Glenn Greenwald
Politics • Culture • Writing
Post-Debate Analysis Live from Milwaukee
Video Transcript
August 24, 2023
post photo preview

Watch the full episode here: 

placeholder

 

Interview with Rep. Matt Gaetz

Glenn Greenwald: All right, we're ready. This is Glenn Greenwald. We are here with a special edition of System Update following the live Republican presidential debate. We're outside the arena in Milwaukee where it happened. We're going to break it all down. My first guest, though, is Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz, of Florida, who confessed before we were on that he is a gigantic fan of System Update, which didn't come as a surprise but thank you for joining us in person. 

 

Rep. Matt Gaetz: What a weird debate, Glenn. I felt like we were watching open tryouts for like a minor-league baseball team. Like you had your batch of has-beens and then you have your batch of, like, not quite ready yet. 

 

Glenn Greenwald: But Trump himself said he viewed this as a potential audition for his vice presidential role. And I think that’s… 

 

Rep. Matt Gaetz: In that respect, look, Trump won the debate by not being here, and probably Kristi Noem won the vice presidential contest – by not being here… 

 

Glenn Greenwald: [Kristi Noem] not being here as well. I guess, first of all, let me just ask you. Trump's decision not to come obviously makes political sense. He's ahead by 40, 45 points. The argument is, that if you're going to run for president, you have an obligation to communicate with the American people by participating in these debates. What do you make of that decision not to come? 

 

Rep. Matt Gaetz: I have not ever heard the criticism that President Trump doesn't communicate enough with the American people. Typically, the criticism is he does a little too much of it at times for some people's taste, not mine. But if President Trump were to have been in the debate, I think that people largely would have been tuning in to hear him. And why punish those people with seven or 8 minutes of Asa Hutchinson and Chris Christie? You know, and so, I think that the 80 million views that President Trump got in his discussion with Tucker Carlson was probably more politically productive for him. But I still tried to pay attention tonight to the issue matrix and how people thought and talked about these issues and also how some of the campaigns in trouble reacted to the dynamics and the questions. Doug Burgum blew out his Achilles in the hours before the debate, stood there like a boss, didn't wince for a moment, and still appeared to be in less physical pain than Ron DeSantis, like during the entire discussion. So, for what? […] 

 

Glenn Greenwald: Despite that Ron DeSantis and his bones being in good shape [...] 

 

Rep. Matt Gaetz: Exactly. Yeah. 

 

Glenn Greenwald: I want to ask you, one of the clarifying parts of the discussion, to the extent there was one involving policy, was the section on Ukraine. There was one candidate – and one candidate only – emphatically saying we shouldn't be sending our money to Ukraine while we have all kinds of problems here at home, including with our own border, never mind the Ukrainian border. DeSantis, as Vivek kind of mocked him for, had his finger in the air saying, “Let's get the Europeans to pay more,” which isn't really a position. To me, it seemed like a kind of Republican Party debate that could have happened in 2004, 2008, 2012. The kind of Republican Party before Trump changed it. What are these people doing when they look at the polling data, seeing that Republicans overwhelmingly don't want to send money to Ukraine and saying that they don't care, they want that money going anyway? 

 

Rep. Matt Gaetz: Well, Glenn, maybe I shouldn't be so surprised that there's such a disconnect between the people on that debate stage other than Vivek and the typical Republican voter on the issue of Ukraine, because there's a similar disconnect with the United States Congress. Like when we had a vote on just whether or not you demand that Joe Biden write down a plan for Ukraine, he could just write any word, like a celebrity Jeopardy final answer, any word would qualify, and we only got 100 votes for that to condition future aid on it. Everyone else said don't even demand to play. It's unpatriotic to ask for a plan from the Biden administration just to give all the money that Ukraine demands. And, you know, the chorus for this globalism is really a challenge that the Republican Party has to deal with. President Trump will, I think, help cement the realignment that we've gone through when he's nominated, as we all expect. 

