplomatically, but insist that it continue indefinitely, precisely because their real goal is and always has been not to protect and defend Ukraine, but to sacrifice it. 

Then, Fox News host Tucker Carlson created controversy and provoked widespread media mockery when he claimed in 2021 that he had proof his communications were being spied on by the NSA. That mockery happened because our wise and savvy media lead us to know that the NSA would never abuse its spying powers for political lines or to spy on journalists. But now a left-wing journalist promptly has come forth with confirmation of Carlson's claims. We'll talk to her about her role in this story, what she knows, what she's telling for the first time this week, and how and why she's appeared on his platform despite her longstanding foreign policy views often associated with the left. 

For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update starting right now. 


 

The war in Iraq, or rather, Ukraine - is now more than a year old. The war in Iraq is on my mind because the 20th anniversary is coming up and many of the same arguments that were assembled to justify it are the same ones now assembled to justify the U.S. proxy war in Ukraine. 

In fact, I was looking at a video earlier today of George Bush and others saying that the reason we had to go fight in Iraq and invade Iraq is that we'd rather fight them over there than fight them over here. And I saw a video earlier today of California Democrat Adam Schiff saying exactly the same thing about the U.S. proxy war in Ukraine. Namely, the reason we must fight Russia over in Ukraine is that, if we don't, we'll have to fight them over here. Presumably, the Russian army is on the verge of attacking the American homeland right after it gets done trying to hold a town or two for more than three months in Ukraine, confident that it can conquer the American homeland, despite spending 1/15 in its military of what the United States spends. 

in any event, ever since that war began in Ukraine, more than a year ago, there have been two primary claims emanating from Washington, from defenders of this war policy who are the majority wings of both political parties. Yet again, we have complete bipartisan support with only some dissidence in the Republican Party and a few on the left, but not in the Democratic Party. Washington is united, as it usually is on such matters, and those two arguments have been the following. 1) the United States has no role whatsoever in the war in Ukraine in terms of deciding how this war will end and under what terms it will end. That decision is left solely to the Ukrainians and to President Zelenskyy because, after all, it's their country, not ours. And “we're just here to help” like we always do. We just want to help Ukraine and whatever Ukraine decides is best for them – having a diplomatic solution to the war, to end the war, continuing the war for as long as they want, that's totally their decision. We have no say at all in any of that because we're not interfering in that region. We're just helping. We're just helping. We're providing them with aid and assistance. We don't even have a position; we’re agnostic, whenever Zelenskyy wants, that's what we do. That's been the position.

Unfortunately, for people who have been claiming that, it's no longer tenable because China is now in that region trying to forge a peace agreement like it just did two weeks ago between Iran and Saudi Arabia, one of the most consequential peace agreements in that region in years in which the United States had absolutely no involvement because it was so focused on Ukraine, a country that Washington forever has said is not a vital interest to the allied states. But now our focus is so overwhelmingly on Ukraine and our money, and our weapons are going exclusively to that region that China waltzed into this much more important region and forged a peace deal. And now that they're trying to do so with President Xi in Moscow, U.S. officials are starting to panic and becoming much more candid about the reality that, of course, it's the United States that decides if and when a peace deal will be accepted and if and when this war will end. And as we're about to show you, what has been clear from the start is now made explicit, which is that the United States has no interest in having this war end because the goal is not it never was to protect Ukraine, but instead to destroy Ukraine, to offer it as a pawn, to sacrifice it at the altar of our real geostrategic goal of weakening Russia by entrapping Russia in Ukraine. And that only works if we entrap them in a war as long as possible. If that war ends too early, before Russia is destroyed, before we achieve regime change, we haven't really achieved our goal. So, we want to keep that war going and we're going to use our power over Zelenskyy, which we've had not since the war began, but way long ago, since 2014, in order to ensure that war continues. And we can show you the proof now that the U.S. officials are losing control of their message, finally revealing the truth inadvertently. 

The other claim that has been emanating from the bipartisan defenders of Biden's war policy in Ukraine is that 2) the United States has no role to play whatsoever in Ukraine. Never did. We had no role there. We're just minding our own business. Ukraine is this totally independent, thriving democracy, bravely fighting for its core civil liberties and independence from Russia and one day Vladimir Putin decided he was going to invade Ukraine for totally imperialistic and malicious ends, having nothing to do with the United States or NATO or the West. We only got involved because we needed to help this democracy because that's what we do. We defend democracy. We arm, fund and support people who believe in democracy and we vanquish tyranny. And we're very, very opposed to wars of aggression of the kind Vladimir Putin launched, even though the current president, Joe Biden, like pretty much everybody who wields power in Washington,

of the invasion of Iraq, of the bombing of seven Muslim countries over the last 15 years. We took our army, we packed it up, we sent it to the other side of the world, we invaded a country of 26 million people that wasn't remotely threatening our own and we stayed there and destroyed it for over a decade. And then we left. 

And now the very people who did that look in the camera and they say, we're in Ukraine because we believe in the rules based international order. The very same people who tell you that send arms and money to the world's worst despots, including Saudi Arabia, with whom President Biden exchanged an affectionate fist bump with the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. We send arms to General Sisi in Egypt, to the United Arab Emirates, to Jordan, to Qatar, and to despots all over the world. And yet they still tell you we have no role to play whatsoever in Ukraine. We're just there to help save democracy and vanquish authoritarianism and despotism because we like democracy and dislike despotism. 

And yet, some newly uncovered videos by several independent journalists, including Michael Tracey and others that are incredibly interesting, where Chris Murphy, the Democrat from the very blue state of Connecticut, who's regarded as a liberal, went in 2014 with the pro-war wing of the Republican Party, John McCain, in particular, not only to support the people overthrowing the democratically elected government of Ukraine because that government was too hostile to the West and too favorable to Moscow - not only did they go and do that - but the things Chris Murphy said at the time are incredibly revealing. This is because he didn't realize that one day the United States government was going to have to claim the exact opposite. So, we're about to show you those videos that are incredibly revealing, along with a few others that really put together the story in a very comprehensive and compelling way. 

The entire concept that the U.S. had no role to play in Ukraine, that it wasn't involved in the governance right on the other side of the border of Russia, in fact, the most vulnerable part of the Russian border – the part of the border that West Germany specifically twice invaded. Russia used that part of the border during the 20th century, killing tens of millions of Russians. They're pretty sensitive about that region. They're particularly sensitive when it comes to Western tanks and even German tanks rolling up to that part of the border, which is now happening as a result of Germany's decision to send German tanks to Ukraine to use against Russia, something that Germans swore would never happen again, that they would never send their military up to the Russian border. That was supposed to be the whole premise of the post-World War II order when it came to both Eastern and Western Europe and yet we have that again, along with German re-militarization and French re-militarization. Imagine what that looks like from Moscow's perspective. 

