From Moscow to MAGA: National Security in the Age of Trump

Episode Transcript
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Jack Hopkins (00:00):
Hello and welcome to the Jack Hopkins Show podcast
.
I'm your host, Jack Hopkins.
Today's guest is John Sipher, former CIA station chief and
national security expert.
John Seifer is a retired memberof the CIA Senior Intelligence
Service, with over 28 yearsexperience in the US
intelligence community.
During his career, he served inmultiple overseas postings,

(00:24):
including as CIA station chief,and led covert operations across
Europe, asia and the MiddleEast.
A recognized expert inespionage, russian intelligence
and national security, seiferplayed a key role in managing
and developing the CIA's Russiaprograms, including efforts to

(00:44):
counter foreign influence andprotect US interests abroad.
He also held senior leadershiproles in the CIA's clandestine
service, focusing on humanintelligence operations.
He is the co-founder ofSpycraft Entertainment, a
production company that works tobring real intelligence stories
to the public through media andfilm.

(01:04):
His writing has appeared inmajor outlets like the New York
Times, the Atlantic and JustSecurity, and he is frequently
interviewed on nationaltelevision and podcasts for his
insight into covert operations,russian strategy and threats to
democratic institutions.
This is one of the longestpodcast episodes I've ever

(01:24):
recorded and I think you'll bepleasantly surprised at the
discussions that we have frombeginning to end.
John's a really knowledgeableguy and, as it turns out a
really likable guy as well.
I think you'll enjoy this asmuch as I did.
Let's get right into it, okay?
So, john boy, there's a lot totalk about going on in the world

(01:48):
right now.
I think the first thing I wantto ask you what's the stated
purpose, what's the outcome ofthe steady state?
There's a lot of smart peoplethat have come together on this.
So what?
Have a lot of smart people thendecided, hey, this is what we
need to do?
No, I appreciate you that.
You asked Essentially as agroup of smart people, then
decided, hey, this is what weneed to do.

John Sipher (02:04):
No, I appreciate you.
The US essentially is a group ofpeople who are national
security professionals,intelligence, diplomacy,
military, you know, areconcerned about sort of the
erosion of knowledge about thesecurity state and erosion of,
you know, some democratic andrule of law principles that back
up the security state, somedemocratic and rule of law

(02:26):
principles that back up thesecurity state.
I mean, I think there's often amythology out there that you
know the intelligence sort ofoperates on its own and it's
sort of a rogue element that'sdoing things, but we really rely
on, you know, a very regulatedrule of law that makes it clear
where our boundaries are Like.
I think a successfulintelligence agency ought to
work at the boundaries.
We're about protecting Americancitizens.
We're about making sure thatyou know we're out there in

(02:48):
places that are hard to get todoing the things that Americans
need done, and sometimes thatinvolves, you know, a lot of
flexibility, administration andessentially, the American people
, and so there is some concernnow, especially with this

(03:08):
administration, that they don'ttake those things as seriously
and that they want, you know,intelligence and diplomacy to be
essentially a personal weaponor a personal arm of this party
or that party or theadministration, and we feel that
, you know, we are nonpartisanprofessionals, we work for the
American people, we take an oathto the Constitution and so
therefore, we want to be.
You know, now that we'reretired we're all retired we

(03:30):
want to help inform the Americanpeople of that viewpoint.

And do you find that, with all of you being
retired, that perhaps it createsa freedom of thought and
expression within the group,because you aren't bound by all
of the can't-dos that you wouldhave been when you were?

Well, certainly, you know, I took an obligation
to protect classifiedinformation and so, for example,
I write a lot of opinion piecesand I, you know, I work with
Hollywood trying to do movies.
So as part of that, when Iwrite things, I have an
obligation to send it to theCentral Intelligence Agency for
them to make sure there'snothing classified in what I
write.
And it's the same thing when Ispeak.
I certainly can explain what wedid, how we did it, how, in

(04:10):
what milieu it all works.
But I'm not going to give upthose kind of secrets that could
put people in harm's way, andso that's not a problem.
So, you know, I think in manyways, at least in the
intelligence field.
You know, when I was growing upit was very much, you know, we
operate in secrecy and we don'thave really an obligation to the
American public to explain thework we did, whereas our leaders

(04:31):
might do so in the Congress,you know, and have an obligation
to that, and I think it wasGeneral Hayden, former NSA
director, cia director, airForce general, who started to
say you know, we have anobligation when we retire to try
to get involved in thediscussion to help Americans
understand what theirintelligence services do.
These are powerfulorganizations law enforcement

(04:53):
for the FBI, cia andintelligence and other parts of
the intelligence community.
We have obligation to try toexplain to Americans what we do
and why.
You know, because you know weoperate in secrecy.
It's easy to come up with allkinds of crazy conspiracy
theories, and so I think youknow those of us who are retired
try to do our best to do that.
Now, of course, like in anyorganization, there's people who
think all kinds of things, butso, yeah, we take that seriously

(05:16):
.

And I think the steady state is one of the
groups and there's a number ofthem that you know vote vets and
some other ones that work inmilitary people who are trying
to play in that realm.
Yeah, I always find it one ofthe most challenging things when
I have somebody who's hadinvolvement with the CIA on as a
guest, because I know thefantastic stories inside their
head that are there but thatthere's no sense even asking
because there's not a chance inhell that they can tell me those
things.

Right, I think there is.
I think one of the things thathappens is if you're not paying
attention to what there is outthere publicly, you're nervous
because you don't want to putpeople at risk or say things
that are still out there.
But you see, I read a lot ofintelligence history and things,
and so a lot of things havebeen declassified.
There is a tremendous amount ofinformation that our

(06:07):
intelligence community has putout there and authors have put
out there that can provide goodexamples of things.
I think most questions can beanswered to the point where it
would be interesting to peopleand help illuminate what the
intelligence services do.
So I think it's a little bit ofa cop-out to be like I can't
talk about that, it's secret.
There's pieces around of itthat we can talk about for the
most part.

Right.
I'm not particularly immersedin this particular topic but,
for example, because everybody'sfamiliar with it, when we see
repeated redactions in anythingrelated, for example, to the
Kennedy assassination, is therein your opinion, as frustrating
as it is, is there usually goodreason for that?

in general, yeah, it's interesting.
So I, with a former colleague,we have a podcast that looks at
conspiracy theories and for thefirst couple of years we were
doing these weekly podcasts andwe would stay away from the
Kennedy assassination becausethe people who get into that are
like so, so deep in the weeds,they have all this knowledge so
that even if you try to diffuseconspiracies around it, those
people know everything.

(07:09):
And so we finally, you know,dipped our toe in to talk about
things.
But to your question, yes, youknow, I think the people who
declassify information take itvery seriously, like what we
were talking about.
I think they understand whatAmerican people nobody at the
CIA wants the American people tothink we're assassins or we're
up to problems or that we'reinvolved in killing presidents.

(07:29):
That's just nuts.
We work for presidents, we workfor American people, and so my
understanding of the fewdocuments and I don't think
there's, I think President Trumpis putting out everything that
were redacted were for a numberof reasons.
So one of the things we do whenI work overseas, like name your
place, because a lot of thiswas in Mexico, right, so say, I

(07:50):
was the chief of station, ciachief of station in Mexico and
we have some sources, and so ifPresident Kennedy was
assassinated, they would comeand say, hey, what did you know
about when Lee Harvey Oswald wasin Mexico?
And we would try to you know,make sure that we had been
written about that before.
What's out there.
But there's some things that youknow.
A good portion of theintelligence that we get you

(08:11):
know a lot of it's from spiesthat are secret.
A lot of it is from technicalstuff, but a good portion of it
is from partners like, forexample, the Mexican police or
the Mexican intelligence serviceor the Mexican president or
government.
And one of the things that wesay to people who share
information with us is if yougive us information, we will
protect that information.
Right, this isn't information Istole, this is somebody

(08:34):
offering this to the USgovernment, and so and there's
periods of time and I thinkwe've seen this now with the
Kennedy stuff is, for example,the Mexicans came to us and gave
us information on things thatwere actually would be illegal
in their country, but they gaveit to us because we had
developed such a trustingrelationship.
They had sources in the Russianembassy that were there when

(08:56):
Lee Harvey Oswald came in.
They shared it with us, butthey didn't want that to become
public because it was againstMexican law.
And then one of the things wesay is we promise that we will
never release that.
And so, frankly, now they'rereleasing it and that you know,
we gave it.
We gave it oath to those peoplethat we would not release that.
So some of the stuff that'sbeen released, you know, I can

(09:17):
understand, on one hand, thepublic's like why aren't they
doing this?
What are they hiding?
Well, we're not hiding, we'reactually trying to protect the
people that we've offeredprotection for.
And there's also another thingis there was a law I'm sorry I
won't go on too much more aboutthis no, no, no.
It was a law, I think in the90s, about releasing or getting
all the information we couldabout the Kennedy assassination.

(09:37):
And one of the things it saidis any situation of anything
about the Kennedy assassination,you need to report that through
this channel at CIAheadquarters.
So, for example, I was in theBalkans, I was working in Serbia
for a while and I remembermeeting with the head of the
Serbian security service aboutnothing to do with Kennedy.
It was about you know, what washappening in the war in
Yugoslavia and all these inBosnia.

(09:59):
But he was like he was.
He was fascinated with theKennedy stuff.
He was one of these people whoknew everything about it.
So half of our discussion wasabout the Kennedy assassination
stuff, just friendly over drinks.
And then of course we talkedabout the issues that related.
But because of the law and wetalked about the Kennedy
assassination, I had to put itin that channel.
That went in there, which meantthat the people who then looked

(10:20):
to release Kennedy informationhave this in their files.
But there's nothing in therethat actually illuminates the
Kennedy assassination and infact if that's released it gives
up secret information that thisperson shared about the Balkans
.
So all of a sudden there's allthis stuff in there that has
nothing really to do withKennedy.
But from the outside you'relike oh, you're hiding something

(10:42):
.
So I think people who areengaged in that are well-meaning
.
I don't think anyone's lookingto hide anything from the
American people.
But we're in the secrecybusiness and we've got to
protect sources that provide usinformation.
Sorry, I went on so long onthat.

