Glenn Greenwald
Politics • Culture • Writing
RFK Jr. and Vaccines: What Counts as a Disqualifying "Red Line”? Plus: Montana Becomes First State to Ban TikTok
Video Transcript
May 22, 2023
post photo preview

Watch the full episode here:

placeholder

 

Good evening. It's Thursday, May 18. Welcome to a new episode of System Update, our live nightly show that airs every Monday through Friday at 7 p.m. Eastern, exclusively here on Rumble, the free speech alternative to YouTube.

Tonight: Robert F. Kennedy Jr is – along with Marianne Williamson –  mounting a primary challenge to the Democratic incumbent, President Joe Biden. Despite polls showing that without even launching a campaign, he already has close to 20% of Democratic voters supporting him, while Williamson has another 7% supporting her, Democratic officials and their media allies are attempting to wish this all way, just pretend that Biden has no primary challengers because the ones who are running against him are – for reasons nobody ever bothers to explain – too unserious and lacking in credibility for the Democratic Party to even deem them worthy of attention much less debate. 

An interview conducted yesterday with RFK Jr on the online show “Breaking Point”, hosted by two excellent journalists, Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti attracted significant attention because of the exchange between Ball and RFK JR on the wall on his long-time well-studied skepticism about vaccines. Ball told RFK Jr that she not only disagreed with his views on vaccines – and pointed out correctly that a large number of Democratic voters share her opposition – but that she considered his vaccine skepticism to being a “red line”, meaning not just a source of disagreement for her, but something that she and many other Democratic voters would consider disqualifying in of itself without regard to any other views he might hold that she likes and agrees with and considers extremely important. 

I've long been interested in, and I've often written about, the idea that once a politician adopts a view that is so disagreeable that it renders them completely off limits from consideration for support they almost get put into this camp of being crazy or a conspiracy theorist or people just too unhinged to even consider supporting, no matter how much agreement one might have with them. I first observed this dynamic in the 2012 election, when Barack Obama was running for reelection, on numerous policies the progressive wing of his party claimed to find morally abhorrent while the Republican primary field included longtime Texas Congressman Ron Paul, the only major presidential candidate in history to advocate views on crucial issues, which progressives claimed to find of the utmost importance, such as Ron Paul's steadfast opposition to the drug war and policies of mass incarceration that accompanies it, as well as his career-long opposition to the abuses of the U.S. security state, all of which President Obama supported and even strengthened. And yet, when I repeatedly pointed this out, I was told by liberals and other Democrats that Ron Paul's opposition to abortion was a “red line” that rendered him completely off limits, no matter what other positions he held, no matter how noble his other views might be. But that never made sense to me and still does not. Why was Ron Paul's pro-life position a “red line” but Obama's support for the drug war or say his view that he had the right to assassinate American citizens using drones – all with no due process and extraordinary power, the embodiment of extremism and radicalism – why was that not a “red line”? How was that determined? It seems it is so often used as a pretext for justifying support for party leadership and especially the ideology of the establishment, often unwittingly. Given that the same argument has arisen in the context of RFK Jr's challenge to Biden to argue that RFK is off limits but Joe Biden, chief advocate of the war in Iraq, chief architect of the U.S. prison state, an ardent supporter of the drug war, that he, Joe Biden, is somehow not off limits, has not crossed any red lines. I think it's really worth exploring how certain politicians are declared disqualified and whose interests are served by this framework and specifically who gets called crazy in our political discourse and why. 

Then: Montana's Republican governor, Greg Gianforte, today signed a bill effectively barring Montana citizens from using the social media app TikTok, owned by a Chinese company. Even if those citizens in his state have voluntarily chosen that platform as their preferred means for expressing their political views and seeking cultural and social communities. 

I realize that there's so much anti-China sentiment in the U.S. right now, not only in parts of the American right but also the establishment wing of the Democratic Party, that virtually any measure, any new government power invoked or justified in the name of weakening or stopping China will be automatically supported from the start. But to me, the overarching lesson of the U.S. government's response to 9/11 in the form of the so-called War on Terror is that it is precisely in such moments when anger toward or fear of a perceived foreign threat is so high that sweeping new state powers are being demanded in its name – such as the right to ban social media apps – it's precisely that moment that we must be at our most vigilant – and our minds most skeptical and open – to the possibility that the new government power either does not really address the perceived threat in whose name it's being justified or the dangers of this new political power are greater, much greater than the threats posed by the foreign actor. It is in that spirit that we will examine the details of this new law banning TikTok in Montana, as well as the dangers it raises. Do we want government officials to have the power to ban social media apps they perceive to be “dangerous’? Do American adults, after hearing their asserted risks and dangers, have the right to decide for themselves which social media platforms they want to use for political expression and organizing?

 I hope that before you lend your support to laws like this and other state powers seized in the name of fighting China – or fighting Russia or fighting Iran or fighting Al Qaida – you at least remain open to the possibility that the threats are being exaggerated to enhance state power at home or that the proposed new powers do not really accomplish what their proponents claim they will. This is an extraordinary new power. Many politicians are demanding the right to ban entire apps and social media platforms from specific states and even from the whole country and, as a result, it deserves not reflexive or emotional approval, but rather serious attention, scrutiny and critical thought. And that's what we intend to apply to this law. 

As a reminder, System Update is available in podcast form and to follow us, simply go to Spotify, Apple, or any other major podcasting platforms. The episodes are posted 12 hours after their first broadcast, live, exclusively here on Rumble.

 Ordinarily, tonight being Thursday night, we would have our Aftershow, on our Locals platform available only to subscribers but since we're still easing back into working after our hiatus due to a death in the family, we thought it best not to have our aftershow tonight, but we will be back Tuesday and Thursday of next week with our show after this one, at its regular time. 

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


 

Earlier this week, the Democratic primary challenger, Robert F. Kennedy Jr appeared on the online show “Breaking Point,” hosted by two very good journalists, Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti. And I found this interview very illuminating for multiple reasons. It attracted a lot of attention, especially this segment that we will show you and break down in which Krystal Ball confronts RFK Jr about what she calls either his vaccine skepticism or his anti-vax sentiment. He does a good job of using the time she gave him to respond. And what I found very interesting about this interview was several things, including the fact that she told him she regards his views on vaccines to be not merely an issue with which she and many other Democratic voters strongly disagree. But for her, a “red line,” meaning that anyone who crosses into that territory specifically is one that she considers as essentially off-limits. It's a “red line.” Once you cross it, there's no coming back. And because this is a dynamic I have long noticed, starting with the 2012 presidential election, as I alluded to, between Barack Obama and Ron Paul, which I want to break down in terms of why that first attracted my attention, and the broader tactic, which I'm not saying Krystal invoked, but certainly is often invoked in the context of RFK, or Ron Paul, or people who are just a little bit outside of establishment thought of calling them crazy or declaring them too strange, too unhinged and too bizarre. It's a very common and potent tactic and I think it's one that you will find is only wielded by the establishment against critics of the establishment. In other words, establishment figures have all the space in the world to endorse the most deranged, the most unhinged, the craziest policies but as long as you're in alignment with establishment orthodoxy, you will never be declared crazy, no matter how crazy those ideas are. This is a tactic reserved only for those who question prevailing establishment orthodoxy and I think all of us are in a way vulnerable to it. It's a very potent and pervasive form of propaganda that requires our constant vigilance and if we let our guard down at all, we're all susceptible to being influenced by that – to think that person has taken a view that everyone just knows is wrong, everyone trustworthy and reliable and credible knows it's wrong, therefore, I just want to stay as far away from them as possible. I think analyzing how this tactic is wielded, and how it manifested here, is of the utmost importance. 

Now, just a few cards on the table before I show you the parts of the interview and dissect it and connect it to other events. I consider both Krystal and Saagar Enjeti to be good friends of mine. I've appeared on that show many times. I have a lot of respect for their work. This is a case where I'm going to express some disagreements with Krystal's views, but it's not because I think she is a poor journalist or somebody ill-motivated. Quite the contrary. I think the fact that she is someone who is often very rigorous and scrupulous in trying to guard against establishment propaganda, nonetheless, in this case, used a tactic that is usually a tool of the establishment. “Breaking Point” is a show that has succeeded because it is anti-establishment, it is what makes it particularly worthwhile. If this had been Anderson Cooper or Joe Scarborough or Chris Hayes or any of those kinds of people, it would have been unworthy of analysis because that's what you expect from them. So, I think the fact that it came from an anti-establishment venue makes it all the more illustrative. 

I also just want to note that we have been in contact with RFK Jr about appearing on the show. He's agreed to do so. We're just negotiating exactly the date on which he will appear. I hope to devote an entire show to him or most of our show to him, as we did with Marianne Williamson, as we did with Vivek Ramen Swami, like we intend to do with any of the presidential candidates who will come to our show. I'm definitely interested in talking to him, and we will be doing that very soon, although he's by far from a candidate that I support. He has all kinds of views with which I vehemently disagree, including his ardent support for most of the extremist expressions of Russiagate. So, he's clearly not my candidate. I'm nonetheless interested in this dynamic because of what it illustrates more broadly. It's a really perfect, vivid illustration of this tactic that I think deserves a lot of attention. It's often overlooked, and as I said, many of us ingest it almost reflexively. 

So, let's go ahead and take a look at the first segment of this interview where vaccines were discussed. It's about ten minutes long. We're going to show you just a couple of segments and I'll comment on the parts that I think merit comment as we go along and kind of explain the framework that I want to explore with it. 

 

(Video. “Breaking Point”. May 15, 2023)

 

Krystal Ball: […] about vaccines, is an area where you and I have significant differences. And just to level with you on this, like a lot of what you say I really respond to, I think you're a very genuine person. But across the board, whether you want to call it vaccine skepticism or anti-vax advocacy, which has been a central part of what you've been up to for the past number of years, for me personally, it's an issue and it's a real sort of “red line.” And I know I'm not alone in that, especially running in a Democratic primary. There are going to be other millions of people […]. 



Okay. So, there you heard what she said, that this is not just an issue with which she disagrees with him, but it's for her – and she surmises I think correctly – for a lot of other Democratic voters, a red line. 

I don't want to place huge amounts of meaning in that phrase where it comes to Krystal because she's speaking here live and without a script and I know as well as anybody how sometimes you don't express yourself in the most precise way, that you use phrases or words that you wouldn't use if you were sitting and contemplating exactly what you wanted to say. But the fact that she did say it and you could kind of see the progression of her thought where she told him, “For me, your view of vaccines is very wrong, in fact, it's a red line” I think was very telling. She wanted to make the point that this is not just an ordinary disagreement she has with him. This is something that for her, despite all the other things he says that she says resonates with him, places him in this kind of different off-limits category. I've never heard her say that about Joe Biden. I believe she supported Joe Biden in the 2020 election, most definitely not in the primary. She, I believe, was a Bernie Sanders supporter, that's for sure. She did not support him in the primary, but certainly in the general election that was her preferred candidate. I have not heard her say that the positions Joe Biden has taken are a red line for her where she would never support him in a way she seems to be saying here for RFK Jr when it comes to vaccines. So that's part of what attracted my attention. Let's listen to the rest. 