But the entire idea that we weren't involved in Ukraine intimately and directly and aggressively since the change of government in 2013 is long been so preposterous that it's amazing that anyone could say it with a straight face, in part because let's remember the scandal of Joe Biden and Hunter Biden and Burisma energy – not the part of the scandal that people like to talk about, the part of the scandal that even Biden administration supporters admit is genuine. Namely, you have this energy company, Burisma, that was facing serious legal problems with a prosecutor in Ukraine and another legal jeopardy as well and they did what American companies often do when they're facing legal jeopardy, which is they thought to themselves, let's try and get on our side, by paying them, someone with access to power so that we're protected. That's a common thing for a company to do. But no, the Burisma did not go looking for the son or a relative of a Ukrainian official, which is what you would do if Ukrainian officials were running Ukraine. They instead went and looked for the son of the United States Vice-President Joe Biden. Why would Burisma, an energy company facing legal problems in Ukraine, try and curry favor with Joe Biden to protect itself from prosecutorial pressure if Ukraine is a sovereign and democratic country in which the United States plays no role? Obviously, they did that because the real country running Ukraine for the last eight years, right on that side of the Soviet mob, the Russian border, has been the United States. And anyone who knows anything about that series of events knows that that's true. And that alone proves it, that Burisma's actions reflected their recognition of who the real power in Ukraine was. It wasn't Ukraine. It wasn't the elected leaders of Ukraine. It was the United States. 

In case anyone had any doubts about that, all we have to remember is that Victoria Nuland, who worked in the Clinton administration and then ended up as Dick Cheney's top adviser on the Iraq war – obviously, did a smashing job there – and then, despite being a neocon involved in what the Democrats claim was a criminal war, ended up waltzing right into the Obama administration at the highest levels of Hillary Clinton’s State Department, when President Obama replaced George Bush as president, in 2008, and ultimately ran European policy for John Kerry State Department and specifically Ukraine, and she got caught on tape – the top official in the State Department in charge of Ukraine, Victoria Nuland, who's still running Ukraine for the United States and the Biden administration – picking the Ukrainian leader. It had nothing to do with any democratic processes in Ukraine. The Ukrainians had already chosen their president. That was the president who won a five-year term in 2010 and was supposed to serve until 2015 but, instead, Americans like John McCain and Chris Murphy and almost every other official, as we're about to show you, traveled to Kyiv to work with those trying to overthrow the government of Ukraine and replace the democratically elected leader with one far more amenable to being a puppet to the two states and NATO. That's the history of Ukraine. 

And here is Victoria Nuland, just the relevant part of the clip in which she did it, it can never be heard enough times. This – remember when they tell you that Ukraine is a democracy we’re there to protect – is how the actual leaders of Ukraine are selected (Feb.4, 2014). 

 

This is the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt speaking on a phone call with Victoria Nuland in a conversation that leaked and that we all now get to listen to.

 

Geoffrey Pyatt:  Yeah. I mean, I guess. Well, in terms of him not going into the government, just let him sort of stay out and do his political homework and stuff. I'm just thinking in terms of, sort of the process moving ahead, we want to keep the moderate and democrats together. The problem is going to be [Oleh] Tyahnybok and his guys. And, you know, I'm sure that's part of what [President Viktor] Yanukovych is calculating on all of this.  

 

Victoria Nuland: I think Yats is the guy who's got the economic experience, the governing experience. He's the guy, you know. what he needs is Klitschko and Tyahnybok on the outside. He needs to be talking to them four times a week, you know. I just think Klitschko going in, he's going to be at that level, working for Yatsenyuk. It's just not going to work.  

 

Geoffrey Pyatt:  Yeah, no, I think that's – I think that's right. Okay, good. Would you want us to try to set up a call with him as the next step? 

 

Victoria Nuland: My understanding from that call, but you tell me, was that the big three were going into their own meeting and that Yats was going to offer in that context, a three-way, you know, a three-plus-one conversation or three-plus-two with you. Is that not how you understood it? 

 

Geoffrey Pyatt:  No, I think I mean, that's what he proposed. But I think just knowing the dynamics, it's been with them where […] 

 

What a weird democracy, isn't it? – where Victoria Nuland and the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine picked the leader of the country. 

By the way, that plan they laid out, the one Victoria Nuland endorsed, ended up being exactly what happened. That's exactly how the Ukrainian leaders were chosen. These Ukrainian leaders were meeting with the United States intelligence agencies, to try and convince them that they should be the person who should lead of Ukraine. And that's exactly what happened. So, this entire narrative that Ukraine is a democracy, they're fighting for their sovereignty, they want to be free of foreign influence, the whole thing is a joke and a lie given that we get to listen to Victoria Nuland choose exactly how you claim was going to be run and Burisma obviously recognized that for the reasons I just described. 

Not only that, but the claim that, oh, it's just Ukraine that decides when this war ends, that the United States has no role to play, that we just listen to President Zelenskyy – if he wants to end the war, we honor that; if he doesn't want to end the war, we honor that – listen to what John Kirby, who used to be the Defense Department spokesperson until a few months ago, now works at the White House, and his senior national security role had to say on CNN about whether or not that's, in fact, true. When he was asked whether or not it would be acceptable for Ukraine and Russia to agree to a cease-fire, if that's something that the Chinese got each side to agree to, 

 

(Video. March 20, 2023)

 

John Kirby: We'll see. But as you know, we've been very, very public about any concerns about some sort of a cease-fire announcement right now. We all want to see peace. We all want to see this war end. It could end today if Mr. Putin did the right thing, but a cease-fire called right now would basically just ratify Russia's conquest and give Mr. Putin more time to reequip and retrain and restart operations at a time and a place of his choosing. 

 

So, note that when asked about a cease-fire, John Kirby was not even pretending to say, “That's for President Zelenskyy to decide; that's for the Ukrainians to decide.” He offered his argument about why he and the United States would be opposed to a cease-fire. It would give the Russians time to consolidate their gains. It would allow the Russians to rebuild. Maybe it would actually foster a diplomatic resolution. That's the idea of a cease-fire: it's much easier for parties to negotiate in good faith when they're not trying to destroy each other. That's why the first step of diplomacy is often a cease-fire. But John Kirby just explained very emphatically why he, a U.S. official, opposed to it. And his argument was not because Zelenskyy is, but he has his own reasons for being opposed to it. And then he makes it even more explicit. 

 

CNN:  If they call for a cease-fire, you believe Ukraine should and will reject that? 

 

John Kirby: Yes, we do. And we would reject it as well. We think that's […]

 

  Ok, that's the key phrase. So, she asked him, you think Ukraine would reject a cease-fire and say, yeah, but we would reject it, too? So, we have a separate position from Ukraine. That's what matters, that we would reject it. The United States, that's the ultimate decision maker. Of course, the United States is the ultimate decision-maker. It's been running in Ukraine since 2013. It picked its government in 2014. It has been providing all of its arms and all of its funding from the beginning of its new government that the United States helped install. And, obviously, since the war began. So finally, this pretense that Ukraine is a sovereign, independent country that makes its own decisions is all crumbling down because they're in panic mode, that China may be able to negotiate an end to this war. And they're making very clear we, the United States, are not going to allow this. We, the United States, are opposed to it. Who cares if Zelensky wants it? It's not acceptable to us. He said that in several interviews, most explicitly right here. 

Now, what's really interesting is that if you go back and look at history, which is incredibly easy to forget, especially – even when it’s very recent history – so often the real truth lies in just having a small amount of historical context. A small historical memory is invaluable in understanding the truth and being able to navigate and critically evaluate the propaganda that you're being asked to ingest. 

