4-1-25 - 9am - Signal Gate & Alex Wong

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good morning, Micha on Dragon.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
Just want to wish you a happy start of the
second quarter. We've already completed one fourth of the year.
Just amazing times traveling too quickly. I'm still writing twenty
twenty three. Thank oh, I'm I'm still dead scrolling through
what your year of birth and it's like pulling, you know,

(00:27):
the arm on a one arm bandit in the Vegas right, yeah,
just oh, it landed on nineteen twenty four. It's close enough.
Who cares on my Facebook page in the little private
group called Michael Brown Unplugged. Probably I'm guessing maybe it's

(00:47):
been a week, maybe not quite a week ago, but
sometime what is today too? Well, so it's been sometime
in the past five days. Let's see, somebody posted a
story and I'm not talking about signal Gate per se,
but it has to do with that story. And it's

(01:08):
another example of how you know, I started the program
out about what are facts and what are not facts?
And we get it's it's so difficult. It truly is difficult.
I imagine doing show prep. I'm so nervous, not that nervous,
but I am nervous doing show prep because I'm always

(01:31):
concerned that I'm gonna get duke somehow, and so I
spend an inordered amount of time checking and cross checking
and spending more money than I should, which is not
reimbursed by a heart on my Lexus NeXT's account to
double check stories and see, you know, is this reported
in just one place or how many places are reporting?

(01:54):
If they If several places are reporting, it is essentially
the same story. What are the secondary sources? Can I
can I backtrack to the to the original story. And
this is an example of that, and it has to
do with Signalgate because they are all these conspiracy theories

(02:15):
about how Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of The Atlantic, how
his number got put into the group chat. Well, let's
be clear, there is there's a huge difference between inference,
you can infer something and evidence. So somebody posted a

(02:38):
couple of times on it in the Facebook group stories
about Alex and Candice Wong, and I had already heard
the stories before, but I wanted to leave the story.
I guess I was testing you, if you remember that group,

(02:59):
to see what reaction would be and to see how
many people would buy into the bull crap that was
being spread around. So differences between inference and evidence. There's
a difference between suspicion and substance. There's a difference between
real journalism and rumor mongering. And in this case, in

(03:20):
the case of Alex Wong, who was recently appointed the
Deputy National Security Advisor for President Trump, the distinction is
not merely academic. It has to do with one's reputation.
So this rogue claim surfaces that Alex Wong is the

(03:42):
individual that inserted the phone number of The Atlantic's editor
into that sensitive signal group chat involving discussions of a
potential military striking Yemen. And the story goes that it
was not a mistake, but that it was sabotage and

(04:03):
that somebody inside the Trump inner circle was trying to
create a story so that the kebbal could then latch
onto the story and boom, we got a controversy. We've
got We're going to get rid of Pete Hegsith, We're
going to get rid of Mike Waltz. We're gonna, you know,
the cabal is gonna be able to get rid of
all these people. So the theory goes like this very

(04:27):
simple Wong, who is ethnic Chinese American, was secretly subverting
American policy from within. So what's the evidence? None that
I can find. None. None. And it's pretty amazing that
this claim even today, because I checked again this morning,

(04:50):
it's still circulating. The claim requires proof, in fact, I
think it requires extraordinary proof, and yet there's been none offered. Indeed,
I think this case is the accusation anyway, is a
paradigm case of speculative defamation. Acclaim without basis, advanced with insinuation,

(05:14):
and amplified by what I think is truly ethnic prejudice.
So let me rebutt it. And stories like this really
get to me because I've been subjected to something similar,

(05:35):
albeit nothing ethnic. I've been quite honest and quite open
about this. Time Magazine accused me back in two thousand
and five of lying on my resume, and I don't
want to go through the entire story, but it's unequivocally false.
People have asked me, why didn't you sue Time Magazine? Well,

(05:57):
because that involves a libel and that involves a defamation lawsuit,
and that takes time, energy, resources. It opens you up
to and are not saying anything unusual? Here? Are there
things in my life that I don't want public. Absolutely,
the things of my life that I don't want public,
just as there are in yours. And just because you

(06:21):
don't want it public doesn't mean that it's illegal or
even immoral. It's just stuff that you just don't want
other people to know. And there's nothing wrong with that.
But once I sue Time Magazine, then everything about my
life is subject, to put it, most crudely, a deposition,

(06:44):
because in a deposition, you're under oath and you have
to answer every question, no matter how irrelevant it is,
because relevancy is something that if they try to use
it at a trial, a judge will decide. So it's
a fishing expedition, a fishing expedition into every aspect of
your life. Did you ever steal a stapler from iHeartMedia?

