Glenn Greenwald
Politics • Culture • Writing
SYSTEM UPDATE NEWSLETTER: DEC 11-15
Weekly Newsletter
December 17, 2023
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We are pleased to send you a summary of the key stories we covered last week. These are written versions of the reporting and analysis we did on last week's episodes of SYSTEM UPDATE.

—Glenn Greenwald


MONDAY, DECEMBER 11 - SYSTEM UPDATE 196

Biden WH Seeks to Renew & Expand Domestic Spying—With Sen. Mike Lee. 

 

The US’ Long History of Silencing Israel Critics—on Campus, Media, & Beyond

 

A new attempt to block a powerful tool of the security state for domestic spying while a bipartisan coalition of intelligence agency aligned politicians work toward its renewal and even expansion; Sen. Mike Lee talks about Section 702, and how to stop it; Censorship for Israel continues and the consequences befall the American people. 

The United States exploited the fears that emerged after the 9/11 attacks in multiple ways. While the wars it started and the torture camps it installed around the world have largely come to an end—some 20 ending only years later—many of the most repressive and authoritarian domestic powers seized in the name of that terrorist attack endure to this very day. One obvious example is the Patriot Act, enacted in the days and weeks after that attack, and which was promised to be temporary; but every four years since, the Congress has re-authorized and renewed the Patriot Act, and now does so with virtually no debate—ensuring that what was once acknowledged to be a radical expansion of state power has now simply become normalized as part our political woodwork.

The same is true of the power grab that the US claimed—at first in secret, and then in the open—of the right to spy on the international communications of Americans citizens without having so much as to get a warrant first: one of the core Constitutional protections of the 4th Amendment. This was a power that the Bush/Cheney administration originally claimed in secret in early 2002. Once the New York Times was a Pulitzer for revealing the existence of this illegal spying power in 2005, the US Congress—under the leadership of Nancy Peolsi—acted to codify and legalize that warrantless domestic spying power by enacting Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act.

The terms of that law required that it be renewed every five years. And since, then, it has been. In 2013, the Obama administration demanded renewal and got it. In 2018, Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff joined with numerous Republicans to give the Trump administration the same vast domestic spying powers—even while Schiff and Pelosi were accusing Trump of being a fascist and new Hitler, they acted to ensure that the Trump administration also enjoyed these virtually unlimited spying powers on American citizens.

Now the law is again up for renewal. This time, however, there is a serious bipartisan coalition—enraged by how many times the FBI has been caught abusing these powers—attempt to impose meaningful reforms on them as a condition for its renewal. Last week, we had on our program Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky to warn that pro-spying members of both political parties are attempting to work with the Biden WH not only to ensure quick renewal, but also to expand those spying powers even further. 

Senator Mike Lee, the Republican Senator from Utah, is now vocally warning about that attempt, and he'll be on with us tonight to discuss the prospects for stopping this bill and the reasons it's so dangerous.

Finally: The glaring abandonment of principle by many conservatives—especially those who have long posed as free speech champions—as they attempt in the wake of October 7 to usher in a wide range of censorship measures and classic cancel culture in the name of shielding Israel from criticism. Many conservatives have been consistent and denounced this—but many on the pro-Israel right who cheer this don't deny that it's a radical contradiction of their stated views and current actions. 

Instead, they claim, they are simply finally using the left's censorship tactics against them, finally forcing American liberals to live under the cancellation and censorship frameworks they have imposed on every one else. While that sentiment might be understandable, there is a major problem with that claim: namely, censorship against Israel critics in the U.S.—in academia, in media, and in the corporate world—has been doing on for many, many years in the U.S. There is nothing new about it. And we'll show you the very long history of how aggressive and extreme this censorship in the U.S. has long been in the name of protecting Israel. Silencing and punishing Israel's American critics is not some new tactic now being used at tit-for-tat against left-liberal censorship: it has long been one of the most common and pervasive forms of censorship that many on the right, who vocally champion free speech, have long ignored if not cheered.