So, let's recall that 2013, at the end of 2013, when there was an uproar in Ukrainian civil society when the Ukrainian president – that was elected still had two years in his own term – that groups funded by the United States and supported by the State Department began organizing and demanding the ouster of their elected president. That happens all the time. Liberals marched against Trump, even though he won; here in Brazil, there were marches all the time against Bolsonaro. Just the fact that there are marches and protests against an elected government doesn't mean you get rid of the government. The people voted for that leader. There's a constitutional term, but the U.S. funded groups in Ukraine to agitate violently to remove that leader because the U.S. preferred a different leader, because that leader was more amenable to Moscow right across the border than to the United States all the way on the other side of the world.

In the history of the United States government, if you know anything about American history, is that when there's a government that’s more loyal or closer to countries we regard as our enemies and not as close to us, our solution is first to warn those countries and threaten them. And then, if they don't heed that warning, we overthrow them. That's what the United States does, what the CIA exists to do, and it's what happened here. 

So here, in late 2013, we always hear how Democrats and Republicans agree on nothing, how conservatives and liberals are so different. They're at each other's throats all the time. In this case, Senator John McCain, one of the most pro-war members of the Republican Party, and Chris Murphy, the young, newly elected liberal from the blue state of Connecticut, traveled jointly and they, in the open, gathered with the protesters, the anti-Ukrainian government protesters. That's what these U.S. officials did. Imagine if, say, Chinese officials came or Russian officials came and just openly marched with anti-Biden protesters or Occupy Wall Street – that's what they did. They just interfered openly in Ukrainian domestic politics by joining with these protesters. 

There you see The Washington Post headline: “In Ukraine, Senators McCain, Murphy Addressed Protesters and Promised Support”. 

 

KYIV, Ukraine – A showdown between Russia on one side and the United States and the European Union on the other drew closer here Sunday, as two American senators told a crowd of hundreds of thousands of protesters that Ukraine's future lies to the west, not the east (Washington Post. Dec 15, 2013). 

 

It sounds a lot like interference in another country's politics to me. 

 

“We are here”, said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), “to support your just cause: the sovereign right to determine [Ukraine's] own destiny freely and independently and the destiny you seek lies in Europe” (Washington Post. Dec 15, 2013).  

 

They had just chosen their own destiny in the election three years ago but because we didn't like it, we were there to tell them it was time to pick a new destiny, one that lies in Europe, not Moscow. 

 

Added Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn): “Ukraine's future stands with Europe and the U.S. stands with Ukraine.”

 

Murphy, McCain and European politicians who addressed the crowd in Kyiv on Sunday turned up the pressure on Yanukovych, promising that their governments will consider individual financial sanctions against responsible Ukrainian officials if there is any further outbreak of police violence against the protesters who come and go at the semi-permanent encampment on Kyiv’s Independence Square (Washington Post. Dec 15, 2013).

 

You can go back and look at Occupy Wall Street and the way that disappeared. It disappeared because the police came and crushed those movements. I spent a year going around the United States visiting various encampments in, I think, 15 different cities and it was a real movement against the Wall Street bailout. It was similar to the one on the right, the Tea Party, before it got co-opted by the Republican Party, that they had very common views which were in opposition to the dominance of Wall Street and the ability of Wall Street to get a bailout when they were gambling and getting rich with their wins and then socializing their losses. And the reason that movement disappeared is that the U.S. government and various local governments used the police force to crush it. And so here we are in Kyiv telling them if they do the same, we're going to support a change of government – which we then engineered – and pick their president. 

At the time, Chris Murphy –  who, again, is a young senator, he was 39 when he was elected just a year earlier –went on C-SPAN to talk about his role with John McCain in engineering all kinds of instability in Ukraine and trying to work with the Republicans and other Democrats in the administration to change the government of Ukraine. And he made some amazing admissions that are really worth watching in retrospect. Let's watch a couple of those. 

 

Sen. Chris Murphy: I will admit to you that I have not been involved, as involved, in what's happening in Venezuela over the last week, because I've been focused, as the chairman of the Europe Subcommittee, on Ukraine. But […] 

 

Time off from trying to change the government in Venezuela. He was a little bit absent from that, he said, because he was so focused instead on changing the government in Ukraine. 

 

Sen. Chris Murphy: With respect to Ukraine, we have not sat on the sidelines. We have been very much involved. Members of the Senate who have been there, members of the State Department who have been on the Square, the administration, the Obama administration passed sanctions. The Senate was prepared to pass its own set of sanctions. And as I said, I really think that the clear position of the United States has in part been what has helped lead to this change in regime. [...] 

 

I mean, did you hear what he said there? We have not been on the sidelines. We have been very active there. And our active role played a key role in the change of regime, meaning we helped topple the democratic government, the democratically elected government in Ukraine, and replaced it with one chosen by Victoria Nuland. It's just an explicit admission probably from the Senate are too inexperienced to understand how you couched these things in euphemisms. You don't go on CNN or I'm sorry, on C-SPAN and admit these things. 

 

Sen. Chris Murphy: I know that there is merit in the claim that the United States sort of has these principles, and then we selectively apply them. We get involved in certain places, and then we don't get involved in other places. But I think if ultimately this is a peaceful transition to a new government in Ukraine, it'll be the United States on the streets of Ukraine who will be seen as a great friend in helping make that transition happen. 

 

Oh, wow. So, apparently, it turns out that even back then we were willing to admit that the United States should get the credit for the change in government in Ukraine, which apparently is not a sovereign democracy, but one that we radically shaped for our own interest. And we're even boasting of it at the time. 

Now, let's look at this next clip. They're all amazing. Let's look at what he says next. 

 

Caller, on C-SPAN:  Thank you for taking my call. 

 

Sen. Chris Murphy: Sure. 

 

Caller, on C-SPAN:  All right. You know, my concern of being a child of the Cold War is always a threat from, you know, the East. And I was concerned with how this moving forward could lead to some type of global conflict. Whenever we seem to have these elections that are monitored, or the United States is involved or Europe's involved but seems to eventually end with some type of violence. I was concerned with that violence escalating on a global scale between Russia and the European Union, or with the United States’s involvement in a potential conflict between those two superpowers. 

 

Okay. So that person said: look, seems to me, knowing the Cold War that I lived through and then whenever we do this sort of thing, whenever we start changing other countries’ governments, start interfering in their political affairs, especially when it involves the attempt to rule countries in Russia's neighborhood, that is a danger to escalate and to turn into a real war between Moscow and the West or Moscow and Ukraine in which the West gets involved. 

That was that caller's concern that he posed to Senator Murphy, who's apparently an expert in Ukraine, given that he's now over there trying to pick their new government and change their politics for the better. He got elected by the people of Connecticut and immediately goes with John McCain to start fiddling with Kyiv. So, let's listen to what Chris Murphy told that caller about those concerns. 

 

Sen. Chris Murphy: There certainly is some concern about what Russia is going to do over the course of the next week or month. I think it's irresponsible to talk about the potential for Russia to move some kind of offensive force into Crimea, which is the coastal region of Ukraine that has a Russian military base and a lot of the important ports. That would be a fundamental, grave mistake on behalf of the Russians. And I think they know that that would essentially lead it to a descent to madness. So, I don't worry that this is going to result in any kind of military confrontation between the U.S. and Europe and Russia. 