(07:06):
Not that I recall could I might have walked out
with a stapler one time. I don't know. Did you
ever steal a magazine from iHeart? Well? Actually I am
today because there are a couple of magazines out there
that I like to read that are being addressed to
individuals that haven't worked in this company, some for as

(07:26):
long as, in fact, one of them's dead. One of
them has been dead for a long time, and they
keep getting the magazine, so I just pick it up
and read it. Is that stealing? I don't know. I'll
let you decide that. So let's consider the facts about
the wrong case and signal Gate. The journalists and in

(07:48):
my case, the people that are floating this these accusations
on the Facebook page, UH speculated and are speculating still
as of this morning, that Alex Wong had personally planted
the number of jeff Jeffrey Goldberg, that's the editor of
The Atlantic into this confidential signal group chat that was

(08:13):
being used by the vice president of the Secretary of Defense,
and other people were on it, although they weren't necessarily
actively participating in it. Oh they may have been reading
the chat, but they weren't adding to the chat. Let's
put it that way. No testimony from insiders, no screenshots,

(08:35):
not even anonymous sourcing, just just to claim issued into
the ether and then lapped up by those in the
cabal and those who are just willing to uh spread
a rumor because oh, there it is. And and I
think in this case, in the case of the Facebook page,

(08:56):
it's because people want to believe that there are people
inside the administration who are trying to sabotage this administration.
I don't deny that's a possibility. And we certainly know
from the first Trump from Trump one point zero that

(09:17):
indeed there were some Rex Stillerson. We've seen what General
Milly did, So yeah, sometimes it would be true. But
because that is true doesn't mean that this is true.
But that's where people get lost and just run with
the story. Now, the only two people that could speak

(09:40):
plausibly about the integrity of the chat set up, how
these numbers got put together are Alex Wong and Mike Waltz.
The National Security Advisor, so the National Security Advisor and
the Deputy Security Advisor, the ones who set up the
chat are the only ones who could credibly speak to
whether or not it really occurred. Mike Waltz is a

(10:03):
former Green Bring and he's a former congressman, and he
almost instantly took responsibility for the mistake. He called it
an unintentional error during the rush setup of a new
communications group, and he says and uses the word incessantly
that it was a mistake, that including Goldberg was a mistake. Wong.

(10:25):
Alex Wong, for his part, has maintained professional silence just
hasn't said anything. Now, some people interpret that as guilt,
which I think is illogical. When your boss admits error
and the supposed culprit refrains from public sparring, that ought
to close the matter, But instead, what does it do

(10:47):
in this day and age? It creates a conspiracy theory
that then metastasizes into a gigantic conspiracy theory. But I
want to know that. I want to ask you, why
do you think, Alex Wong? Why in particular of all
the dozens of people, and you know, never forget that
the National Security Council, while the National Security Advisor in

(11:11):
this case, Mike Waltz does have a West Wing office.
The National Security Council takes up hundreds of offices in
the old Executive Office building. It's a huge operation. So why,
Alex Wog, Why this particular man among the hundreds involved

(11:32):
in national security operations would they pick him? I think
the answer appears to lie not in what Wong has done.
I think it lies in who he is. So who
is Alex Wang? His parents are Chinese legal Chinese immigrants

(11:53):
that fled communism, and Wong himself is a product of meritocracy.
His parents were Grace and Robert Wong. They were among
the thousands who left Hong Kong in the waning days
of when the Brits were turning over Hong Kong to
the Chinese Communist Party back in early nineteen ninety seven.

(12:14):
Both of his parents were really skeptical of the Chinese
Communist Party. They seen it from Afar. They saw the
slow strangulation of freedom on the mainland, and so they
came to America in the late nineteen seventies, seeking stability, liberty,
and opportunity the American dream. The parents his dad worked
as a freight logistics manner manager at a US based consolidator.

(12:40):
His mom became a real estate agent in northern New Jersey.
They settled and lived in Bergen County, where they raised
Alex with a clear message. Freedom is fragile, Freedom is Prussia, precious.
America is the last best hope of preserving freedom on
this planet. Took that lesson to heart. His wife, Candice Walm.