 

READ THE FULL STORY: PART 1 & PART 2 

WATCH THE EPISODE


TUESDAY, DECEMBER 12 - SYSTEM UPDATE 197 

Zelensky Begs DC for Money—While Torturing US Journalist, Gonzalo Lira. 

 

Bill Ackman’s Long-Time Censorship Crusade Gets Results. 

 

Google Loses Massive Anti-Trust Suit, w/ Matt Stoller

 

President Zelensky makes a final plea to Joe Biden and the US congress to fund his conscription army while his own government officials call him ‘delusional.’ ‘Brave’ Bill Ackman is celebrated as a hero by Israel supporters as he tries to cancel people via X; Google loses a major antitrust suit against Epic Games—creator of Fortnite—friend of the show Matt Stoller joins to give all the details. 

Ukraine's President Vlodomyr Zelensky goes to Washington—again—with his hand held out for more American money—again. The Biden administration—after first blocking any possibility of a diplomatic resolution at the start of the Russia/Ukraine war—has spent more than $110 million in American resources to fuel the war, accomplishing little other than guaranteeing the destruction of Ukraine, sending hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian and Russian men to their deaths, and all but ensuring that Russia will end up controlling roughly ⅕ of what had been Ukrainian territory.

Over the last month, President Zelensky's closest allies in Kiev have run to the Western press to turn on both Zelensky and the war—accusing him of everything from having become an authoritarian to being "delusional" about his obviously baseless belief that Ukraine has any chance to expel all Russian troops from Ukrainian soil. But none of that stopped Zelensky from going to the White House, making rounds with American media, and meeting with members of Congress to plead, demand, and insist that more American money be transferred to keep fueling this increasingly futile but as-destructive-as-ever war. 

Then: Few people outside the world of high finance and academia knew the name Bill Ackman until Oct. 7, when Hamas attacked Israel. Almost immediately, the multi-billionaire hedge fund manager and fanatical supporter of Israel went on a rampage against anyone and anything insufficiently supportive of Israel—at first helping compile black lists of American college students who committed the crime of placing blame on Israel for the long-standing conflict with the Palestinians, then using his vast wealth to coerce Harvard and other institutions to intensify their censorship attacks aimed at Israel critics.

It has been bizarre watching so many Israel supporters and assorted Republicans march behind Bill Ackman and celebrate him as a hero—and to watch him celebrate himself as one: he really did recently praise his courage. Bill Ackman is what every conservative and even many liberals claim to despise: a billionaire who weaponizes his wealth to cancel and destroy the careers of those who disagree with him, and who tries to dictate to major universities which political views they may and may not permit to be expressed. And he's hardly alone. But the last two months have taken people like Bill Ackman out of the shadows and thrust them into the spotlight—and it's vital to realize that his cause—while masquerading as some sort of noble fight against wokeness—is nothing other than an attempt to force universities to prohibit and punish criticisms of this foreign country.

Finally: As the Justice Department prepares to go to trial against Google in an antitrust suit brought by the Trump administration, Google just suffered a major defeat in a courtroom in San Francisco. A company called Epic Games, the creator of Fortnite, won a jury verdict that Google's use of its Google Stores violates America's anti-trust laws. We'll speak with one of the nation's premiere antitrust and Google experts, Matt Stoller of the American Economic Liberties Project, to tell us what this means.

 

READ THE FULL STORY: PART 1 & PART 2

WATCH THE EPISODE.


WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 13 - SYSTEM UPDATE 198 

Zelensky, Live on Fox, Re-Affirms His Own Tyranny. 

 

ADL’s Game-Playing w/ Hate Crime Stats. 

 

Media’s Gullible Embrace of Anon CIA Leaks. 

 

Shocking Censorship Escalation in Brazil

 

In a Fox News interview with Bret Baier, Zelenskyy continues the lie of “defending democracy” to shield criticism of the repressive and tyrannical political powers he has ushered in Ukraine in the name of fighting Russia; ADL manipulates hate crime statistics and manufactures its own antisemitism crisis in order to fight an information war on behalf of Israel; CIA leaks lies about Russian army and Ukraine; Brazilian Youtuber Monark faces consequences as political censorship grows. 