 

Well, so just a few months after he assured everybody that, of course, Russia would never do something so stupid as to take Crimea, Crimea was part of Russia. And, of course, he's not concerned that this one day might lead to confrontation between Europe and the U.S. on the one hand and Russia on the other, because he's not the one whose house is going to be bombarded, who's going to fight in those wars. It's just going to be the Ukrainians getting bombed and the Russians dying. So, of course, he's not concerned. But here is this genius – who obviously can't even run the United States, the country where he's elected to be an elected official – who decided he was going to interfere in Ukraine instead, making all kinds of predictions about the future, all of which proved to be the exact opposite of what ended up happening. These are geniuses who are not only running our country but trying to run every other. 

Let's listen to this next one. I'll just pick a few key excerpts from it. But these really are amazing. 

 

C-SPAN: […]  McLean, Virginia, Independent Line for Senator Chris Murphy. 

 

McLean:  Hi. I just have a few points and thank you for allowing me to call C-SPAN, by the way. […] So I'll just have three quick points and then I'll take my answer off the air. The first one is, isn't it true that Yanukovych was elected for the first time in 2010 for one five-year term, that elections were scheduled for 2015? So, the second point is, why is it okay for foreign ministers from other countries to show up during protest movements – so, let's say in Ukraine – like the foreign ministers of Poland and Germany and support the protesters against the current government there? Wouldn't it be something similar to the foreign ministers of, let's say, Mexico and Canada showing up during the Occupy Wall Street movement and saying, yes, we agree that your government is corrupt? And the third point is, why isn't the West and America talking about the fact that a large or significant portion of the Ukrainian opposition right now is made up of far-right politicians, including the party supporter, which openly is fascist and xenophobic, and they said that they don't want to join the EU because they considered the EU to be a bunch of gays and Jews just as well as they say that they don't want to join the imperialist Moscow regime? 

 

Do you see how the random callers who just call C-SPAN and hope to get on because they have no credentials, are infinitely smarter than the people who are running all these policies? So, he said: you keep talking about democracy. Doesn’t the democratically elected president of Ukraine that you're trying to overthrow have a five-year term until 2015, and, also, like, by the way, isn't it kind of inappropriate for you, for foreign officials and foreign ministers, to go join protest movements in other countries to overthrow their governments? And, also, by the way, aren't we supporting the part of Ukrainian society that's filled with a bunch of neo-Nazis? Isn't that kind of like a concern? 

Let's listen to his answers. 

 

Sen. Chris Murphy: Let me take all those very quickly. One at a time. You're right. Yanukovych was elected and I mentioned this before. I understand the difficult position here, which is that Yanukovych was elected, and we are not in the business of encouraging rebellions and revolutions on the streets against elected leaders, because we ultimately think that elections, as you mentioned, are the place in which you should settle your differences […] 

 

Okay. So just hold that thought, because that's going to be important in just a minute. According to Chris Murphy, the United States is not in the business of interfering with democratically elected leaders and trying to change them or topple them. That is not what we do. What we believe in is democracy. And if a country chooses a government democratically that we dislike, we accept it. That's according to Chris Murphy. The posture of the United States historically. We don't interfere in trying to topple the democratically elected leaders of other countries. Except he is doing exactly that here, he just admitted the government that he was trying to overthrow was democratically elected. And so, he has to explain how to reconcile that. 

 

Sen. Chris Murphy: The issue here is that Yanukovych lost his legitimacy to govern when he used force to try to break up these protests and the United States didn't go on to that Square in any meaningful way until the president tried to break up the peaceful protests. That's why Senator McCain and I went and we certainly got a lot of grief from people asking why two U.S. senators are going to the Square to support a protest movement against an elected government. 

 

So, the way democracy works is that countries get to choose their leaders but then if those leaders use more force than Chris Murphy and John McCain, who have no Democratic electability or accountability in those countries, decide is a little excessive –  even though our government constantly uses violence to keep order against protesters here in the United States – as soon as John McCain, Chris Murphy, and others decide they've gone a little too far – somehow the Saudis haven't gone a little too far. We keep supporting them. The Egyptians haven't gone too far. Apparently, they're allowing dissent to a sufficient amount. But the Ukrainians, according to John McCain and Chris Murphy, went a little too far and now their democratic legitimacy is over. They lost their right to serve through the five-year term that the Ukrainian people chose them to serve. 

 

Sen. Chris Murphy: We did that because we think that there were human rights and civil rights that were violated there. And we've always stood up for that, for that concept. And again, I think that answers your second question as to why you had foreign ministers and foreign leaders who were on that Square. It was because we're standing up for the idea that people should be able to lodge protests against their government. 

 

Remember, this was 11 years after the U.S. invaded Iraq, set up torture regimes all around the world and continues to hold people in Guantanamo and in the middle of the Indian Ocean, with no charges of any kind. But somehow the United States senators have arrogated unto themselves in the name of human rights, the right to go around changing the governments of the world whenever they decide it's justified by some vague appeal to human rights. No UN decision is needed, and no international bodies. Once the United States decides that's the end of the democratic legitimacy of that country, and that's what happened in Ukraine, the country we're now told as a sovereign democratic leader got government, which is why we're over there. He then finally acknowledged, yeah, there's a lot of Nazis in the movement we supported. But don't worry, they're a minority. There were only a few thousand among the large numbers gathered there. 

Let's look at this last clip. It's just 49 seconds. 

These are all amazing because this is just explicitly acknowledging the truth, not realizing that since he's on C-SPAN in 2014, seven, eight years later, these are going to be incredibly incriminating statements because the entire position in the United States government is to make you forget that all of this happened. 

 

C-SPAN: So, what is the best way the U.S. can help in this situation? 

 

Sen. Chris Murphy: Well, I think the United States has a strong voice in support of the peaceful protest movement. This is a big part of the story as to why there is an opportunity now for the Ukrainian people to get what they want. Early on, the United States said that peace should be observed in that Square. We came down hard on Yanukovych when he violated that peace, when he sent his forces into the Square repeatedly to clear it, ultimately, over the course of the last week, resulting in dozens of people killed. And I think it was our role, including sanctions and threats of sanctions that forced in parting Yanukovych from office. […] 

 

I just need you to hear that again. Let's listen to that last part. 

 

Sen. Chris Murphy: […] over the course of the last week, resulting in dozens of people killed. And I think it was our role, including sanctions and threats of sanctions that forced in parting Yanukovych from office. 

 

“I think it was our role that forced him from office.” So, there's no debate that the reason Yanukovych, the elected leader of Ukraine, was removed from office is because of the United States’ role. By the way, the way you determine what the Ukrainian people want is not by inciting a bunch of people to go into street protest. That's not counting what the majority wants. Those are called elections. That's how you determine what the Ukrainian people want. And what the Ukrainian people said they wanted in 2010 was to be led by a leader that the United States played an active role in overthrowing. So, it's an incredible set of admissions here. 

Let me just show you a clip from Jen Psaki, in 2015. In one way, it's a banal clip. It's Jen Psaki at a State Department press hearing, a press briefing that she was giving every day the way she ended up doing when she became Biden's White House press secretary, but it reveals how casually and seamlessly and continuously these people just lie right to your face. There's no limit on what they're willing to say – none – to advance their career. If they're told to say something to justify U.S. actions, they will say it no matter how blatantly, insultingly, stupidly false it is. 