Thanks for that.
That's interesting.
So when you talk about peoplewho you know, just the average
person, who a hobbyist, whomaybe with this subject doesn't
even consider themselves ahobbyist but a professional
right, like you said, they're sointo it and they know every
detail about it I would assumethat within the intelligence
field is there such a thing asoversaturation of information,

(11:21):
in that if you aren't good atsorting and creating a hierarchy
, that it can start to workagainst you.

Tell me more.
What do you mean Like?

are you talking?

specifically about the Kennedy assassination.

Yeah, yeah.
For example, where somebody whojust just the average guy,
right, and it's just that's beenhis topic of focus, says that
he works at a factory by day andhe does this Kennedy thing by
night, and who has gathered somuch information that it's
allowed him to be able toconstruct all of these intricate

(11:53):
conspiracies.
Right, does that exist withinthe intelligence world?
But it's just that intelligencefolks are just better at
sorting the wheat from the chaff.

Well, the one thing that intelligence services do
professional intelligenceservices do very well is sort
and collect and keep information.
That's one of the things thatis sort of a superpower Like.
Decade after decade, we live inthese countries and we write
everything you know.
The one thing people don'tunderstand about the
intelligence world is we say itdidn't happen unless it's
written down and sent toheadquarters.

(12:29):
So every source I meet, everyperson who might be a source I
meet, every bit of informationwhen I'm out is written and sent
to headquarters and it's sortedin different places.
It is sort of kept together.
So there's a tremendous amountof information.
Then we have a professionalanalytic cadre who goes over
this stuff and tries to put itin context, because we're
getting stuff from satellitesand diplomats and spies and all

(12:52):
these type of things.
I worked in the spy side of theagency, living overseas running
human spies and so, yes, there'sa tremendous amount of
information and the sorting andanalysis and putting that into
context is a huge, huge issue.
But I do think that's the onething that intelligence services
do very well and it's going tobe interesting to see how they
use that massive amount of datanow with AI, because we're

(13:16):
collecting every day like moreinformation.
Like 10 times the amount ofinformation in the Library of
Congress is coming into ourintelligence services like every
day, and so there's a lot ofstuff that just doesn't even get
seen or read by a human,because there's just so much
stuff coming in, and so we'vealways been good at sorting that
and getting it in front of theeyeballs that need to see it.
But it's going to be harder andharder as time goes on, because

(13:38):
we're also getting data notjust from human spies but from
satellites and electroniccommunications and all these
other kinds of things.
On the other hand, I would justadd to that with the Kennedy
assassination stuff, for example.
So yeah, like I worked in theCIA for a long time, if I
thought the CIA was involved inkilling Kennedy, I would.
I would think that was horrificand I would say so publicly,

(13:58):
even if I got in trouble for it.
And frankly, everybody who'sworking is focused on what
they're doing.
Now we're trying to.
There's so many threats outthere there's North Korea,
what's happening in Iran andSyria, has Ukraine, russia.
Like nobody has time really togo back and dig into these old
stories, except for that cadrethat focuses on declassifying

(14:20):
old information.

Right, which is that's part of why I asked about
that.
I kind of wanted to set thestage for a current day question
that involves some of thosesame concepts.
To your knowledge, has thereever been a US president that
has had as much non-official asmuch non-official contact with

(14:49):
someone like Putin.

That's interesting.
So you know a lot of ourpresidents.
Obviously they've had largepublic lives before they were
presidents.
You know Eisenhower obviouslywas in the military huge amount
of contacts.
You know Nixon was a careerpolitician, traveled the world,
sort of an expert in writtenbooks.
You know most of those people.
When they came into governmentthey had that knowledge and

(15:15):
background to help them.
You know better at what theywere doing.
And then when they got into thegovernment they worked with the
people around them the securityadvisor, the security state,
the intelligence diplomats toput that into it.
But when they were presidentsit's rare for them to have
one-on-one meetings and if theydid it would just be for a
specific purpose, to discusssomething so that it could be
written and categorized latelyand put into the system.

(15:38):
Because the goal is obviously tocreate foreign policy that keep
Americans safe.
There shouldn't be secrets thatjust are personal in nature.
I mean presidents have todevelop good relationships with
foreign leaders.
That's what we want and sothere is some of that.
That's not necessary to be partof the public record.
But we've created a system thatyou know if you're working for

(15:58):
the American people and you'vetaken an oath of constitution to
include the president.
You know that information itbelongs to the public.
Now some of it can be secret,but then it has a series of
oversight.
You know the Congress has arole in that, and the Justice
Department and others to makesure that it's treated properly.
And so, yeah, the relationshipwith Trump and Putin it's hard

(16:20):
to say because essentially, yeah, Trump has met Putin, he's met
him personally and publicly, buthe because, essentially, yeah,
trump has met Putin, he's methim personally and publicly, but
he still, I think, reallymisunderstands Putin, like he
doesn't have much of a knowledgeof sort of the history and the
kind of things that have gone onwith Putin.
But, to be honest, otherpresidents have been pretty bad
in terms of understanding anddealing with Putin too,

(16:40):
democrats and Republicans, Ihave to say.

Putin too, democrats and Republicans, I
have to say Safe to say and Ithink this is kind of general
knowledge, but to drill down alittle deeper safe to say that
Vladimir Putin is a dangeroushuman being in his cunningness
and in his intellect, combinedwith his former experience with

(17:03):
KGB, that there's probably neverjust a casual conversation
between Putin and someone else.
There's always an end goal andeach thing that's said, question
asked, question answered, isall to move the ball to the next
yard marker.

I think that's a very astute thing to say.
Putin was a career KGB officer.
He was trained in sort ofmanipulation.
He's also very Russian.
There's a long Russian historyof under the czars and under the
Soviet state a security state,a security service.
That's all about keeping theleadership in power and
therefore subverting theirenemies and keeping them off

(17:43):
balance.
So they use propaganda anddisinformation and deception,
agitation all these things thatwe've seen in the last few years
, to include assassination, allthis kind of stuff.
And so Vladimir Putin isabsolutely never above using
lies or using subversion ortrickery or manipulating people
to get what he wants.
And so, yeah, that notion thatyou can sort of trust Vladimir

(18:05):
Putin we've had now more thantwo decades of him in power.
We have complete patterns thatare very clear.
So it's very surprising stillto see people who you know
listen to what he says andbelieve it rather than look at
it in the longer period of whatwe have about Vladimir Putin.
So, yeah, I agree with you.

I always chuckle, as I can imagine some people you
know do when Donald Trump sayshow good of a friend Vladimir
Putin are.
That may or may not be his trueperception of the relationship,
but I can only imagine thatfrom Putin's perspective.
There's not a friendship there,or at least not described as we
would.

Yeah, he wants to play.
If Trump wants to think he'sgot a friendship, putin's going
to play along.
You know, trump is frankly nothard to read.
So Trump believes he has a sortof old 1970s view that Russia's
this big power, economic power.
If we just get along with them,it would benefit us financially
.
I mean, frankly, the Russianeconomy is the size of Italy or

(19:04):
Portugal.
It's not a huge, you know, it'syou know, and they're involved
in all this sort of nefariousstuff.
They're undermining all of sortof the Western states and our
allies as well as the UnitedStates.
So he's really not a friend.
But if he understands thatTrump wants to see him that way,
he will present himself thatway.
And so, yeah, I think in thisgame Vladimir Putin has been so

(19:26):
far coming out ahead.
But at the end of the day likeI'd like to think that somebody
can talk to President Trump thatyou know we are the biggest,
most powerful country in thehistory of the world Vladimir
Putin is sort of a loser of the21st century he's actually been.
His country's been going downin power.
They've become sort of a secondrate, a second rate power
compared to China.
China controls much of whatthey're doing now, and so any

(19:50):
dictator that's been in powerfor 20 years is no longer.
People are telling him what hewants to hear.
And those kind of dictatorslike we've seen over the decades
, they think they're really inpower.
They use repression to keepthemselves in power until
someday that big branch breaksand things change quickly.

Right and along those same lines of deception
and always having an end pointwhere Putin's trying to get to.
In general, what we've seen inthe last eight, nine years since
Trump came on the scene nineyears since Trump came on the
scene how much, I guess,particularly in the last three
to four years it seems that youhear people talk about and we

(20:31):
know there are psyops, peoplewho have been involved with the
Trump administration or theTrump campaign.
If you were just to kind ofspeculate and guess how much of
how we got here is the result ofsome background psyops and how
much of it is just clumsinessand, you know, accident and

(20:54):
there was no real plan I thinkmore of the latter.

Frankly, like I study and I lived in moscow,
I've worked on russia things formany of these years.
The soviets and the russiansagain, are masters of creating a
false narrative, of creatingdisinformation, of trying to
undermine us from within, put usagainst each other, and social
media obviously makes that veryeasy.
Now, right, they can see badactors.
They don't even have to createa fake story.

(21:19):
They can see us fight eachother and they can exploit that
and amplify that and createthings anything to weaken your
enemy.
And so, yeah, they've been atthat.
But it's also hard to say that.
You know, for example, trumpwon because of Vladimir Putin.
Or you know, bad choices by usare just because of that.
Now we should be resilient andsmart enough to fend off.

(21:40):
You know Russian disinformation.
They've been doing this also.
You know they've been doing itlong before President Trump.
You know, trying to interferein our elections and put
information into our system andusually, again, we were bigger,
stronger, smarter, even somestuff that would stick.
You know they created thisstory during the 80s that the US
government had created the AIDScrisis.
It was part of a plan that wasin the Defense Department that

(22:01):
got out of hand and all thesepeople died in Africa and around
the world because of AIDS.
And it was a.
It was a United States psyop orsomething and it was completely
fake.
But it went through the mediasystem.
There's still people whobelieve that.
But you know, at the end of theday, you know we're a big,
powerful country and with lotsof narratives, lots of people
working on things, and you knowit created some problems, but it
doesn't, it doesn't underminethe state.