 

Glenn Greenwald: Just one more question on foreign policy, because you did have this amendment not just on Ukraine, but to withdraw troops from Syria. I doubt most Americans know we have troops in Syria. There's no war going on in Syria, at least a declared one, and all you want to do is bring them home because there's no clear reason. Overwhelmingly, through a bipartisan vote that got rejected. What do you think is the real reason why so many of these people in Congress continue to insist on this foreign policy of putting troops and fighting wars all over the world that so plainly have no benefit for the American people? What is really going on? 

 

Rep. Matt Gaetz: The neoconservative worldview is well funded in every think tank in Washington, but a few. It buttresses campaign donations. It funds a military-industrial complex. And if you hold that worldview, you really are willing to allow the United States to become the block captain of the world. President Trump had a more thoughtful and, I think, modern approach to interacting with the world, but really what props it up is the neocon money is sweet, man, whether it's for your golden parachute when you leave Congress at a think tank, whether it's for the, you know, a deliverable to the people who fund your campaigns. And I find it all sickening. And that's why I don't participate in it. It's why I hold a different view. 

 

Glenn Greenwald: But to me at least, it seems like when you put these people in Republican Party politics for decades, the way a lot of them are up there, on some level, the line between self-interest of being funded and true belief starts to kind of blur. There's only so long you can be that cynical, I think, to me… 

 

Rep. Matt Gaetz: Oh, you're totally wrong. You need to hang out with the people I hang out with… 

 

Glenn Greenwald: Which are the people in Congress, I'm glad I don't. But you don't think there's any sense of kind of conviction and true belief that we're still in this Cold War, that fighting continues over the war? Is that not part… Am I being incredibly naive? 

 

Rep. Matt Gaetz: Conviction?! Mike Pence looked like a 1980s avatar of foreign policy. Right? 

 

Glenn Greenwald: Right. 

 

Rep. Matt Gaetz: It was so dated and so tired. And frankly, it's been disproven in the world we live in now. Thank goodness, Doug Burgum occasionally tried to focus on the real threat of China. 

 

Glenn Greenwald: I saw you becoming a Doug Burgum fan! 

 

Rep. Matt Gaetz: Man, I've got some North Dakota roots and I thought, you know, as he talks about China being the dominant threat, it made a lot of sense in it. It had some contrast with the obsession over a land war in Europe. Did it seem to you like Chris Christie was running in the wrong primary? 

 

Glenn Greenwald: I think both Nikki Haley and Chris Christie's views on foreign policy would find ample support in the Democratic Party… 

 

Rep. Matt Gaetz: Sure. 

 

Glenn Greenwald: … in the Democratic Party than in the Republican Party. They don't recognize the transformation in the Republican electorate that Trump first identified and then ushered in. 

Let me ask you one last question. I know you're short on time. You've been very generous. Your wife is waiting. You want to get out of here. So, I appreciate your indulgence. So let me just ask you one last question, which is about the weaponization of the Justice Department. It is an extraordinary reality in the United States that the leading oppositional figure to the current president is being indicted four times now, probably a fifth or maybe even a sixth is coming. The kind of thing, if we looked at any other country or especially an adversary, but even an ally, we would be shocked by how overt it is. I know there are a lot of Republican voters on your side in terms of denouncing it, but I feel like not enough is being done, that not enough hardball is being played by the Republican Party in retaliating and making Democrats live under the same prism. Do you share that frustration and what do you intend to do to kind of amplify the pressure that is kind of a remarkable state of affairs for abusing the Justice Department? 

 

Rep. Matt Gaetz: Well, first, you have to accept the fact that Congress has equities here, and a lot of my colleagues don't. They just say, well, this is an investigation and so, we have to hold our hands up and leave this to the courts. And that grants the premise that this is a legitimate legal process. Right? The premise that I approached this dynamic with is that this is election interference. And if your underlying belief is that it's election interference, then I think Congress can assert greater equities. Here's how I would assert them. You sent Jack Smith a letter saying that you want him to appear for a transcribed interview in 15 days. If you don't answer, you send a subpoena. If he doesn't comply, then you hold him in contempt of Congress and you force him to try this case while he himself is in criminal contempt. And if Merrick Garland won't enforce that, then you impeach Garland on those grounds. And that could actually unify Republicans because it is a step-by-step process. Instead, what we see from our leadership is a whole lot of handwringing and bedwetting, but not action that will actually have an impact on the election interference that troubles so many. 

