Ben Weingarten Enters the Freedom Hut

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is the Buck Sexton Show where the mission where
mission is to decode what really matters with actionable intelligence
magnor mistake America, You're a great American. Again the Buck
Sexton Show begins. He's a great guy. No book up

(00:25):
to the Buck Sexton Show. This is Ben Weingarden filling
in for Buck Sexton here on a sticky, humid, steamy
knight in New York. Thank you for taking this time
to spend a few hours and tonight we have a
very busy show lined up. Lots of things going on
in the world, both in America and abroad. And I

(00:45):
want to start first by thanking Buck for giving me
the opportunity to fill his ward shoes. So always a pleasure,
in a privilege to spend some time with you, a
great audience, a knowledgeable audience, a unique audience. Tonight we're
going to talk about a handful of topics that I
think are crucial on the domestic front and on the

(01:06):
global front. The big news of this week is the
squad versus Trump. The squad being Congresswomen Presley twyeb Or
talib omar an AOC. I believe that what we have
seen in real time is the meta narrative that will

(01:27):
play out in the twenty twenty election. And I believe
it was a master stroke by the president to do
what he did. And there are people of two minds
on this. The president could have stepped back and let
his enemy hang itself, effectively his political enemy. He could
have let the civil war on the left continued a

(01:48):
fessor between the quote unquote moderate establishment. They're not moderate,
by the way, they're just slightly less crazy leftists because
they're more practical, they want to stay in power, they
don't want to scare off normal Americains, and then the
true believers who don't care and are willing to tear
it all down instead. What Trump did was he forced

(02:11):
them into an embrace. People would say, why would you
want to unify the left, Well, it's a very uncomfortable
bear hug that we've seen take place where Nancy Pelosi,
who was in open warfare with the squad quote unquote,
is now forced to embrace them and condemn the president.
That is the most uncomfortable embrace that we will see

(02:34):
probably going into twenty twenty, because that embrace has elevated
them them being the squad, and it has also served
to toxify the entire Democratic Party. It elevated the squad
because then the squad had this big press conference, and
then they are on the shows in the morning, and
they are becoming the face of the Democratic Party. And
that is the worst nightmare of Nancy Pelosi and all

(02:58):
of the twenty twenty presidential candidates. Should It probably isn't
for Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren some of the others.
But what Trump has done has made the twenty twenty
election a choice ultimately that is going to be put
to all of these candidates of well, first of all,
are you with the squad or are you with the
rest of the country. Second of all, if you're a

(03:19):
Democratic presidential contender and the squad comes out with their
positions and it's not like they're going to be muzzled
because they're running their own campaigns for reelection in the House,
do you agree with AOC's position on XYZ? Do you
stand with anti Semitic, anti American, ungrateful Representative Ilhan Omar?

(03:41):
Do you believe the sort of crass identity politics played
by Ianna Presley. In fact, let's go to quip two.
Let's go to quip two of Ianna Presley and what
he had to say this week. So, if you're going
on to come to this table, and if all of
you that have aspirations of running for all this, for

(04:01):
whatever lived experience and identity that you represent, if you
are not prepared to come to that table and to
represent that voice, don't come. Because we don't need any
more brown faces that don't want to be a brown voice.
We don't need black faces that don't want to be
a black voice. We don't need muslim that don't want

(04:22):
to be a Muslim voice. We don't need queers that
don't want to be a queer voice. Hold on, we did.
And if you're worried about being marginalized and stereotyped police
don't even show up. What could be a more unifying
message than that speak with the voice of your chosen

(04:42):
identity group. Because that's what America is, a collection of groups.
Right wrong? What about American voices, Congresswoman Presley, We're also
supposed to, supposed to speak with one voice, one unified voice,
united by our shared ideals, values and principles. We're not groups,

(05:03):
we're individuals. We can think for ourselves. This is what
the Democrats are going to be forced to embrace and
to answer questions dealing with and you can see right
now they're already very uncomfortable with this because on the
left there is this civil war going on, and it's generational,

(05:25):
it's ideological, and it's tactical. It's the young Turks versus
the old guard. It's the lifetime leftists who want to
stay in power and push as far as they can
to the left while again retaining their seats versus people
who don't care and they want to tear it all down,
and they're willing to engage in open warfare against the
power seats in their party. And then there's a tactical issue.

(05:48):
So it is these young Turks who are going in
and torpedoing chosen legislation of the real power in their party.
There was a series of very telling tweets this week.
They came out regard what the quote unquote establishment democrats
actually believe. This is from Jake Tapper, this threat of CNN.

(06:09):
He says, quoting one House Democrat. The President won this
one of this debate between Trump versus the squad. Quote.
What the President has done is politically brilliant. Pelosi was
trying to marginalize these folks, and the President has now
identified the entire party with them unquote. Another issue, there's

(06:30):
a second Democrat representative speaking quote. The President's words and
actions speak for themselves. We need to focus on the
issues that got them here, them being these Democrats, jobs, healthcare,
instead of the issues the President brings up deliberately. Anything
that takes away from bread and butter issues is playing
into his hands. Other House Democrats, quoting Tapper's tweet, are
conflicted about having to defend the squad given things they've

(06:52):
said and done. House Dems cited talk of supporting challengers
to incumbent Dems in primaries, AOC's use of the term
concentration camps antise made comments by tolib and Omar. Tapper
says this perceived selective outrage rankled some Dems. Quote. Everybody
was completely outraged by what the President said unquote said
House damn number three anonymous quote, and everybody thought it

(07:14):
was appropriate to criticize him. But this was the first
time the House has taken action to criticize him in
any way. We couldn't even bring ourselves to have a
resolution exclusively condemning anti Semitism uttered by one of those members, Omar.
But we leapt to their defense here. Let's stop it
there for a second. Another critical point here. They totally
jumped the shark. They went overboard because they condemned the
president by names, specifically over comments that they portrayed as racist,

(07:38):
merely because of the person or the people receiving the criticism.
But meanwhile, when Congresswoman Omar clearly made jew hating comments,
they could not condemn her by name, They could not
condemn specifically her speech. They had to water it down.
The establishment caved because of the progressives in their party

(07:58):
and in particular the Squad. The squad set the terms
of the agenda. They had to completely depreciate, watered down
their quote unquote condemnation, and they made it of all
hate speech quote unquote, and they did not define Representative
Omar as one of those purveyors of hate speech quote unquote.
And let's forget about the fact that hate speech is
not a concept that exists in the American idea of speech.

(08:20):
It's something the left has tried to create so that
someday they can criminalize quote unquote hate speech, which is
translated loosely as speech they don't like from people who
they don't like. So this might make for great politics
for President Trump in the short term, and I would
suggest that it does. He has forced the party, the
Democratic Party, into an embrace and if he runs against

(08:42):
the Squad in twenty twenty, that's a win. But long term,
I believe the Squad will be the Democratic Party. And
why do I say that, Well, the left has been
pushing in the direction of the Squad basically since progressivism
really began to take it one hundred years ago, as
Buck has spoken about at length from Woodrow Wilson on.

(09:04):
But now the Overton window has shifted in real time
to where Nancy Pelosi, a lifelong far leftist, is now
considered moderate and establishment. That's the Overton windows shifting, and
the people who make up the Squad, or the exact
people that I went to school with, all of my
classmates I went to Columbia University. My classmates were exactly

(09:25):
like them, had the same views of America, had the
same disdain and loathing for our founding principles, had this
same regressive progressive ideology. And it's really important to say
that progressive is a Progressivism is regressive by the way,
because it takes us back. It takes the power out
of you, the individual, and gives it to them the state.

(09:46):
The state used to be the king, the monarch. Now
the state is them. It's all about taking power from you,
the individual and redistributing it to them, and they can
lavish it on their friends and continue to get reelected
them way. It's a power play. Their whole governing ethos

(10:06):
is that America is racist, misogynist, homophobic, deplorable, irredeemable, colonialist, occupationalist,
and that you all we all bitterly cling to our
guns and religion. That is the view that dominates in
the corridors of power in this country. Silicon Valley gone.

(10:27):
The corporate world is completely cowed to these social justice warriors.
The ranks of government are filled with people who fundamentally
believe this. The media is gone, most of our cultural
institutions are gone. In the long run, the regressive progressives
pose a dire threat to us. Again. The purpose is
redistribution of wealth and power under the banner of justice

(10:49):
for themselves at home, and also redistribution of wealth and
power and redistributive justice to our enemies abroad. Because if
America is a fundamentally evil, awful place, and our founding
principle are the most backwards of all. Then it all
needs to be turned on its head. That is their
perverse worldview. And I believe that the squad is ultimately
poised to triumph over the Democratic Party if it hasn't

(11:11):
already started. And by the way, you can look at
that in proxy terms by looking at how many members
of the House are in the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Guess what,
it's over ninety right now. When the CPC started in
the early nineties, there were six six to ninety ninety
out of two hundred and some odd in the Democratic
majority in the House. They're almost at a majority of

(11:33):
their party, and the next generation and the generation after that,
it all goes in one direction, regressive progressivism. This has
been wangern In for Buck Sexon. We'll take a quick
break backward after this. Many who debated them hope there
now do neither. There now seems to be a broad
acceptance of the racial divide as a permanent state. While

(11:56):
we once celebrated those things that we have in common
with our fellow citizens who did not share our race,
so many now are triumphal about our differences, finding little
of anything in common. Indeed, some go so far as
to all but define each of us by our race

(12:18):
and establish the range of our thinking and our opinions,
if not our deeds, by our color. I, for one,
see this in much the same way I saw our
denial of rights as nothing short of a denial of
our humanity. Not one of us has the Gospel, nor

(12:40):
are our opinions based upon some revealed precepts to be
taken as faith. As thinking rational individuals, not one of
us can claim infallibility, even from the overwhelming advantage of
hindsight and Monday morning quarterbacking. This makes it all the

(13:04):
more important that our fallible ideas be examined as all
ideas are in the realm of reason, not as some
doctrinal or racial heresy. None of us, none of us,
have been appointed by God or appointed God. And if