(13:07):
Her parents were also from Hong Kong. Her father worked
for more than twenty years in satellite operations at Asia Staff,
owned by a US private equity firm, and her mom
was a hospital Dietitian and just like her future husband's parents,
they left Hong Kong because of the growing unease of

(13:31):
Beijing's influence, its encroaching grip on civil liberties, and they
were also staunch opponents of the Chinese Communist Party. They
ended up in Ridgewood, New Jersey, proud legal immigrants who
embraced their adopted country and the constitutional order that we
live under. Wong graduated summa cum laudi from the University

(13:53):
of Pennsylvania a degree in literature and French, then went
on to Harvard to get a law degree. He was
the managing editor of the Harvard Law Review. He clerked
for Judge Janice Rogers Brown, who is a legal icon
of the conservative judicial movement. He later advised, I know
many people ping him for this, but he was an

(14:13):
advisor to Mitt Romney on foreign policy. He was a
senior advisor to Senator Tom Cotton. He was a deputy
Assistant Secretary of State for North Korea in Trump one
point Oh and Wong himself crafted probably some of the
toughest most clear eyed policies against Chinese expansionism and North

(14:38):
Korean belligerence among any of the foreign policy advisors in
Trump one point. Oh, so can we get rid of
the innuendo? It's kind of difficult, if not impossible, to
square the portrait of Alex Wong as some sort of
Chinese asset with that kind of professional history. By every account,

(15:00):
he was incredibly hockey on China inside the Beltway. He
actually helped formulate the Free and Open Indo Pacific strategy,
something which I had a one thousand percent support. He
pressed for maximum pressure and signsures against Pyongyang. He was

(15:21):
instrumental in organizing the Trump Kim summons. Then he gets
appointed to the US China Economic and Security Review Commission
during the Biden administration, which only reinforces the bipartisan respect
that he commanded on both sides of the Aisle on
the Hill and at sixteen hundred Pennsylvania Avenue. But let's

(15:42):
go back to his wife, Candae for a moment. She clerked,
are you ready for this? Associate Justice Sandra Dale O'Connor
and Judge Brett Kavanaugh when he was on the DC
Circuit she served for more than a decadi is a
federal prosecutor. What was her focus? Human trafficking, violent crime?

(16:07):
Her lone involvement in the January sixth prosecution a violent
rioter that confronted the cops endangered lives, not a peaceful protester.
Swept up in all the bureaucratic zealotry that we talked
about regarding Judge Beryl Howell, in twenty twenty two, with

(16:27):
bipartisan support, she got appointed to the US Sentencing Commission.
In other words, this is not some household conspiring against
the republic. It's a household dedicated to serving the republic.
The claim against wrong fails every factual, logical morality test.

(16:50):
But then you got the problem of there's no evidence,
So the road conspiracy theory just collapses under its own way.
Why what? Well, let me ask the question if you this, Michael,
I would appreciate if you could attempt to be more diverse.

(17:11):
Please refer to yourself as Miguel, or as I like
to say, Little Michael, Miguel megil what. I'm pretty partial,
Michael Brown. Someone just on the text line said that
Tom Cotton had written something about Alex Wong tonight. Maybe

(17:35):
this is what you're referring to. Uh, Alex Wong and
his wife Candice are completing total Patriots one MAGA Warriors
who always put in America first. For three years, Alex
worked hard for me until President Trump smartly hired him away.
President Trump made another great decision to hire Alex as
his deputy National Security Advisor. America is safer and better

(17:56):
off with Alex in the White House. And the uh,
somebody writes, but I don't trust Tom Cotton, he's not MAGA. Well, okay,
that's that's not the issue at hand. The issue at
hand is Alex Wong and and the larger issue at
hand is again, just yesterday when when I when I

(18:22):
came into work yesterday, I had it in my head
that one of the things I wanted to focus on
this week was how do how do you and I
go through a world in which I I'm not saying
this is you, I'm just saying it's me. I find

(18:46):
it hard to believe almost everything that I read or
hear or see everything. And that's because of artificial intelligence.
It's because people, just just one person can post one thing,

(19:06):
a thousand other people start posting it and it suddenly
becomes the assumed truth, and you you have to go
back so far and so deep to find original sources
to find out what you know so you know, it's
that game that kids used to play of you know,
you'd sit in a circle of chairs telephone, yeah, and

(19:29):
you'd whisper something in somebody's ear, And then what does
it end up being by the time it gets back
around to the original person you And in this day
and age, when information flies at mock two and you
don't have time, I'm not blaming you, but I'm just saying,
this is just the world we live in. And then

(19:50):
it becomes personal for me because twenty years ago, having
been subjected to the same kind of bull crap, I'm
a little touchy about this stuff. And so when I
then when I find it on my Facebook account, I
become ballistic, particularly when I see because I'm one of