Ukrainian President is in Washington and, as we discussed on last night's show, he went to the White House and Congress to plead for more billions for his failed war effort, and then met with the true beneficiaries of this war—the CEOs of the American arms industry: Raytheon, Boeing, General Dynamics and the rest. December 13 on Fox News, Zelensky was asked by host Bret Baer about recent accusations by his closest Ukrainian allies that he has become an authoritarian and tyrant. Zelensky, rather than even attempt to deny the accusation, essentially affirmed his own autocracy—all while he insists that we must give him billions more to "defend democracy."

Then: The ADL has long been in the business of accusing people of being racists and anti-Semites in order to silence their opposition and force businesses to pay them substantial amounts of money to be released from those accusations. Ever since Oct 7, the ADL has found new allies as they seek to capitalize on the emotions surrounding the Hamas attack and the new-found efforts to silence Israel critics. Central to their campaign, and those of like-minded allies, is the cynical manipulation of hate crime statistics to try to invent a crisis that can be used to justify the repression of political speech. 

After that: Despite how many times the CIA, FBI and the rest of the US Security State routinely spreads lies by using anonymous leaks, every new leak is met with an instinctive belief on the part of many in media that these leaks—by virtue of appearing in major media outlets must be true. The CIA just engineered a leak about Russia's military that is so obviously designed to promote their primary foreign policy aim of securing billions more to keep the war against Russia going, and yet so many people who should know better gullibly treated the leak as proven fact, without an iota of questioning or skepticism. 

Finally: Censorship programs having been growing not only in the US but more broadly in the democratic world—in the EU, in the UK, in Canada, in Ireland, and in Brazil. These attacks on free speech in major countries are important in and of themselves, but also because each advancement of censorship powers is seen by other countries as a test case for how far they can go. Some of the most extreme systemic repression of political speech has taken place in Brazil—being used as a laboratory by the EU to see how far they can go—and earlier today news broke of one of the most extreme and truly shocking cases of political censorship.

 

READ THE FULL STORY: PART 1 & PART 2

WATCH THE EPISODE.


THURSDAY, DECEMBER 14 - SYSTEM UPDATE 199

Congress Again Renews FBI’s Warrantless Spying Power Over Americans. 

 

Vivek’s Revealing Clash w/ CNN on 1/6. 

 

Natasha Bertrand’s CIA Servitude. 

 

Dems Pretend to Chide Israel

 

FISA 702 renewal sneaks its way into the annual National Defense Authorization Act and passes with overwhelming support from the bipartisan consensus in Washington; At a CNN town hall, Vivek shocks host Abby Philips by citing evidence of Jan 6 being an “inside job” ; Natasha Bertrand—the CIA’s favorite corporate “journalist” —has a new article taken right from the mouths of intelligence community and government operatives; Faced with broad opposition from the base over the violence launched against Gaza, Biden and Dems feign concern and give lip service to humanitarian values while continuing to arm Israel unconditionally.

In Washington, the US Security State always gets its way. This, yet again, is exactly what happened over the last 24 hours as first the Senate, then the House, voted on a bipartisan basis to renew and extend the FBI's power to spy on the communications of citizens without warrants of any kind. 

Over the past two weeks, we had two lawmakers on our show—Senator Mike Lee of Utah and Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky—both of whom held out real hope that this time Congress would do its duty and at least impose limits, safeguards and reforms on the FBI—given the mountain of evidence proving that they abused these domestic spying powers. We'll show you what happened—how the FBI yet again won the right to hold onto this truly dangerous and authoritarian power—and, most of all, who in Washington is responsible for it.