(22:24):
You know we're a powerful,powerful country.
But I have to say you know thepoint where we've gotten now, or
where Putin has gone intoUkraine, it's a bigger, long
term political thing.
You can go back to Clinton,bush, obama and Trump all of
them.
You know Putin would push theboundaries and do things and we

(22:44):
would often think you know we'revery Western Americans are like
oh no, he you know he must notmean it Like maybe if we just
treat him well and let him getaway with it this time he won't
do it.
And so there's been a series ofthings where Vladimir Putin saw
us back down or move away ornot seem to pay attention.
That he read as weakness thathe could take advantage of.

(23:09):
I mean, I was just going throughsome stuff back on the bin
Laden stuff and looked at earlybin Laden thought that we were
to be attacked because you knowthere was a number of periods of
time where they took action andwe did nothing and they read
that as weakness to be exploited.
And we have been that way,frankly, with Vladimir Putin for
a long time.
They went into eastern Ukraineand Crimea and we really did
nothing.
And then you know they saw whathappened in Afghanistan when we

(23:31):
looked foolish and backed out,and they think they can play the
long game better than we canand oftentimes they're right.

Is there some of?
I'll give you an example herein this small community that I
live in for-.
Where are you give you anexample?
Here in this small communitythat I live in?
I'm about 90 miles north ofKansas City, Missouri, pretty
much straight up I-35.
You know, for decades, since Iwas a kid, grade school because
my grandfather was on the citycouncil, you know it didn't mean

(23:58):
much to me then, but I wouldhear him talking to other people
.
So they always kicked the canon our.
For example, the sewer pipes inthis community were 100 plus
years old.
They're the old clay pipes,right, and they were well past
their.
They needed to be replaced, butthe city council always skipped

(24:19):
on that because they didn'twant to have to raise taxes,
right, they didn't want to bethe city council who was
responsible for raising taxes.
So ultimately now it's kind ofhit crisis mode and we've
experienced several insuccession big spikes in taxes,
right, tax increases.
Is that a fair analogy for alot of what happens from one

(24:43):
presidency to the next?

I think that's actually very that's true.
I think that's very good, infact, having grown up and worked
in the CIA for many years, whenthere are people who are very
into it and very against the CIAand look at its history and say
these things that they find badover history.
Oftentimes it's exactly that.
In the early years of the CIA,before the reforms of the 1970s

(25:05):
that put it under congressionaloversight and spheres of
regulations, the CIA gotinvolved in a lot of these
things where we're overthrowingcountries in Chile and Guatemala
and Iran and this type of stuff, many of which backfired over
time, and we look back at it andsay that was probably not a
smart move, but it was oftenbecause it was the easy button

(25:26):
for presidents.
So if the president you knowname your president Truman,
eisenhower, nixon, they see aproblem.
They can either then build uppolitical support for that, go
to the American people, explainit, try to get the Congress on
board, build up the votes, orthey can go to the CIA in secret

(25:47):
and say you guys go kill thatguy or whatever it is Like.
It's like the easy button andyou know at the end of the day,
I think we learn over time thatyou know there is no easy button
.
You know you can do thosethings in secret and get away
with it for a period of time,but it comes back to roost.
There are consequences thatfollow on down the line.
Iran is in the news today andthere's, you know, a long
history of Iran.
There's still a lot of anger atthe United States for its role

(26:08):
in Iran in the 1950s, for Pete'ssake.
And so, yes, I think you knowthe way our politics works.
There's a lot of concern thatyou know I need votes today,
tomorrow, next year.
Long-term things can be pushedback, pushed away.
I remember working in the 1990s.

(26:28):
The Clinton administration onforeign policy was very much
like that.
We'd put up these issues thatwere potential, say, for example
, terrorism and things, and itwould be like you know, it's
just a little bit too hard to doall these things.
Let's just put this piece offruit in the back of the
refrigerator and we'll get backto it later.
But of course, by the time youget back to it, it's rotten and
has gotten into all the otherfood, and so I think that's just

(26:51):
a real problem with democraticpolitics that make it harder to
focus on long-term issues andobviously some president's
administrations have been betterat that than others.
But yeah, yeah, I think that'ssadly a weakness of Americans in
general.

And could it be because you said it makes it
harder to focus on the long-termissues, right?
Could that be a really powerfulpiece of why so many MAGA or
hardcore Trump supporters?
One thing they like about himis he has this impulsive nature
that he almost responds, orreacts rather in the same way

(27:31):
they would as a non-leader,somebody who doesn't have
emotional control and who doeshave a temper that gets out of
hand every now and then.
And since that's what theywould do, they see a mirror
image of themselves in him and Igo yeah, that's my guy.

I think that's right.
I mean, the one thing aboutPresident Trump is he is
authentic, and authenticity goesa long way in politics, right.
And so he has these instinctsand he says what he thinks, and
a lot of it is.
People want simplicity, theywant to understand things.
A I think Trump just gives youthat instinctual, simple answer

(28:26):
that, yeah, that makes sense.
Like you know, make Americagreat again.
Yeah, stop illegal peoplecoming in.
Totally makes sense, andDemocrats and others often have
a hard time.
Yes, I agree with that inprinciple, but here are all the
other issues you have to.
There's issues of fairness,there's interests of government
money, there's interests oftaxation, there's interests of

(28:47):
other countries and how theymight do it, and maybe they
won't work with us if we do itLike that.
That always loses to the simpleanswer, and so I think, yeah, a
lot of MAGA people, rather thandelve into this world that you
know, if they get too far intoit, they'll feel like, oh, these
people are going to say I'mstupid because I don't know all
these details.
I'm stupid because I don't knowall these details.
I'm going to stay where I'mcomfortable, like I'm going to
try to tie it to what I do in myday-to-day life and it makes
sense right and wrong and,frankly, if these issues were

(29:14):
just like right and wrong, wewould have no problem making all
these like.

Everybody wants to make a right decision and not
the wrong decision, everybody ingovernment and anything else,
but the world's just too complex, so yeah, I totally get that

(29:40):
and politics plays on that, andthat's why, when feel like I've
got the I figured it out aboutthe connections between
something, I pause and remindmyself that there is somebody
who is thrilled that I just gotthat dopamine spike, about
having figured it out, becausethe farther and harder I run

(30:04):
with that, the easier it makesthem to accomplish what they're
really doing.
Now.
That may or may not always bethe case, but to just step back
and to give myself pause, gosh,we see the media struggle with
this.
People on social media, myselfincluded, struggle with this.

(30:26):
I have the Jack Hopkins Nownewsletter and it's always
coming back to what you said mywriting style is such that I
would fail any.
Well, I guess I didn't, becauseI adhered to their rules when I
was in college.
But if I were to go now and usemy writing style, they'd kick
me out right.
But I know the closer I writeto how I just bullshit with my

(30:52):
friends, the more people connectwith it because, like you said,
there's an authenticity in thatYou're not trying to like come
up with fancier words to try to.

You know you're not writing for.
You know an academic audienceLike people write for the
audience that they want to Sure,and so obviously simpler,
straightforward stuff isappealing to anybody.

Right.
And so that's the trap.
When you post on social media,or when just someone in general
posts on social media, the goalobviously is to communicate
something to someone, get themto read it and I guess,
fortunately or unfortunately,whatever side of the fence you
are on in order to get somebodyto read it.

(31:33):
You know, in the copywritingworld there's a quote that says
the purpose of the firstsentence is to get them to read
the second sentence.
The purpose of the secondsentence is to get them to read
the second sentence.
The purpose of the secondsentence is to get them to read
the third.
And if you can't do that, thewhole thing fails.
And so to move to a largerentity and look at a news

(31:55):
network right, I mean, wecomplain and again I'm among
them but if they didn't conductbusiness like they do, we
wouldn't get the adrenalinespikes that we get, we wouldn't
get the biochemical flood ofneurotransmitters and just that
right mix that kind of pulls usout of that afternoon funk, amp

(32:17):
us up and people would stopwatching.
And the reason I brought thatup is because I think that's
something Trump understands asmuch as anyone.

Yeah, absolutely.
And I mean that's how things,that's how we sell things,
that's how we get informationacross.
I have a company that workstrying to make espionage movies
and shows and one of the thingsyou know you work with, let's
say, netflix or Amazon.
It's incredibly sophisticatedbecause they can tell, they have
all the data that if you go onand start to watch a show, they
can see exactly how long youwatch before you turn it off.

(32:49):
They can see whether you watchit and then go to the next one
or not, the next.
So they know same thing theygot to catch you in.
And then they can look overtime at people like you and you
to say, okay, what kind ofthings can I put out there?
How do I get somebody hooked?
And it's the same with socialmedia.
It's the same with criminalstrying to get things that they
try to get you hooked tocigarettes.
You're trying to get somebodyhooked on it.

(33:11):
And politics, in many ways andcertainly has become more so for
a lot of people, it'sentertainment, right, it's being
interested in.
He gets you.
You know he's angry at the samepeople you're angry and he
makes fun of them and that makesyou feel good, or all those
kind of things, which iscertainly understandable.
Like there's a lot of people, Ithink when Trump came along in

(33:31):
2015, 2016, there was a lot ofpeople who just were out of
politics, they weren't involved,and I think they used Facebook
data and other kind of things toget these people engaged, to
get them so angry that thesepeople who never voted now came
out and started support and thenthey like Trump, they're
entertained by it.
Like he hates the same peoplethat they are taught to hate and

(33:54):
that becomes addictive.
Like you said, it's dopamine,and so this is how people try to
get us to buy things.
This is how criminals try totake advantage of us.
This is how politicians try tokeep us on side, and Trump is
just sort of and we see he usesit to sell things too, right, so
it's not.
He uses it to stay in power.
He uses it to, you know, hitenemies and he uses it to make

(34:14):
money.
And we just have never had that.
You know those of us ingovernment, you know, maybe it's
because we take it seriously,our obligation is seriously.
Because we take it seriously,our obligations seriously, we
work for the American people.
We don't care about how muchwe're paid, we're trying to do
something that's important.
Government is serious work forserious people, but that's not
entertaining, that's notinteresting to people, it's a
turnoff.
And so how do you do thesethings where you need experts in

(34:36):
all of these areas that none ofus can?
You need experts because wecan't each one of us can't look
at our food and know it's allgood for us, or we can't look at
what's bad for us, or thisvaccine or whatever, or this
foreign policy thing, or thiscountry, what's happening in
Myanmar or Moldova, and so youneed serious people, you need

(34:58):
experts.
But that bores people, and so,therefore, the entertainment
wins the day, and so, therefore,the entertainment wins the day.