(13:24):
any of us has, then my question is, why hasn't
he or she solved all these problems? That was justice
Clarence Thomas in nineteen twenty one years ago, giving the
strongest response possible to the words of Congresswoman Iana Presley,

(13:45):
And this has been Weingarten here in for Buck Sexton.
I really do believe that Justice Clarence Thomas provided the answer,
the best response possible to those who say that you
can't criticize ideas based upon the person who came up
with the ideas in the first place, that you are
de facto racist if you challenge someone on the merits

(14:09):
of their views. And in fact, look, Nancy Pelosi has
been lumped in with President Trump as a racist because
she went after the squad. If you see the world
through an identity politics prism, honestly, then you're going to
evaluate everything through that prism, and it makes civil discourse
debate impossible. It means the science is settled. When it

(14:33):
comes to any argument, it's the same view that there's
your truth and my truth. No, there is objective truth
and things that are false. What Justice Thomas calls for
is judging viewpoints and individuals on the merits as individuals,

(14:54):
not as races. Not in all of the different identity
groups that Congresswoman Presley sliced and diced and that failed
senatorial runner Stacy Abrams and Georgia. Even though she'll never
admit that she lost, she says, she says identity politics
wins and identity politics one. She's written a very lengthy,

(15:17):
pseudo intellectual piece arguing for identity politics. Identity politics is
a recipe for tearing the country apart. If you divide
people by groups, definitionally, you're dividing them. We're supposed to
judge everyone on the content of their own character. Has
nothing to do with some characteristics that you have no

(15:40):
control over. But they are cynical. They want to play
on differences between people. They want to divide us as
opposed to treating us all as Americans. They want to
make you this kind of voice and you that kind
of voice by calling their opponents racist. At every last turn,

(16:06):
just by dint of who makes the argument and who
the argument is made against, they devalue that term of racism,
which hurts real victims. The disaster for the country an
absolute disaster. And I want to make clear something. When
I talk about the fact that this is all a
power play, they actually make it very clear themselves. It's

(16:30):
a very very telling piece in the Washington Post profiling
aoc is chief of staff who's got into all these
TIFFs with Democratic leadership by accusing them essentially of being racist,
including Speaker Pelosi and her team's he's been a huge
thorn in their side. His name is Saka Chakrabarti, and
in this profile they talk about him having a conversation

(16:52):
and exchange with someone who works for Washington Governor j
Insley on climate issues, and he's praising him for essentially
a Green New Deal like plan platform that he's put forth.
Chaco Rabarty says this, quoting The interesting thing about the

(17:14):
Green New Deal, he said, is it wasn't originally a
climate thing at all. Unquote. The person created that startling
notion with an attentive poker face quote unquote. Do you
guys think of it as a climate thing? Chaco Robardi continued,
because we really think of it as a how do
you change the entire economy thing? Could it be any

(17:35):
more clear? So this person, his interlocutor, responds, I think
it's it's dual. It is both rising to the challenge
that is existential around climate, and it is voting an
economy that contains more prosperity, more sustainability in that prosperity,
and more broadly shared prosperity, equitability and justice throughout. He continued, Well,

(18:02):
you know we're not done when it comes to a
nationwide economic mobilization. There's more to come on this front
and other key components. We're going to be rolling forward
to speak to some of the key justice elements of this,
ensuring every community has got a part of this. And
the reporter who is watching this back and forth says,
this nationwide economic mobilization, justice community. Everything is intersectional now,

(18:25):
including decarbonization. What does that mean. It's about taking power
from you under all of these different guises, and part
of that is through dividing us all. We're going to
talk about one member of the squad coming up next.
This is Ben Weegarden in for Buck Sexton on the
Buck Sexton Show. Welcome back to the Buck Sexton Show.
This is Ben Weingarden in for Buck Sexton. Appreciate you

(18:48):
taking the time to spend your Friday night with us,
if you have a great weekend lined up. All right, Well,
we were talking about the squad before, and I want
to talk about perhaps the most radical of squadron members,
Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. The big story is surrounding Congresswoman Omar

(19:10):
this week. Besides the fact that she disputed that her
comments were anti Semitic, that she made before about Israel
and about it's all about the Benjamin's and dual loyalty
Kinnard smearing millions of people. Story was that picked up

(19:30):
by the media anyway, is that President Trump talked about
this potential marriage to her biological brother and the media
reported this as Trump makes false claim about Omar's family
and their rationale was Omar has denied this claim. Okay,

(19:51):
that's not the story. There is actually substantial evidence out
there of pretty much definitive criminality regarding her marriages and
potentially this bizarre allegation, but which is far better substantiated
than Russia Gate, the biggest story of the century. Why

(20:16):
they don't want to dig into this story because they
want to make this about bigotry. You see, they want
to use the identity politics as a vail to protect
Congresswoman Omar and use as a cudgel against her opponents.
Why they want to protect a bigot by crying bigotry
out of cowardice and also a belief that they need

(20:38):
the Omar constituency whoever that is. So, there are these
allegations out there, and I want to point specifically to
the work of David Steinberg, formerly of PJ Media and
Scott Johnson at Powerline and prasm Sunder formerly at Alpha News.
They dug into this story for the last three years,
and only now is the Star Tribune, a left wing paper,

(21:02):
a very pro Omar paper actually saying you know what,
maybe there is something to these allegations. And the backstory
is that the only real reason that they're reporting on
this now is because it was exposed in the campaign
finance violations that Omar was involved in involving payments surrounding
advice around some of these family issues, political payments out

(21:26):
of campaign funds. Potentially that in this case, docket showed
that she built a crisis management team when it started
to break a few years ago that there may have
been something strange going on with her marriages, that in
internal emails, her crisis management committee was talking about the
fact that they needed to make sure that the Star
Tribune quashes any of these stories. It's been exposed now,

(21:49):
so the Star Tribune has to respond to retain any
shred of dignity, and only because the Star Tribune is
talking about it does potentially the rest of the media
have to report, but they're not doing a good job
of it because there is so much information out there
it is overwhelming. And David Steinberg released a piece through
Powerline yesterday that goes through in great detail all of

(22:12):
the elements backing the notion that Elan Omar did in
fact marry her brother and then in the process committed
a whole slew of crimes, as Steinberg suggests, and a
quote here probable cause to investigate Omar for eight instances
of perjury, immigration fraud, marriage fraud, up to eight years
of state and federal attacks fraud, two years of federal

(22:33):
student well and fraud, and even bigamy quote unquote. Now
this has been portrayed from the start as right wing journalists. Okay, well,
facts are facts, and the folks who have printed these
stories admit what their political leanings are. But let's look
at the substance and the substance of the case that
Steinberg lays out, building upon his work and the work

(22:54):
of others over the last three years. Three years is substantial.
Here's a few of the items. Verifiable UK and US
marriage records, verifiable address records, timestamp, traceable archived online communications,
background check, confirmations of social securities and numbers and birthdates,
archived court documents signed under penalty of perjury, photos which

(23:15):
can be examined to roll out digital manipulation. The twenty
nineteen Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board investigation which
found Omar filed illegal joint returns tax returns with a
man who is not her husband in at least twenty
fourteen and twenty fifteen, and the evidence goes on substantially
from there, including perjury evidence that stands on its own.
After June twenty eleven, Omar was clearly in contact with

(23:37):
the only man in either the US or the UK
with the same name and birthdate as the man she married.
She was clearly in contact with several people who were
in contact with him claim that she wasn't during that time.
There's a slew of evidence here. You can examine the evidence.
It's all right there. Authorities should examine the evidence, media
should examine the evidence. But they're not. And let me

(24:01):
tell you why this is such a critical issue. It's
not just the massive felonious activity. It's the fact that
when you combine that activity with the anti American jew
hatred and conversely, on the other side of the coin,
the pro Islamist ties as I lay it out in
an article at the Federalists in great detail. I'll point
you there. It's titled why is ilhan Omar's collusion with

(24:22):
Islamists acceptable? And it goes through the links, ties and
or coordination quote unquote that she's had with all sorts
of people associated with the global jihadas movement, not to
mention her own rhetoric relating to it, and her defense
of jihadis calling for leniency asking a federal judge for it.
Put all of these things together, and ilhan Omar would

(24:43):
never ever ever get a security clearance. She sits on
the House Foreign Affairs Committee. This is a national security threat.
There's nothing more compromising than her ties and the criminal
activity in her background. Be back in just a minute.
This has Ben one Garden in for Buck Sex and
on the Buck Sexon Show. This is Ben Weegarden in

(25:06):
for Buck sexon on the Buck Sexton Show. Appreciate you
taking the time here on this Friday, steamy summer evening
here in New York. All right, Well, we talked about
the squad and Trump versus the Squad and what it
means in twenty twenty and beyond. I want to talk
about something that has percolated that flows from the squad's

(25:27):
disastrous worldview. And that is one of the recent Supreme
Court decisions that got a lot of attention for a
couple of days, but not really in my view regarding
the most important aspects of it and what it means
to our republican system of government with real practical consequences.
And that is the census citizenship question. And we've spoken

(25:48):
about this before on this program. This is an issue
that I started following back in twenty eighteen in part
because I saw people on the left clamoring to it,
in particular Eric Holder, former Attorney General under President Obama,
and it became clear that this was actually about protecting
and preserving information and thus power on the left. Let's

(26:11):
talk for a second about what the population count does
for you. The census count of people includes all people, legal, illegal, legal,
non citizens, everyone in between, and those numbers are used
to break out congressional districts and also at the state level,

(26:33):
state legislative districts and the like, and other offices as well.
Based upon the total population count, that's how seats are apportioned. Also,
hundreds of billions of dollars are allocated down to these
districts based upon the population counts. So the census count

(26:53):
is hugely meaningful when it comes to where your tax
dollars go and how much your vote is worth. You know,
we have a system of one man, one vote, but
the fact that the population count in total is used
to determine these districts flies in the face of that.
It actually debutes your vote because let's say I have
a district that's a bright blue district that has two