 

Glenn Greenwald: All right. Well, I know you’re being waited for. And so, I don't want to make enemies, but knowing what a huge fan you are of my show – you watch it every single day, from the first minute into the last – we're going to have you back on that in-depth discussion when you have more time. Thanks again for taking this. 

 

Rep. Matt Gaetz: We've done on-location in Milwaukee. I'm waiting for the on-location in Brazil invite for System Update. 

 

Glenn Greenwald: I’m going to get you a reason to go to Brazil. Everybody needs one. Thanks. Have a great evening. Thanks a lot. All right. 


So, there you have it. There is Congressman Gaetz. He is off and we really appreciate his time.

So, we're going to try and get a few more guests, although it is pretty late here. I did another show prior to coming on, so I just want to share a couple of my thoughts with you about the debate that I didn't find particularly fascinating. I don't have a lot to say about it, and I certainly don't want to do the kind of punditry that I'm supposed to say which candidate helped himself, and which one did not. 

The thing I found most interesting about the debate was how much attention Vivek Ramaswamy succeeded in bringing to himself. He was clearly the center of the debate. You had politicians on that stage who had been elected governors, the vice president of the United States and senators who have been in politics for a long time, and he continuously provoked them into wanting to pay attention to him. That's in part because he is clearly the closest ideologically to Donald Trump in terms of the positions he's taken. You saw him as the only candidate emphatically saying that we should not be sending any more money to Ukraine, which is the representative of the vast majority of Republican voters at this point. Governor DeSantis kind of said it. He tried to avoid saying it too directly, trying to resort instead to the idea that European countries should be picking up their fair share, which would only continue this dangerous war with no end in sight while destroying Ukraine. It's not really a solution. And you saw Vivek kind of mock him by putting his wet finger up in the air, suggesting that that was what Governor DeSantis was doing. However, I do think Governor DeSantis made a more direct statement about the fact that we shouldn't be sending money to Ukraine. Their argument that resonates in Republican politics is we should be using it to fortify our own border and not caring so much about the Ukrainian border. 

But we saw these politicians Nikki Haley, Chris Christie, Tim Scott and Mike Pence, who really sound like they're from the Republican Party of 2004, 2008, 2012. They would fit perfectly within the party of Mitt Romney, John McCain and George Bush when he was running. I don't think they have any conception of the fact that the reason 2016 and Donald Trump's victory was such a cataclysmic moment in American politics, isn't that Trump ushered in changes in how Republican Party voters were thinking about things like militarism and imperialism, and war and priorities and the swamp and their contempt for corporatism and lobbyists and the way that they run Washington. Those sentiments predated Trump. He detected them. He observed them. He was the one who was able best to give voice to them. 

If you go back and look at Ron Paul's campaign in 2008 and 2012, he was sounding exactly those same things going into South Carolina and Iowa and some of the deepest red districts that are in the early part of that Republican presidential campaign and railing against neoconservatives and the evils of the Iraq war and the complete waste of funds that go into constant new regime-change wars in places like Syria and Libya, that not only come at the expense of the American people in terms of the money that is spent not on their interests but on the interests of other people but also the dangers that are brought to the United States as a result of doing that – the reason why there's so much anti-Americanism, the reason why the world is now gathering in this confederation under BRICS, under China, that's expanding because of this narrative. 

And so, I don't think these politicians have any sense at all of the radical changes in the views of the population, of the people who compose their own parties. They sound like Reagan-era militarists when it comes to foreign policy, and that is just radically out of step with the Republican Party voter, which is why you see Vivek rising in the polls while Donald Trump has a 45-point lead, while DeSantis remains a viable candidate while avoiding that sort of thing, and the rest of them who sound like they're from that old Republican establishment era cannot get traction and it's inconceivable that they will because the things they're saying actually resonate now more in the Democratic Party. 

I just wanted to share with you one of the observations I had from being here, which is that the setup of the audience is extremely well coordinated. I'm here as part of Rumble’s coverage. Rumble has exclusive online streaming rights. And so, I was able to sit very, very close to the stage. I was sitting in the row behind Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, his wife, Donald Trump Jr. and his wife, Kimberly Guilfoyle – they were there as part of Rumble as well – but the entire middle section up to the stage, right behind the Fox News microphones, every single seat says “reserved for the RNC.” 