Listen to Jen Psaki do something so extreme that even the journalists covering the State Department couldn't believe she was willing to say it. 

 

Journalist: President Maduro last night went on the air and said that they had arrested multiple people who were allegedly behind a coup that was backed by the United States. What is your response? 

 

So that was Nicolas Maduro alleging that the United States was involved in an attempted coup in Venezuela. It's basically an open policy. Remember, the United States went around for years calling somebody, Juan Guaidó, who never got a single vote, the legitimate president of Venezuela. Of course, it's U.S. policy to overthrow the government of Venezuela. It's been U.S. policy for decades to do that, just like it was in Cuba. So, she said, look, Nicolas Maduro said that the United States played a pretty big role in the unsuccessful coup that just happened. Here’s Jen Psaki’s answer: 

 

Jen Psaki: These latest accusations, like all previous such accusations, are ludicrous. As a matter of longstanding policy, the United States does not support political transitions by non-constitutional means. Political transitions must be democratic, constitutional, peaceful and legal. 

 

 

Okay, so she's reading from the press briefing there. She says it in a very moderate way, so, it's easy to lose the evil of it – the evil of how much these people will just lie so easily. I honestly, I honestly, I'm not saying this to be sanctimonious. We're all humans. We all have our flaws. I certainly do. But I can't, for the life of me, understand what leads people like her to be willing to say things like this that she just said with a completely straight face and an obviously conscious, free comportment. The United States, as a matter of policy, does not engage in transitions that are anti-constitutional, only democratic. Even though we just listened to Chris Murphy, six months earlier, admit that the United States openly and successfully caused a coup in Ukraine by ousting the democratically elected leader. And of course, there are dozens or hundreds of examples throughout the Cold War and well beyond in which the United States did exactly what she just got done saying the United States never does as a matter of policy. Just let's listen to that again and the way she says it. 

 

Jen Psaki: Their response to these latest accusations, like all previous such accusations are ludicrous. As a matter of longstanding policy, the United States does not support political transitions by non-constitutional means. Political transitions must be democratic, constitutional, peaceful and legal. We've seen many times that the Venezuelan government tries to distract from its own actions by blaming the United States or other members of the international community for events inside Venezuela. These efforts reflect a lack of seriousness on the part of the Venezuelan government to deal with the grave situation it faces. 

 

Journalist: Whoa, whoa, whoa. The U.S. has a long-standing practice of not promoting – what did you say?  How long-standing is that? I would – in particular in South and Latin America, that is not a long-standing practice. 

 

Jen Psaki: Well, my point here, Matt […] 

 

Do you see that pause? I mean, even she. It's not that she’s conscious about it that bothered her. It does not bother her at all. She just didn't know what to say. I mean, it's like literally standing up and saying two plus two equals five and someone says, “Wait a minute, are you sure? How can that be? Everyone knows two plus two equals four.” So, she stood up and said, it's the United States's policy in longstanding practice not to engineer government changes in other countries that are in violation of the Constitution. We only do it democratically. And when he said, “Are you joking? Everyone knows that's wrong and dumb, especially in Latin America, where you can point to almost every country that has suffered exactly that. She barely knows what to say. You have this long kind of embarrassed pause, and then she says this: 

 

Jen Psaki: Well, my point here, Matt, without getting into history, is that we do not support, we have no involvement with, and these are ludicrous accusations. 

 

Journalist: In this specific case. But if you go back not that long ago, during your lifetime even […]

 

Jen Psaki:  The last 21 years? (All laugh)

 

Journalist: Well done. Touché. But I mean, I know that there's long-standing I mean, ten years in this case. I mean […] 

 

Jen Psaki:  My intention was to speak to specific reports. 

 

Journalist: But you said […] 

 

 

So, there you go. The only valid conclusion from watching this is that she is a sociopath. There's no other explanation. If you can stand up and lie that obviously with such an authoritative tone, with such a straight face, to hide the crimes of the American government, your soul is broken, and you have no moral code. You're a sociopath. That’s the only way to allow somebody – she's only doing this for the most trivial career advancement - there’s no passion behind that. She doesn't stop working for a cause. It's just her job. Her job is to read what she's told without thinking about whether it's a complete lie or not. And so, when I called her out the other day online, I saw a bunch of journalists bristling because, after all, Jen Psaki is nice. Or she's nice when she's an ordinary woman. She, like, lives in the suburbs. She does kickboxing classes, she drinks margaritas. She talks about her young kids. I'm sure she loves her kids, no doubt about that. She's a mom. She likes being a mom. She talks about that a lot. She's friendly with reporters. They're all, you know, she should be a good neighbor. She doesn't look like a sociopath. So, you say that it's like a cognitive disconnect. Sociopaths are like Putin and like evil-looking people from evil-looking countries like Saddam Hussein's. Not Jen Psaki. She's now an MSNBC colleague to all those people who work there. And that's exactly what Hannah Arendt, the German philosopher, called “the banality of evil” when she went to the Nuremberg trials and watched Nazi war criminals, one after the next go on the stand. And she was shocked at how kind of mediocre they were. They didn't have any sense that they had done anything wrong, and they really didn't believe it. They were just basically like I just did my job. And my job was to count the number of Jewish citizens being transported on these trains. And I filled out that report. I don’t have hate in my heart for anyone. I was just doing my job. Evil is banal, and this is the banality of evil right here. 

And the fact you can watch Chris Murphy openly boast of things that he will now tell you are insane conspiracy theories and will vehemently deny to your face because now he has to, that is the kind of sociopathy that dominates our government. Everything that we have been told for the last year and month about the United States’ role in Ukraine, that what Ukraine is and what our goal is, is a completely we have been governing and running Ukraine since at least 2013 when we ousted the government and installed the new one in 2014. We've been running the country right on the other side of the Russian border and we've been running it not for their benefit but for our own, which is the same reason we are fueling this proxy war, not to defend all the nice old ladies in Ukraine who are getting bombed and killed. It's very tragic. And the media will show you that in order to incite your hatred against Putin. We could stop that with the cease-fire, for example, and diplomatic efforts to end the war. But John Kirby told you he's against that. He wants this war to continue. Yeah, of course, if Putin humiliated himself and gave back everything, including Crimea, and told the Americans and NATO you have free reign over Ukraine and then turned himself into The Hague, of course, the war would end – if he was willing to do that. But short of that, they don't want the war to end. They want the war to continue. They're benefiting in every conceivable way from it. They don't care that Ukrainians are dying. That's part of the game for them. There are people in the United States benefiting the people who fund both political parties, the arms dealers, the intelligence agencies. There are all kinds of benefits to go around. And the fact that John Kirby is now finally admitting that it's the United States that continues to run Ukraine and we're running it to keep the war going, not to stop, it is something that you should at least have as your starting point when analyzing this war and all of the propaganda and lies that have been rained down upon us by the U.S. government and their media allies ever since Russia invaded. 

 


 

So, you may remember that back in 2021, Tucker Carlson went on the air with a rather extraordinary story, a rather extraordinary claim, which was that the NSA is designed not to spy on American citizens, but to spy on foreign adversaries was, in fact, spying on his communications (Fox News, June 29, 2021). 

This is why Tucker went on the air and said:

 

Tucker Carlson: But it's not just political protesters the government is spying on. Yesterday we heard from a whistleblower within the U.S. government who reached out to warn us that the NSA, the National Security Agency, is monitoring our electronic communications and is planning to leak them in an attempt to take this show off the air. 