(27:15):
hundred thousand illegal aliens in it. Those go into the
population count. In this way, we actually have foreign interference
in our elections, foreign influence in our elections because non citizens,
including people whose first act was to break our laws,
to violate our sovereignty, count when it comes to our

(27:36):
districts and the money that goes down to them where
your tax dollars are redistributed. All President Trump wanted to
do was ask a simple question, is this person a
citizen of the United States? And you've probably heard that
this was on the census from eighteen twenty or nineteen fifty,
and then there's been variations of these citizenship questions on

(27:56):
the census every decade pretty much since, including under the
Obama administration, they had this long form census, it's called
the ACS American Community Survey, went out to a percentage
of Americans, still millions of Americans, asking them a question
just like this. It's a pretty basic thing to have
account of citizens and non citizens. And you couldn't incriminate

(28:18):
yourself as an illegal alien. You couldn't actually answer, not
a citizen here, illegally. But the left ginned up this
narrative that this was about, well, for one thing, potentially
trying to go round up non citizens, even though you
couldn't distinguish between illegal and legal non citizens. And second,

(28:38):
that this was about trying to scare non citizens into
not responding given that potential fear. This was BS. Everyone
knows it was BS. This was fear mongering, and fear
mongering tinged with the cries of racist Well. Ultimately, there

(28:59):
were lawsuits filed against the Trump administration and the Commerce
Department in particular, which oversees administers the census, and there
were numerous challenges to it. Ultimately they went up to
the Supreme Court, and Supreme Court, in a critical ruling
said the following, the census citizenship question is constitutional. The

(29:20):
Commerce Department representing the Trump administration, has a right to
ask it. Obviously, it's been there for a hundred, two
hundred years. They also said that it was lawfully put
into practice. So, in other words, this agency of the
Commerce Department, the process by which they put the question

(29:41):
in the census was lawful. There's something called the Administrative
Procedures Act that governs these sorts of actions. They said
it was a reasonable question, and there was reasonable justification
for putting it in there. That should have been it constitutional, lawful,
But no. Chief Justice Roberts ruled in a five to

(30:06):
four ruling against the Trump administration on what grounds on
an invented principle, an invented principle that even though this
was constitutional, even though this was lawful, the Trump administration
wasn't really being honest about why they wanted to include
the question. In other words, the Supreme Court, the highest
court in the land, engaged in mind reading. They threw

(30:26):
out the constitution, they throughout the law, and they said,
we think the Trump administration has nefarious designs. As the
left wing activist who brought these suits argued, here's what
Justice Clarence Thomas said in an opinion that agreed with
the Court on the constitutionality and the lawfulness and then dissented,

(30:47):
and he was joined, by the way, by Justices Gorsage
and Kavanaugh. Quote. Our only role in this case is
to decide whether the secretary complied with the law and
gave a reasoned explanation for his decision. The Court correctly
answers these questions in the affirmative ought to end our inquiry.
So what happened, Well, here's how Justice Thomas describes it,

(31:08):
and I'll punched In an article that I wrote in
The Federalist about this, it was titled why John Roberts's
citizenship decision is legally and politically corrupt. Here's why it was,
quoting Justice Thomas for the first time ever, and justices,
by the way, don't usually say for the first time
ever unprecedented, as he's about to for the first time ever,
the Court invalidates an agency action, the Commerce Department's action,

(31:30):
solely because it questions the sincerity of the agencies otherwise
adequate rationale. The Court's holding reflects an unprecedented departure from
our deferential review of discretionary agency decisions. Unable to identify
any legal problem with the Secretary of commerces reasoning, the
Court imputes one by concluding that he must not be

(31:51):
telling the truth. The Court therefore upholds the decision of
the district court that also wrote against the Trump administration,
which in turn was transparently based on the application of
an administration specific standard. What does that mean? An administration
specific standard? Since when do courts? Since when do judges
apply specific standards to any individual, separate and apart from

(32:13):
everyone else. Why does the Trump administration get held to
one standard and other administrations to other standards? Thomas goes on,
This Court has never held an agency decision arbitrary and
capricious and therefore unlawful on the ground that it's supporting
rationale was quote unquote pretextual. Nor has it previously just
suggested that this was even a possibility. Again, Supreme Court

(32:35):
justices don't toss around unprecedented, never happened before administration specific standard.
This is radical stuff. What does it mean if there's
an administration specific standard at the Supreme Court, then we
don't really have a rule of law anymore. One president
gets treated one way, another president gets treated another way.
Do you think that Barack Obama the courts would have said,

(32:58):
you know what, that's lawful, it's constitutional, but we don't
think that you were really being honest and what your
real rationale was behind your constitutional, unlawful decision. Does anyone
think that would have passed muster If there are different
standards for different people, if there's a double standard, then
there is no standard of justice. So it's really fascinating

(33:20):
all of these people who love to attack the Trump
administration and say they're violating the institutions and norms and principles. Well,
this is about the biggest violation of an institution, of
a norm, of a principle of justice that you could
have and we get screwed as a result of it
because we as citizens are not able to be represented
by the administration on account of unelected judges, and because

(33:45):
we bear the price of not knowing the truth, of
not knowing the information that would be helpful of who
is living among us. How much do they influence our
political power? And by the way, what does it tell
you about what the incentives of politicians are who stand
to bene fit from districts with large illegal alien and
non citizen populations. It's almost like there's actually a plan

(34:06):
behind having sanctuary cities. It means more political power for Democrats.
But even if it didn't, the basic principle of knowing
who is living among us is common sense. It's right there,
it's historically reasonable, it's constitutional, it's lawful. And then why
did Justice Roberts rule as he did here? You have

(34:30):
to ask yourself. And the only thing that I can
think of is three words orange man bad. That was
the court's rationale here, and the Supreme Court should never
have a rationale like that. Injustice Roberts talks about dedication
to star a decisive which is precedent. Even if precedent's bad,
we stick to it. Thomas disagrees with him, rightfully, in

(34:53):
my view, he believes in the importance of the independence
of the judiciary. Well, the judiciary could not have put
their finger on the scale more than in applying a
quote unquote administration specific standard. The only silver lining in
this decision for the rule of law for citizens of
the United States, for anyone who cares about the rule
of law and our republican system of government, is that

(35:16):
if you actually applied the logic of the court here,
that they can overrule agency actions by mind reading well,
then you can use this to block any administrative action
from any president. Now I have a feeling this administration
specific standard will only apply to one administration, and that's
this one. But we all pay the price of that.

(35:39):
We all pay the price when the institutions violate their
own norms and principles and don't do their job and
don't have fidelity to the Constitution on our behalf. This
has Ben Winegarden in for buck Sexton back after this.
Welcome back to the buck Sexton Show. This is Ben
Weinegarden in four buck Sexton here at the top of

(35:59):
our two. Hope you're enjoying your drive home, hopefully to
a nice weekend at the beach up in the mountains
the like. Meanwhile, in the real world, very serious goings
on and one of the major stories that has been
completely dwarfed in all of the issues of the squad
versus the President back and forth twitter wars, which we

(36:20):
discussed Laron will discuss a bit again later in the
episode concerns the goings on in the case of General
Michael Flynn. Now you might be wondering, how is this
case still going on in the first place. Well, actually,
it's very live even though the Special Council's work has
wound down, and there are actually two cases associated with

(36:42):
General Flynn concerning his activities prior to becoming National Security Advisor.
And I think ultimately what we're going to find out,
as we continue to dig deeper into the weeds and
as more and more extraordinary events continue to transpire with
this case, is that this was a set. This was
the leading edge of the attack on not just President

(37:04):
Trump and his presidency, but the counter attack to what
the political establishment and in particular the national security and
foreign policy establishment, was trying to do to counter the
Trump administration. In other words, the Trump administration wanted to
completely turn on its head many of the assumptions that
had been conventional wisdom for decades in Washington, DC. He

(37:27):
posed a threat to them, and going at National Security
Advisor Michael Flynn and him being the first domino to fall,
they felt might topple over this entire presidency. But meanwhile,
there have been simply incredible, completely peculiar developments that have transpired.
As I mentioned in both of the two cases in
which General Flynn as involved, and someone who has been

(37:48):
following this very very closely over months and explaining all
of these details is Margot Cleveland. Margo is a senior
contributor to the Federalist Great Publication. I'm a senior contributor
to the Federalist as well. She served for nearly twenty
five years as a permanent law clark for a federal
appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. She

(38:08):
has been following these two cases very closely. Margot, you're
on the Bucks Extent Show. Thanks so much for joining us.
Thanks so much, Ben. Okay, so let's go back. I
want to start before we get into the litany of
events that have transpired in just the last few weeks,
including probably the biggest one from a headline perspective, which
is that General Flynn actually went ahead and fired his

(38:29):
prior legal counsel. Let's go back to the sentencing hearing
that happened several months back. Speak a little bit about
what transpired during that hearing. So the last sentencing hearing
that they were just talking about when they should go
forward with the General Flynn sentencing, and you recall that

(38:50):
he had pled guilty to one count of making false
statements to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian ambassador,
and at that hearing they said whether there were a
couple different hearings, and I kind of confused which one's which,
But there was one that I think happened in December

(39:10):
where the judge Sullivan seemed to indicate he was going
to put Flynn in jail, and they decided, Flynn decided,
we're going to wait, We're going to continue to cooperate
and then we'll come back. And when they had a
follow up sentencing hearing, they said, you know, Flynn's gonna
he's still working with us, and we need a little
bit more time. And the delay was that there is

(39:33):
this related case going on in the Eastern District of
Virginia which involved Flynn's former co founder of Flynn Intelligence
or Intel Group. And I have no idea how to
pronounce this lasting because I don't see much, but it
was something brought the con I believe, and Flynn was,
for for all representations, going to be testifying at that trial.