 

Krystal Ball: […] who, like me, have similar concerns. So, how do you win them over? What's your message to people who think like I do? 

 

JFK, Jr.: But just tell me where you think I got it wrong. 

 

Krystal Ball: Well, I think you get it wrong when you draw a correlation between the rise of things like autism and the introduction of vaccines when there isn't hard scientific evidence tying those things together.

 

JFK, Jr.: How do you know? Let me ask you this. How do you know there's a lot of hard scientific evidence? 

 

Krystal Ball: Well, because the one major study that purported to show that was retracted and the scientist who conducted it was, you know, had a […] 

 

JFK, Jr.: What you're doing [...] 

 

(voices overlap)

 

Krystal Ball: Basically, fraudulently created […] 

 

JFK, Jr.: No, no, no. 

 

Krystal Ball: Hold on. Hold on. I don't want to get in a debate with you about this because you've spent your life pulling out of this. I will tell you. Let me just tell you. 

 

JFK, Jr.: […] and hundreds and […] 

 

Krystal Ball: Let me just tell you, I've listened to hours of interviews with you with an open mind, and I'm not persuaded. Now, maybe I'm wrong. That's possible. I'll hold it out there. People can watch. I thought Megyn Kelly did a phenomenal interview with you that went through all these claims piece by piece by piece. I really encourage people to watch that whole exchange because we won't be able to do it justice here in the five minutes we have left. But there are going to be people like me who aren't persuaded and who see this as an issue. And the fact that it's been such a central part of your advocacy means I can't just sort of put it to the side and say, “I will just ignore this piece that's been really important to you and your life.” So, you're running in a Democratic primary. You have a lot of people who feel even more strongly than me who think that Dr. Fauci is a hero and all of these things. How are you going to persuade them? How are you going to reach them? And what is your message to them? 

 

JFK, Jr.: Well, first of all, I'm leading with, you know, my opinions about vaccines. What I said to people is to show me where I got it wrong. Show me where I got my science wrong. I've written books about as you know; I wrote a book about a link between Arizona autism that has, I think, 450 distilled scientific studies confirm and validate that […] 



All right. So, there's a lot going on there that I think is worthy of attention. So first of all, you can see that Krystal is explicitly acknowledging that she doesn't have the same level of information and knowledge, she hasn't devoted anywhere near the amount of time to this question as RFK, Jr. and for that reason, she's explicitly saying, I don't want to actually engage with you on the merits. She keeps trying to kind of switch the question to a political or punditry question of, well, look, right or wrong, there's a lot of Democratic voters out there who share my views, who think you're wrong on vaccines. How do you intend to persuade them? But he wants, rightly so, after having been accused of being wrong on vaccines, to hear from her, what the basis is for her view that he's wrong, He wants to engage the substantive debate – that's part of why he's running. And I think he goes on to say to her that he, after listening to her try and make the case, that she's parroting establishment outlets, that she's parroting what the health establishment and what health policy officials have just repeated over and over, to the point that I think even well-intentioned people like Krystal start absorbing it to be true. And this is what I think is such an important point. 

I think in order to have a public platform where you opine strongly on vital issues, like whether the benefits of vaccines have been oversold, whether their harms and risks have been minimized and concealed, I really think you have an obligation to have that opinion be steeped in some very in-depth knowledge. I've tried very hard in my journalistic career never to opine publicly unless I feel I have that kind of basis of information. That's one of the reasons why I've always can find myself to a few issues out of time. One of my concerns with doing a show like this nightly and I talked about this a lot with my team was ‘How am I going to do a show where I have to talk every night about nine or ten or 12 issues where my knowledge about it is superficial?’ And so, one of the things we decided was we're not going to talk about nine or 12 issues every day. I'm not going to be obligated to opine politically, opine publicly or journalistically, or assert claims when I have just an ordinary level of knowledge, no deeper or more developed than the ordinary person who has a full-time job that requires them to work on nonpolitical issues. And so, if you're going to come and tell Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to his face that he's not only wrong when it comes to vaccine skepticism, but it's so wrong that it's crossed over this red line, then I do think you have the obligation to be prepared to engage on the merits and to construct an argument. She does go on to say, “Look, I may be wrong on this, this is something that I am open to being persuaded on, but I've listened to you and I haven't been persuaded.” 

But she also says that she doesn't really have anywhere near the level of knowledge he has. He spent years working on this. Remember RFK, Jr. was for 20 years or so a very widely regarded environmental activist working on issues of harmful waste by corporations and toxic dumping. He's somebody who's a very serious person. He is not some extremist or marginalized figure who just emerged out of the blue and started, you know, for clicks or attention talking about vaccines. This is a very deeply developed view, which does not mean I agree with it. I don't have the knowledge to agree with it or not. But what I know is this: health officials in the United States and in the West were proven to be not just wrong, but dishonest, repeatedly, throughout the COVID vaccine. Starting with the very first week when Dr. Fauci received emphatic emails from some of the most well-regarded virologists and epidemiologists on the planet, telling him that they were very convinced that the novel coronavirus could not have emerged naturally or through species jumping, but almost certainly came from a lab in Wuhan that happened to be one that received funding from agencies supervised by Dr. Fauci. For obvious reasons, Dr. Fauci was highly motivated to destroy and crush any possibility that this pandemic came from risky research that he himself approved and funded and so, within a matter of a week, the entire establishment got on board with the view that he insisted they endorse – which was the notion that this came from another species and jumped species or evolved naturally was all but proven. While the possibility of a lab leak was debunked, we know that that was completely baseless at best to the point where for a year or so, Facebook and other social media companies barred anyone from questioning it. That's how powerful Dr. Fauci was, creating a false consensus. You couldn't even question what he was saying, let alone did you have people willing in public to say it was wrong. Only for the U.S. government itself to finally get to the point that they said they didn't know the origins of the coronavirus and that an investigation was needed, including considering the possibility of a lab leak. And now, as we know from the Wall Street Journal and other outlets, the most elite scientific units and teams in the Department of Energy and in the FBI believe that a lab leak from the Wuhan lab is not only plausible – something you weren't allowed to say as a result of Dr. Fauci – but is the most probable explanation for where the coronavirus came from. You certainly have other experts who dispute that but the debate is open. And yet Dr. Fauci, from the beginning, closed it. We also know that all kinds of claims about the Pfizer vaccine and other vaccines were false to the point of being just deceitful. There are famous clips of people they send to propagandize the public, Rachel Maddow and others, about Dr. Fauci himself saying that the vaccine prevents transmission, that, if you're vaccinated, you cannot contract or transmit the virus to others and then, two months later, we watched as millions of vaccinated people were contracting and transmitting the virus to other vaccinated people. Something that turned out to be a complete lie. And on and on and on and on. 

So, whether I'm persuaded or not by what RFK, Jr. has to say about vaccines, both, generally, and when it comes to the COVID vaccine, I know for sure we benefit from having these questions debated. That's the reason the DNC wants to pretend RFK, Jr. doesn't exist. They're petrified of him for reminding Americans not only of how much we were deceived on almost every aspect of the COVID pandemic, including the vaccines, but how much damage that it has done from all the policies that we enacted based on these false claims, from school closings that have destroyed the social and intellectual development of huge numbers of our nation’s youth and youth around the world, to skyrocketing rates of depression and suicide and alcohol and drug abuse, which came from the harms of isolation and shutdowns and so many other things. So, at the very least, I think that if you have a public platform, you have a responsibility to encourage and cheer for and want to foster debate on these most critical questions, especially when it comes from highly informed people who are challenging and dissenting from establishment orthodoxy, especially on debates where they have been proven over and over to lie and to be proven wrong. 

So, Krystal Ball has every right to insist that she disagrees with RFK’s skepticism on vaccines but I think if you're going to use your public platform to say that, as opposed to just believing that privately – which we all have to do, we all have to form opinions privately – but it's a big jump to say I'm going to use the privilege and the responsibility I have with my public platform to opine on issues that I really haven't done the work necessary to have a reliable opinion, then I think the only default position there is if you're going to comment on those issues without the sufficient knowledge, is to encourage skepticism, to say, I want to hear these debates. We need more transparency and more of a right to have these questions raised rather than telling somebody that they're not only wrong but so wrong that they've crossed a “red line” which is completely in alignment with what the DNC is trying to do, to say that both Marion Williams and RFK, Jr. don't even deserve to be heard, they don't even deserve to be considered primary opponents to Joe Biden. If you ask a DNC official, they'll say it's already done. Biden has no primary challenger; he's our nominee – without a single vote being cast, without any debate being held – precisely because their strategy is to encourage people to believe that RFK, Jr. is not just wrong, but so wrong that no matter how much else you might like him on other issues, such as his vehement opposition to the proxy war in Ukraine, that he shouldn't even be someone that you're willing to get near. He crossed a red line. This is the establishment tactic that I think Krystal Ball, in this case, and so many other people in so many other cases have, unwittingly and with good motives, propagated. It's almost subconscious. She believes this – I'm sure she's done the hours of work she said she did, but hours of work on a question this complex is nowhere near enough to opine that emphatically and to tell someone they're off limits, that they've crossed a red line. So, again, I don't think she did anything criminal or cataclysmic here. I think it's more illustrative of how this propaganda tactic functions, often implicitly. 

Let me show you another example. This was from when Bari Weiss went on Joe Rogan's program. This is from January 2019. There was no Democratic primary, but it was heating up. There was a Republican challenger, Bill Weld, and a couple of others, but they never got anywhere near 20% in the polls like RFK, Jr. did. But there was a vibrant Democratic Party primary with Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren and Tulsi Gabbard, and Marianne Williamson who was among those challengers. Bari Weiss had a discussion with Joe Rogan about these Democratic candidates and specifically about Tulsi Gabbard, whom I believe, unbeknownst to Bari Weiss, is someone that Joe Rogan really admired and still admires. I want you to watch what happened, the way Bari Weiss asserted claims, only to have it be clear that she had no basis for making them. She had just heard it so often that she just implicitly started believing it was true because it came from establishment voices. Watch this: 

 

(1:31-2:39)

(Video. Joe Rogan Podcast. Jan. 21, 2019)

 

Bari Weiss: […] So we have Kamala, Kirsten Gillibrand […] 

 

Joe Rogan: Tulsi Gabbard. 

 

Bari Weiss: Oh…monstrous […] 

 

Joe Rogan: Monstrous?  