Then: It is hardly a secret that the primary ideology of the corporate media is blind loyalty to the FBI, the NSA, the Pentagon and the rest of the agencies composing what Dwight Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex. Still, in a sewer of corporate media employes who perform this function, none is as corrupt about it, as mindlessly subservient to the CIA's talking points and agenda, as Natasha Bertrand—who proved her usefulness in this function by becoming the Queen of the most deranged parts of Russiagate. There was no CIA conspiracy theory beneath her dignity to spread—and then she became the first person to spread the CIA lie that the Hunter Biden laptop was "Russian disinformation." Bertrand has a new article on the Biden administration's view of the war in Israel, and it is really worth looking at just to see the kinds of rotted journalistic tactics that are not just acceptable but propel these people to ascend the corporate media ladder.

After that: GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy appeared on a CNN town hall with one of the network's personalities, Abby Phillips, who went there from being classified as a reporter with the Washington Post. Phillips asked Vivek about his statement that January 6 was an "inside job,” something he first said on this show and then repeated at the last GOP presidential debate. Phillips sought to prove that this was a false conspiracy, but rather than letting him answer, she used the tactic that has become the most common among incompetent TV interviewers: she just refused to let him speak, constantly talking over him, in large part because she had no idea what she was talking about, and in part because much of what Vivek was saying was demonstrably true, but she thought it was false because CNN never has its hosts tell its audience about it. There is a lot of illustrative meaning from this quite contentious exchange, so we'll break it down.

Finally: Democrats are playing a deeply cynical, even jaded, game when it comes to the posture of the Biden White House towards Israel's war in Gaza. From the start of the war, Biden did what he has done his entire political career: pledged complete, unlimited and unconditional financial and military support for Israel. He continued to do that even as the world began turning against the Israeli onslaught until Gaza. What changed, however, was polls began showing that the Democratic Party base was abandoning Biden over his support for Israel's war, and ever since, Democrats have been making theatrical gestures in public to pretend that they are chiding Israel and trying to limit what they can do, while in reality, they are telling the Israelis and making repeatedly clear that their financing and arming of Israel's war is unconditional and eternal. No matter your views on this war, this sort of deceitful game-playing should repulse you. At the very least, it deserves journalistic scrutiny and exposure.

 

READ THE FULL STORY: PART 1 & PART 2

WATCH THE EPISODE


FRIDAY, DECEMBER 15 - SYSTEM UPDATE 200

Tucker Carlson on Global Populism, the Censorship-Industrial Regime, Israel/Ukraine, His New Network, & More

Tucker Carlson has long been one of the most heterodox and fascinating journalists in American politics, whose daily coverage of world events on Fox News broke with the corporate media consensus on matters of foreign policy and economic orthodoxy. For the 200th episode, Glenn interviews Tucker Carlson for an in depth discussion on various topics including the crisis of free speech, the failures of neoliberalism, and the messianic lunacy of neoconservatism.

This week SYSTEM UPDATE commemorated the one-year anniversary of the debut of our show—our show launched on December, 12, 2022—and tonight marks the 200th episode of this program. To mark this anniversary, we have a special episode for you—we are devoting the program to a conversation I had on Wednesday with Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host whose program was canceled under mysterious circumstances despite being the most-watched show on cable news.

Tucker just announced that he was launching a brand new media outlet—the Tucker Carlson Network—that has quite high ambitions in terms of the kind of journalism it intends to do. We spoke with Tucker in a wide-ranging interview about that new project, but also about all sorts of pressing issues including the new US-supported war in Gaza; the about-face done by certain sectors of the American right since October 7 on issues such as free speech and cancel culture; the primary pathologies of corporate media; the possibility of his own political future, and much, much more.

This is the first time he's been on SYSTEM UPDATE and the result was an illuminating and different sort of conversation that we are confident you will enjoy.

 

READ THE FULL STORY MONDAY ON LOCALS.

WATCH THE EPISODE

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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!

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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:

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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!

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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. 

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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. 

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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!

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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. 

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The first question comes from @thefarside:

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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. 

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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: 

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 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. 

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

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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. 

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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. 

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

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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:

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

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

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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. 

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

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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. 

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