I think if people watching or listening, if they
got nothing more out of thisepisode than what you just said
collectively but then that lastphrase it wouldn't be a golden
nugget, it would be a brick ofgold, and that is entertainment
wins the day.
Donald Trump was a businessmanslash entertainer.

(35:30):
He's probably more of anentertainer now than he's ever
been in his life.
And whether they realize it ornot and I'm sure there's not a
big piece of conscious awarenesson this, but that makes it even
more dangerous, of course ifit's just impacting them at the
unconscious level People likethe people who support Trump Let

(35:53):
me clarify that the people whosupport Trump, who vote for
Trump, they're entertained byhim and, just like, they make
sure they arrange the rest oftheir life to be home for that
certain TV show on that certainnight of the week because they
love that show, because theyfeel entertained.
And if they've got some achesand pains in their old arthritic

(36:15):
knees, at least while they'rewatching that show they don't
notice their knees aching anylonger.
And I think and maybe DonaldTrump himself I've written about
this, in fact, I'm not surethat Donald Trump on a conscious
level understands this.
I think it's instinctual, it'slike an animal.

It's like a feral animal who knows how to find
weak spots?

Absolutely, it is.
It's that purely reptilianbrain which I think, in part
anyway, he got from Roy Cohn,because Roy was about as much of
a reptilian Not to say that hewasn't cunning and intelligent
and crafty but he was going forthe throat and that's a very

(36:59):
primal thing.
That doesn't come from theprefrontal cortex, right?

Yeah, that is, I think you've nailed, and I think
presidents, like you know, ifyou study the presidency, one of
the things that presidents needto do and probably the most
important thing to do iscommunicate.
I think one of the things.
I think people are very angryat Jake Tapper for talking about
Joe Biden being old and allthis type of stuff.
But you know, I'm not asupporter of Donald Trump.

(37:26):
I think he's very dangerous,but I also admit that I think
Joe Biden failed the Americanpeople in that he failed to
communicate to the Americanpeople.
They kept him hidden away.
I think he had professionalexperts around him who were
competent and they generally dida better job on the economy and
their security and things thanthe Trump people certainly do.
But by hiding him away andhiding his age, he did not.

(37:49):
Maybe he had good policies onthe economy, maybe he had good
policies on health and on thesetypes of things, but he did not
communicate that to the Americanpeople so they can understand.
So by the time it came to runfor election, it was easy for
Donald Trump to just lie, saythis is true, this is true, this
is true, and there was nobodyon the other side saying things
clearly about to go against him,and so I think there's real

(38:15):
failure on the part of the Bidenadministration in terms of
communication and Donald Trump.
I think a lot of thecommunication is bunkum and lies
and for his own personalnarcissistic views.
But he does communicate and hedoes entertain and he does get
people hyped up and that'sthat's that's your dopamine hit.

You know, and I have caught health for this
anytime I've ever brought it upand I'll catch hell for it again
for bringing it up this time.
But I think it's so critical totalk about because I think
there's substance there andneeds to be talked about.
We ran, or I should sayPresident Biden stepped down and

(38:52):
said Kamala Harris is going tobe who's running.
And now and I love PeteButtigieg, but I keep seeing his
name come up a lot as somebodyto nominate for 2028, right, and
here's the conundrum for meOkay, I'm not going to.
I've found that pretending,like everybody else feels this

(39:14):
way, don't worry about it.
But here's my thing.
We know one of the reallyeffective strategies the right
used was in framing the left aswoke right, the power of that
word and all of the negativeconnotations, meaning negative
connotations for voters on theright.

(39:36):
And I'm not look ethically,morally absolutely, but I'm not
sure running a black woman in apresidential election or, in
2028, running a gay man who'smarried to a man, to a man.

(40:07):
That fits in perfectly to thevalues of many of those on the
left, right and especially theprogressives, and so that's who
we think we should run.
But that cuts out entirely themindset and the thinking and the
positioning of the right, andwhen we do that, we give them
the greatest gifts that anyparty could give another.

(40:28):
Now I voted for Kamala Harris.
If Pete was on the ticket,would I vote for Pete?
I would.
Will I be somebody tooting thehorn saying Pete should be the
guy?
I won't.
Would I be somebody who wassaying, yeah, kamala should run
again?
I will not.
Now, if you people strugglewith me, these things.

I think it's true.
I think the woke stuff.
You know again doing this thingwhen we talk about conspiracies
.
Conspiracies work with whenthere is a nugget of truth that
you can then spin the biggerconspiracy and the woke stuff.
I mean, I'm a 64-year-old man.
I'm progressive in a sense.
I've voted mostly Democrat, butI see myself as a centrist.
I worked on national securityissues, lived around the world,
I've lived in different cultures.

(41:20):
I believe in America verystrongly.
I believe I'm a patriot, butsome of these things did seem
silly like I should be tellingpeople to call me he or him or
whatever.
I mean like trying to dictate topeople what you think to do.
I understand the intent, it's agood intent, but we forget how
new this stuff is right.
So I mean we forget thatliterally, maybe 10, 12 years

(41:44):
ago Obama was against gaymarriage.
I mean we think of you knowObama as a sort of left wing or
president, whatever, but he wasagainst it.
Biden was against it.
Well, biden came out beforeObama did on this kind of things
, and so it takes a while forthe American public to get
things.
It took a long time for us torealize smoking was bad.

(42:04):
It took us a long time torealize we had to wear seatbelts
.
We don't like being dictated to.
You know the center of theAmerican people are good people,
but if you try to like get infront of them too soon, you know
they'll get there.
But you know winning electionsis winning elections today and
you know you want good peoplewho create laws so that people

(42:26):
you know of, you know weakerparts of the society or minority
parts of society, are protected.
It all totally makes sense, butit doesn't mean you're supposed
to, you have to likeautomatically celebrate it or
you know, I think parties winwhen they come to the middle and
what has happened for bothparties is the anger has pushed
them both to the extremes and Idon't think that's good

(42:48):
ultimately for the Republicansor certainly for the Democrats
either.

Right, you said something magnificent there.
You said I get it, the intentis good.
And the other half of that forme is when we get caught up on
what the intent is, we say well,the intent is good, so it must
be good.
The intent over-focus on theintent can lead to us ignoring

(43:12):
the cost.
And, like I tell my kids,there's a cost to everything.
Even a clean-shaven face costsa beard right to everything.
Even a clean-shaven face costsa beard right.
So I split the difference, Ijust get part of it.
But no, there's a cost to everydecision that we make.
Does it matter what the intentis to your point?

(43:33):
Does it matter what the intentis if the cost is so great that
it hurts our chances of winningthe election?
And I think in this election.

It was true there's those voters in Michigan who
were angry about the Biden'ssupport to Israel, but then by
doing that, you've actuallybrought in something that's far
worse.
Right Even for that issue.
Right Even for that issue thatyou care about.
It's worse.
Like we, if were provided withperfection.
Again, if we were provided withthe answer right or wrong

(44:07):
almost all of us would alwayschoose right.
But we don't get perfection, weget choices, and in our system
you get two choices and you gotto be.
You got to say one is good.
You know, was Biden a greatchoice or was Kamala Harris a
great choice compared to Trump?
Yes, but in terms of likeperfection, no, nobody's going
to get the perfection.
We got it.

(44:27):
We got to grow up and be alittle bit mature about this.
Like in the Democratic Partyhas to start thinking we need to
win elections rather than justput out all these great ideas
that say I'm a good personbecause I have these ideas.
No, you have to sell thoseideas to people and not
everybody buys them, and sosometimes it takes a while.

(44:47):
We saw it took a while withcivil rights.
In a perfect world it wouldn'thave, but it did.
And presidents like LyndonJohnson, who were from the South
, were the ones that ended upsort of pushing it across the
line.

Yeah, it's fascinating to me Again, that
concept of just becausesomething is right doesn't mean
that it's the right time for it.
And election year, you mightargue, is always one of the most
iffy times for anything.
For anything, yeah, I'm tryingto think, I want to backtrack

(45:23):
just a little bit on that.
For example, I've posted a fewtimes about I really like JB
Pritzker right and see, I'm nota political strategist, but when
I'm thinking about things Ilike to think from the
perspective of a politicalstrategist, because in doing so
I kind of give myself a momentto be able to step back from all

(45:46):
the touchy-feely things.
Right, because the touchy-feelythings can really sabotage
effective strategy in a hurry.
And so I understand thetouchy-feely perspectives.
But the question for me isalways how does that impact the
strategy effectiveness?

(46:07):
And when you look at Pritzker,obviously one thing he would be
attacked on is his wealth, andyou know just the family money.
But he's straight, male,married family.
There's not a lot of theirinherent woke to attack him on
right.
And I guess what I mean by thatis he's less repugnant to the

(46:30):
right, he's less repugnant tothe people.