 

Bari Weiss: Ideas. Ideas.

 

Joe Rogan: Well, when she was […]

 

Joe Rogan inserted Tulsi Gabbard as Bari Weiss was listing the candidates. Listen to this again: 

 

Bari Weiss: […] So we have Kamala, Kirsten Gillibrand […] 

 

Joe Rogan: Tulsi Gabbard. 

 

Bari Weiss: Oh…monstrous […] 

 

Joe Rogan: Monstrous?  

 

Bari Weiss: Ideas. Ideas.

 

Joe Rogan: Well, when she was 22, she had […]

 

Bari Weiss: No, she's an Assad toadie. 

 

Joe Rogan: What does that mean “She is a toadie?” 

 

Bari Weiss: I think that I used that word correctly. Jamie, can you check […]

 

Joe Rogan: Like toeing the line? Is that what it means? 

 

Bari Weiss: (talking to Jamie) T, o, a, d, i, e. (To Rogan) I think it means […] 

 

Joe Rogan: (shows search results from a screen) Toadie. Definition of toadies:  “A person” […]

 

Bari Weiss: Sycophant.

 

Joe Rogan: […] “that flatters or defers to others for self-serving reasons.” 

 

Bari Weiss: A sycophant. 

 

Joe Rogan: So, she's an Assad sycophant. Is that what you're saying? 

 

 Bari Weiss: Yeah, that's... known about her.  

 

“Are you saying Tulsi Gabbard is a sycophant to Bashar al-Assad?” “Yeah, right. Of course. I'm saying that. That's known. That's known about her.” I can't imagine making an accusation of that gravity on a very public and widely watched platform without having a single example I’m able to cite to substantiate that accusation and all I can say is, “Yeah, this is known. Everyone knows this.” Listen to this: 

 

Joe Rogan: So, she's an Assad sycophant. [Is] that what you're saying? 

 

Bari Weiss: Yeah, that's... known about her.  

 

Joe Rogan: What did she say that qualifies her […]

 

Bari Weiss: I don't remember the details… 

 

Joe Rogan: You probably shouldn’t say that – before we say that about –  we should probably read it rather […]

 

Bari Weiss: Well, I have read it. 

 

Joe Rogan: […] Oh, yeah. Okay. Just so we know what she said. […] Look, I really enjoyed talking to her. I like her a lot. 



I find that remarkable. Again, I think Bari Weiss was well-intentioned there in the sense that she was saying something she believed to be true and had come to believe it because just enough people had said it, that in her brain a switch clicked and it just became gospel to her, something that you don't even need to bother anymore to debate. She was obviously extremely unprepared to debate that or even to raise a single thing Tulsi Gabbard had done that would justify accusing her of that. And I think it's very similar to what happened with Krystal Ball, though I think Krystal Ball was much more prepared to talk about RFK vaccine skepticism than Bari Wise was to talk about Tulsi Gabbard’s supposedly “toadie”-ness or serving someone for her own self-interest, dishonestly, to Bashar al Assad. But nonetheless, I think it's a very similar dynamic because as RFK, Jr. pointed out in the second half of the segment, we didn't show you – he said, I think what you're doing is parroting establishment voices. It was clear to me that was what she was doing. She definitely did some work, but nowhere near enough. 

As I mentioned, this is a dynamic that I've been talking about for many years. And the thing that really led me to first start talking about it was in 2011, 2012, when Barack Obama was seeking reelection to his second term in office. I was a very vehement critic of Obama in many areas, particularly in his embrace of the exact war on terror policies instituted by George Bush and Dick Cheney and civil liberties assault in the name of the War on Terror. Then, Obama spent all of 2008 vowing to uproot. And not only did Obama continue those, but he also aggressively expanded them in some very radical and extremist ways. The left purported to be just as appalled by that as I was. This was during the time when my audience became filled with a lot of left-wing supporters because I was vehemently criticizing President Obama, not from a conservative or right-wing perspective, but from the perspective of civil liberties and my critique of his continuation of George Bush and Dick Cheney's most invasive and radical policies in the War on Terror. 

That was something the left strongly believed in and there was a candidate running for president in 2012 who agreed with the left's critique about President Obama's civil liberties assault. His name was Ron Paul. And he not only agreed with the left on some pretty important issues like the War on Terror and civil liberties but also became a vehement opponent of the drug war, the idea that American adults should be put into prison if they choose to buy and consume narcotics the government has declared to be illegal, drugs that you're not allowed to use, even if, as an adult, you're completely informed of the risks and benefits and choose to use them. Not only are you prohibited, but you will go to jail for it. He argued that this led to mass incarceration, it was the main reason the U.S. imprisons more of its citizens than any other in the world by far  – there was a racial component to it. Things the left adored. Yet, even the mere suggestion that Ron Paul's candidacy should be looked at and not necessarily one should vote for him or support him if one doesn't want to, but at least appreciate and celebrate and support the parts of his candidacy that were genuinely unique in a way that the left has a long claim to crave. That was one of my earliest, most violent breaches with the American left – when I started trying to argue that what Ron Paul is doing is something that should inspire them and whatever you want to say about Ron Paul and the issues on which you disagree with him, that at least is true for President Obama and yet the fact that President Obama had a “D” after his name and was the incumbent president, had the establishment on his side, whereas Ron Paul was always somebody who was kind of marginalized, considered a little crazy, not because of any personal behavior, which has always been upstanding in terms of his personal integrity and his conduct in office, but because of his views. He was immediately declared to have crossed red lines the way Krystal Ball said of RFK Jr the way don't see the way Bari Weiss said of Tulsi Gabbard.

Here you can see just a very common article from 2011 in The Washington Post. There you see the headline: “Call him a nut”.  “Ron Paul: Call Him a Nut,” just like he's crazy. This is by their media critic, Erik Wemple. So, again, this is the same tactic. Ron Paul doesn't have views with which one disagrees. He's just crazy. Just call him a crazy person, an insane person, and be done with it. 

The article I wrote in December 2011, in Salon, which, as I said, will probably, maybe, after my support for the majority opinion in Citizens United on free speech grounds, is probably – which is 2010. This is probably, at the time, the most abrupt and aggressive breach I had with the American left. “Progressives and the Ron Paul Fallacies.” There you see in the sub-headline: “The benefits of his candidacy are widely ignored, as are the Democrats’ own evils.” 

So, it reminds me very much of the framework Krystal Ball had created. She is certainly not a supporter of Joe Biden but, at the end of the day, she will urge him to be elected. She will advocate for people to vote for him in a general election because, apparently, he hasn't crossed red lines, whereas RFK, Jr. has. This is the same issue for me when it came to President Obama and Ron Paul. So let me show you a couple of videos where Ron Paul said some things that were really extraordinary, that you would think the left would be supportive of and excited by. 

Let's take a look at this video here, which is him talking about the effort by President Obama to use the CIA to overthrow the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad. Listen to Ron Paul express his opposition to that policy:

 

(Video. May, 2011) 

 

Ron Paul: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Plans, rumors and war propaganda for attacking Syria and disposing Assad has been around for many months. This past week, however, it was reported that the Pentagon indeed was finalizing plans to do just that. In my opinion, all the evidence to justify this attack is bogus. It is no more credible than the pretext given for the 2003 invasion of Iraq or for the 2011 attack on Libya. The total waste of those wars should cause us to pause before this all-out effort at occupation and regime change is initiated against Syria. There are no national security concerns that require such a foolish escalation of violence in the Middle East. There should be no doubt that our security interests are best served by completely staying out of the internal strife now raging in Syria. 

 

Just to put this in the simplest terms, to this day, if you mention the name Ron Paul, not just the Democrats, but anyone who's inherent to the establishment would laugh at him, they'll treat him like a joke. He's crazy. He's just insane. As the Washington Post said, “just call him a nut.” And yet, Ron Paul, in 2002, was one of the most ardent opponents of the idea of invading Iraq. He made all kinds of predictions that proved prophetic and prescient.  At the same time, Joe Biden – who no Democrat will say is crazy or off limits or has crossed a red line – was one of the most vocal advocates of the war in Iraq and because he was a Democrat  – considered to have a lot of experience in foreign policy, he was the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee at the time – you could really make the case that Joe Biden's support for Iraq, the war in Iraq, like Hillary Clinton's and like John Kerry's, was arguably the most important. He was the most important senator that enabled that war to happen, who led half the Democratic Senate caucus to vote in favor of the war in Iraq. Let's listen to him. In 2002, while he was cross-examining in a very hostile way, Scott Ritter, at the time a weapons inspector who was against the war in Iraq and was saying he was in Iraq, he was on the ground in Iraq, he vehemently believed Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction – so Ron Paul turned out to be right. Joe Biden turned out to be radically and disastrously wrong and yet, for some reason, Joe Biden is considered sane and on the right side of the red line,  and Ron Paul is on the wrong side of it. 

Let's put this video of Joe Biden in the Senate in 2002. Actually, this is a Senate hearing about the first war in Iraq. There are lots of clips, of course, of Joe Biden vehemently arguing for the war in Iraq. This is a video from 1988, he’s talking to Scott Ritter, but he's advocating regime change – all the way back in 1988, so three years before 9/11 – and then four years before that war was actually approved of. Listen to what Joe Biden said. 

 

(Video. C-SPAN. 1998).

 

J. Biden: […] Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me begin by saying, I think, Major, you have provided and are providing a very, very, very valuable service to your country by coming forward as you have, because, quite frankly, I think what you've done is you forced us to come to our milk here, all of us in the United States Congress. I think you and I believe and many of us believe here, as long as Saddam's at the helm, there is no reasonable prospect you or any other inspector is ever going to be able to guarantee that we have rooted out, root, and branch the entirety of Saddam's program relative to weapons of mass destruction and you and I both know and all of us here really know. And it's the thing we have to face that the only way we're going to get rid of Saddam Hussein is we're going to end up having the started alone – started alone – and it's going to require guys like you in uniform to be back on foot in the desert taking Saddam down. You know it and I know it. So, I think we should not kid ourselves here. There are stark, stark choices. 



So, it is amazing. Biden was not just an advocate of the war in Iraq in 2002 when it was opposed, after 9/11. He was a very emphatic advocate of it, of regime change in Iraq and the need to take down Saddam Hussein before 9/11 even happened, back in 1998. 

Why is Joe Biden considered sane and people like Ron Paul considered crazy and off-limits and insane when, on the most critical questions of our time, Joe Biden has been wrong over and over? 

Let's look at Joe Biden and his support for the war in Libya –  a war that, like the war in Syria, Obama waged to take out Bashar al-Assad – turned that country into a complete wreck of a country where anarchy of the worst kind thrived, where slave markets are turned, where ISIS returned, that created extreme amounts of instability, not just in that country, but a migrant crisis in Europe, one of the worst and most misguided interventions the United States has ever launched, Joe Biden – like the war in Iraq – was strongly in favor of that one as well. Let's go ahead and pull that up. 