(39:58):
So that was where we were for some time. The
sentencing was to lay to let that conclude, And it's
important to point out a couple of things. First of all,
the conversations for which General Flynn played guilty were perfectly
lawful conversations. They were about US policy with respect to sanctions,

(40:19):
for one thing, and also US policy in support actually
of our ally Israel, which was lost in much of
the conversations about this. And then in the statement of
offenses which listed the charges against General Flynn, there was
a comment in there about Farah violations, that is, Foreign
Agent Registration Act violations and General Flynn being effectively dishonest

(40:42):
in his forms associated with Farah, and that relates to
this other case. Now, since that point, what has happened
in the case in the Eastern District that you spoke
of with respect to General Flynn. So we have several developments,
and as you mentioned, he fired his old attorney, and
Sydney Poll, who was former prosecutor then defense attorney, just

(41:04):
really a sharp attorney who's dealt with prosecutorial misconduct, took over.
And the case in the Eastern District of Virginia was
scheduled to start in mid July, which was when Sydney
went before Judge Sullivan in Flynn's case and said, we
need more time for me to get ready to go

(41:25):
with sentencing. And we have this other case that I'm
really working on preparing for so the Sullivan set the
sentencing hearing or i should say a status hearing to
see where they were for the end of August, and
Sydney is Sydney poal. The attorney is working with the
prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia to prepare Judge

(41:46):
Flynn for his testimony for the trial that began on
Monday this week. And we have material that we learned
for the first last week Monday, but it was actually
going on in in the end of June, but it
was all sealed. But last week Monday, we find out
that there was this falling out between Flynn and the prosecutor.

(42:11):
So Flynn's been cooperating with them for about two years,
and all of a sudden we find out the prosecutors said,
we're no longer calling Flynn and we now think that
he is a co conspirator, even though the whole time
they said, no, he's not a co conspirator. No, he's
not a co conspirator. So that is what was going
on in the Eastern District of Virginia that something happened.

(42:34):
And one of the articles I wrote for The Federalist
is kind of the guide to it, because when this
broke lass Monday, I was like, what happened. I went
through all of the filings to try to piece together
what happened. And there were filings by Miss Powe and
by the government and also by the defendants in the

(42:56):
Virginia case affidavits, so you could piece got it what happened,
And basically it's this. The prosecutors wanted Flynn to testify
that he knowingly filed false statements related to the far registration,
and Miss Palla said he can't do that. That's not

(43:19):
true and he's not going to lie. And you had
the prosecutors come back saying, wait, he said in a
statement of offense that he did this, and as she
pointed out, no, he said that the statement had material
false statements. That's based on what we know now. That's
based on what he knows is the truth after all

(43:43):
of this evidence about what other people knew, based on
what he's read now. And as she may clear in
her filings, I gave this. He gave this, I should
say Flynn gave this to his attorneys and said, here,
file this. This is all the information, and it is
to you to put this together. I don't know anything
about far I don't know what we need to say.

(44:06):
So his statement of offense, all he was saying is yes,
what was in there was false, but he never said
that I knew it was false at the time that
I assigned it. And that is what happened as far
as the falling out. That is what caused the prosecutor
to say, Okay, we're not calling him, and we're going

(44:27):
to now say he's a co conspirator. And I want
to add to that. They also put Flynn Junior on
the witness list last minute, never called him, which shows
you where they're going. This looks very much as if
it's payback for Flynn refusing to say what the prosecutors
wanted him to say. Is that common or is that

(44:47):
prosecutorial abuse in your view? Oh boy, you know, I
don't have enough experience with the trial level to say
is this something that's common? I think and a lot
of prosecutors do play hardball, But it seems it seems
inappropriate here. Even if it's not a violation of the

(45:08):
ethics rule, it smells, especially since they had no intent,
or at least it appears as if they had no
intent of calling him. It's worth noting as well that
at that sentencing hearing that I mentioned where extraordinarily Judge Sullivan,
who's overseeing Flynn's case, wrongfully accused him of being a traitor.
But before that point he also gave Flynn the opportunity

(45:32):
to bring in an independent council to basically evaluate his
case and provide in effect, a second opinion. Now, Margot,
we're about to run up against a break shortly, so
I'd love to pick up this conversation on the other
side of it. Will you stay on with me? Absolutely? Okay,
very much, look forward to continuing the conversation. This is
Ben Weingerton in for Buck sexon here on the Buck

(45:53):
Sexton Show. Back after this, this is Ben Winegarton in
for Buck Sexton here on the Buck Sex Show. We've
been talking with Margo Cleveland, a senior contributor at the
Federalist who also served for nearly twenty five years as
a permanent law work for a Federal appellate judge on
the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, and we have been
talking about the curious case of General Michael Flynn and

(46:16):
some of the recent goings on extraordinary recent goings on
in the two cases involving him, and before the break,
I was just mentioning the fact that Judge Sullivan, the
judge overseeing General Flynn's case, the case directly implicating him,
actually gave General Flynn the chance to bring in a
second council essentially to check the work of the prior

(46:37):
council and perhaps give him some competing advice. In part,
I think because what Judge Sullivan saw was that Flynn's team,
all of a sudden at the end, was asking for
all of this information that seemed a little bit exculpatory,
one could argue with respect to General Flynn's case. So
I want to bring back Margo Cleveland and ask Margo,
what do you make of the judge giving him that

(46:58):
out essentially during that sentencing hearing. Sure, So I actually
interpreted that as him wanting to make sure that Flynn
was pleading guilty because he was guilty, because he knows
Judge Sullivan knows what's going on, which is there's a
lot of talk out there that Flynn only played because

(47:20):
for squeezing his son, and that, like you said, there
was nothing illegal about the conversation. Maybe he misspoke and
ATBI agents didn't really think he did it. So if
you actually read the transcript, Judge Sullivan starts out very now,
are you sure you want to plead? And I'll give
you alternative console, And then after Flynn goes and says yes,

(47:42):
I do, yes, I do know, I don't want a console.
That's where Sullivan kind of rips into him with that
false accusation of treason, which Judge Sullivan walked back later on.
So I think he was concerned about that. I think
though now Judge Sullivan is going to be even more concerned.
One of the things that was not clear, and I

(48:04):
do not believe had ever been brought to Judge Sullivan's attention,
is to that the attorneys in the Far matter, the
Covington attorneys who helped prepare the FAR filing, were also
the attorneys representing judge representing General Flynn in the special
Council case, which to me screams conflict of interest. And

(48:29):
Judge Sullivan did a really interesting thing. Oh boy, I'm
losing track of the weeks it must. I believe it
was earlier this week when he set a status hearing
and called the old Covington attorneys back into court, And
he also said, I'm just going to give you notice.
I'm going to have a member of the DC bar
who's their epic specialist, come in and talk to you

(48:52):
about these epic rules which require Covington to turn over
the files to Sydney Paw. Now you'll find that in
the filings. Judge Sydney pal said to the Judge Sullivan,
we don't yet have all of them. I think that
was just a reason to get them in there to

(49:14):
push a little bit harder on this of was there
a conflict because under Sydney's filing, she said, we're not
going to have everything for a few weeks yet, but
Judge Sullivan didn't set the hearing until later. So the
fact that Judge Sullivan is getting this epics person here
and Covington attorneys there to discuss the obligation to turn

(49:38):
over file material that they'll already have kind of struck
me as I think he's a little bit more concerned
in other ways. So I think that that will be
the thing to be watching coming up is what happens
in I believe it's in August when Judge Sullivan has
Sydney Powe, the old attorney's there and is questioning them

(50:02):
with a bar representative as well, So I think that
that'll be an interesting development. And there is one other
development I did want to mention, Ben, if you have time,
and I'm not sure if you have any questions, Yeah, no, absolutely,
go ahead. The one thing I just wanted to point
out is that the idea of bringing in ethics officials
for these very senior lawyers at a top reputable law firm,

(50:25):
potentially over a conflict of interest in and of itself
is a remarkable fact. I just want to underscore that,
But feel free to go ahead, right, but I do
want to clarify he didn't call them in on the
conflicx issue. He called them in for not giving the document,
and to me that seems rather strange because by then
they're going to have the document. But the third development

(50:46):
that I think is huge is what happened last week's Friday,
when all of a sudden, there's a hearing in Virginia.
The defendants attorney says, we got this one sentence statement
right before the hearing, in which we're told that the
government is in possession of multiple independent pieces of information

(51:11):
relating to the Turkish government's efforts to influence the United
States policy on Turkey, and specifically about Michael Flynn and
his contacts with a codefendant who is actually in Turkey.
He's a fugitive. And the reason this is key is
that had never been provided to the defendant before Flynn's

(51:35):
attorneys testified on Tuesday that they had no idea what
he's talking about. This tells me that the intel community
was not sharing everything that they knew about these cases
with special Counsel and with the prosecutors. And for a
very simple reason. There are rules that say that the

(51:55):
prosecution has to turn over evidence Brady material that is
going to be excuse me, exculpatory. So this information would
harm Flynn, who is testifying, and they never showed it.
Why didn't they Why didn't they turn it over? I

(52:15):
think they didn't turn over because they didn't have it.
The intel community kept it cordoned off, didn't give it
to the prosecutors, didn't give it to the Special Console,
and waited until Flynn is all of a sudden making
a stink, And now all of a sudden they're gonna
they're gonna give them Inteli fence. Fine, But the intelligence community,
I see is going to give this now to the

(52:37):
prosecutors and say hey, here, you can get Flynn with this.
And what that says to me is the IC community,
the intel community, was controlling what was going on with
Mueller's investigation. They gave what they wanted and they didn't
give what they didn't and that is shocking. We have
just about under a minute left to try to put
a bow on all of this, and there have been

(52:58):
so many peculiar things relating to this case. And let's
be clear when we talk about Turkey and the evidence here.
The evidence that we know about was basically that General
Flynn wrote something published in The Hill regarding Turkish government
policy and one of the figures who was viewed as
an adversary to the Air to one regime. So in

(53:19):
about a half a minute, now, what do you think
ultimately happened? Was the fix in here? Was this all
really effectively a conspiracy to get Flynn? And I grant
that requires a lot of speculation on your part, right,
I think that this was to get Flynn in order
to get Trump. I think the intel community did not
like Flynn. That it goes back a long way when
he auded the failed policy of Obama when Flynn told Trump,

(53:42):
we need to do an audit. There's never really been
an audit of what the intel community is doing, and
that they were out to get Flynn. Margo, we're gonna
have to leave it right there. I apologize. This has
been one garden in for Buck Sexon on the Buck
Sexon Show. We'll be right back after this. Sorry to
cut you, Margo, I apologize. Welcome back to the Buck
Sexton Show. This is Ben Weingarten in for Buck Sexton.