Well, elections are becoming.
I want to stay in my by lanebecause I don't get too much
into politics in my by lanebecause I don't get too much
into politics, but electionshave come around that small
scale of people who change likethat might've been an Obama
voter who then voted for Trump,now the Trump voter might get
pulled back.
So you know, both parties haveto look for that center and see
if they can pull that smallmajority over, and so they have

(46:55):
to appeal.
If you just appeal to you knowwhat they call your base, your
extreme side, you're not goingto win elections.
You have to find that middleground that allows you to take
some away from the other side,because right now we're like a
50-50 country and if you don'ttake a little bit from the other
side, you lose, and that'ssecurity.
Some of the people that I'vegotten to meet since I've

(47:16):
retired and become friends within the political space, who I
really am impressed by, arewomen Abigail Spanberger, who's
running for governor here inVirginia, mickey Sherrill, who's
running for governor in NewJersey, and Alyssa Slotkin,
who's your senator in Michigan.
Two of them were CIA officersand one of them went to Naval
Academy and flew planes and wasin the Navy and they have know,

(47:38):
they have national securitybackground, they're centrist,
they're very, they're reallysmart, they understand governing
and they're impressivecommunicators.
And so you know, I think thereis hope for the Democratic Party
when I see people yeah, jbPritzker is a good example.
There's some of those peoplewho are really good, but they
need to be able to communicateeffectively, and not just to

(48:00):
their team.

And so one reason I kind of went down the path of
this realm is to kind of comeback to how that links up with
your field of expertise and youmentioned.
You know you kind of want tostay in your lane and so I want
to bring this back to your lanethen and connect the two.
And so I want to bring this backto your lane then and connect

(48:22):
the two, because I think youwould agree with me, these
things that you kind of considerout of your lane.

(48:47):
There are people, very smartpeople such as yourself, who are
part of these campaigns, thatwill take these fragments that
are like diamonds when it comesto division and separating this
little group from that littlegroup and then fragmenting the
whole thing.
Each time we gift them withsomething like that, it's going
to be multiplied.
So whatever we think we'vegiven them like ouch, oh, we

(49:18):
just gave them that, we've giventhem a hundred times of that,
because they are going to milkthat and multiply that and
exacerbate the whole mess tosuch a degree that it becomes
another one of those problems wedon't have a strategy in place
to deal with.
And I think you would be quickto agree that one of the big
problems the Democratic Partyhas had the last few years is
we've been involved in all ofthese battles, if you will, with
the right that we have nostrategy in place to deal with.

You can't give your opponents the weapon to beat
you with.
Right, Right, right.

You know, I mean there are so many parallels, the
Art of War, right, a classicbook and one that even people
who aren't interested inpolitics or war should consider
reading, just because of thejust the practical value of life
and positioning and thinking.
And so I think if there's aparty that understands the art

(50:08):
of war, it's the RepublicanParty.

It's interesting, I think, in that way.
I think that's true.
I think Republicans are moredisciplined and are ready to
stay on because we I saw thisoverseas right.
So when you're, my career wasworking overseas, so I was
undercover.
I was a State Departmentofficer, really worked for the
CIA.
So you live in a country sayRussia or name a different place
two, three years, get to knowthe people, work with the locals

(50:33):
.
We were looking to recruitspies and sources and you might
live in a country like Zimbabwe,but you're looking to recruit
Russians and Chinese and NorthKoreans who happen to be there
that can go back to theircountry as spies, but oftentimes
because we're undercongressional oversight.
That's our connection to makingsure the American people are
getting what they need out ofthe intelligence service Always.
We always entertain senators andcongressmen and certainly

(50:55):
people on the intelligencecommittees when they come
overseas and so they get briefedon what we're doing, what we're
trying to do, and what youlearn is you know a lot of these
Republicans, for example, nowthat you know, I see in the news
they know better.
We brief them on stuff.
They understand the issues,they understand.
You know good and bad Russia,whatever you know.
And then you see them sayingsomething that you know, they

(51:18):
know is not true, because DonaldTrump has said it that way.
They're going to be disciplined, they're going to stay together
, and so they're very good atthat.
You know, holding together stuffDemocrats tend to be, you know,
and I respect the fact that youknow.
On this issue, I think this andon this issue, I think that and
you know, the Republicans canpick at that and take them apart

(51:39):
because they're more unified.
And so, yeah, I think that theRepublicans are more sort of
focused, brutal, willing tostick the line, willing to say
things they know not to be truein order to win.
And the Democrats, they can'tchange their stripes completely,
but they do need to figure outa way to appeal to a larger

(51:59):
group of people so they can winthese elections, because, at the
end of the day, I do think, atleast in today's world, they're
more competent to govern.

Yeah, I agree with that completely.
You know, in 1995, and I didn'tget through the program, I
didn't graduate and I didn't getthrough the program.
I didn't graduate.
I was never a SEAL, but I wasin a BUDS class at the Naval
Special Warfare Center inCoronado, california, and I had

(52:29):
a spinal injury a short time inMed, dropped, and then about six
, eight months later I had a TBIthat I could never pass a dive
physical again.
So there was no going back,right.
But I was there just longenough to understand a little
bit about the culture and topick up some really good and

(52:53):
interesting and controversialquotes that would be useful
later on.
And one phrase I heard mentionedthere several times and it's
easily misunderstood, but I havea feeling you understand this
as well as anybody and it was ifyou're not cheating, you're not
trying Now, when I don'tpreface that, you know when I

(53:16):
don't preface that in the rightway, people wig out because,
right, with the anger aboutTrump and all of the things that
he has done, but in the contextof the objective is to
accomplish the mission.
Right, here's how we propose wedo that.

(53:39):
Right, here's how we propose wedo that.
But if you fail to complete themission, don't come back and
say well, I tried what we weregoing to do and it didn't work.
Find another way and keeplooking for another way until

(54:01):
you've exhausted everything youcan think of.
Then, if you fail the mission,well, you still failed the
mission.
But we know you really failedthe mission, not that you quit.

In the intelligence world.
General Hayden was a directorof CIA and director of NSA used
to say you know the Congress andgive us the laws.
The laws create our authorities, but we need to be playing
along those boundaries.
We need to.
He used to say we need to getchalk on our cleats.
Our job, if we're going toprotect the American people,

(54:42):
we're going to do.
Our job is, we have to say, ifyou're giving us this authority
to do this and our job is tocomplete that mission, we need
to go right up to the edge to dothat.
And if it turns out thatAmerican people and Congress see
that that's still too far, thenokay, you can change the rules
of the game for us.
But our goal is to achieve themission, to get things done.
And that's one thing I reallymiss about working in the
intelligence community is it'smission-driven.
You woke up every day knowingclearly what you're doing and
why, and knowing it's missiondriven.
You woke up every day knowingclearly what you're doing and
why and knowing it's important.
You didn't go to work thinkinglike what am I doing?

(55:04):
Why am I doing it?
That never happened because youwere focused on a mission and
you're given authorities and youhave to use those authorities
to the complete, farthest youcan, as best you can, to get
things done.
So I hear you.
And same thing with themilitary.
When I retired I worked for awhile for Stan McChrystal's
company.
He was the head of JSOC, headof special forces over the SEALs

(55:26):
, the Delta Force and things wasin Iraq and Afghanistan and
stuff, and we'd often talk aboutSEAL training and the people
who would fail out of SEALtraining were these people who
came in all muscled up and verylike, focused on themselves and
didn't you know, whereas anybodywho gets involved in elite
activity understands it's a teamsport like.

(55:49):
If you think you're a someonewho can do everything yourself
and you don't need others, thoseare the ones that fail.
Like it's you know.
If you're going to be a SEAL,you know every SEAL is not the
biggest, fastest, strongest,meanest looking guy.
They're the ones that saythere's a job to be done.
What can I do?
Who can I work with?
How can we do this together?

You mentioned the Crystal Group.
You may or may not be familiarwith Jeffrey Eggers or Chris
Fussell.

Yes, I know him very well.
I used to work there.

Eggers was one of the officers in my BUDS class,
so I had the privilege ofspending a short time in his
presence and Fussell wasenlisted.
In fact, initially he was myswim buddy, as a matter of fact.
Oh yeah.

He's not a big guy.

He's a little guy, oh you know crazy, and I'll
just tell you this funny story.
It's completely irrelevant toanything that we're talking
about, but uh impressive, don'tget me wrong.
I wasn't trying to say littlelike not yeah oh, no, no, no no,
I know I know, believe me, heuh, it's just one of those
things that's always stuck in mymind for some unknown reason,

(56:58):
but, like the the first daythere, uh, he said, you know, my
dad has really and this isreally before the internet just
the ability to do this easily.
He said my dad has really donea lot of research on what some
of the best things out there forrecovery and carb loading and
stuff like that.

(57:18):
And he said these cliff barshe's found are the you know, and
at the time I'd never evenheard of cliff bars, but I I
still eat cliff bars today.
So every time I do, I think ofhis dad and the pre-internet
research that he did.
But talk about two stellarindividuals, values driven, just

(57:39):
great guys.
So it's cool that that you knowthem.
And yeah, I think.

Chris doesn't.
Chris still does some work froma crystal group, but he's not
there full time yet.
My son actually works from acrystal group now.
I haven't been back there in awhile, but yeah, yeah,
impressive guys.

You know, speaking of values, what, both
individually and collectively,and I know it's harder for you
to be able to speak to theindividual reasons for each of
the members of the steady state.
Why are they doing this, otherthan the obvious?

(58:17):
What's something that you mightknow about a few of them, and
you don't have to mention names,of course, but that really

(58:40):
makes this something they wantto do.

You know and I would prefer not to say it this
way, but I think it's the Trumpphenomenon, Like I think almost
everyone who's involved in that,who signed their name and have
some sort of now public role,had no intention or don't want
to be public.
Like I had no public role butit was in 2016, because I had
worked in Russia.
I worked on Russian espionagecases, I worked with the FBI and

(59:03):
catching Russian spies andthings.
Like I had no public role, butit was in 2016 because I had
worked in Russia.
I worked on Russian espionagecases, I worked with the FBI and
catching Russian spies andthings.
I found myself because peopleall of a sudden were like, what
does this mean?
What is all this Russia stuff?
And I found, okay, I have arole to speak and try to write
and try to help educate aboutthis.
But in this case, I think mostpeople we worked comfortably, we

(59:24):
focused on the mission, we workinside the government, we were
satisfied with our job, we hadno intention of having a public
life or trying to get out therein front of the camera and stuff
.
But I think a lot of people sawthis as a real danger.
They see our securityinfrastructure as nonpartisan,

(59:46):
our security infrastructure.
As nonpartisan, I worked aroundthe world with friends in like
difficult places, war zones andother places incredibly
important, spends, day and nightwith them and I had no idea
what their politics were.
We never talked about thisparty or that party or this
president or that president.
We were focused on the mission.
You know, if we were inPakistan trying to figure out
what al-Qaeda is doing, that'swhat we were doing and so we had
no and that was satisfying andthe career was great and we had,

(01:00:09):
you know, our relationshipswere inside and they were
focused on that.
But I think people saw whenTrump came along that he had a
completely different view.
He wanted he wanted thesepowerful institutions not to be
nonpartisan, focused on Americanpeople, but weapons that he can
use to smite his enemies and ormake money or you know someone

(01:00:31):
to blame.
He created this whole view thatthere's the deep state that are
working against me, andessentially nobody in the deep
state was working against him.
They worked for the president.
But because he didn'tunderstand the system, he didn't
understand law, he said if Iwant to do this, you know
someone would come to him andexplain, like sir, that I
understand what you're trying todo, but that's against the law,
you know.
But we can go to Congress, wecan do this, we can do that.