 

(Video. CNN. 2011.)

 

J. Biden: Libya, Gadhafi, one way or another, is gone. Whether he's alive or dead, he's gone. The people of Libya have gotten rid of a dictator of 40 years whom I personally knew. This is one tough, not-so-nice guy. And guess what? They got a chance now. But what happened in this case? America spent $2 billion total and didn't lose a single life. This is more the prescription for how to deal with the world as we go forward than it has been in the past. 



So, I think this is somewhat of an elusive point. So, I just want to get at it in one more different way, which is the idea that the establishment in the United States uses a tactic of proclaiming you to be mentally unwell or somehow just completely radioactive simply by virtue of dissent to establishment orthodoxy. And even if it's establishment orthodoxy itself, that proves to be the crazy view, that proves to be the destructive view, that proves to be the deranged conspiratorial view, you will never be labeled crazy or off limits, or having crossed a red line, as long as you're in alignment with the establishment thought there is no limit to what you can do provided you remain on that side. This is a term and a tactic reserved only for those who dissent from it. That's why Joe Biden's never considered crazy or off limits for people like RFK, Jr. or Ron Paul. 

I think the most vivid example is this one: from 2016 until 2019 – and we covered this on our show on Tuesday night when we talked about the Durham Report and its conclusions about the FBI's interference in our election by essentially collaborating with the Clinton campaign to create this false space investigation to link Trump to Russia – in the context that we discussed the fact that for three full years in the United States, the main political story that drowned our politics, that covered the front page of newspapers on a virtually daily basis that was constantly on television was Russiagate. The Russiagate scandal. The two key component parts were: the first, that the Trump campaign had criminally colluded or collaborated with the Russians to hack into the DNC emails and John Podesta's email – something we know from the Volcker investigation that closed without accusing a single American of that crime said there was no evidence for it – and now the German investigation concluding that the FBI never even had a basis to open an investigation into that in 2016. We know that that part was fraudulent. But the other part that was at least equally prominent came from the Steele Dossier. The Steele Dossier. It was one of the most insane and unhinged conspiracy theories imaginable. It really was the case that establishment figures in the media and politics for three straight years continuously went on television and to their pages and the op-ed columns and even gave themselves Pulitzers for it and constantly ratified the view that the Kremlin had seized control of the levers of American power by virtue of sexual, financial and other forms of personal blackmail held over the head of Donald Trump, that essentially they could force him to do the bidding of the Kremlin, even if it came at the expense of the United States. A conspiracy theory that, if you tried to submit it as a script in Hollywood, it would be too much even for them. It's preposterous. It's a joke. When you talk about wild, crazy conspiracy theories, that is the living, breathing embodiment of it. And no matter how often it was disproven because Trump acted against the most vital Russian interest when he sent lethal arms to Ukraine after President Obama refused to do so – a direct threat to Russia's vital interests – when Trump spent years trying to sabotage the most important economic project that Moscow has, which is the Nord Stream 2 pipeline connecting it to Western Europe to allow it to sell cheap natural gas through Germany, no matter how many times Trump acted directly against Russian interests when he bombed Russian troops in Syria and threatened to bomb Russian troops even more and take out. Their main Russian ally, Bashar al-Assad, no matter how much he acted against Russian interests. This conspiracy theory continued. And yet, not a single person who propagated that crazy conspiracy theory would ever be called crazy or a conspiracy theorist or having crossed a red line because they were acting in servitude in captivity to establishment dogma and establishment interest. To this day, those of us who stood up and objected to that conspiracy theory being baseless are the ones called crazy and even called conspiracy theorists, because these terms really are just weapons and tools used to stigmatize anybody who challenges establishment thought. This is the point that I want to get at. 

Let me just show you one last example of this because it happened not only to Ron Paul but also to his son, Rand Paul, when he became elected as senator from Kentucky. The exact same things are said about Rand Paul that were said about Ron Paul.

Here you see, from the New Republic, in May 2011, a headline: “Rand Paul is Really Crazy.” Rand Paul is Really Crazy – all but echoing The Washington Post’s similar story about his father – “Just call Ron Paul a nut”.  

Conor Friedersdorf, who now writes at The Atlantic, wrote a really great article in Newsweek that examined the question of why Rand Paul could be deemed crazy. What was it about Rand Paul that allowed him to be called crazy by establishment figures in Washington media and politics who themselves endorse all sorts of objectively, inherently extremist and radical ideas? And the answer, of course, is because what “all crazy” really means in Washington is opposing establishment thought. 

Here is Conor Friedersdorf’s article in Newsweek, in May 2010. The headline Is “Rand Paul Crazier Than Anyone Else in DC?” Let's look at the text of the article. 

 

Rand Paul has plenty of beliefs that I regard as wacky, such as his naive, now withdrawn, assumption that markets would have obviated the need for certain provisions of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Or his desire to return America to the gold standard. 

Of course, I feel world-weary exasperation upon hearing every national politician speak – have you ever gotten through the election season television commercials without rolling your eyes? – but the media seem to reflexively treat some ideas and some candidates less seriously than others for no legitimate, objective reason. 

Third-party presidential candidate Ross Perot was called a disparaging name so often that he tried to diffuse the situation with humor by dancing in public to Patsy Cline's rendition of the song “Crazy.” Rand Paul can't escape this treatment, even on Fox News, where an anchor called him a libertarian wacko. If returning to the gold standard is unthinkable, is it not just as extreme that President Obama claims an unchecked power to assassinate, without due process, any American living abroad, whom he designates as an enemy combatant? (Newsweek. May 24, 2010).

 

Just to remind you, the Obama administration adopted a theory that if an American citizen is abroad in a place that they deem lawless or out of the reach of American extradition, the United States government has the right – without charging that American citizen with a crime or giving them any due process – simply for the president to declare them an enemy combatant and then murder them by drones. And this wasn't just a theory that Obama asserted. It was a theory that he used in Yemen. For example, he sent drones to first kill the American-born, American citizen cleric al-Awlaki and then to kill his 16-year-old son in Yemen, Anwar al-Awlaki. And what kind of Friedersdorf is saying is, “if you think advocacy of the gold standard makes Rand Paul crazy, how is that any less crazy or crazier than a president of the United States claiming the power to assassinate without due process any American living abroad whom he designates as an enemy combatant? 

 

Or that Joe Lieberman wants to strip Americans of their citizenship not when they are convicted of terrorist activities, but upon their being accused and designated as enemy combatants? (Newsweek. May 24, 2010).

 

And he goes on a bunch of other examples. He then concludes that essentially people who get called crazy in Washington are always people who dissent vigorously enough from establishment orthodoxy. I think maybe the correction that we need is not to stop calling people crazy, but to make sure that we include establishment figures in that. Because over the last six years, in particular, the establishment has gone utterly berserk. Joe Biden, if you look at it from a progressive perspective, has supported every policy that ought to be across the “red line” – from the Iraq war to the war in Libya to the war in Syria to funding the proxy war in Ukraine, endlessly and without limits to being the architect of the prison industrial complex, to be a virulent supporter of the drug war – and yet no one will call Joe Biden crazy. No one would call Mitch McConnell crazy, even though he supports almost every one of those same policies. Because if you're part of the establishment, you're inherently serious, you're inherently sane. Even if you're wrong, you're inherently credible. This is a tactic that appeared in Krystal Ball’s interview of RFK, Jr.; that appeared in Bari Weiss's commentary on Tulsi Gabbard; that appeared in all of these articles demanding we call Ron Paul and Rand Paul insane; that is designed to render dissidence to establishment thought intrinsically crazy. And it's one that I think a lot of us can adopt because we're constantly bombarded with claims from venues we've been conditioned to regard as inherently credible. And it leads us to believe all sorts of things that we haven't really critically evaluated and, as a result, to implicitly or reflexively regard as crazy or weird or off limits or on the other side of a “red line,” people who are questioning policies that themselves are often quite crazy but are deemed to be sacrosanct by virtue of the fact that it's the establishment that supports them. And so, I thought this interview with RFK, Jr., the treatment of RFK, Jr. and his candidacy, and the permission given for the DNC to basically pretend he doesn't exist, all illustrate this tactic. It's been one that is evident for decades and I think when you put it all together, it's one that we really need to work to be consciously aware of. 

 

So right after this, we will be back. We will look at the new law in Montana that bans TikTok and hope to apply the same critical faculties I was just talking about to this new law and other measures being demanded in the name of stopping China. We'll be right back after this. 


 

We would like to say a very special thank you to Field of Greens! They have been a big sponsor to the show because of Field of Greens we here at System Update can stay an indepedent news program. Thank you Field of Greens! 


In the last segment, I talked about a lot of policies that were enacted in the name of the War on Terror and fighting al-Qaida that, by all objective measures, should be deemed not just radical and extremist, but really quite just crazy, just unhinged. One of the lessons I learned from those years of reporting, in fact, probably, the overarching lesson, is that one of the most dangerous ways that governments extract power from its citizenry is to convince that citizenry that they face such a monumental threat, such a grave fear, usually from foreign sources, from foreign actors, that they need to capitulate to government demands for increasingly greater powers, including from powers previously thought out of any conceivable possibility. That was the story of the Patriot Act. We've covered that history several times on this show. Within literally days after 9/11, while the rubble and the corpses beneath it had not yet been cleared from the streets of Manhattan, there was legislation designed to enable the United States government to spy not just on foreign nationals, but American citizens, in ways previously unthinkable to radically reduce the evidentiary burdens that government has to meet in order to spy, in order for the CIA and the FBI to share information about American citizens. At the time, even as proponents acknowledged it was an extremist and radical bill, a fundamental change to the American system of government, to the values that we've always embraced for the limitations required for the government to operate in a way that protects our basic rights. And yet the Patriot Act passed easily despite those realities overwhelmingly in both the House and the Senate. Anyone who even breathed a word of dissent against the Patriot Act was instantly accused of either not taking seriously the threat posed by al-Qaida and Islamic radicalism, or usually and worse, being on the side of al-Qaida, being pro-terrorist simply for questioning anything the government demanded in the name of al-Qaida. 