(54:06):
All right, we were just speaking with Margot Cleveland about
the goings on in the Flynn case, and it seems
potentially the intelligence community sort of stage managing what has transpired,
and this all of this is just so peculiar and
out of the norm for what would happen with a
normal case. And let's remember that General Flynn himself had
one of the highest levels role in intelligence possible. He

(54:29):
was the head of the d i A, the Defense
Intelligence Agency during the Obama administration. And what did he
do during that time, Well, he basically challenged the Obama
administration's narratives about everything that was going on in the world.
He foretold the rise of ISIS. He said they were
not a JV team. He foretold the disasters in Syria

(54:51):
and Iraq and elsewhere. He challenged political correctness, and for
that he paid a tremendous price. He attacked the president
under whom he served, and then the long knives came out.
And it's amazing, incidentally, that he got to the position
of head of DA in the first place, because he
was so good at what he did out in the field,

(55:13):
in particular in Iraq, understanding the enemy and taking the
fight to them. He was so talented that he had
to rise to the position. He rose too, even though
it's very clear that he differed with these colleagues. In fact,
in testimony you can look back, he essentially contradicted at
the time James Clapper, who I believe was Director of
National Intelligence at that time, and others as well. So

(55:35):
when you take a line against the administration, you serve
because you think it's the right thing to do. That's
pretty honorable, and he did it in the right way,
unlike the people who were trying to undermine this president.
But ultimately Flynn was pushed out I believe a year
before his tenure was scheduled to conclude, and then he
supported Donald Trump, which is the ultimate sin in the

(55:56):
eyes of the national security and foreign policy establishment. And
even beyond that, he attacked the former Secretary of State
and led chance of lock her up, and that may
have sealed his fate ultimately, because it was very clear
that the long knives were out for him well before
the Obama team left. They set landmines essentially to try

(56:17):
and capture him. It's a serious problem when our intelligence
community and our national security apparatus more broadly ends up politicized, worse,
ends up politically correct. So not just politicized, but politicized.
From a leftist worldview, you cannot have political correctness and

(56:38):
politicization and national security because lives are at risk. And
when lives are at risk, truth is what matters, not sugarcoating,
not advancing people because they scratched your back and now
you're going to scratch theirs. It is about who is
the best person for the job to protect and defend
American lives. To that end, recently, there were news reports

(57:01):
that President Trump might be considering making a change atop
the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and what
does that office do ODNI? The position that James Clapper
held during the Obama administration. ODNI is the bureaucracy on
top of the entire intelligence community of bureaucracy, it oversees

(57:22):
the sixteen agencies beneath it. All of the other intelligence
agencies from CIA and DA on down all report filter
up to ODNI. So if you're the Director of National Security,
you are responsible for coordinating, integrating, setting the tone for
managing all the intelligence agencies beneath you. And this was

(57:42):
created in response to September eleventh, and how effective it
has been is quite questionable. And in fact President Trump
himself before he was elected or right around the time
of the transition, said that he might want to abolish
ODNI altogether. We want to get rid of another layer
of government, stream line it at least for the time being.

(58:02):
He recognizes the political challenges associated with that, and I
believe Congress would be responsible for it because it was
statutorially created by Congress. He is looking to make a
change atop od and I and one of the names
that's been rumored is someone who have come to know
through their commentary through conversation as well. Believe we interviewed
him on this show actually once Fred Flights, Fred Flights

(58:26):
may be the next Director of National Intelligence, and I
believe he would make for an inspired choice, and I
believe it's imperative that we talk for a minute about
it and about him as a potential replacement, because if
you don't have an intelligence community that serves its ultimate consumer,
which is the president, and puts forth the president's priorities

(58:46):
in terms of intelligence, naturally your intelligence community is going
to act like any bureaucracy. It's going to do what
is in the interest of those who are atop it.
Fred Flights has a lifetime of experience working intel, spent
twenty five years in it, working in analysis and administration
at CIA, at DIA, at Department of State, on the

(59:07):
House Intelligence Committee Intelligence Committee, and most recently as chief
of staff for the Trump Administration's National Security Council. And
it's imperative to point out that Flights is from the
intelligence community, but not of it. That's a crucial, crucial distinction.
Someone who understands how the sausage is made, but themselves
are not swamped by the swamp fights himself, like the

(59:32):
President actually recommended doing away with the very position Director
of National Intelligence that he might be tabbed for that's
a pretty good criteria. If you're looking at anyone to
lead any agency, if they want to abolish that agency,
probably not a bad criteria. Flights called for streamlining the
ODNI if we're not going to abolish it, because he

(59:53):
felt that it would combat the bloat and consequent bureaucratic
stultification that is contributed to the major intelligence failures that
we've seen since nine to eleven. In spite of the
fact that ODIE and I was created to help mitigate
for those failures, to coordinate the agencies so that information
wasn't lost, it was coordinated, and they acted with one voice.

(01:00:16):
Flights himself has warned about politicization of the IC that
he's seen during his time in it, and it's been
clear that the politicization of the IC when you consider
the public displays of hostility the President Trump has faced
from his own principles or former principles, and the torrent
of leaks leveled against the Trump administration, Flights understands that

(01:00:36):
there need to be, as he puts it, quote, strong
leaders in top intelligence positions who will act independently and
are not beholden to the intelligence community unquote very infrequent
that you see someone potentially tab to lead a community
that they worked in, who is looking for someone that
takes a perspective antithetical to it. But that should be
what we want. We should want to shake up the bureaucracy.

(01:00:58):
That's what President Trump was elected to do. Flights has
also attacked political correctness, and in fact, if you want
to look at his independence or his attack on political correctness,
this is someone who, though we hold, held these very
senior positions throughout his career, oppose the Russian collusion hysteria
narrative from the start. He challenged that infamous January six,

(01:01:20):
twenty seventeen Intelligence Community assessment, which basically said Houdin was
working to advance Trump's campaign and help him get elected
on the like he questioned it. He said, and I'll
quote here, the unusual way of the ICA that Intelligence
community assessment was drafted raised his major questions as to
whether it was rigged by the Obama administration to produce

(01:01:42):
conclusions that would discredit the election outcome and mister Trump's presidency.
And this, ultimately, by the way, was proven out by
the House Intelligence Committee's report on Russian Active Measures. It
showed that that Intelligence community assessment, was deficient, was politicized,
was framed to make Trump look bad, to make it
look like there was collusion to fit this narrative. So
we should want someone who oversees our intelligence community, who

(01:02:05):
would see something like the whole Russian collusion hysteria with
queer eyes, who wouldn't buy into that narrative, in spite
of the fact that he spent all this time in
the national security and foreign policy establishment. And incidentally, this
is particularly important because if and when Attorney General bar
gets the bottom of what transpired, even if we get
a fraction of declassification and what we should have, there

(01:02:29):
will probably need to be massive reform, and someone like
Flights and what he has advocated publicly, which most people
wouldn't do if they were interested in position like this,
you'll need someone like him to oversee that reform. It
also bears noting Flight spent his career focused on two
issues North Korea Iran. Those might be the two most
pressing issues that we face outside of China, which will

(01:02:51):
talk about at length during the show tonight. He served
as the top brand on the House Intelligence Committee as
a staffer from six to eleven, in particular on these
two issues, the Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs. He
served John Bolton as chief of Staff of the State
Department when Bolton was under Secretary of State for Arms Control,

(01:03:12):
and he's been a dogged supporter of the President's maximum
Pressure campaign in addition to serving him at the National
Security Council. This is someone who supports the President's America
First agenda. President shouldn't have to ask for much more
than that among those leading our most essential agencies. I

(01:03:34):
believe that Flights would make a tremendous Director of National Intelligence,
and I wanted to spend some time talking about it
because it is such a vital position for our country.
It's so imperative that the president's prerogatives when it comes
to our national security prerogatives and priorities are met. He
has to have his team in place. Personnel is policy.

(01:03:57):
This has been wangartan in for Buck Sexton on the
buck Sexton Show. Back after this, This is Ben Wangaran
in for Buck Sexton on the buck Sexton Show. All Right,
we were just talking about the intelligence community, politicization, the
need for the President's policies to be met in every agency.
I mean, is that so much to ask incidentally, for

(01:04:17):
president to have people that actually agree with him in
the most critical positions. Remember that these folks who run bureaucracies,
they are delegated tasks by we the people. Ultimately they're unelected,
but we elect the people who appoint them, and so
they represent the agenda that we voted on, or they should,

(01:04:40):
and if not, changes must be made. I talked a
little bit about the pressing issues of North Korea and Iran,
but I mentioned that of all the issues, and I've
talked about this at length here on this program before,
China is the seminole long term issue facing America in

(01:05:00):
national security and foreign policy, and it bears noting. And
the President has not gotten credit for this, with a
handful of exceptions of articles that the foreign policy establishment
has sort of come on board at least directionally with
where the President is on this, and that is no
small feat. That is kind of a remarkable thing, especially

(01:05:22):
because if you go back and look at the president's
comments on China, he's been remarkably consistent for at least
a couple of decades. The Trump administration put into writing
in its National Security Strategy the idea that the foreign
policy and national security establishment got China wrong wrong. All

(01:05:43):
the experts what they told us about China's peaceful rise,
that China would liberalize politically, socially, culturally if we just
had quote unquote free trade didn't work out that way
with them, that China would get rich and all of
a sudden, because you're a rich country, then you suddenly

(01:06:03):
want freedom. They said, economic liberalization would lead to political liberalization.
In fact, the opposite has been true. What really happened
over the last forty years was that we helped subsidize,
we helped invest in, We helped China, by dint of

(01:06:25):
their stealing of our technology, intellectual property, and the like,
we helped recapitalize and build a communist regime into our
number one competitor and adversary in the globe. We built that,
we did build that. We granted them access to the

(01:06:46):
world financial system, the global trade architecture, all of these
institutions that America built, that America defends, that America bears
the vast majority of the burdens of And what did
we get for our generosity? And of course, look, this
was this was a relationship that was viewed as a
matter of national self interest. Will help make China rich.