(01:00:52):
He saw that as people justtrying to undermine him, you
know, instead of realizing, likeyou know, yes, we want to
support you in every way we can,but we can't break the law.
And so he needed someone toblame.
And so I think that's what'sbehind these people, the people
who sign up for these things,like the steady state and other
things, believe that we areblessed as Americans with having

(01:01:13):
so many selfless people willingto put their time in and
expertise in to help theAmerican people.
Now, yes, any grouping ofpeople, any organization is not
perfect, make mistakes, allthose kind of things, but
there's a process where there'saccountability and that type of
thing.
But Trump himself, I think, is adanger to that view.
He doesn't understand theimportance of allies.

(01:01:35):
He doesn't understand how thesystem works.
He doesn't understand the ideaof nonpartisanship.
He sees the other party as theenemy, Like I see the Russians,
Chinese, other as eitheropponents or the enemy of the
American people.
I don't see other Americans asthe enemy he sees.
You know his American opponent,you know whether it's Hillary

(01:01:55):
Clinton.
She's the enemy.
Therefore, anything I do todestroy or hurt the enemy is
okay, even if it's against thelaw or even if you know, and so
that's against our ethos, that'sagainst what we do.
So I think the steady statewouldn't exist, probably if it
wasn't for Donald Trump.
So we have to be honest aboutthat.
I think it's a concern thathe's a threat to sort of the

(01:02:16):
health of our democracy in theUnited States, and you know the
Western world, for instance, aswell.

Jack Hopkins (01:02:25):
And in that answer you also answered the next
question I was going to ask,which was without Trump, would
there be a steady state, and youanswered that question.

John Sipher (01:02:32):
I'd be glad to do no podcast, no TV, no writing.
I'm happy, I have a nice family, I like what I'm doing, but I
think all Americans need to dowhat they can and we believe
strongly about these things.
And you know, it's a rough andtumble world of politics and
we're glad to stay out of it.
When I was inside, we sawourselves as professionals and

(01:02:52):
again, when Congress, peoplewould come out and stuff it's
like oh, that game of politicsis not something.
You know, we support presidents, we support administrations,
but that sort of dirty thing ofpolitics of people attacking
each other is just not ourcomfort zone.

And that's always been interesting for me as the
host of this podcast, and I'vegotten feedback from viewers and
listeners who it's beensurprising to them too, and it's
a pleasant surprise.
There's an element of comfortto that, even though it's very
different than what I expected,and that is, for example, with
yourself and the last episode Ihad Stephen Cash on.

(01:03:28):
It's interesting hownon-political they've been in
their career.
Right, you can just sense it,and it's not necessarily
anything that you or thatStephen, for example, said, but
you can just pick it up that thejob was the focus.

(01:03:50):
Right, there was a very clearunderstanding of what the job
was and just as clear of anunderstanding about what you
need to do to accomplish the job.
Who was president?
Those were, I hate to diminish,but almost peripheral issues.
Right, that you might bereminded of it occasionally, but

(01:04:13):
it really didn't factor intothe.
And if there's nothing else andthere's plenty of other things,
but if nothing else came out ofthese discussions with people
like yourself and Stephen, Ithink those are great things for
the American people to know.

We took pride in providing presidents or
providing you know, it's notjust presidents, it's their
administration, secretaries ofstate and the military and army
navy and providing intelligenceto help people make better
policy and execute better onpolicy.
You know military generals andstuff, and so you know we even
take a pride.
So if I was working in Indiaand I was, you know we had

(01:04:51):
sources and we were trying toprovide you know policymakers
what's the best thing, what'shappening on India?
Our diplomats are doing that,intelligence services are doing
that.
You know what's theirrelationship with Pakistan,
what's their relationship withChina?
We take pride in providing whatwe think is the best information
to those policymakers to makepolicy and sometimes they don't
want to hear it because theyhave a view like this is what I

(01:05:12):
want to do, and we come in andsay, well, okay, but here's a
pile of shit you got to dealwith Right, and so, like in our
world.
You know you took pride in that.
Our job is to give you theunbiased truth.
Now we understand the politicalprocess.
If we give you intelligence, itdoesn't mean you have to do
anything.
Presidents have lots ofconstituents.
They have, you know businessand they have the Congress and

(01:05:33):
they have their voters and theyhave, you know, foreign press,
all these things that weigh onthem to make a decision.
Intelligence is just one pieceof that.
We totally get that.
But we take pride in giving ourbest guests, our best
information to them.
We used to say you can lead apolicymaker to intelligence, but
you can't make them think.
That was sort of our word.

(01:05:55):
But Donald Trump sees that as oh, if you're telling me
information that I don't want tohear, you're an enemy.
You're doing it on purpose toscrew me.
You're doing it because you'reon the other side.
It's absolutely not true.
Anybody who shows how old I am.
I worked for Reagan.
I worked for Bush.
I worked for Clinton.
I worked for Bush, I worked forObama, Like it didn't matter.

(01:06:15):
Our goal is to get the bestinformation to the
administration as we could, andsometimes it was really helpful
and they liked it and it fitwith their preconceived notions,
and sometimes it didn't.
But Trump sees that if you tellhim something he doesn't want
to hear, you're the enemy.

Right.
How would you assess thisstatement that I'll make that
within the intelligence world,and particularly, I guess, the
CIA, there are often things thatare so much in the best
interest of the United Statesand what we stand for and our
national security that sometimesthere are things that happen

(01:06:55):
and must happen that areunpalatable to the average
American citizen.
So when we I want to take thisback to politics for just a
minute, and I think the reason Ibring up so many issues that I
know people who've beenDemocrats their entire life
really are put off by, forexample, like me, saying you

(01:07:18):
know what, we can't continue torun people who have been
identified as woke candidatesand expect to get the same
result we would without giftingthem with that.
The reason I bring that kind ofthing up anyway is because,
look, there are to win and to dowhat's in the best interest of

(01:07:40):
the nation.
You sometimes have to do thingsthat are unpalatable to the
average American citizen, and Ihave no illusions about how
effective I will be inconvincing the masses of that,
but I'm always attempting.
I always write and speak to oneperson because I believe sitting

(01:08:04):
eye to eye across the tablefrom someone.
I believe enough in my skills,that of every 10 people, there
will be some people that I talkto that I can persuade, and I
never know online or a podcastor in an article.
I never know on what day, whothat one person will be and

(01:08:27):
whether I persuaded them or not,but I know if I do they might
then persuade somebody.
So it's worth the risk to.
Obviously I'm not trying to bea mega influencer because I
don't do the right things toright.
If my goal was to become amega-influencer within the

(01:08:47):
Democratic Party, I would notsay things or post things like
that because it's kind ofdeath-rattle, but they're
important, I feel, to say anddiscuss.
So the steady state I want toknow how important or how much
of a growing need there will bein the future for people from

(01:09:10):
the intelligence and nationalsecurity communities to do what
the steady state has set out todo.

Yeah, to go back to your thing about unpalatable
stuff, I have to say you know, Iworked almost 30 years overseas
in lots of places and most ofit is not unpalatable stuff.
I have to say, you know, Iworked almost 30 years overseas
in lots of places and most of itis not unpalatable.
We used to talk about theWashington Post test Like if,
what?
You, if you know, we operate insecrecy, but if, what?
If all of a sudden there were,you know there's, a leak and it
all came out on the front pageof the Washington Post, what
would your mother think?

(01:09:39):
Could she, would your motherunderstand basically what you're
trying to do?
Would the American people get asense of why are you doing what
you're doing?
And for the most part,absolutely you feel comfortable
about that.
There have been things obviouslyin the past.
The one that comes to mind mostrecently in the last few
decades is the whole issue withterrorism and torture, the whole
interrogation programs whichbecame called torture and the

(01:10:02):
CIA did, in fact, waterboardthree terrorists to try to get
information from them and thatbecame a huge issue which people
fought over and stuff.
And you know you have to behonest about that.
Looking back, was it worth it?
Did it make sense?
How do the American people dothat?
Did administrations explainthat?
Well, so on one hand you knowyou hear people say, oh, the CIA

(01:10:23):
program.
You know those of us in the CIAoften say you know, I hate to
tell you, but the interrogationprogram, that's America's
interrogation program.
That was a presidentially.
The president said I wantedthis done.
It went through the wholesystem, the Justice Department,
the lawyers, everybody.
The Congress was brief told onit.
That was a program.
You know now, when it becamepublic because it was secret,

(01:10:45):
you know there was a lot ofpushback.
Did it make sense?
And those are good discussionsto have.
But that wasn't the CIA doingsomething.
That was not part of you knowwhat the president and the
Congress, everybody wanted to do.
It was America's program andit's good to look at those
things in retrospect.
Does it make sense or not makesense?
You know we'll talk about, youknow, the war in Iraq.
Or people say, oh, the CIA war.