 

 

As I said, I was someone who lived in Manhattan and worked in Manhattan and was in Manhattan on 9/11. I remember how traumatizing that attack was. I remember it took me, I think, two weeks, and I went to a movie and I realized in the middle of the movie that for about 10 minutes I wasn't thinking about the attack – for the first time since it happened. It was genuinely a traumatizing attack. Very shortly after that, came the Anthrax attacks, which for a lot of Americans, I believe, escalated those risks even further. We're going to devote a show very soon, perhaps tomorrow night, or in the upcoming week, about the Anthrax attacks and the impact it had on American perceptions about threats that we face, but also the still very significant lingering questions about how that Anthrax attack was launched on American soil, who really launched it and for what ends. I genuinely believe, as do a lot of mainstream scientists and even mainstream news outlets – they don't talk about it anymore but they did at the time – that the FBI's version of events for how the Anthrax attack happened stretched credibility to a breaking point that we don't really know the full story, but it sheds a lot of light on things like how our government manipulates and weaponizes viruses and other biological weapons in our labs, in Chinese labs. So, we're going to devote an entire show to remembering that history. I think a lot of you are probably too young to remember it, to have lived through it, but the lesson that I got from all of that is that once the perception of fear or anger toward a foreign power is high enough, the population is basically conditioned to accept anything and everything the government demands in the name of combating that threat. 

Right now, the threat that Americans regard as the gravest and the most serious is no longer al-Qaida or ISIS; it's not the Russians – unless you work for MSNBC and the Washington Post op-ed page – It's not Iran. It's China. I think there is a consensus growing certainly within the establishment wings of both parties – and even the populist right in the Republican Party – that China is the single greatest threat that the United States faces. At some point, we're going to delve deeply into the question of whether that's an accurate perception but for the moment, I want you to just assume that it is. 

So, let's assume that whether you think of China as some kind of an enemy with which we need to go to war or some kind of a very serious, formidable competitor that will likely require decades of a new Cold War of funding the intelligence agencies, of spending more and more money on weapons and deploying fleets and military units in that part of the world and confront China in every conceivable way, even if you're right about that, it still is the case that we are all vulnerable to having that concern, that fear, that anger toward China exploited for the government to seize more powers by telling you that those powers are necessary to combat the threat from Beijing and that you need not worry about these new powers because the government is only here to help you and protect you and keep you safe from the Chinese Communist Party. This absolutely becomes an argument we're hearing more and more in Washington in ways that I think people are finally starting to realize can be very dangerous in itself. 

Only for Supporters
To read the rest of this article and access other paid content, you must be a supporter
27
What else you may like…
Videos
Podcasts
Posts
Articles
Answering Your Questions About Tariffs

Many of you have been asking about the impact of Trump's tariffs, and Glenn addressed how we are covering the issue during our mail bag segment yesterday. As always, we are grateful for your thought-provoking questions! Thank you, and keep the questions coming!

00:11:10
In Case You Missed It: Glenn Breaks Down Trump's DOJ Speech on Fox News
00:04:52
In Case You Missed It: Glenn Discusses Mahmoud Khalil on Fox News
00:08:35
Listen to this Article: Reflecting New U.S. Control of TikTok's Censorship, Our Report Criticizing Zelensky Was Deleted

For years, U.S. officials and their media allies accused Russia, China and Iran of tyranny for demanding censorship as a condition for Big Tech access. Now, the U.S. is doing the same to TikTok. Listen below.

Listen to this Article: Reflecting New U.S. Control of TikTok's Censorship, Our Report Criticizing Zelensky Was Deleted
7 hours ago

@ggreenwald Glenn, could you do a segment on the escalations between India-Pakistan sometime soon? As someone who’s not an expert on the history I would appreciate your trusted perspective on it, possibly with guests laying out either side’s position on it.

Interesting discussion last night. I had not realized Harvard's historical funding situation, and I think we need to DOGE that. They have enough money to get by on their own now. The general consensus of those in the live chat seemed to be to cut the funding, and stop telling them what to do. Great discussion!
Looking forward to the transcript!

Here's a lovely, short video of a man playing music for animals, including horses, elephants, lemurs, and more. It turns out that even horses enjoy the Rolling Stones' song Wild Horses😁
https://substack.com/@sailingbeyondknowledge/note/c-108597224?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=1ngpds

post photo preview
Christopher Rufo: On Civil Liberties, the American Founding, Academic Freedom, and More
System Update #450

The following is an abridged transcript from System Update’s most recent episode. You can watch the full episode on Rumble or listen to it in podcast form on Apple, Spotify, or any other major podcast provider.  

System Update is an independent show free to all viewers and listeners, but that wouldn’t be possible without our loyal supporters. To keep the show free for everyone, please consider joining our Locals, where we host our members-only aftershow, publish exclusive articles, release these transcripts, and so much more!

AD_4nXcaDoagdcOwWqPuydSyfiB58LKHhideu8aMOqpnF_26_9JdySfAef3WgL7ufOMbO8Z2jLgsOTC08pOjtr4euekB7HCXi9dD83ONcKQouui6E-oBit2VENTvfGA-zXImQFrUbJjs3Av4li-MiawLDw?key=pQIu-Amz3rzPmGu1T6DqxQ

Tonight: Regardless of what you think of him or really about any issue, there's no denying the profound influence that tonight's guest, Christopher Rufo, has had on conservative politics and state and federal policy more broadly, though he has often focused on educational debates and educational institutions – Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, for example, appointed him to a key position to transform that state's New School from an institution largely producing left-wing thought to one that is more aligned with conservative educational dogma and policy. He was also instrumental in publicizing the plagiarism of Harvard President Claudine Gay, which, along with issues regarding campus Israel protests and antisemitism, led to her firing after only six months in that position. He has become one of the most influential voices shaping the views of leading conservative politicians and media figures. 

Rufo appeared on our program once before: back in 2023, where we spent an hour exploring his core beliefs and goals, some of which I agree with and some of which I do not. The conversation was spirited but unfailingly civil, and I think, illuminating of some of the controversies surrounding his work. 

What promoted Rufo's appearance tonight were comments that I had made about him and other right-wing figures in an interview I gave about the Trump administration to Reason Magazine. Rufo saw those comments, noted them and objected to them on X. It led to a back and forth but it became rapidly apparent - at least to me - that social media was the absolute worst venue to try to sort through those issues we were discussing, some of which have a lot of complexity and nuance to them: things like the core values of the American Founding, the values and views that most influenced the founders and how all of those questions apply to our current political debates, especially over civil liberties and the freedom of academic institutions. 

So, I suggested that we remove the conversation to a platform more suitable for a constructive exchange and he quickly agreed to come on this program for us to do so. 

His official biography does not really capture Rufo's influence and accomplishments, but for those unfamiliar with it, he is a senior fellow and director of the Initiative on Critical Race Theory at the Manhattan Institute. He is also a contributing editor of City Journal, where his writings explore a range of issues, including critical race theory, gender ideology, homelessness, addiction, crime, and the decline of American cities. He has been published in Fox and the New York Post and has been the subject of numerous corporate media profiles, the most recent of which is a lengthy interview he gave to the New York Times just last month. He's the author of the New York Times bestselling book, “America's Cultural Revolution,” and as a filmmaker, he has directed four documentaries for PBS, Netflix, and international television, including America Lost, which tells the story of three forgotten American cities. 

The issues we hope to discuss are, in my view, some of the most consequential for American politics and the West more broadly, and I'm very much looking forward to our exploration of our agreements and our disagreements on all of those questions. 


G. Greenwald: Chris, good evening, it's great to see you. Thanks so much for coming on and agreeing to do this.

So, it's interesting, when I was thinking about how to do this, how to conduct our discussion, the issues that we discussed, even though it was just a few tweets, were so far reaching and kind of complex that I had so many things I wanted to talk to you about, so the hard part was figuring out what to kind of focus on. 

There was a series of tweets that you posted in response to that interview I had given in Reason, where I basically said, and it was part of a larger conversation, I was asked specifically about you, that I think you're very shrewd and influential and successful operative and journalist but, to me, it seems like you've gotten to the point where you care more about this kind of Machiavellian quest for power than you do about principles. 

And in response, you said this:

AD_4nXdNgj7qMUMr42-TjzG1Xkk4q6CuOtpqnDmG83ToQPvXSxwqcbIs90cuBKe_a6CNGK3wXbL351OJD6S7IQ9bTBkSgITVZPqkVLJYUpqVhor0nqqYo3H1gQYdrBqle69SFBcwJJk5xy5Rcy_CZ_B-M_M?key=pQIu-Amz3rzPmGu1T6DqxQ

AD_4nXcOEpKRM--8xTmtxxxpZIh6D5VTD6vza9AEN0mSz-ZC9ShfneizvxtBhXHrQ8X6x-7qhfaL7yzw2XCNpPYBbKC3KEPQuYCHJ_2CoMxfO_t8jxXoFY2nn-Z8NJr657FdP60B_amh1mqk8MczwlgXaQ?key=pQIu-Amz3rzPmGu1T6DqxQ

Only for Supporters
To read the rest of this article and access other paid content, you must be a supporter
Read full Article
post photo preview
NIH Ends Fauci's Brutal Dog Experiments; MTG and Massie Shut Down Law to Criminalize Israel Boycotts
System Update #449

The following is an abridged transcript from System Update’s most recent episode. You can watch the full episode on Rumble or listen to it in podcast form on Apple, Spotify, or any other major podcast provider.  

System Update is an independent show free to all viewers and listeners, but that wouldn’t be possible without our loyal supporters. To keep the show free for everyone, please consider joining our Locals, where we host our members-only aftershow, publish exclusive articles, release these transcripts, and so much more!

AD_4nXfOxGUsg7A_S3ddqbTf0xdGX7VXJr8EwP92b1AKf4pGAlS-rPMMzfUP43cO8VRoSDJmtnjafkjZkWLr6PIa5Uw8gm-Mk5Lf-NKu01__8JfL6RrzjdjMp0ZP7WIjgfVuB7hH0qMHePVkOb0VjUNIXME?key=b0Z6bGXfV7ehSQkOWJEvWQ

Former senior health official who lurked around Washington for 40 years, Anthony Fauci was, well before COVID, highly polarizing and, in many cases, widely disliked. When many of the truths of COVID and his behavior during that pandemic were revealed, he was jettisoned into an entirely new category of the hero/villain narrative that plagues so much of our politics. 

But one constant in his long career was that he was always a robust advocate for and a funder of – an ample funder of – some of the most grotesque, cruelest and pointless medical experimentations on animals in government labs paid for by the government, especially dogs. And when doing these experiments on dogs which have almost no medical value, they often chose on purpose for beagles as their breed of choice because as anyone who has spent any time with beagles will tell you, they have a particularly loving, docile and trustworthy instinct when they are with animals, which makes it very easy to deceive them. 

Justin Goodman is the Senior Vice President of Advocacy and Public Policy at White Coat Waste, is our guest to talk about the major win animal advocacy groups led by the very bipartisan White Coat Lab group scored today. The National Institute of Health, now run by Jay Bhattacharya, under the direction of HHS Secretary RFK Jr., announced that they were eliminating the last government-funded lab experiments on beagles: that was the lab that conducted the so-called barbaric septic shock experiment, and I'll save you the description until later. 