(01:07:10):
Maybe they'll enter you know this quote unquote community of Nations,
be less hostile, liberalized, turn away from communism. Perhaps meanwhile,
we'll get cheap goods. We'll be able to outsource to China,
which will help the top and bottom lines of our businesses.
Everyone wins, except, you know, those industries that were creatively

(01:07:31):
destroyed in the process. And that's a whole debate in
of itself. But at its highest level, this failed because
we empowered now our biggest adversary, a nation that wants
to be the dominant player within the next thirty years,
and probably it'll probably be less than that the way
they're growing, Not that you can trust their numbers. So

(01:07:53):
let's assume that, you know, China isn't as big as
they portray themselves to be. Communists have a way of
cooking the books. We provided China with the technology, with
the funds, We created this whole entree for them, and
they took advantage of us. And now we deal with

(01:08:15):
the scenario where trillions of dollars of global trade go
through waters that China claims are theirs. They buzz our ships,
they buzz our plans, they engage in some of the
greatest attacks from an intelligence perspective, from an espionage perspective,
that we've ever witnessed. When you know, when they talk
about something like a cyber warfare nine to eleven, well,

(01:08:39):
China hacked the records of twenty to twenty five million
US government employees, their most sensitive information, their applications for
national security positions, and those applications, by the way, expose
your most compromising or potentially compromising information precisely because the
government wants to know that they are vetting for and

(01:09:00):
not hiring people who could potentially be leverage, potentially be
manipulated in order to advance the aims of our adversaries.
China hacked install those records so they have that most
compromising information on millions of Americans and by extension, the
people that those Americans flag within those documents as well.

(01:09:22):
They're nuclear power, they're developing all sorts of asymmetric warfare capabilities.
This is the major long term threat and what Donald
Trump has done, and he should run on this because
it truly is on the merits. The most important thing
he's done on the national security and foreign policy side,
in my view, is he has started to turn the

(01:09:44):
ship around and has actually unified to some extent the
entire political establishment around the fact that China does pose
the gravest threat to America and we need to have
a comprehensive strategy in order to counter them. That is
all facets. That's in the realm of ideas, that's in
the realm of hard military power, soft power, information warfare,

(01:10:06):
technological strength, artificial intelligence. We're fighting over space technology right now.
We are fighting in every single realm. And the next
hour we're going to talk with someone who played a
central role in helping develop this strategy of competition with
the Chinese and who has focused in particular on the

(01:10:29):
technological realm and the telecommunications realm. In that next half hour,
we're going to talk about Huawei in particular, and Huawei
is perhaps the most important enterprise within the whole Chinese
Communist Party framework when it comes to competing with us.
If you control global telecommunications, you control the transfer of information,

(01:10:50):
you really control the world. We'll talk about that in
the next hour. This has Ben wangeron in for Buck
Sexton on the buck Sexton Show. Back after this this
has been Wan Are in for Buck Sexton on the
buck Sexton show, all right, Well, at the end of
the last hour, I was speaking about President Trump's comprehensive

(01:11:10):
effort to counter China, which I believe and I think
it's clear is the greatest geopolitical threat ultimately to America
over the long run and in the short term as well.
And I was speaking a bit about global telecommunications and
Huawei's role in particular as central to China's efforts in

(01:11:30):
global telecommunications and ultimately, as we'll get to in a minute,
as well national security, Huawei as the and essential, if
not the essential entity therein And someone who has spent
a great deal of time focusing on the problem of
China writ large, in particular global telecommunications, the threat pose there,
and the challenges that we face and Huawei specifically, is

(01:11:54):
General Rob Spaulding, who's a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.
He's also served in senior positions of strategy and plomacy
within the Department of Defense and Department of State for
more than twenty six years. Most recently, he was a
crucial member of the Trump National Security Council, where he
was a senior director for Strategy and played a critical

(01:12:14):
role in the drafting of the Trump administration national security strategy,
of which I spoke a moment ago, General Spotting, Thanks
so much for joining us. Glad to be here, Thank you.
So let's start at a very high level, which is
we hear all the time and the media focuses in
particular about this concept of a trade war or trade

(01:12:34):
competition with the Chinese. Is it fair to suggest that
trade issues are just one part of a multifaceted, whole
of government strategy the Trump administration is trying to implement
and execute to counter China. Yeah, and I think the
whole terminology trade war actually doesn't do justice to the

(01:12:56):
level of the strategic competition that currently going on between
the US and China, and the fact it hasn't begun
just since the Trump administration. It really began, you know,
several decades ago, really at the end of the Cold War.
As a China, you know, sought strategies to figure out
how they can use the strengths that they had in

(01:13:17):
their society to get after the weakness. What they saw
where the weaknesses within the United States system and essentially
the three things that they focused on in terms of
strategic trends in history in the twenty first century, was
nuclear weapons really make war less possible between like powers

(01:13:41):
nuclear powers. Globalization allows the complete opening of the country,
and then the Internet kind of creates a binding agent
to synchronize all those actions. And so they as opposed
to the theory where globalization and the Internet we're going
the openness was going to create this opportunity to drive

(01:14:03):
democracy throughout the world. But the Chinese Communist Party saw
was that they could use openness in the Internet essentially
to drive their liberal principles worldwide. Yeah, and to that point,
they're engaged in competition on all levels, and America essentially
has not been engaged in competition. So, as you mentioned,

(01:14:25):
you know, we're now forty years from nineteen seventy nine
when we officially normalize relations, and of course Nixon went
to China prior to that. How would you assess the
current state of play in terms of our government sort
of revving up the engines to actually compete in all spheres. Well,
if you break the national security strategy down in kind

(01:14:47):
of the score elements, the first element is really realigning
democratic principles with free market principles. In other words, during
the Cold War, we only traded with democracies. At the
end of the Cold War, we opened up and we
essentially brought into totalitary regimes on the basis of an
economic theory and the social theory. The economic theory was

(01:15:08):
open markets lead to wealth. The social theory, the theory
of modernization, said that wealth leads to democracy. And so
we believe that by opening up to regimes, totalitarian regimes
like the Chinese Communist Party, that they would over time
democratize as they interacted with the US population. So the

(01:15:31):
idea of the national Spirity strategy is that's a failed
endeavor and that what we ought to do is focus
more on trading, aligning our trading, our financial our investment,
our internets with the democracy of the world. The second
is to really figure out how to create policies and
rules and regulations in an open in a globalized world

(01:15:54):
that actually allow for the United States to defend its
companies and its people in a way that allows form like,
for instance, after China entered the wto seventy eight thousand
factories clothes across the United States, three point four million
manufacturing jobs as lost. We need policies and rules and
regulations to actually allow the United States to protect its

(01:16:16):
companies and citizens. So that's the second pillar. The third
pillars really to begin to reinvest in America, and that's
really talking about infrastructure, industrial based STEM, education and R
and D. And that component of the strategy still hasn't
come into play. Would I would characterize the trade war
as trying to figure out some of those policies, rules

(01:16:38):
and regulations for protecting the nation. But really the investment
needs to happen into the into the country so that
we can begin to grow economically again, and so those
those communities that were affected by China's entry into the
W two can begin to heal. And the final is
to take those those all three of those legs and
to work on a bilateral basis without lives and partners,

(01:17:01):
to align our diplomatic efforts, our informational efforts, our economic efforts,
and our military alliances around promoting democratic principles in the
international institution. So's we're, you know, three years into a
strategy now that I think is going to take decades

(01:17:21):
to actually implement. And so I would say, based on
everything I've seen over the last six years, we've made
tremendous progress. Just in the first three years of the
Trump administration. A very basic question, and one of your
comments earlier brings this to the four is you talked
about the fact that China in a sense looked at

(01:17:42):
its strengths and weaknesses, our strengths and our weaknesses, and
has acted in its national self interest to the thousandth degree.
To that end, one of the things that China has
done is they have used capitalism, the influx of not
only technology that it was illicitly taken as well as
fairly developed and wand or taken by China, and allowed

(01:18:05):
us to capitalize them and also help build them up.
To that end, it seems very clear that any major company,
and probably every minor company as well, operating in China
does so at the pleasure of the Chinese Communist Party,
whether explicitly or implicitly. To that end, Ultimately, are we
going to have to decouple given that in a sense,

(01:18:28):
if we're doing trade with China, we're transacting with China.
Ultimately it's about benefiting the Chinese Communist Party, which is
anathema to us and opposed to us. That's really good question. So,
first of all, I don't believe it's my opinion that
there will not be a trade agreement. And the reason
there will not be a trade agreement is because structurally,

(01:18:49):
the Chinese Communist Party has basically placed their bets on
the power of the state owned enterprises within China, and
a lot of the power structures are aligned with those
state owned enterprises, and so essentially reform and opening requires
them to kind of dismantle those state owned enterprises. So
I think that they have doubled down on their method

(01:19:11):
of driving what they believe is what they call um
Chinese or socialism with Chinese characteristics. Now, I think if
you if you look at how the global economy works
and um and you say, today you know what used

(01:19:31):
to be the strength of the US system, and what
you can point to is the fact that individual motives,
profit motives were tied to US national interests. And this
is something that the Chinese figured out and dunk shout
things started and they grew, and what they what they
realize is that they could use the Chinese um large

(01:19:52):
market of one point four billion Chinese and their enormous
financial resources to incent buy businesses everywhere. So US corporations,
European corporations, Asian corporations essentially all over the globe, they
could incentivize them to seek profit by fulfilling what were

(01:20:16):
the Chinese Communist Party's national interests. And so it's actually
been quite interesting to see. It's I think it's really
an incredibly thoughtful strategy. I think they looked at how
the United States was able to use the private capital
capital system to in essentially in essence bankrupt so Union.
They saw that and they sought to replicate it. If