(01:11:07):
And we're like, no, it's notthe CIA war, it's.
You know we're part of the USgovernment, we work for the
president.
The president has written, youknow, orders of things to do.
Those go through thecongressional committees.
Those are vetted by the JusticeDepartment.
So when we do something, youknow, like you said, we need to

(01:11:30):
go up to the edge of ourauthorities.
But sometimes, sometimes thoseauthorities, in retrospect, look
like they went too far.
When Americans are scared, youknow, places like the CIA and
the military are given a lot oflatitude, like, oh my God, you
know, we might be attacked again.
9-11 happened, buildings camedown, thousands of Americans
dead.
We need you to do these things.
Then, of course, you know, as wetry to have success and stop
terrorists and catch terrorists,a few years down the road it's

(01:11:52):
like people aren't scared andthen they look and say, oh, you
went too far, like well, youknow, when you're scared, you
ask for this and now you're notscared and you say we went too
far, like well, it's our job todo those things.
You, meaning the Americanpeople, the Congress, the Senate
has to take your responsibilityseriously about telling us
exactly what you want us to doand why, and be comfortable with

(01:12:12):
that.
And if the Congress, you know,and the president say that they
want these things and they can'tjustify them to the American
people, then they have to bewilling to put up with something
.
If you know, we catch aterrorist and you know we can't
question them and interrogatethem and we find out that they
knew something that we didn'tget and Americans are killed,
we've got to be comfortableliving with that.

(01:12:34):
And so, yeah, we have to havethose discussions, but they need
to be serious discussions.
You know, I didn't get involvedin that directly because I was
working on other programsRussian and other kinds of
things but those are reallyinteresting and important
discussions to have andoftentimes, when you drill down
to talk to Americans, yourealize again, these are hard
decisions.
If it was like this one's rightand this one's wrong, we would

(01:12:54):
always choose the right one,like we're given choices, like
both bad outcomes what do you doin this situation?
And not making a decision isnot one of the options.
And so, yeah, americans need tocome to terms with those things
.
Our government needs to takethis stuff seriously.
Again, when we look at the Trumpadministration, these people
tend to have like thesesimplistic views.

(01:13:15):
You know, and act like theyknow the answer to these things,
and I think they're going tofind, you know, like Bongino and
Patel now run the FBI.
They've had these podcastsforever.
They've been saying thesethings which are untrue or get
people hyped up their followers.
Now they're going to have atough time when they're working
with professionals who areexplaining things to them and

(01:13:35):
they're like, oh okay, yeah, Isee, but that doesn't appeal to
the people that they've beentelling these stories to for a
long time.
They set themselves up for this.

That they've been telling these stories to for a
long time.
They set themselves up for this.
That clarification on so manylevels was beautiful and it
clarified a couple of things forme right from the start that
have helped me do a littleinternal realignment on my
thinking.
Even when I asked the question,you said I don't know so much

(01:14:04):
about how unpalatable some ofthose things are, and I couldn't
agree with you more because Ithink it's not what the CIA is
actually doing that the Americanpeople find unpalatable.
What they find unpalatable iskind of a direct result of the

(01:14:24):
secrecy you are sworn to and thethings they generate in their
mind.
They think you are doing in theabsence of knowledge.

No, and that's understandable.
I mean, it's easy to go to thedarkest part of the room and
assume these kind of things.
You know, secrecy is just.
It doesn't inherently work witha democratic government right
and it's easier if you're Russiaor China, to just do things.
And because the people have no,they they understand, they have
no say or no part, they don'tget to vote for things.
They don't.
You know, it's just the way itis.

(01:14:54):
In America, we expect you know,to know, what's being done in
our name, and so you know, if Iwas, you know, with most
Americans, if I was to sit downand explain here's what we're
doing and why, I think almost100 percent of the time they'd
be like I get it, I get whythat's important and why that's
being done, but from the outsideI don't have the context and
therefore it's easy for me tosay I don't support that, I

(01:15:17):
don't like that.
So that's an inherent frictionin a country like ours, and so
that's why our oversightcommittees and committees and
Congress need to be seriouspeople who take their
responsibility seriously.
If their only goal is to get onFox News and spread crap, then
they're not doing their job.
Their job is to look at theseinstitutions, to hold them
accountable and explain and makesure the laws are clear to them

(01:15:39):
so that they can get along withtheir mission.

Yeah, someone who was.
He was actually my first everpodcast guest and over the last
year and a half I've actuallybecome friends with him.
I guess you could say who goeson routinely at Denver Riggleman
.
Oh, I know Denver.
Yeah, I love listening to hisbreakdowns of Interesting guy.
Yeah, breaking-.

I got to go down to his.
He has that bourbon place.
I got to get down there and getmyself some of his bourbon.
I've said the same thing Wellyou tell me where you're going
to go, I'll go down there withyou, because I live in Northern
Virginia, I can get down there.
That would be fantastic.

Yeah, yeah, I guess his wife has won some
awards.
I guess it's a pretty top-notchdeal.
So, yeah, notch deal.
So yeah, let's talk about,because I see in almost every
post that I make I get thisquestion or somebody poses this

(01:16:34):
question.
I don't know that it'snecessarily to me or somebody
else in the thread, but it's agood question and it's one that
I know I don't have an answerfor what they want, right, but
it is what can we as everydaycitizens, what can we actually
do?

That's a tough one.
That's a hard one, isn't it?
Yeah, I mean, obviously is.
You know, our forefatherscreated a system that was unique
in the world and brought thepeople into the body politic,
but they expected an educatedand engaged polity.
Or you know people who wouldtake their job seriously and you

(01:17:11):
know voting is not just youknow, watching TV a day or two
before the election and votingthings, it's really.
You know, getting engaged,contacting your congresspeople,
all of those type of things.
I think people are doing thosethings.
You see, now a lot of peopleare out protesting, people are
writing to Congress, people aregetting online expressing

(01:17:32):
frustrations.
They're trying to find media.
They're trying to findinformation.
There's probably moreinformation out there, but it's
also a flood of bad informationalong with the good information.
In fact, you see Trump peopleand others trying to like poison
that by saying you know themedia is bad.
You shouldn't follow thesethings.
Well, it's because they want tocontrol their media.

(01:17:55):
You know, and you know mostserious journalists I see take
their job, just like I took myjob inside the government
seriously.
They take their job to get goodinformation, to find good
sources, to check it whenthey're wrong, to explain
they're wrong and continue tolearn.
And so, yeah, I think, keepingyourself educated, being smart
about the information that youconsume, making sure that you

(01:18:18):
vote, making sure you're engaged, maybe, sure, maybe, run for
local offices there's no officethat's too small to be engaged
with.
But yeah, I don't know I thatis a hard question I've had that
answer.
I'm like.
You know there's 300 million ofus.
We need to all play some sortof role right.

I want to ask you what is john cypher's shit?
Uh, description meaning.
What would, what would have tohappen, or what would, if it did
happen, signal to you that itmay be unrecoverable at that

(01:18:55):
point?

You know it's so easy to say just the things that
I've seen in the last few days,where you know a sitting
senator is wrestled to theground and handcuffed, you know
in a federal facility, with FBIofficers escorting him in, gone
through security.
You know, bringing Americantroops into our cities.

(01:19:18):
I mean it's just reallycreating false stories.
You know, saying you knowwhat's happening in one small
block radius of LA is aninsurrection.
These people are going todestroy our country.
Like these are law enforcementthings that happen all the time.
You're in a big, busy place,there's criminals, there's
problems.
They're not easy Lawenforcement people.

(01:19:38):
Others are trying to deal withit.
But when you create a falsestory and you scare the people
into believing there's danger tothem, we forget Again.
We live in the richest, mostpowerful country in the history
of the world.
We live better than kings andqueens did a couple hundred
years ago.
You know we have computers inour pockets and we have healthy
food and we have.
I mean, you know, yes, there'sproblems.

(01:20:00):
Yes, we don't have enoughpeople to have enough money to

(01:20:26):
have issues.
There's concerns and those kindof things.
But we need to focus on thepositive and then not see
themselves as political pawns tobe used in politics but, you
know, to defend the country.
But they're really.
These are real powerful tools.
That's why we in the steadystate are talking up.
If you have the intelligenceservices and the FBI and the
military and you use them likeweapons, they're incredibly

(01:20:47):
powerful and that's why they'reunder strong.
You know regulatory, legalrules to make sure that these
things are used on behalf of theAmerican people.
But if they're used against theAmerican people, yeah, it's bad
.

I saw a post last it was this week, I can't tell
you the day, but it was thisweek by Alexander Vindman and it
really stopped me in my tracks.
One, because Alexander is notsomebody who posts BS, he's not
looking for the viral tweet,he's sticking to the facts.
And the first sentence of thispost said our generals are

(01:21:30):
scared and Wow.
And it went on to say anythingI would say would be
paraphrasing, but it went on tosay that they are cowed right
there, they're there.
He made the statement.
I do remember this beparaphrasing, but it went on to
say that they are cowed right.
They made the statement.
I do remember this and not wordfor word, but he said I'm not
confident they're going to standup to this in the way that we

(01:21:54):
need them to.

Again, that goes back to Trump's gift for knowing
how to weaken people.
He saw it in his lastadministration.
He hired people, put them inpositions and then eventually
went against them.
And now he's actually trying toarrest the same people he put
in positions of power to includeGeneral Milley and other people
ahead of the Pentagon inincredibly powerful roles who
took that job seriously ofproviding the president with
advice, even if the presidentdidn't want that advice.

(01:22:22):
But again Trump said you giveme bad advice or I don't want to
hear you're an enemy.
And now we see him acting onthat and that's really dangerous
.
If you get the JusticeDepartment supporting,
investigating and arrestingserious Americans that are
taking their job seriously inthe military, it's a real
problem.
So, like all, that's the thingall generals can't quit.

(01:22:44):
Trump is, you know, putting outthis information that you know
the lower levels of the militarywatch Fox News in their place.
A lot of time may may resonatewith them, I think.
I do think the officer classtends to understand their role
in a free society is not not tobe partisan.
But yeah, you keep digging awayat that and tearing at that

(01:23:04):
fabric.
At some point it weakens andjust rips.
Yeah.