Then, Reason's magazine Matthew Petti wrote an excellent article today, a really good piece of journalism that broke down and analyzed the statute in very clear detail and concluded that it "would arguably be the most draconian measure of this kind to date". He is our second guest tonight. 

Some laws are so extreme and shocking that you can't actually believe anyone in Congress actually proposed them, and for me, this is one. As is true for most of the pro-Israel measures in Washington, it had a long list of co-sponsors from both parties. 

AD_4nXfOxGUsg7A_S3ddqbTf0xdGX7VXJr8EwP92b1AKf4pGAlS-rPMMzfUP43cO8VRoSDJmtnjafkjZkWLr6PIa5Uw8gm-Mk5Lf-NKu01__8JfL6RrzjdjMp0ZP7WIjgfVuB7hH0qMHePVkOb0VjUNIXME?key=b0Z6bGXfV7ehSQkOWJEvWQ

AD_4nXc_Yo8Z6iDXaF7iic4CpePaVf7WorA4k4PnGQf-KFz6rZx_D63EeI-qWYw9vMSLVYFmsC59ghot91KUV9BOGxAhX2N-4lQ6lhxqAzMqJvY7TlF2ymQm2wwiPOg1nphRSejLGOunmYjO-H9xesUN?key=b0Z6bGXfV7ehSQkOWJEvWQ

 

Justin Goodman is the Senior Vice President of Advocacy and Public Policy at White Coat Waste Project, a non-partisan, non-profit organization that just got done heralding, explaining and it exposed and has held Dr. Fauci accountable for many things, including funding the Wuhan lab, as well as testing cruel, gratuitous, and pointless testing on dogs generally and beagles specifically. For more than two decades, Justin has led successful and award-winning grassroots and lobbying campaigns to end cruel taxpayer-funded experiments on dogs, cats, primates, and other animals. I've long been an admirer of that group and his work, and we're really delighted to have him join us tonight. 

Only for Supporters
To read the rest of this article and access other paid content, you must be a supporter
Read full Article
post photo preview
Glenn Takes Your Questions: Iraq War Lies, Judge Rebukes Trump, Ilham Omar Curses Reporters & More
System Update #448

The following is an abridged transcript from System Update’s most recent episode. You can watch the full episode on Rumble or listen to it in podcast form on Apple, Spotify, or any other major podcast provider.  

System Update is an independent show free to all viewers and listeners, but that wouldn’t be possible without our loyal supporters. To keep the show free for everyone, please consider joining our Locals, where we host our members-only aftershow, publish exclusive articles, release these transcripts, and so much more!

AD_4nXcgqrI4khVWM9sL44S_5Npt2tVfz9ddQh-HNP_QjdziQ0WyQWMPiz1uiqZcYVuG-QC0WTCBk-OdNkCF_fmrlyR-6a08mQcA5ieUcToA2YU_WDFDuNMvf5kKnmZRmxA7MvBgNX0tEjfzL1atDLBNOeg?key=MrBQyTUNLJMvWrwHZK6IMQrI

As most of you know, Friday night is our Q&A show. We take questions submitted throughout the week by members of our Locals community. This week, the questions cover a very wide range of issues including the bizarre story told by former Senator Pat Leahy of Vermont about how he was secretly accosted by shadowy members of the deep state while jogging in 2003, and they directed him to proof that the Bush administration was lying about the proposed war in Iraq. Leahy cast a meaningless vote against the war because of what he saw, but never let the public know about the proof he was shown. 

We also have questions about yesterday’s very significant ruling by another Trump-appointed federal judge who ruled against the Trump administration. This one concluded that the administration lacks the authority even to invoke the wartime Alien Enemies Act, which is what the administration has been using to justify removing people from the U.S. and sending them to an El Salvador prison without so much as a trial. 

Finally, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota uttered very naughty words to a journalist from the Daily Caller, who walked up to her on the street, began filming her, asking her adversarial questions – a perfectly legitimate journalistic activity. Upon seeing the video and Omar's reaction, many conservatives – including many who have spent a decade calling journalists The Enemy of the People and cheering right-wing politicians who have scored journalists often aggressively and with verbal abuse – have now decided that Omar had failed to show journalists the respect and deference that they deserve as journalists. 

We'll examine this and other questions as well, as much as we can, time permitting. 

AD_4nXcgqrI4khVWM9sL44S_5Npt2tVfz9ddQh-HNP_QjdziQ0WyQWMPiz1uiqZcYVuG-QC0WTCBk-OdNkCF_fmrlyR-6a08mQcA5ieUcToA2YU_WDFDuNMvf5kKnmZRmxA7MvBgNX0tEjfzL1atDLBNOeg?key=MrBQyTUNLJMvWrwHZK6IMQrI

The first question comes from @thefarside:

AD_4nXf-me7kh5mPQwD652Dq3_zrdzNwwYQRoYu4tChTsrxP-Cl0VcADBqnzL4Qg0cE9pwBXY-OdST_spHo77ixKRPPclw33v1exrzrfQD4wxjNy2FbvySGIZj4d39iWckwypBnb7INAcJGv_smUR9CLudY?key=MrBQyTUNLJMvWrwHZK6IMQrIAD_4nXeby0jzOFo5WRYpQW0X2KwtoSa4bp3NlsO53VhmO5YbiKkznvHqA7v-gm1yu4zfkuB3rq2S1MLg7gf7FyIaZfWbqp6RPlLColAkmz7Ade1E2AR8Re1ZxcvWn-4YVbJEVC-5tmy5wOh027115gqaIjE?key=MrBQyTUNLJMvWrwHZK6IMQrI

I totally agree with that point of view and I've seen this happen many times before when senators and Congress members access classified material and they're too scared to show it to the public, even though they could do so on the floor of the Senate or the House enjoying absolute complete immunity: they cannot be prosecuted, criminalized, or arrested for anything said on the floor of Congress. It's legislative immunity. They could just go and reveal it, but they almost never do. They leave it up to people like Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, or other courageous whistleblowers to do it, even though they don't have immunity, while senators just conceal this information. 

So, here's what he wrote in his memoir, “The Road Taken” by Patrick Leahy. By the way, it's not a new memoir; it's from 2022, it was just a couple of years ago, but it just got resurfaced and started going viral on X. I think a lot of people didn't know about it. Who would sit down and read Patrick Leahy's book? I certainly didn't. 

AD_4nXd6lwKN3AZcpbS1PTgGfVtcn1f1Q6p-8Y-jtWAJ9UntKypX3EILWhRqcUz83Yg8vnttZjCpRj79kbdOkL0GGs1DhLxmaATdg5_9rOy15LygaWbOtiMYJcMqRI8psOYD9gH9Hyi6Mh7wH_5jJzawlEg?key=MrBQyTUNLJMvWrwHZK6IMQrI

So, imagine you're just walking on the street with your wife. It's like an old couple walking in the street and out of nowhere, there are very fit joggers behind you. They are following you and they stop and say, “Hey, we hear you're bringing in briefings. How have those been going?” And you say, “Fine, but I can't talk about them.” They're like, “No, no worries. We don't want to talk about that. Just take a look at file 8. Have you seen that?”

He writes:

[…] It was obvious from the look on my face that I had not seen such a file. They suggested I should and that I might find it interesting. Quickly thereafter, I arranged to see File Eight, and it contradicted much of what I had heard from the Bush administration.

Days later, Marcelle and I were out walking again when the two joggers reappeared. After the opening greetings, they told me they understood I had seen File Eight and asked what did I think about it? It was the eeriest conversation I'd experienced in Washington. I felt like a senatorial version of Bob Woodward meeting Deep Throat—only in broad daylight.

I went through the usual disclaimers that I could not talk about any file and if such a file was available and so on. They said of course they understood, but they wondered if I had also been shown File Twelve, using a code word. […]

(The Road Taken, Patrick Leahy. 2022.)

 

They're like, “Hey, remember when we mentioned File Eight? We're glad you took a look at that. No, no, don't worry. We don't need to hear your opinion. We just want to know, you should look at file 12 too.” 

He says:

[…] Again, I think the look on my face gave them the answer. They apologized for interrupting our walk and jogged off.

The next day, I was back in the secure room in the Capitol to read File Twelve, and it again contradicted the statements that the administration, and especially Vice President Cheney, seemed to be relying on, and I told my staff and others that for a number of reasons I absolutely intended to vote against the war in Iraq.

(The Road Taken, Patrick Leahy. 2022.)

According to Patrick Leahy, he had been directed by mysterious deep state operatives, obviously, to classified files that had not been shown by the people briefing Congress on the Iraq War, both of which, he says, proved that the government was lying to the American people. 

You would think, I would think, that somebody in that position would be like, “Hey, I need to alert the American people to the fact that there are documents inside the government's file that prove that what Dick Cheney and George Bush were saying about the war in Iraq are lies.” 

Again, he had legal immunity; he could have read the whole file on the Senate floor and nothing would have happened. Even if he didn't have immunity, I would think you would be duty-bound when the government is selling a war to the population, a very serious invasion on the other side of the world, not a few bombs being dropped, and you have proof that what the government is saying is lying, but that's not what Patrick Leahy did and he admitted that in his book, not even realizing there's anything wrong with it. 

There's a woman on X who I find to be genuinely one of the smartest and most interesting X accounts to follow. Her X name is @villagecrazylady, but her name is Mel. She is very upfront. She does a podcast, a self-identified MAGA woman from the South. Yet, she believes the MAGA principle, she is vehemently opposed to all kinds of intervention, she's opposed to funding the war in Ukraine, funding Israel's war in Gaza, going to war with Iran, bombing Yemen, all the things that we were promised that Trump would do in foreign policy, she actually believes in it and insists on it and complains when it doesn't happen as it should. And she's just very smart. She's just always plugged into what I think are the right things, thinking about things that are really interesting, and I actually learned a lot from following her. I'm going to have her on the show soon. She was the one who alerted me to this. I think she was probably the one who alerted a lot of people to this, she said: 

AD_4nXfr2epG9hgciIkpiP0V-Vg8hyfdw_eKfagM0zn3XbLGxXjvjgDWfP1ZYR94sv1mcbiu-N-oefYMuSPKE5wclOOHC6Si2Kjqnt9gcchQACVqWAZIoFXtFu5gs3ASozfBaI57kpso25Gpz7Ys8Jb7yA0?key=MrBQyTUNLJMvWrwHZK6IMQrI

AD_4nXeJda1FgfBphHUuW3uElR4oIVQlWVoaGMHWMhYK3UMOMc7qnMU1R3FpJugjBsT-tt-94Sv14JU4oUv4_zujYgYETP-302CT4kX-jHpU4CIBTI0f87dvEbbMmjjFBUUr71ErGLpV1DxsC6WHiFSBZZw?key=MrBQyTUNLJMvWrwHZK6IMQrI

 I think what's really notable, too, is imagine that you're those two guys who obviously are risking their career, probably risking their liberty to try to make sure that Patrick Leahy sees, not just circumstantial evidence, but proof that the Bush-Cheney administration is lying about the key arguments they're trying to sell to the public to justify the invasion of Iraq. They put themselves on the line, they put themselves at risk because they apparently thought it was important for the truth to be known and they get Leahy to go read both of those files, and he just does nothing, nothing, to tell the public. He's just like, “Yeah, I'm going to vote no.” He didn't even tell his fellow senators. He didn't say a word. 