(20:11):
these guys that tends to you put something up of
my Facebook page on the page, not on my account,
but on my page. I'm more interested in people's Obviously
I read what you put up, but I'm more interested
interested in what people say about it. And when people
are like right on, or I knew it, or you know,

(20:33):
you know, let's let's kill the bongs. Let's you know,
they just everybody just the the temptation to fall into
group think is horrendous. And if I were teaching a

(20:56):
forensics class, speech and debate class back in law school,
but if I was back teaching law school again, it
would be, Man, you've you've got to take everything at
face value. You know the old joke about you know

(21:17):
your your mother tells you that she loves you, the
lawyers will say, let me see the evidence, you know,
something to that effect. Well, this one struck home with
me because everything, you know, when I first saw it,
I hadn't I hadn't thought about Alex Wong in years.
And then suddenly he crops up and he's part of

(21:38):
this conspiracy theory that he's the one and he was
doing it, the sabotage Trump. Well, that of course catches
my eye. And because I mean, I don't know Alex
Wong personally. I know who he is, but I've never
met him or worked with him that I know of.
But this claim against Wong fails every single test, a

(22:02):
factual test, a logic test, a morals test. It's just
not there. There's just no evidence. And so it does,
as I said last hour, it just the whole allegation
collapses under its own weight. Now I'm going to take
the post down today. I'm going to delete it. And
there was one commentator I looked at during the break

(22:23):
who said, yeah, I saw this earlier, and since there's
not been a lot since then, I kind of assumed
that it was, you know, false or whatever, and I
just moved on. Well, the problem I have is I'm
pretty much assuming that everything is false. Why would a
seasoned lawyer, a national security expert, why did you go

(22:47):
torpedo your own reputation in a manner that would so
obviously implicate yourself. Why would Alex Wong, of all people,
expose sensitive discussions to a hostile all media outlet where
the most plausible explanation technological error has already been admitted
to Morally, the claim reeks of you know what, it reaks.

(23:10):
It truly reaks a racism And I hate invoking racism,
but it appears to me that there's some racism involved here,
a post hawk narrative driven not by conduct but by
his race. When you study history as much as I do,

(23:30):
you realize that one, one name, one word comes to mind, McCarthy,
the McCarthy era head lists. Today, we've got X timelines,
we got Facebook timelines, we got Instagram. But in both cases,
innuindo replaces investigation. Ethnicity becomes a proxy for disloyalty. That's

(23:52):
not conservatism, it's a perversion of conservatism. If we're truly conservatives,
we should resist the urge to indulge in character assassination
absence proof. Now, if there's proof, boom, I'll be the
first to fire the shot. You know, I I have

(24:18):
in my notes to use the term Jacobins J A.
C O. B I N S because a high school
friend of mine. Again, going back to Facebook post, do
some mean that came from the Jacobins. Well, if you

(24:39):
understand anything about the Jacobins they were, you know they're
the true socialists. They're the true gateway drug to Marxism
and communism. Well, that's not who conservatives are. That's not
our lineage. Ours is you know, Burke, Ours is Thomas Paine.

(25:04):
Ours are the Federalist papers. So this rush to malign
Alex Wong with baseless conspiracy is not only unjust, I
think it's anti American. It's Unamerican to put up back
in McCarthy turns that Wong has borne this with dignified silence.

(25:26):
I think it's a testament to his character. But silence
can't be the only defense. Alex Wong's record, his background,
his integrity demand some sort of public vindication. And I
think the people who have slandered him do so not
because of what he has done, but sometimes because what
he looks like. And it's you know, in some ways,

(25:48):
it's like a black conservative. The left can't stand the
idea of a black conservative. Oh, that's your why you're
voting against your own self tress. Is that the SoundBite
we used earlier about the black women that voted for Trump, Well,
why do you think they did that, Well, because they
voted against their own self interest. Really, so you can't

(26:11):
be black and conservative. You can't be black and a Republican.
The same things probably true with Alex Wong. Oh, here's
a guy from Did you know he's from Hong Kong. Yes,
his parents, His parents left Hong Kong. Well, if you
understand anything about the history of Hong Kong, you should

(26:32):
admire people that escape Hong Kong. I feel sorry for
the people who are still the anti communists who haven't
been disappeared or killed or jailed, that are still in
Hong Kong trying to fight the Chinese Communist Party, but
they didn't do that. They left seeking liberty and freedom
and taught that to their children, both and Alex's parents.