Now, that's a shocking claim, and ordinarily, we'd be skeptical. But is it legal for the NSA to spy on American citizens? It's a crime. It's not a third-world country. Things like that should not happen in America. But unfortunately, they do happen. And in this case, they did happen. The whistleblower – who is in a position to know – repeated back to us information about a story that we are working on that could have only come directly from my texts and emails. There is no other possible source for that information, period. The NSA captured that information without our knowledge and did it for political reasons. The Biden administration is spying on us. We have confirmed that. 

 

All right. That's a pretty extraordinary claim. I don't think Tucker Carlson is a person prone to just inventing stories, he has been in the media for decades. No one ever has claimed that that's something he's done before. Obviously, he's criticized for all sorts of other things, but he's worked in every media outlet across the spectrum and has never been caught, never been accused of simply fabricating. What he claimed was that he proved that the NSA was spying on him. 

Obviously, the people in the media who have no audience but who specialize in essentially covering Fox News, decided that that was a joke. It was preposterous. The NSA would never do such a thing. And the people who served the U.S. Security State decided to mock it. Here you see the employee for CNN named Oliver Darcy – never broken a story in his life, but is obsessed with Fox News, had an article right immediately after, in June of 2021, entitled “Tucker Carlson claimed the NSA is spying on him. Even his own colleagues don't seem to believe it”. The obvious purpose of this was to mock him. 

Same with this Vox headline from July 1, “Tucker Carlson’s NSA spying claims are evidence-free. Republicans are running with them anyway.” That was by Aaron Rupert, who is the Vox Video guy, the person who does nothing but watch his Fox all day and post distorted clips to the Internet to serve the Democratic Party. He was at Vox then, which is where he earned the name Vox Video Dunn's. He knows nothing about anything, but he decided that this was a false story. The NSA would never do such a thing. Except, then, what happened is something very odd, which is Axios, a part of the corporate media, on July 7, published a story that seemed to confirm at least parts of it, namely, you see their “Scoop: Tucker Carlson sought Putin interview at the time of spying claim”. This is by Jonathan Swan, whom I regard as one of the better journalists in corporate media. Liberals love him because he conducted an adversarial, but I thought fair interview of Donald Trump and generally does a decent job reporting. He reported on July 7, 2021, that somehow people inside the government knew exactly what Tucker Carlson was doing at the time, that he claimed that he was being spied on, namely, he was trying to get an interview with Vladimir Putin, something that all journalists should have been doing, and that obviously gave some credence to the story, and we never really got anywhere else after that. What that article actually said was that there was a ”U.S.-based Kremlin intermediary” that Tucker was using to try and get that interview with Putin. Somehow the NSA had a lot of details, the U.S. government had a lot of details about those conversations, enough to leak Axios, what it was exactly that he was doing that seemed to lend credence to his claim that he had been spied upon by his own government. But it never went anywhere because the media just decided that they had no interest in it and they didn't care and they decided to mock it instead and Tucker basically stopped talking about it.

Yesterday, though, the left-wing journalist, Anya Parampil, who has done some of the best reporting on foreign policy in particular, typically associated with the left, who works at The Grayzone, published an article that was designed to say that she, in fact, has confirmed or can confirm or provide proof that Tucker Carlson, in fact, was spied upon by the NSA. In fact, she self-identified as “the U.S.-based Kremlin intermediary that tried to help Tucker Carlson book an interview with Putin. In other words, that the Axios’ story was true, that she, in fact, was talking to Tucker Carlson about the possibility of interviewing Vladimir Putin. And the fact that Axios knew that certainly strongly suggests that, indeed, what Tucker Carlson claimed is true.

I find it very notable, though, that she has come forward, given again, that she is typically associated with the left, to offer definitive proof of the story. We're about to talk to her about what exactly evidence she's in possession of and how she's able to offer it. And a few other questions as well. As I said, I find her one of the more interesting voices when it comes to foreign policy. She reports for the Grayzone, which is extremely independent, and we are delighted to have her for her debut appearance here on System Update. We're about to talk to her right now for our interview segment. 


The Interview: Anya Parampil

 

 

G. Greenwald: Anya, good evening. It's great to see you. How are you? 

 

Anya Parampil:  Hello. I'm great. How are you? 

 

G. Greenwald:  Good. I'm happy that you're here for your debut appearance, which I hope won't be your last. You have an extremely interesting story that I want to talk to you about, as well as a couple of other things. You published in Grayzone, an article in which you essentially said that you're able to prove or offer evidence that Tucker Carlson, in fact, was spied upon by the NSA during this period. What is that evidence that you have and how does it come to proof of the veracity of his claims? 

 

Anya Parampil:  Thanks again for having me, Glenn. Basically, what I explain in this story published at the Grayzone is a timeline that stretches between the end of April and early July 2021. People may recall, as you covered just now, that on, I think it was June 28, Tucker Carlson went public with this story claiming that the Biden administration was spying on him and had actually accessed his private messages, texts and emails in order to leak those messages to the press and that he found out about this because an NSA whistleblower had actually come forward and informed him of the plot. And the reason he believed this person was telling the truth is that they actually met with him in person and repeated back to him information that someone would only know if they had access to Tucker's private messages. And he said at the time that this was all regarding a story he was working on, but he didn't specify the details of the story. 

Now, just a few weeks ago or a few days ago, Tucker did finally talk about this publicly, give us some more information regarding what actually happened. He told the Full Send podcast that this all had to do with his plan to travel to Russia in the summer of 2021, which is really just months before the latest escalation in this war happened when Russia launched its military escalation in Ukraine in February of 2022. So, just a few months before then, this was after Biden had already taken office, Tucker was planning to go to Russia. He wanted to interview Russian President Vladimir Putin and – this is, according to Tucker, what he said in the Full Send podcast – what the NSA and the U.S. government were spying on. And these messages were what they wanted to leak to the press. 

Because this whistleblower came forward and actually warned Tucker he was able to get ahead of them, go public on his show and even though he didn't get any support in the media and virtually no journalist and asked questions about what Tucker was alleging and just took the word of the U.S. government, as you then pointed out, Axios reported a story in which they appeared to actually prove what Tucker was saying was true because they had quoted U.S. officials saying that Tucker was trying to book this interview with Putin around the same time that he made the allegations that the NSA was spying on his communications. 

So how do I fit into the picture? I was actually kind of getting a front-row seat. I was privy to all of what was going on at the time because Tucker had told me, at the end of April 2021, that he was trying to go interview Putin, but he was having difficulties booking the interview. And I – because I had a rapport with Tucker – I trusted him and I also happened to have a really good contact in the Russian government, I tried to help him by putting him in touch with that contact and just assuming that Tucker's team would take it from there and perhaps they'd be able to schedule this interview. 

This contact was the deputy foreign minister, his name is Sergei Ryabkov. He's the second most powerful diplomat in Russia. And I met him in the summer of 2019, when I was in Caracas, Venezuela, on behalf of the Grayszone, covering a meeting of the nonaligned movement. Basically, there were all of – the Iranian foreign minister was there, the Bolivian foreign minister was there – all of these high-level diplomats, including Ryabkov, were there. And I interviewed many of them, and one of the interviewed was him. And he's a very powerful, very important figure in the world. He has negotiated some of the main treaties established between the United States and Russia. 