How pathetic is that? How cowardly is that? You run for the Senate, you're a career politician, you're old, you're in your 23rd term or whatever. Who cares? But don't you have any sense of duty at all? 

I don't want to be naive. I get that these are scummy politicians, very conniving. The more they stay around Washington, probably the fewer principles they believe they can operate on, the more kind of just pragmatic and cunning or whatever they become. But you're talking here about the most serious war that the United States has fought since it left Vietnam and you have the evidence in your hands that the government is lying yet again, like they did with the Vietnam War and the Gulf of Tonkin, and you just sit and say nothing? 

But there's a counterexample. When Daniel Ellsberg discovered the Pentagon Papers in the late 1960s, a multi-volume, tens of thousands of pages compiled by the Pentagon, the Pentagon Papers concluded and members of the highest levels of the government also knew under Lyndon Johnson and then Richard Nixon that there was no way the U.S. could win the war in Vietnam; at most, they could fight to a standstill. Yet they were constantly telling the public that was growing tired of this war, like, “Hey, we're losing all our young men who are being drafted, we're killing huge numbers of people, we're spending tons of money, there's social unrest. What is going on?” So, the Pentagon would say, “Oh, don't worry. We're close to winning. We're like six months away from winning. We're making immense progress.” In the Pentagon Papers, though, they were saying the exact opposite. They knew they could not win, so it's the same thing. 

Daniel Ellsberg had proof in his hands that the American government was lying to the people about the Vietnam War. Ellsberg had a very high position in the government. He had a PhD in nuclear policy from Harvard, zand he worked at the highest levels of the Rand Corporation, had some of the most sensitive documents inside the government and he did what Patrick Leahy wouldn't do.

He wasn't a senator; he didn't have any sort of parliamentary immunity, but he tried to get members of Congress to read it on the floor, as he couldn't, he went to The New York Times, The Washington Post, and they published parts of it. But then finally, he found Senator Mike Gravel, a Republican from Alaska, who was like, “No, you know what? I have parliamentary immunity, and this is what it's for. The public has a right to know that the American government is lying.” 

By the way, Daniel Ellsberg was charged with espionage, they tried to imprison him for life and the only reason his case was dismissed was because the Nixon administration was discovered to have burglarized the office of his psychoanalyst to try to find dirt on the private life of Daniel Ellsberg and the judge, because of that misconduct, dismissed the case, but had the judge not done so, Daniel Ellsberg probably would have been in prison for the rest of his life. He just died about 18 months ago at the age of 94. 

I had the honor of working with him when we created the Freedom of the Press Foundation together, he was unbelievably smart. One of the smartest people I've ever met. And even at like ‘91 or ‘92, he would attend these board meetings we had at the Freedom the Press foundation and just present the most complex arguments possible. 

So, he got Senator Gravel to read it from the floor of the Senate, and this is what that kind of bravery looks like. 

Video. Sen. Mike Gravel, US Senate Chamber. June 21, 1971.

So, that was the prelude to him then reading the Pentagon Papers into the record. You can be uncomfortable with, or even mock if you want, the very emotional display of Senator Gravel there. He was crying in the middle of that statement. But I would suggest that that is a far more admirable, noble and understandable reaction than what Senator Leahy did. 

I mean, every day, if you're a senator in the late 1960s, early 1970s, you're getting intelligence briefings about how unbelievably horrific the Vietnam War is: 58,000 Americans killed, two million Vietnamese, at least, killed. I mean, just the use of biological agents like Agent Orange, it was a brutal, savage, barbaric war, and the people who were in there, in the middle of the jungles and rivers of Vietnam, had no idea why they were fighting, why they were being killed on the other side of the world. 

So, if you're aware of information that the public can perhaps use to understand they're being lied to and hopefully stop the war, I think it's absolutely commendable to think about what's happening to human beings. I mean, that's a humanistic response. 

He didn't just cry about it, he actually tried to do something about it. Even though they have parliamentary immunity, reading top-secret Pentagon documents about a war in the middle of Washington, D.C., you would never know for certain that that's going to be honored. 

Here in Brazil, there's just a very similar parliamentary immunity privilege that people in Congress and the Senate enjoy. A couple of months ago, a member of Congress went to the microphone to speak at the tribunal where he heavily criticized the authoritarian chief judge of the Supreme Court, even though he's not technically the chief judge; he acts that way, Alexandre de Moraes. And then, shortly after, Alexandre de Moraes ordered the police to investigate him and to try to convict him for having spoken there. And their argument was, “Yeah, they have parliamentary immunity, but it's not absolute.” 

There's another case that I'm very familiar with, that I've had personal dealings with, that to this day sickens me and I just want to tell you about. 

For about two or three years before the Snowden reporting started, before Edward Snowden risked his liberty to come forward and show his fellow citizens the truth about how the government was spying on them with no limits and no warrants, and risking his life in prison to do it, two different senators, Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado, went around hinting that, “Oh, the NSA is doing some really bad stuff that if the American public knew about it, would be enraged by,” but they never said what it was. They could have done what Senator Gravel did and gone to the fore, but no, they just kept hinting. They would write emails, be in interviews, they would go write up ads saying, “Oh, if you only knew how they were interpreting the Patriot Act and what they were allowing the NSA to do, you would be enraged.” But they didn't have the courage to say it. 

And it was only once Snowden came forward and we started publishing reporting about what the NSA was doing based on his courageous act, did they start coming forward and say things. The headline of The Washington Post, July 28, 2013, is: “With NSA revelations, Sen. Ron Wyden’s vague privacy warnings finally become clear”. 

I mean, you know what? I reported on this topic for three years. It was a very important part of my career. I still pay very close attention to this violence debate but I could barely get through that. It was so ambiguous, so bereft of anything substantive that you could really understand what the government was doing, because he, too, was just a coward and then the minute we came out with that report, he's like, “I tried everything.” Yeah, everything except disclosing what you could have disclosed to let the American people know way before Edward Snowden came forward, so that he didn't have to spend his life in prison or Russia. 

People in the government, in the intelligence community, were trying to alert the public through Leahy that this proof existed, but he was too much of a coward to do anything about it. And so were Senators Wyden and Udall, whereas Senator Gravel wasn't. 

I just want to say the final thing: when Edward Snowden did their job for them and he comes forward, he doesn't dump it all on the internet, he is as careful as he can be, he gives it to journalists with very conservative instructions about only to use this very carefully, don't put anybody in danger, only use it to reveal to the public what they should know. And then he, of course, gets immediately indicted on multiple felony charges, including the Espionage Act, which would send him to prison for the rest of his life. 

They would ask Senator Wyden and Senator Udall, “Well, he revealed what you said should have been revealed. What do you think of him? Are you defending him? Do you think the prosecution would be dropped?” And they'd be like, “I'm not really going to talk about Snowden. I mean, he disclosed classified information. You can't have that.” – basically calling him a criminal for doing what he did only because they were too afraid to. 

These people are propellant. They'll let wars happen rather than step forward and confront any sort of risk or warrantless unconstitutional eavesdropping, as the courts ruled on American citizens with no warrants. And that's the kind of people that, unfortunately, with some exceptions, but very few, get to Washington and sit in both houses of Congress. 

AD_4nXcgqrI4khVWM9sL44S_5Npt2tVfz9ddQh-HNP_QjdziQ0WyQWMPiz1uiqZcYVuG-QC0WTCBk-OdNkCF_fmrlyR-6a08mQcA5ieUcToA2YU_WDFDuNMvf5kKnmZRmxA7MvBgNX0tEjfzL1atDLBNOeg?key=MrBQyTUNLJMvWrwHZK6IMQrI

All right, here's the next question, from @Andante423: 

AD_4nXco5EeJOMpGfm0iJLTGIpawiHuFLRc_S_OLs5QNl7kBxJjO9bIpI7xGfhP16gqODI5Zk7CJgOPKkBtwQvRZcYfM_EzqXBUyAleR1JPhDq5CWil_tb7nlk7_DOvCqixu4pct0Qnlq1xQjUnpbNI7D7Q?key=MrBQyTUNLJMvWrwHZK6IMQrI

It's a great question. Thank you. 

Just to give you the context, because it's so important, all of you, of course, remember when Trump just picked up, ICE picked up, 238 Venezuelans, and then, just in the middle of the night, shipped them out of the United States on a plane to an El Salvador prison. They filmed these people having been dehumanized, being humiliated, having their heads shaved, kneeling on the floor and it's almost certainly the case that at least some of them weren’t guilty of being gang members, but they're in this prison that's designed to be permanent. It runs on slave labor; it's one of the most abusive ones. 

But when this got to the Supreme Court, the Supreme court said by a 9-0 ruling – so that includes Justice Thomas, Justice Alito, Justice Gorsuch, Justice Kavanaugh, all the conservatives’ favorite judges – “Even if you want to use the Alien Enemies Act, you still have to give these people a due process. You have to give them a hearing, advance notice of their intent to be removed and then their opportunity to go into court and present evidence that they’re not a gang member.” 

So, they already said you have to give them a court hearing; in this court hearing, the judges should decide two things. Number one: Does Trump have the right to invoke the Alien Enemies Act? It's supposed to be a wartime statute. It's only for wartime. The only three times it was invoked previously were the War of 1812, World War I and World War II. 

Just to give you a feel for how extremist this power is, that's what FDR used to order all Japanese Americans interned in concentration camps because they were suspected of being loyal to Japan, which is generally considered one of the most shameful acts of the 20th century – but at least there was a real war going on. 

When the lawyers for the Venezuelan detainees sued in federal court to argue that this law was invalidly invoked and they weren't gang members, they got the best judge they could have gotten. They got a judge appointed by Donald Trump in his first term. So, he's a Trump-appointed judge and you can imagine how conservative judges Trump appoints from Texas are. 

Yet that's the judge who yesterday said that there's no legal foundation for adopting and invoking the Alien Enemies Act because we're not actually in war. 

The Trump administration had to concoct a theory and their argument was we're basically at war with these international drug gangs that are invading our country. They're like an invading army. 

Here's the ruling from this Trump-appointed judge issued yesterday. 