(01:20:37):
you look at what we have today, a really need
to spend more because of way the way they have
created a very efficient and effective and cost low cost
defense in the Pacific, and we have a very expensive
and exquisite response to that that really enables them to

(01:21:02):
not only use their economics warfare against our entire ecompany,
also incentivize our companies to do things that are not
in our own national interests, but then forced us to
drain our coffers by increasing our defense by just not
just to counter them in the Pacific, but also to
counter their proxies. I ran Russia and North Korea everywhere,

(01:21:24):
general spotting. We've got about a minute left and then
we're going to hit a break, and I'd love to
have you continue the conversation after the break. But in
the briefest of manners, what is the ultimate goal of
the Belt and Road initiative that is bandied about with
respect to China. It's still align economic and geopolitical interests

(01:21:46):
or relationships around Chinese natural interests, and how is Chinese
national interest ultimately defined the preservation of the Chinese Communist Party.
I think that's so it's such a critical point. And
not only that, but relating to that, when people talk
about the Chinese military the PLA, it's imperative to make

(01:22:06):
the distinction that that is not the military that represents
the Chinese people. It is the military that represents the
Chinese Communist Party, which is about ninety million people, who
really are the ones that dictate the direction of the country.
All Right, we're speaking with General Rob Spouting. We're going
to take a quick break and then we'll have General
Spotting back to talk a little more about China. This

(01:22:26):
is Ben Weingarten in for Buck Sexon on the Buck
Sexon Show. Back after this, Welcome back to the Buck
Sexton Show. This is Ben Weinarten in four Buck Sexton.
Appreciate you taking the time to join us on this
Friday evening. All right, we've been talking at length about China,
China's overall strategy and America's overall strategy with someone who
is actually responsible in a large part for helping formulate

(01:22:49):
our national security strategy with respect to China, and that
is General Rob Spotting, General Spotting, Thanks again for coming
on the program. Thank you. So we talked at about
a thirty thousand foot level about really what does China
want and what is America doing to try to counter
it where it clashes with the US national interest And
one of the central entities in China's long term strategy

(01:23:15):
is competition in five G fifth generation networking and telecommunications technology,
and in particular the most dominant player in that space WAWE.
What would it mean for America for Wahwei to dominate
in five G infrastructure globally. Well, that's an interesting question.

(01:23:37):
So if you look at the rise of the Internet,
in the growth of technology. Since the rise of the Internet,
there's been a convergence in technology and business models around
the four G system or the four G architecture, or
the four network, if you will. So in that system,
the network itself is a pipe in the mobile computing,

(01:23:59):
the smart own has become the platform upon which the
applications of services and the business models were built, and
that has allowed massive collaboration across many different fields and
industries and has allowed for incredible economic growth. It what
it also has enabled, with the rise of social media

(01:24:23):
and artificial intelligence and machine learning and big data analysis
is the ability to do targeted influence. And so the
ten thousand person over ten thousand person march that happened
roughly a week after the election in twenty sixteen in
New York was actually works traded by the Russians using Facebook,

(01:24:46):
so social media network, big data analysis to identify nearby
groups and then automated bots to basically encourage them to
come out in protests. And so that is I call
that is very um, you know, very you know, very

(01:25:07):
rudimentary technology in terms of what can be done with
the convergence of this technology going forward with five G.
In four G, you could opt out by not carrying
a smartphone. In five G we go from ten thousand
connections per square mile to three million connections per square miles.
Now you're not going to get you another two million,

(01:25:28):
nine hundred and ninety thousand smart smartphones out there what
you're going to get are all these devices and Internet
of things that are going to be surrounding cities, and
they're gonna they're gonna track you, they're gonna identify you.
And so when you could where you could opt out
in the four G world, in the five G world,
you're not going to have the opportunity to opt out.

(01:25:49):
So China's using that capability by deploying technology, the internet
technology of five G globally to be able to do
widespread survey length and then also to do targeted influence.
But finally, because the things that are going to be
connected to the networker machine, some of which have the

(01:26:09):
weight and mass to to kill you, to have the
ability to I believe, launch targeted attacks if the if
the need arises. But far more pervasive is the association
with all of these things in a new systemized social
networking or social um. What what they have is called

(01:26:30):
a social credit score. So they use this and I
call it six sigma fascism because they're they're seeking to
automate control of their society by systematically removing the non
conformists and society by tracking them, by collecting data about them,
and by using the business models that were created by

(01:26:51):
Amazon and Facebook and Google to incentivize conforming behavior and
then to punish you by excluding you from that world
if you don't suform. I think it's critical to point
out that we have real, live case studies right now
going on, both in mainland China and beyond in terms
of what happens when you live at the mercy effectively

(01:27:16):
of the Chinese Communist Party, which, as you've just stated,
is not only widespread surveillance but also ranking its citizens
based upon that surveillance, and as well all of the
potential problems that one might face from the perspective of
cyber attacks, and one can imagine all sorts of other
nightmare scenarios when China controls your infrastructure, particularly your networking

(01:27:37):
telecommunications infrastructure. And I think it bears noting that several
nations in China's orbit have refused to allow Huawei to
build their five G infrastructure. But all that said, even
if Huawei was completely excommunicated from the Western world, isn't
it a fact that the parts that go into not

(01:27:58):
only the infrastructure it's self, but many of our networking
items as well have Chinese parts in them and do
allow backdoors anyway. Yeah, and it's important to note that
there are no longer because of predicatory economics from the Chinese. No,
there are no longer any equipment manufacturers that are from

(01:28:19):
the United States. They all went out of business. So
there's there's First of all, there's that. And if you
think about globalization, is really about converging the standards around
an agreed upon a set of recommendations, both at the
industry level, so that's three GPP forum and then at
the international level at the ITU. So right now, what

(01:28:42):
happened is with five G China has sought to dominate
five G standards. So we recently saw where a Nokia
Nokia phone sold into the European market. We're sending data
back to China. Now, why was that happening? General Spotting. Sorry,
we're gonna have to leave it right there. Thank you
so much for joining the program. This is Ben Weegardon

(01:29:03):
in for Buck Sexon on the Buck Sex and Show.
Back after this. This has Ben Weegarden in for Buck
Sexton on the Buck Sexton Show. Allright, Earlier in the episode,
we talked a bit about we talked more than a
bit about the squad versus Trump twenty twenty all the
politics of it, and then a little bit of the
broader ideological issues that are really at the core of

(01:29:26):
the divide in this country, and there actually divides within
both parties. I've pointed out repeatedly that there's a burgeoning
civil war on the left, and we also have riffs
on the right, although people are getting together and supporting candidates. Ultimately,
it's interesting that the left is sort of having the
equivalent of something like their Tea Party moment, or maybe

(01:29:48):
even something like a newt Gangridge storming the gates moment.
But on our side, on the conservative side, there continues
to be fractures over both tactics and ideology, and it's
import not to just talk about why we oppose the
views on the left of the squad and their accolytes,
but also what we believe in and where we go
from here, not just over the next six years, but

(01:30:11):
beyond and here to join me and talk about this
the conservative side of things is Josh Hammer, who is
editor at large for The Daily Wire and also of
counsel at First Liberty Institute, the Texas based religious liberty
Legal defense From Josh, thanks so much for joining us
always a pleasure show with you, Ben, So, Josh, you
were at the National Conservatism Conference this week. What was

(01:30:34):
the premise of that conference? So, I kind of Jesus
conference and a piece for the Daily Wire a little
over a month ago when I build it as the
most important intellectual gathering for the American right in all
twenty nineteen. So you know, suffice to say, I had
high expectations for it, and it really did live up

(01:30:55):
to expectations. It was organized by two gentlemen in Joram Hazzoni,
who is a Jerusalem based political philosopher, as well as
David Brogue, who was based here in the US, formerly
executive director of Christians United for Israel and currently heading
up the Macabe Task Force, which is another anti anti

(01:31:15):
Semitism group. And the premise of the conference was essentially
trying to provide an intellectual framework for the present political moment.
So in twenty sixteen, from my perspective, then the election
of Donald Trump and Brexit were really two key events
that took the political landscape and intellectual political landscape by storm.

(01:31:39):
And I think in a lot of ways, a lot
of thinkers or have given serious thoughts to what happened
to what the people and these two major phenomena essentially
told their fellow voters and their elites. And we're now
trying to provide a framework to basically account for or

(01:32:00):
political reality. And your Manzoni in particular has been a
super super traditionalist conservative thinker for decades now. He despises
John Locke with a burning passion. He's all about Emminburke
and very traditionalist conservative thought. And this conference was really
trying to provide an alternative to neoliberalism, to libertarianism, classical liberalism,

(01:32:26):
even neo conservatism, with a frequent but of jokes at
this conference. And what we're trying to do here is
provide a nationalist flavor of conservatism. And nationalism, of course
is such a deeply deeply divisive term for any but
the organizer of those conference are really trying to bring

(01:32:47):
it back and providing more national solidarity framework, a more
of a common good oriented framework in sharp distinction to
this kind of libertarian view of conservatism favors individual liberty
above all else. So that's what we were trying to
do with this conference. And interestingly, the conference brought together
people who on their face might appear to be at

(01:33:09):
odds have actually duked it out in the intellectual sphere,
but clearly there are ideals that unite them. So, for example,
John Bolton and Tucker Carlson were two of the keynote
speakers during the conference. What would you say you saw
that unifies these people who seemingly take disparate positions, and
you know Tucker Carlson, for example, Will Savage, John Bolton

(01:33:31):
on an almost a nightly basis, So what unifies them? Yeah,
it's really interesting. Foreign policy was kind of the one
in areas I thought was probably most divisive. I think
a lot of people who called themselves nationalists can actually
agree to disagree within what that actually looks like on
a foreign policy landscape. But you know, as you and
I both know, Ben, even though John Balton excusing, even

(01:33:54):
though John Bolton is very much a hawk, he is
not a neo conservative. He has actually always reputia in servitism.
In fact, he has never supported any sort of moralistic interventionism,
never support any sort of nation building crusade trying to
sculpt Madisonian democracy out of a Sharia desert landscape. And
he obviously supported the Iraq War, and he has supported