 

G. Greenwald:  He's somebody any real journalist would want to talk to. 

 

Anya Parampil:  Exactly. He actually was spearheading the peace negotiations over Ukraine on behalf of the Russian government. So, he was someone – I interviewed him and I maintained contact with him. Sometimes, I would send him an article and say, what do you think about this? I heard that there was this story about Ukraine negotiations like – and I should just disclose the fact that my main interest here is that I actually would like the peace between Russia and the United States because I am from the United States, and I don't want there to be a nuclear war. And I think it would be in the United States’ interest to just have a reasonable relationship with Russia. 

Anyway, I put them in touch and apparently that was when the NSA began intercepting Tucker's messages, because I didn't think much of it at the time but, when I put them in touch on an email thread, they both replied, within hours, within 12 hours, both of them wrote back to me and to each other. But then a few days later, Ryabkov wrote me back and said that for some reason his email to Tucker would not send. And I thought it had to do with maybe spam or because, yeah, it was a Russian government email. There was something that bounced back. Tucker had a different email service than I did. And I forwarded the messages. I think sometimes I texted Tucker. I asked him, like, did you get this message? And turned out no. Tucker didn't get any of the emails. 

Ryabkov’s email address was sending him, even though I knew that they were both accurate in the thread because they had already both replied to the email. So, I didn't make a mistake in retrospect then. A few weeks later, when Tucker told me that this NSA source had come forward and told him that the U.S. government was spying on his communications, then it kind of clicked, Oh, there was some interference going on there. 

And at the time when this was all going on, this was when Tucker came forward, in June 2021. He didn't offer specifics of the story. I was kind of just so blown away by everything that there was no reason for me to assert myself in the situation and corroborate his story or vouch for him. And then, a few weeks later, in early July 2021, then Axios did this story where they confirmed what he said and claimed, based on the quotes from U.S. officials, that Tucker was dealing with U.S.-based Kremlin intermediaries in order to get an interview with Putin at the time he made these allegations. And so, when that story came out, Tucker and I were talking, and it was like very clear that means they were saying I was the Kremlin based – I mean, they said “Kremlin-based intermediaries”. They used the plural. I would love for the U.S. government to offer specifics as to whom they were talking about there and if there were multiple people. But I can pretty much state, for certain, based on my experience, that they were referring to at least me. And I don't know if they're referring to anyone else. 

And so, again, I didn't talk about the story then – Tucker didn't offer details – but then, when I saw him come out and say, yes, this was happening when I was trying to interview Putin, I was like, Oh, right now we might as well tell the full story and I can tell the full story. So, I just went ahead and put it all down. 

 

G. Greenwald:  You know, I remember at the time, obviously the NSA happens to be an interest of mine, that the agency put out a statement, knowing how stupid most journalists are, that pretended to deny the story, but actually denied nothing. They said this is preposterous. We can confirm that Mr. Carlson has never been a target of ours, and everyone knows who knows anything about the NSA, that when the NSA says they're not a target, you're not a target of theirs. It doesn't mean they're not eavesdropping on your conversations. All they have to do is proclaim the people with whom you are speaking to be their targets, and then they're free to listen in on your conversation, even though you're an American citizen without warrants because they're just claiming we're not targeting Tucker, we're not targeting this other American citizen. We're targeting these foreign nationals with whom they happened to be speaking. 

That was the whole point of the Bush-Cheney spying program that got revealed by The New York Times in 2005 that won a Pulitzer. The law that was passed in 2008 – that's now up for renewal – was designed to retroactively legalize that, to give the government the power to spy without warrants on the conversations of Americans by claiming they're just targeting foreign nationals. And, of course, the Biden administration is demanding it gets renewed again. And there's a lot of Republicans who want Biden to have that power – because the bipartisan consensus in Washington is that we should be able to spy on our citizens without warrants. 

But what struck me was how stupid journalists were to believe that this NSA denial actually was a denial, and that's what caused them to mock Tucker “Oh, the NSA denies it”. It's amazing that journalists take a denial anyway from the NSA and assume it's true without skepticism. But in this case, it wasn't a denial. And that's what was so obvious to me was, well, they're obviously spying on someone with whom Tucker is speaking. I assumed that meant they were spying on the Russian diplomats with whom he was speaking to set up an interview with Putin until the Axios story came out and made clear that, in fact, he was talking to a United States citizen whom they had proclaimed to be a Kremlin intermediary. 

Just for people who don't know the rules of the NSA, if the NSA wants to spy in a conversation between two American citizens and you are an American citizen, a native-born American citizen, talking to Tucker Carlson, another American-born citizen, they need a warrant in order to do that. That's two Americans talking. Now, you're not talking about a foreign national, which means they would have to go to the FISA court and allege that either you or Tucker is an agent of a foreign government, presumably the Russian government. And that means they have a warrant on you to spy on your communications, or on his, or it means they broke the law. I think we should try and find out. 

Do you have any indication at all that the NSA ever got a warrant to spy on their communications? And is there any ground for the belief that you are a representative of or an agent of the Kremlin? 

 

Anya Parampil:  No, I mean, that's a very good question. I've had zero indication that my communications have ever been spied on due to a FISA warrant. I mean, I'm a U.S. citizen. As I explain in the story, I did work for R.T. America, which is the Russian state-funded news outlet that was based in Washington, D.C. So, between the years 2015 and 2019, I worked – or 2014, up until December 2018, I worked for R.T. America, I think from 2014 to that point.

And all of my contact with Ryabkov, and all of my contact with Tucker took place long after I ceased working for R.T. America. But even then, it would be ridiculous to claim that an individual who worked for a state-funded media network was actually an intermediary or a representative of that government. Especially, I'm a U.S. citizen. I don't represent the interests of any foreign government. I worked for R.T. America so that I could provide a critical view of my own government that corporate networks would have never allowed me to do. And none of these emails were even sent from an R.T. America-affiliated email account. I can't think of any loophole, and I never – there's obviously any bank payments or statements or anything that they could bring in court to prove the allegation that I'm a Kremlin intermediary, other than the fact that I forwarded an email as or maybe sent a screenshot of an email to Tucker's text, something to ask him whether or not he got these messages. There is no proof that they could come forward with that. That I am a Kremlin intermediary. Absolutely not. 

I think there are there are three explanations here. They had a FISA warrant on me. I doubt that, because I don't think I'm very significant. They had a FISA warrant on Tucker, which is possible, I mean, he's a very powerful and influential figure. We know that the FISA courts offer a rubber stamp on anything, basically. And so just having communication with a government official maybe, and even in my case too, could justify it from their warped illegal perspective. But I don't think that's what happened either. I do think what happened is very similar to what happened to many of other Trump's allies that were all implicated in Robert Mueller's Russiagate investigation. If you recall there were like, I mean, they claim there were 30 people that were indicted as part of Mueller's investigation. Almost half of them were a bunch of Russian nationals that they accused of being like operating a troll farm or something[...] 