(26:58):
So the signal chat theory is it's just implausible, it's unproven,
racially charged, it's defamatory, and quite frankly, I think it's wrong.
Alex Wang's not the story. The story is how easily
a lie can catch fire when facts are treated as optional,
when prejudice somehow becomes proof. You and I are not

(27:20):
required to believe every accusation. We are required, however, and
I shouldn't even use the word accusation. You and I
are not required to believe everything. We are required, I think,
to examine things, and on that examination, in this particular case,

(27:41):
the case against Alex Wang collapses. So let it fall
and let us instead focus our scrutiny on those who
are actually peddling actual poison under the guise of patriotism.
What we ought to do is recognize that in this
world that we now live in Mock two, Mock three, however,

(28:02):
fast information is now traveling. It's probably actually just traveling
at the speed of light. It's all traveling on fiber
optic faster than we can even imagine. We can't even
imagine what a trillion dollars is. How can we imagine
how fast information travels around the world. That makes it

(28:24):
incumbent but even more difficult for us to stop pause,
consider sources, and if it's something that's important to us,
then we ought to dig and dig and dig and
dig until we have convinced ourselves that looking at original sources,

(28:46):
looking at sources that have solid reputations, looking at the logic,
looking at the rationale for whatever the story is about.
Then we come to our own conclusion, through our own
critical thinking, that it is either true or it is false.
And then one last thing, I think we have an
obligation to do when we find that which is false,

(29:11):
point it out, take it down, respond to it, because
otherwise it's the equivalent of good men doing nothing.

Speaker 1 (29:22):
So yesterday I had to go to the emergency room.
I'm fine, thanks for asking. But now today I've got
smoke alarms tripping at me and my wife let a
freaking fly in the house. It is one thing after another.

Speaker 2 (29:37):
Good grief. Well, I hope you can catch it. That
would drive me nuts, So who knows, maybe eventually you
will from the category you just can't make this crap up, Well,
somebody will. There's a new study published this week in

(29:57):
the journal Nature Communications. It has come up with yet
another malady of humankind that we can attribute to the
all seeing, all knowing, all causing, all powerful mythical bees
that we call climate change. Now, the researchers are in China,
so no doubt this is an incredibly scholarly study because

(30:20):
of it's from China. You know it's got to be true, right,
They expect you to believe that as a matter of faith.
I mean China, who is actively building coal power plants
Latin I think that's the same China. Gotcha. I'm not
sure whether this was Northern China southern China, but it
is one of the two. You can't sleep because climate

(30:43):
change or something I don't know. The abstract starts out
this way. The impact of rising ambient temperatures on sleep
and sleep phases under climate change is becoming increasingly concerning,
but remains under explored. Sleep, consisting of on rapid III
movement and rapid eye movement phases, is crucial for health.

(31:04):
An insufficient sleep neither phase could have significant implications. No
Fece Sherlock. I think we already knew that. Based on
sleep monitoring of twenty three million days from two hundred
and fourteen thousand plus participants across mainland China. We investigated
how daily average temperature affected sleep without going any further.

(31:30):
You check somebody's sleep, how much rim light, deep or
interrupted sleep did they have, and then you compared that
to ambient what room temperature, outside temperature, but you compared
it to temperature, and then you walked. Well, the only
thing I can see you could do is you could

(31:51):
draw a correlation, but not necessarily a causation. So rooms
or warmer you had less good sleep, rooms were colder,
you had more rim sleep. I mean, what's the deal?
The point is pretty simple, though. Quit blaming your sleep

(32:13):
problems on job stress, your misbehaving rug rats, the barking dogs,
the food you ate, the food you ate, or that
you bought a house next to a freeway, or that
you fell asleep listening to my podcast, any number of

(32:34):
things exactly. And don't think that it's because you just
got home from a church, meaning at the church of
the climate activists. That would never be a cause of
it either. So you can either accept the friendly advice
from the ghouls at the World Economic Founder of Federation

(32:55):
or the IPCC, or you could be labeled forever as
a climate denier and a artake by al Gore and
John Kerry, whoever's taking their places now. These findings, they conclude,
highlight the potential of climate warming to exacerbate sleep deprivation
and degrade sleep quality, especially for the elderly, women, individuals

(33:18):
with obesity, and regions of South, Central and East China.
Now I'm thinking, wait a minute. Elderly always have difficult
time sleeping. Obese individuals have difficult time sleeping.

Speaker 1 (33:32):
So

Speaker 2 (33:34):
They'll do anything, tie anything to climate channel