(01:34:17):
sundry interventions, but he's always done that out of a
concrete focus on what he views as being in the
best narrow interests of the United States. And he was
never a liberal mugged by reality either for that matter, correct,
absolutely correct. Going back to his time at Yale an
undergrad he was a member, I believe, of the Party
of the Right, the right most party of the Yale
Political Union. So he's a very very lengthy history on

(01:34:38):
the American right. And Tucker and Bolton obviously do not
the odd ion foreign policy, but they very much do
see eye to eye on upstream premises, and I think
some most premises are you know, they both believe in
the political philosophy of Emin Burke at the Emin Burke Foundation,
with actually the group that organizes conference, so Burke played

(01:35:00):
a huge role, I think, kind of looming in the
background of a lot of the speakers. Thought. Bolton himself
actually in his Q and A with Krista Muth, referenced
Burke as actually a guiding light forrest foreign policy. But
I thought was actually super fascinating. So even though some
of the people disagree on policy, where they come down

(01:35:21):
similarly is that the way they view the ultimate goal
of the American polity is through a narrow national self
interest lens. That was really the unifying team of the
entire conference. I think it's it's worth pointing out how
ironic it is that the non intellectual, pragmatist dealmaker, at

(01:35:41):
least as he portrayed himself, Donald Trump, is the one
that shook up the intellectual sphere and actually caused people
on our side of things to question or try to
understand and interpret what it is that unifies Trump's thought,
What it is that the electorate saw in Trump that
appealed to them and allowed allowed Trump to earn the
consent of the governed. I think it's very interesting just

(01:36:04):
to point that out. I also think it's critical that
we point out or ask the question rather, how do
we define nationalism? How was nationalism defined at this conference?
Because defining our terms is probably one of the things
we most sorely lacked, both in the intellectual sphere and
in the political sphere as well. Yeah, the defunding nationalism
is crucial because in orders to kind of resuscitate this term,

(01:36:27):
we first need to identify what it is. And you've
all Levin, who's a brilliant political theorists. You've all come
from a slightly less nationalist, slightly more classy liberal frame
of frame of view. I would say he was. His
remarks were inundated with kind of questioning what nationalism itself is.

(01:36:49):
But Joram Hazzoni, who was again the brainchild of this
entire conference. His book, which won the Isis Conservative Book
of the euro Award this past year, came out of
last summer, was called the Virtue of Nationalism. So he
evolved all else has really done the intellectual groundwork and
kind of reviving this term and making it basically a

(01:37:09):
healthy and salutary term mean contradistinction to the way Americans
always learned in high school and being affiliated with pre
World War One belicostasy and then the eventual rise of
the World War two era fascists. So the way that
Hazzoni defines nationalism is in direct opposition to imperialism, and
imperialism is a willingness to project, either by ideas or

(01:37:35):
by military force, the norms that dictate a nation unto
other nations and other distinct people. Whereas the nationalist tradition
recognizes that humanity is best governed at a local level.
We are best not governed by transnational, unaccountable institutions such
as the United Nations, the EU, NATO, International Criminal Court, etc.

(01:37:59):
And that is that this is the natural state of
affairs that humans naturally congregate and like muddy nations that
are that are tied down by a common culture and
values and norms, and then this is just the best
general global order by which to govern all of our affairs.
So that was the pretty anodyne, innocent view of nationalism.
I would say that was pretty pervasive at the conference. Josh,

(01:38:22):
we've got about a minute lefter, a little bit less here.
Do you see there being a coalescing among intellectuals on
the conservative side. It's clear that among the Republican electorate
there's almost unanimity with respect to President Trump. Do you
see the fractures ultimately healing on the conservative side or
is it going to continue to fracture. It's a great question,

(01:38:45):
you know. I think back to that X Y scatter
plot that everyone has seen that kind of breaks down
economics and social liberalism. Conservatism libertarianism if we define it
as economic conservatism and social liberalism, is like three to
four percent of the voters. So even though it is
predominance in the college dorm room and in some squats
of kind of the elite quote unquote right, it is

(01:39:07):
not popular at all, and that divide is only going
to get starker. And I really think that what we
saw at this National Conservatives and Conference really is the
vanguard of where we're going. And I Centator Holly was
the only elected official to speak here. I think he
is leading this vanguard. And I think that it really
in the end, you're kind of going to have to
get You're gonna have to get on board or just

(01:39:28):
miss the train, because this really is I think where
we're going. On that note, we've been speaking with Josh Hammer,
editor at large of The Deli Wire and a great
prolific writer. He's also of counsel at First Liberty Institute
at the Texas based religious Liberty legal defense firm. Josh,
thanks so much for joining us. You got it, Ben,
And this is Ben Weingarton in four Buck Sexon on
the Buck Sexon Show back right after this, Welcome back

(01:39:49):
to the Buck Sexon Show. This is Ben Weinarten in
four Buck Sexon. Appreciate your spending a few hours here
on this Friday night and hope you all are getting
ready for a great weekend with your families and friends.
I want to take a moment before we conclude the
show to look back on events from fifty years ago,

(01:40:09):
a seminal event actually in American history that was overshadowed
by a couple of other things like man walking on
the moon. Also the Mets winning the World Series, the
Miracle Mets, which jeez, it seems like it was five
hundred years ago. What happened fifty years ago yesterday was
chap Aquittic, the scandal of all scandals involving the Kennedy family,

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a family whose entire legacy has been in mashed in scandal.
I saw a tweet yesterday from AP Images that said
this quote. Fifty years ago today, Senator Edward M. Kennedy
left a party on chapa Quittic Island near month of
his vineyard with Mary Joe Capecney. Twenty eight Sometime later,
Kennedy's car went off a bridge into the water. Kennedy

(01:40:55):
was able to escape, but Copecney drowned. AP left out
a few elements of this story here, and it shows
you perfectly how the left, how the media, which is
really just the mouthpiece of the left, and this is
ap images for God's sake, whitewash's history when it serves
their narrative. Kennedy left a party with someone. Sometime later

(01:41:19):
his car went off a bridge into the water. As
if he was not driving the car, he was not
responsible for getting behind the wheel that night after a party,
someone notorious for drinking and womanizing, someone who may may
very well have been involved in a relationship, an extramarital
relationship with Mary Joe Coopecney. Sometime later, his car went
off the bridge. Kennedy was able to escape, but Copecney drowned.

(01:41:41):
That's an interesting way of framing what happened that evening.
I find it amazing that whitewashing juxtaposed with what we're
seeing now, which is that all of the candidates on
the left for president are going out there and trying
to apologize for all the positions they held that two
seconds ago. We're fine, but now we'll bring the social

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justice warrior mob or Antifa or the like outside their
houses to try to tear them down. People are apologizing
over what their ancestors did generations and generations ago, things
that they're not culpable for things they may not have
even known until they probably had an oppo research or
do the research for them to figure it out. We're

(01:42:24):
in a time today where what are kind of the
dominant trends in culture and society on the left, in
particular me too. There's this focus on power relationships. There's
a focus on privilege and mail privilege and in particular
white male privilege. On the Kennedy family personifies it embodies it.

(01:42:46):
But you will see almost nothing about chap aquittic in
the news. But for the kind of whitewashing that we
have right here, why why is that the case? Why
isn't a microphone in every candidate's face asking do you
denounce ted Kennedy, who drove off a bridge killed this woman,
And it appears, based upon what the inquest found after
the fact, allowed her to suffocate when he could have

(01:43:08):
gone to authorities and potentially saved her life. In fact,
let me just read quickly from the inquest. This is
from a diver who was on the scene in court
filings quote from John Ferrar. It looked as if she
were holding herself up to get a last breath of air.
It was a consciously assumed position She didn't drown. She
died of suffocation in her own air void. It took
her at least three or four hours to die. I

(01:43:30):
could have had her out of that car twenty five
minutes after I got the call, But he didn't call.
He being Ted Kennedy. Ted Kennedy didn't call anyone in
terms of the authorities until the next day. He did
get his friends together, he did reach out to lawyers,
he did try to cover himself. But meanwhile, this woman
drowned and died. And by all accounts it appears that

(01:43:50):
if he had gone to the authorities sooner, her life
could have been saved. And said he swam to safety,
she died. Did he pay a price for this? Well,
he was never president, but in the annals of history
he is called the lion of the Senate. This was
someone who is a drinker, a carouser, someone who, according
to one of the most horrible accounts that's almost unreadable

(01:44:12):
on air. Believe it was in GQ talked about him
and Chris Dodd, his beloved liberal colleague, forced themselves on women.
How could it be that the hagiography The hagiography continues
with Ted Kennedy to today. I would suggest it's this.
All of this is ultimately about power. It's a facade

(01:44:33):
for power. When they talk about being virtuous and they
talk about treating people with dignity and they try to
call people deplorable, that's projection. There are people who are
deplorable in their party. They're not shunned, their names aren't
taken off buildings, their statues aren't torn down. All the
matters ultimately is did that person win? Did that person

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push the ball down the field for our cause? Mary
Jocopecni was just one of the millions of victims of
leftist policy in the fifty years since nineteen sixty nine,
since chap Aquittic. But it's always supposedly they're good intentions
that seem to matter. Ted Kennedy was the liberal lion

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of the Senate, that's all that mattered. Ultimately. If he
was a terrible person in his personal life didn't matter.
And obviously we can separate the personal from the political,
but they have created that standard where they are one
and the same, at least when it comes to wielding
it as a cudgel against their political adversaries. And by
the way, Kennedy really colluded with the Russian. So let's
really talk about projection here. I think this is a

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fitting analogy for what the left has done. It's all
about good intentions, but ultimately people get hurt. On that note,
we need to defeat them every way we can, starting
with the ideas and ending at the ballot box. This
has been Ben Wangeren in for Buck Sex, and I
want to thank Buck sexon for giving me the chance
to fill in. I want to thank you for taking
this time and sharing it with me. Have a great weekend.

(01:45:58):
Thank you so much.