So, the RNC obviously takes its biggest donors. We watched a lot of the big donors from the hotel we're staying at migrate from that hotel to the debate. And so often the reaction that you're hearing to each candidate's position is one that is anything but organic. It is coming from Republican Party donors. They don't want to hear condemnations of Donald Trump because they want the Republican Party to win and they obviously recognize the chance that Donald Trump will be the nominee. So, they don't want to hear from Asa Hutchinson and Chris Christie that he's a criminal and beneath the dignity of the office – that's why you heard booing for that sort of thing. But so often when Vivek would speak, you would hear the kind of booing about certain denunciations he made of other Republican Party candidates. There was a gigantic pro-Vivek, young vocal section off on the side. I don't know if they were visible in the air or not, but so much of the audience's reaction shapes how viewers perceive these candidates. And that is all coordinated. That is all very carefully constructed. And that's something that you see only while you're at this debate. It's one of the reasons why I wanted to come. I haven't been to a Republican Party presidential debate before. I very much wanted to see the theater and the circus of it to understand how it's constructed, to get a feel for what the dynamic is here, and clearly, there is a sizable portion of the Republican donor base that is desperate to get somebody, anybody other than Donald Trump. I think they continue to think Governor DeSantis is the most likely alternative. Republican voters like DeSantis, I think he performed perfectly competently tonight in a way that will continue to make them like him. But it's impossible for me to imagine a reconstructed party whose ideology has transformed about the military-industrial complex, regime change wars, wars themselves, the foreign policy in Ukraine, the CIA, the FBI, the weaponization of the Justice Department, abandoning President Trump absent some very unforeseeable event. There was nothing in that room that changed that. The fact that Vivek became the center of attention, to me, illustrates that they understand that what they need to do is not so much attack him. It's not like he has some gigantic surge in the ball, though he is increasing – you saw him at the center of the stage next to Governor DeSantis reflecting his polling increase – but the fact instead the dynamic they need to defeat is Trumpism, is the ideology of Trump of rejuvenating within the Republican Party, the idea that we need to be fighting foreign wars, we need to be supporting proxy wars when it comes to Ukraine. This idea of the kind of glorification of the United States as this great, inspiring country that is still so wonderful for everybody. You saw Vivek explicitly reject that; Trump's politics is all about talking about the forgotten man, about the people who no longer are in any way assigned any value by the political class. They need to wrench the Republican Party back out of the hands of the people who think that because that is an establishment is an ideology that is genuinely threatening to the establishment. Despite all the ways Trump failed to carry through in his first term, despite the way in which the establishment ran circles around him, that ideology itself ever continues to take hold in The Republican Party will be irretrievable. And if you get somebody aggressive, inarticulate, incompetent, and I think someone like Vivek showed how that can be done, then you're going to have a Republican Party that has an ideology that is fundamentally anathema, not just to the police, but to the interests of the Republican Party. That's why there's so much more vibrancy taking place in the Republican Party than there is in the Democratic Party. 

So, I think all the guests wanted are kind of gone. And that's fine. I just wanted to share some thoughts we'll certainly have on guests over the next week or two. I was able to talk to a lot of people about coming on the show and they're interested in doing so, so, we will have them on shortly, but those are my thoughts. I'm also interested, as I know my colleagues are, in getting home. We have an early flight back to Miami tomorrow where I'm going to appear on Patrick Van David's podcast on Friday, so you can look for that. 

I don't think we're going to have a System Update tomorrow because we're going to be flying late to Miami, but we will certainly be resuming that and then, Friday night we're flying back to Brazil. So, you should probably look for the next System Update next Monday at 7 p.m. Eastern. 

I'll be on a couple of podcasts and I'll promote those.


That will conclude our live coverage of the Republican presidential debate. 

I hope you have a great night. I hope you enjoyed watching the debate and the interview with Congressman Gaetz and we will see you shortly next week at our regular, scheduled time. 

Have a great night, everybody.

community logo
Join the Glenn Greenwald Community
To read more articles like this, sign up and join my community today
14
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
3 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