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Good evening everybody. It is Wednesday, September 4. As you can see, we are still not in our regular studio. That's because I continue to be traveling concerning some work, and each time I get to a new place, we seem to have a little bit of technical issues trying to make sure it works. Hopefully, it is now working because there's a lot to talk about tonight, including a guest that I'm really interested in talking to. So, let's roll the dice and see what it is that we can do. It's interesting. I was on Megan Kelly's program for two full hours today using exactly this setup, and it worked perfectly. So, let's try and give it a go.
So, for tonight: Whenever a Democrat is nearby and encounter someone or something that they dislike, one thing is certain: they will start ranting and raving about Russia and accusing whatever or whoever is bothering them of being controlled by or being subservient to the Kremlin. The list of their targets since 2016 is too long to count but today – with the election just two months away – they resurrected yet again this old, crusty, cliched, tired Cold War script to try to claim that Vladimir Putin yet again – while running Russia, overseeing a war in Ukraine, managing his country's complex oil economy – is, in his spare time, also trying to propagandize the American citizenry through all sorts of covert influence campaigns.
Earlier this morning, the Biden administration leaked to many of its favorite reporters that it was about to make a major announcement accusing the Kremlin of trying to interfere in the 2024 election, exactly what they did in 2016 and 2020 and many times before. Who could have ever guessed that? With the election just two months away, Democrats would start talking about Russia. But that, of course, is exactly what they're doing. Hours later, the DOJ issued a lengthy indictment of various Russians and the state-owned RT purporting to detail how these influence operations are being carried out. The indictment very deliberately and purposely named without naming a wide range of conservative influencers who they accuse of either knowingly or unwittingly having accepted Russian money to deliver pro-Kremlin messaging.
While this document, like all indictments, is filled with nothing but unproven accusations, they're being treated as gospel facts. And as a side note, this is something I've seen many times. The Justice Department issues an indictment based on allegations that come from the U.S. security state and it's almost like nobody questions it. Whatever the DOJ said is what happened ends up being accepted as true. To do that in general is misguided but to do it about a highly politicized document just two months away from a national election, when Democrats do exactly this almost reflexively, now seems to me like madness. But even if every single claim in this indictment is true, even if it ends up being proven to be true, the magnitude of this so-called influence campaign run by the Kremlin is laughably tiny. It barely even rises to the level where it wasn't being called trivial. It's just clearly yet another act of standard Democratic Party reflex to scream Russia whenever they feel endangered. So, we're going to examine this indictment because of the historical context surrounding it and what the implications are.
Then: two separate elections were held in France over the past several months. One was an election for France's seats to the EU, and that election was won by Marine Le Pen's right-wing party. Following that, President Emmanuel Macron called new elections to have a vote to determine who should compose the French legislature, and that election was won by a coalition of left-wing parties. One of the major messages, obvious messages, of both of those votes, was a rejection of the Macron government, which won neither of those seats.
We covered these elections, both of them extensively. At the time, we've had analysts on our show to talk about not only what drove the outcomes but also what the impact on French politics would be in general and, specifically, how it would change the French government. I mean, that's the idea of democracy is you have a vote not just to be a symbolic expression of people's beliefs but in order to let them determine the composition of their own government. And yet, as it turns out, absolutely nothing has changed in France or with the French government since those votes and that's because President Emmanuel Macron, his party and his government, have basically pretended that the election never even happened. Even Macron's protégé – Prime Minister Gabriel Attal – continues in office even though his party lost a majority, and even though he tendered his resignation immediately after the election, only for Macron to refuse it. He continues to be the prime minister overseeing the legislators until this very day.
One of the guests we had on to evaluate the election results was the political analyst, Arnaud Bertrand, and he will be here to join us tonight to talk about, among other things, the bizarre spectacle of a country that bombastically claims to be one of the leaders of the democratic world, simply ignoring a national election because it doesn't like the outcome.
For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.