AD_4nXdfjcd1l0DyuleP9HGL7u2kO1ZtfjRqyT5RYvtKDAzIHRtbI8x-6PWrGh25jT5GeBrYLl9nTo-Yxl7bH4l7ZhLfMMcPMc5eDuvuCaCkD-m_uWOPDAM5MJpZgTmuSXmOS1ZZKfZClYWnFJYMhPwpR4A?key=MrBQyTUNLJMvWrwHZK6IMQrI

There you see the caption. It is J.A.V., which is one of the Venezuelan detainees that they want to deport, versus Donald Trump. It's quite long, but it's not actually a long opinion. You can read it. The link is here.

It explains why, based on the statute, the president cannot invoke this law, because it's only for wartime and we're not at wartime. It's as simple as that. 

I've seen a lot of conservatives questioning why the courts get to decide this. In part, it's because that's been how the Supreme Court and the judicial power have been interpreted for more than 200 years, going back to Marbury v. Madison, and if you think about it, it has to be this way. 

The purpose of the Constitution is to limit the powers of the federal government, to limit the powers of the president and Congress. The government can't do this, it can't do that, it cannot do the other thing. So, if the president ignores the constitution, let's say Joe Biden orders that all Trump supporters be rounded up and imprisoned with no trial, obviously a violation of the constitution, if you can't go to the courts and seek relief and ask the courts to declare that unconstitutional, who does that then? Where do you go? Where do you get relief? The president just starts ordering his political enemies imprisoned with no trial, no due process. Of course, it's the courts who have to say this is unconstitutional, therefore, it can't be done. 

That's how our system works. And it's all balanced. It's not like the courts are the supreme branches that sometimes people try and claim. It's the president who appoints the judges who are on the courts. The Senate has to confirm them. If they start abusing their power, they can be impeached. And federal court judges have been impeached before, not often, but they can, and they have been. 

On top of that, the courts really have no way to execute their decisions. They don't have an army, they don't have guns, they don't have any way to force a president. The president or Congress respects the credibility of the courts, and that's why court decisions are abided by. But if you're going to have a constitution and a set of laws, you need to have somebody who interprets what those are and who decrees what they are. You can't ask the president to rule in his own case, like, “Hey, Mr. President, are you violating the law? Are you violating the Constitution?” 

Obviously, tons of conservatives, many times, under Clinton, under Obama, under Biden, ran into court and asked federal court judges to put a stop to what those administrations were doing. 

It is true that there are a lot more of those rulings coming under Trump. You could make the argument that it’s because he has so many new policies that have tested and pushed the limits of the law. But that's how our system works. It works that way under every president. I do think picking people up in our country and sending them for life in prison in a country they have nothing to do with and have never been to, from where they'll never get out, is an extremist power and we definitely need judicial review. 

As the Court said, the president, despite not being able to use the Alien Enemies Act, has all the legal authority in the world to deport people who are illegally in the country. There is another set of laws, the Immigration and Nationality Act and others. That's how President Obama deported millions of people. He didn't use the Alien Enemies Act; he used the set of laws that are normally used for that. That's what the court is saying: it doesn't mean you can't deport people in the country illegally, it's your obligation, your right and your duty to do that, you just can't use this wartime power to do so because we're not at war, as the statute describes it. 

AD_4nXcgqrI4khVWM9sL44S_5Npt2tVfz9ddQh-HNP_QjdziQ0WyQWMPiz1uiqZcYVuG-QC0WTCBk-OdNkCF_fmrlyR-6a08mQcA5ieUcToA2YU_WDFDuNMvf5kKnmZRmxA7MvBgNX0tEjfzL1atDLBNOeg?key=MrBQyTUNLJMvWrwHZK6IMQrI

All right, this one is from @MarcJohnson125, who says: 

AD_4nXcrsbrvOa-Yti_uPXBw44q88bCgSaDYGB1CfCPys2FXMiIY5dH9EztAwhuIDCLU-gNlHCufhUGeObas9HSDSlYnsWCC6kZ6zyKzNv1xBonDiyYC1YNywWP5J99YX10HoWck2iU3V0kx_3f_DG9mIaM?key=MrBQyTUNLJMvWrwHZK6IMQrI

All right, so just to set the stage for this, so you can see what happened, for those of you who haven't, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar was walking on the street toward the Capitol, and it's very common for journalists to work there. That's one of the places you can ask members of Congress questions, even if they don't invite you into their office or agree to an interview. It's very often done. So, the reporter's not doing anything wrong here at all, I don’t think, but this is how Congresswoman Omar reacted: 

Video. Ilhan Omar, The Daily Caller. May 1, 2025.

Okay, it was a little bit of a snarky question. That's okay. Reporters can be snarky. They don't have to be super deferential, super respectful. He didn't assault her; he didn't do anything. But in return, yeah, she used a naughty word. It's a word you tell your nine-year-old kid not to use, but adults use that word. She wasn't aggressive about it. She wasn't violent, she didn't attack him, she didn't threaten him. He asked this question, she was bothered by it and she says, “I think you should fuck off.” And then he said, “Excuse me, what?” She didn't backtrack at all. 

And that was it, maybe not the best way to handle a journalist, I'll certainly accept that. Maybe a member of Congress should conduct themselves with more, whatever, decorum, if you want to say that. I mean, Trump campaigned throughout 2024 using every curse word he could think of in his rallies. So let's not invoke decorum unless the politicians you most admire are actually adhering to it as well. 

Here was Nancy Mace, who was questioned by a constituent, not a journalist even, but a constituent in her home district when she was at some sort of drugstore and here's what happened. 

Video. Nancy Mace, X. April 19, 2025.

All right, that seems unhinged to me, to be honest. He was very polite. He kept his distance. He wasn't the slightest bit aggressive. It's part of the duty of members of Congress and she's like very aggressive, right from the beginning, very hostile and out of nowhere, by the way, “I voted for gay marriage twice.” Why would you say that? I mean, yeah, he is pretty clearly gay but why would you bring that up? Why does that even enter your brain? And then by the end of it, she used the F-word for, I don't know, 10 times maybe, probably, and said other things as well. 

So, if you're going to be very upset by Ilhan Omar using an f-word with a journalist – we all know journalists deserve the greatest deference, the highest amount of respect – if that's the sort of thing that you really want to hold politicians to, like no naughty words, then you ought to be complaining about Trump, who curses more than any politician I've ever seen. And it doesn't bother me, by the way. Or what Nancy Mace did, which is, of all those things, like the most unhinged. 

Here's Charlie Kirk, yesterday, after he saw the video:

AD_4nXdPp3uZqFl_SzhccIa4KQrp2VAKv9txT199vJnOzEiGGzW0_o9rMOAtsaUvI_-NYOWPLJl3Dej4pMgd2k-kzgJJVnWFc55AcG87Xpo7yC1BG3JJRh_BZOP1IJQ12PK2qAIqwGPW3KLYYOnd_Vj3H_E?key=MrBQyTUNLJMvWrwHZK6IMQrI

Piers Morgan, the British subject who loves to spend his time commenting on American politics:

AD_4nXcSOYAnGdCqv5k6K3elx923HL7rGqnOjWxqxjeLGYLkT6kiX8qGX7lHF-SI39lQUuhYO_mboCHR4SrU7nKIkvgOKn6aQc9AZcw-bI3Ak1GEGd4S-N_eNsdMrfLzpfzxxeWnwWTeeuAedwWvdnDyUI8?key=MrBQyTUNLJMvWrwHZK6IMQrI

Here's Libs of TikTok, always the beacon of perfect politeness and civility and respect for others. She says:

AD_4nXdzNAKjaQmZDfjz6dtZP8tguaM_3wV1okwXRGdOJZfCWaa4Runzz_pJNkgPVEFThk7GDkSNtKqh5VSTaVBgTs6LAsHNx0MTGsD-xeU_DNbcsur82bxvdiY-bp8GA29bh6gOW3pQXe1bZkfjoY5wDQ?key=MrBQyTUNLJMvWrwHZK6IMQrI

That wasn't the question: whether they're going to. He said, “Should they?” Do you think that more should go? As I said, it was a snippy question, but who cares? 

These are the people – the Trump movement, the American right, Trump himself – who spent 10 years calling journalists the “enemy of the people,” which I don't disagree with and never bothered me. In fact, I can make an argument about why that's legitimate. But still, that's some very aggressive, hostile rhetoric to use about journalists. Republican politicians over the last 10 years have frequently scorned and insulted journalists. Trump insults every journalist who asks him a question. Everyone. And now they’re going to turn around and be like “A politician should not speak to a journalist in this manner. Journalists deserve the highest respect. She has no class.” 

How about Nancy Mace? Does she have class? Does Donald Trump have class? This is the kind of thing I really can't stand. I really can’t stand it. I just have some consistent standards, especially on these kinds of trivial issues, and to act like Ilhan Omar is some kind of heathen, some kind of threat to society! “She doesn't have gratitude toward America.” She's an American citizen. Yeah, she was born in another country and became an American citizen and the same is true of Elon Musk and Melania Trump and a lot of other people. She's still a full citizen like anybody else is.

To be honest, I thought what Ilhan Omar did was funny. I mean, I kind of thought that the whole thing with Nancy Mace was sort of funny. I think Trump is funny; like, loosen up. The rectum doesn't always have to be, like, so tightly closed when you're pretending to be offended by things. I think we want our politicians to be more human. This is how people speak. 

AD_4nXcgqrI4khVWM9sL44S_5Npt2tVfz9ddQh-HNP_QjdziQ0WyQWMPiz1uiqZcYVuG-QC0WTCBk-OdNkCF_fmrlyR-6a08mQcA5ieUcToA2YU_WDFDuNMvf5kKnmZRmxA7MvBgNX0tEjfzL1atDLBNOeg?key=MrBQyTUNLJMvWrwHZK6IMQrI

All right, one last question. It’s from @Sambista. 

AD_4nXebgllMRY_mqkJT5a516ARzippvbtZKGTL2_-zVZxGNp1tWjyijKN9EarOTLAXZL-UMCa7VeIoHehxAGNUjs705iRB5kaxSkMhKb1dq_KTNNLG-9vEeSV-fUB16eluOOxeZJzJfXacMM5hHHUN6ywc?key=MrBQyTUNLJMvWrwHZK6IMQrI

So yeah, they're all doing great actually. All the ones you named and all the other dogs that you've gotten to know they're doing very well. I appreciate your asking. And yeah, I actually wish I could find a way to integrate the dogs into the show more, or something like wander around. Maybe Friday night is a good night to do it. We'll think about it. But yeah, appreciate your asking. 

Read full Article
See More
Available on mobile and TV devices
google store google store app store app store
google store google store app tv store app tv store amazon store amazon store roku store roku store
Powered by Locals