 

G. Greenwald:  They knew they would never get and never be able to prosecute. 

 

Anya Parampil:  Exactly. But they had 30 people. Yeah, 13 of them were – they would also never get a fair trial. So, the main targets of the Mueller investigation throughout the Trump presidency were Michael Flynn, Trump's national security advisor, who was removed within weeks of his inauguration because of this trend that I'm discussing now. So, there was Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, and George Papadopoulos. Now, Manafort and Papadopoulos were both part of the Trump campaign. Michael Flynn was a part of the actual administration but all three of those cases have something in common with my story or, in this case, I think is really Tucker's case, because he was someone that was close to Trump. He was someone that was seen as a threat because as I detail in my article, he was throughout Trump's time in office, Tucker would really challenge Trump to take seriously his America First agenda, criticizing his policy in Syria, criticizing his policies on Venezuela; personally, convincing him not to escalate with Iran. I think the deep state forces that were pushing Trump to do that, Bolton, Pompeo, otherwise really saw Tucker as a threat. 

And so throughout their effort to really create a case against Trump, they tapped Russian government officials. They were trying to, of course, prove that there was some sort of coordination between the Russian government and people around Trump. And they came up with all of these crazy accusations, whether it was Manafort cutting business deals with Ukraine. Back when like when you know everyone. So many U.S. operatives, including members of the Biden family, were cutting business deals in Ukraine. They said that he failed to register as a foreign agent, so they prosecuted him for that. Again, Papadopoulos and Flynn, it all had to do with the fact that they had inadvertently picked up their communications while spying on Russian or foreign officials. And the key here – and this is what you alluded to in your question – is that it is illegal for the U.S. government to spy on Americans directly. But we could assume that, yes, if I'm writing an email to the deputy foreign minister of Russia or if Tucker is writing emails to the deputy foreign minister of Russia, or if Paul Manafort is talking to foreign business officials, or in Michael Flynn's case, he was having a conversation with the Russian ambassador to the United States right before Trump was inaugurated, we can assume those types of communications because they're targeting the foreign officials, are monitored […] 

 

G. Greenwald:  But just to interject there, I mean, and that's the thing that used to be illegal until Bush and Cheney violated the law. It used to be that the NSA if they were targeting a foreign national, which of course, you expect them to do, that's completely legitimate for the NSA to target Russian officials, that's kind of their job if they discover in the course of that eavesdropping that they're talking to an American citizen, the NSA is now listening in on the telephone conversations of American citizens, reading their emails. They have to stop doing that because they need a warrant under the Constitution to listen in on reading your emails. And they instead invented this theory that was contrary to the law, that, as long as the target is the foreign national and not the American citizen, they're allowed to do it. They made up their own law. But then Congress created this law to say, yes, the NSA can now do that. And of course, the concern always is it's a runaround from the warrant requirement, because, as long as the NSA knows the foreign nationals with whom I'm speaking, they can just claim those are their target, and they can listen to all of my conversations, even though that's not allowed and that's the law that they want to be renewed. Let me just ask you one point. 

 

Anya Parampil:  And I also want to ask you a question, because you're the legal expert here, not me, but from what I'm –  the point that I was building up to is that, for me, the question is about the unmasking – the concept of unmasking, which is that, yes, if they are spying on a U.S. citizen, that identity of that U.S. citizen, if it's indirectly collected as part of their spying on foreign officials, is supposed to be protected. But for some reason, we know about Michael Flynn's conversation with the Russian ambassador. According to Tucker's NSA source, that's exactly what the U.S. government was trying to do with Tucker's conversation. They wanted to leak his texts. So, when that level of leak happens and when they're actually revealing the identity of a U.S. citizen who let's be honest, as I said in the article, it's not unheard of for journalists to be in contact with government officials, even if they're foreign. And Michael Flynn's case, it definitely is not strange that he, in his capacity as the incoming national security adviser, would have a conversation with foreign officials in order to prepare for his role in the incoming administration. And, in fact, I would venture to argue that Biden officials did the same thing before they officially were sworn in. But the reason that we heard Michael Flynn's conversation and the reason that we hear about Tucker, is contact with Russian officials, or mine is that it was part of a weaponization of the law against targets surrounding Trump. So, I'll ultimately go after Trump but also go after figures such as Tucker. And so, it comes down – What I'm trying to say to this nuance of unmasking and deciding that, oh, look, we're actually going to reveal that this person talked to a foreign government official or we're going to reveal the fact that Michael Flynn was talking. 

 

G. Greenwald:  Right. I mean. 

 

Anya Parampil:  Why don't we hear about what Anthony Blinken said? 

 

G. Greenwald:  I mean, the idea of unmasking is supposed to be that it's only done if it's necessary to understand the context of the conversation that this foreign official who's being targeted is having. So, if you only have the mask identity of the United States, if a person with whom they're speaking and you can't understand the full context, only then is masking necessary. The problem, of course, is if there's no oversight in the NSA. And the bigger problem here is the complete lack of curiosity on the part of the American press corps that the most watched television news personality in the history of cable news clearly ended up having his conversations monitored. Perhaps there's some legitimate explanation for it, although I doubt it and perhaps there isn't. But the reason we don't know any of the details is that there was never any pressure placed on the adversarial press corps on to the NSA to demand answers. And there was really very little effort on the part of the Republican Party that I think wanted to stay away from this story as well. And as a result, we're kind of now here in the dark because that's the media that we have as they hear that a major figure in the American media, whether you like him or not, he's very influential, he has a lot of people listening to him, got spied on by government, and there's zero concern about whether it was even legal or constitutional. And that's why I'm really glad that you wrote your article and I'm glad you were able to join us tonight. 

 

Anya Parampil:  Yeah. Thanks, Glenn. I totally agree. And the last thing that I'll add is just I brought up the Dominion lawsuit in my article because it represents the same tactic. You know, Tucker's texts were seized as part of that lawsuit. Now they're getting published in The Washington Post. And in order to say that there's some major disagreement between President Trump and Tucker. And it really just seems as though people surrounding President Trump were really targeted. There was a law fair campaign that elements within the Justice Department and the federal government waged in order to criminalize things that every journalist does, or every diplomat does. And it's very selective and it's very concerning for journalists, especially because if they can go after – if of a company can sue major news organizations such as Fox and gain access to the text messages of a private journalist and private citizen and try to bankrupt that company, then for people like me who work in alternative media, it's very dangerous because it's like we're screwed. There is no free press if journalists don't have any right to privacy and if they really want to accuse someone like me of being a Kremlin intermediary, they should have to provide evidence in court and they obviously don't have any. And so, and or […] 

 

G. Greenwald:  Or they did. And they went to the FISA court, which, as you say, is notorious for being rubber stamping. And I think you're absolutely right. This is all part of the same reason Trump is threatening the establishment, which is why Tucker is threatening the establishment, which is principally that they're among the few people with influence who challenge longstanding pillars of the bipartisan foreign policy consensus. It's the reason you and I both – surprisingly in some ways – often appear on Tucker Show precisely because he's providing some of the only space for dissent to a lot of these orthodoxies. The same reason why Trump was regarded with such antipathy by the establishment as well and was attacked in so many different ways by them. 

Thank you so much for taking the time. We're a little over time, but I thought it was really important to hear the details of this story. Well, absolutely. Continue to follow it and hope to have you back shortly. 

 

Anya Parampil:  Thanks, Glenn. 

 

G. Greenwald:  Have a great night. 

 

So that concludes our show for this evening. Have a great night, everybody. 

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