Will we have a free and fair election in 2026?
Yeah, it's funny.

I have a podcast too, and we interview some of
these same guys.
Denver's a friend and Alex andEugene, his brothers, are
friends and all these type ofthings.
As Americans, we always hopefor the best.
It'll work out.
It'll work out.
It's part of our instinct and Ifeel that too.
It's like there's so many goodpeople, we're so lucky to have
what we have.
This country is so great.

(01:23:39):
It'll work out.
But yeah, I worry.
There chances like we had aguest on and he started saying,
hey, you know, actually fromBritain, and he said well, you
know, here's some of the thingsI worry about.
I worry that you know, you seewhat Trump's doing.
Say, in Los Angeles, he claimsan emergency.
He says, oh, there's, they're,they're invading these

(01:23:59):
immigrants.
Well, they're not, and sotherefore, I'm going to use the
authorities for Insurrection Actto take over and use the
military at the border or whathave you.
If you can create these fakeemergencies and they are in our
system, I guess, legal becausethe president does them.
They're unwise and they'redangerous, but they're legal.
In the lead up to the election,if he's worried that they might
lose the election, he could saycome up with some false

(01:24:21):
emergency and say we can't holdthe election because you know
we're being invaded byforeigners, or there's these
radical Marxist, whatever createa fake emergency and say you
know we're putting off theelection.
And then some governors decide,well, we're going to go through
with it and some governorsdon't, and like then what do you
have?
You have like real chaos andlike state against state

(01:24:42):
governors against federal youknow, and like state against
state governors against federalmilitary, some military not
wanting to like.
These are dangerous things thatAmericans deserve better than,
and so I worry about that.
Again.
I expect things to work outwell, but why, yeah, why do
these things?
I don't get it.
I think they created, like theycreate false information,

(01:25:04):
created false narrative to scaretheir people, to keep them
voting for them.
Then I think they startbelieving this stuff.
I think they start believingthat radical Marxists, blah,
blah, blah it's insanity, butthey're willing to do so many
things on behalf of these thingsthat they say For a while

(01:25:24):
you're like they're just doingit for populist reasons, and now
you start to worry, like Jesusdo they believe these things?

You know, rural areas in red states are
interesting.
It's where I was born andraised and grew up here.
I was a Republican for 59,almost 50 years, I guess, if you
count the years even before Icould vote and who my, how my
parents voted.
But you know there there is Ican't point to anybody

(01:25:52):
specifically here in this areathat has plans to shoot me, but
I do know a lot of people herebecause of my, but I do know a

(01:26:27):
lot of people here because of myposition who would probably be
happy if someone else did theappetite and watch as I say this
, I'll step out on the frontporch.
There's not really the appetitethat I know of for somebody at
this point to do it, but thereis the mindset and the
psychology of well, if somebodydoes, that guy's a traitor, you
know.
And so one reason I do this, Ithink, is because people who

(01:26:52):
don't live in rural areas orhaven't experienced rural areas,
I've found it's very hard forsome of them to understand how
the Trump supporters in thoseareas can think and feel like
they do.
And I get that because it's notthe same right.

(01:27:16):
It's a different environment.
You know, I grew up it was notan odd thing at all to go to my
grandparents and have squirrelsand biscuits and gravy for
breakfast.
It just wasn't.
You know that was somebody wasoh wow, I hate that.
I missed that right, that's notan experience that my first

(01:27:39):
wife was from.
Spent most of her time inBaltimore, maryland, right,
different in Baltimore.
Yeah, there were aspects of mylife that she just you know, it
was like a TV show to her.
And I remember the first timeshe came back here with me we
were driving somewhere andeverybody that you met, right,

(01:28:03):
everybody just raised a friend,friend kind of wave, acknowledge
.
And she said do you know all ofthose people?
Well, first of all, and thiskind of blew her away, yeah,
probably, yeah, I did, I knewwho they were at the very least.
And she said I said well, yesand no.
So why do you all wave at eachother?
And I said it's almost a reflex, you just kind of grow up with

(01:28:25):
that.
But then she heard my parentssay and now, forever, every time
I hear it, I think of that.
I never noticed it before.
But my dad said well of anevening, you know, talking about
something happening.
He said well of an evening.
We usually and I remember herasking me what's of an evening
or somebody asking do you takethe paper?

(01:28:47):
It's a way of saying you know,do you have a subscription to
the paper, do you get the paper,do you take the paper?
Things like that.
There's a different language.
So I guess my point is I try tohelp people connect to the idea

(01:29:11):
and many of them just find itso repulsive I'm not sure that
they can expects their husbandto come backing the truck into
the driveway with a gutted deerin the back right Because
they're going to take it, haveit processed and made into jerky
and that's like a high point ofthe fall.

(01:29:33):
It makes it easier for them toembrace certain aspects of
Donald Trump.
There's a— but what's funny?

he is not that.
Like they are Right.
Yeah, I'm from a small town,I'm from upstate New York, near
Finger Lakes.
Like little, yeah, we used tohit deer and then you have to
like, wait for someone to comealong who could take it and do
it.
Yeah, I grew up in a small towntoo, and the thing Donald Trump
is exploiting that Like, yeah,small town values are good,

(01:30:06):
Rural is good.
We had on our podcast, we hadTrey Crowder.
Do you know who Trey Crowder is?

Yes, he's from.

Tennessee.
It was interesting to talk tohim, but let me try to put it
with something I learned fromwhen I was overseas.
So I spent some time inYugoslavia, which became
eventually Serbia.
Serbia, montenegro used to beBosnia.
Yugoslavia means South Slavs,so they were part of the Soviet
bloc in the old days, communist.

(01:30:33):
So as communism was falling,after the Soviet Union was
falling apart, the head wasMilosevic and he was a communist
, you know sort of dictator.
But as the country fell apartand Croatia moved out and Bosnia
moved out, you know heexploited like essentially
communism was dying.
He had to find a way tomaintain power and the way he

(01:30:55):
did it was to exploit thedifferences between the country
and the city.
And so I saw a leader exploitrural, urban for his personal
benefit to keep himself in powerand willing and supported and
led to civil war.
So essentially he controlledbecause of the communist and
they controlled TV and the media, which meant the people in the

(01:31:18):
rural areas.
That's the only way they gotmessages.
So he was essentially the FoxNews of his day and he would
spread all this stuff aboutkeeping power and creating
enemies and saying you know, theCroats are your enemies, or the
Bosnians are enemies or thistype of thing.
And then people I lived inBelgrade, which is the capital
of Serbia, worked in the embassythere, and if you were in that
city, it was as urbane andpeople traveled to Europe and

(01:31:40):
these were as, but he knew thatelectorally, if he wanted to
stay in power, he almost didn'tcare about them.
They had lots of different waysof media, they had newspapers,
they had liberals, they hadwhatever.
They were very pro-European,but he controlled the
countryside.
He controlled and he turnedthese against each other, which
led to a vicious, horrible,bloody civil war in that part of

(01:32:01):
the world.
So I saw a dictator who had tofind a way to stay in power that
used urban versus rural, and Iwould like to think we could
learn from that, because there'surban and rural.
That's not a real difference inour country.
We're still like you might befrom a small town, but you're
like a Kansas City Chiefs fan orwhatever.
We have sports teams.
We are more woven together thanwe think we are Like.

(01:32:25):
We focus, you know, we have thesame kind of stores that we go
to, we have the same kind ofsports teams we follow, we eat
and drink the same stuff.
Yeah, there's some differences,but they're not real.
But if you scare people and youmake them think they're real
for your own personal benefit,either to steal from them or to
steal power, that's just yeahthat doesn't come out.

Well, that is brilliant and kind of a short
golden nugget piece.
We're not as different as whatsome might lead you to believe,
and so you might ask why do why?
Is it important for me to pointout the differences of people
in rural areas?
And the answer to that questionis I want people to understand

(01:33:11):
what he's exploiting.
Right, he can take a differenceof that much that is noticeable
but not problematic, and he canmake it a difference of this
much which now becomesimpossible to ignore and becomes

(01:33:33):
very problematic.
You know, when I was a kidgrowing up, my parents would say
you know, we're an hour and ahalf two hours from Kansas City
in a rural area, my parentswould say we're going to go to
the city this weekend.
You know that was the city.
Any place bigger than this isthe city Now, but once we got

(01:33:53):
there, it's just a bunch ofother people right.
So we knew there was adifference, but once you're in
the collective mix, you're justpart of it.
What Donald Trump hassuccessfully done is those
people who used to maybe havegotten ready to go to the city
who, when they got there, wouldjust kind of blend in and feel

(01:34:15):
part of the city.
He now has these barriers inplace so that, no matter how
long they mingle and mix, theywill still feel this separation.

Looking over their shoulder.
Do they think they're beinglooked down on?
If you tell people enough thatthey're looked down on, they
believe it.

Right.

Whereas I'm sure most people in that city are
walking by people.
They're not thinking at allabout them, they're focusing on
their day.
They're not walking by saying,oh look at that country person.

You brought something up, john, that he's
nothing like the—I'll hearpeople say you know, he's just
like us, it's like you know.
No, he's not.
But here's the scary part ofthat innate skill to be so

(01:35:09):
different, to be so completelyunlike in so many ways the
people who he has convinced.

He's just like that's cult-like behavior.
Remember, howard Stern used tosay, like you guys understand,
howard Stern hates you people,he thinks you're stupid.
He wouldn't, you know he wouldwash his hand if he had to shake
hands with people like, butyeah, but you know, he is gifted
at that feral instinct ofsaying you know, creating
enemies to hate and blaming.
You know whether it's aforeigner or whether it's an
immigrant or whether it's aDemocrat or whether it's a

(01:35:42):
whatever name it up Marxist,liberal, whatever.
I get a kick out of this.
I lived in communist countries.
Like there's no Marxistanything going on in the United
States.
I mean, like you know, the mostMarxist thing is like the NFL
draft.
You can't just pick whateveryou want from college, you have
to like go through this thing.
So you know it's exploiting usand I don't know when we'll sort

(01:36:04):
of figure it out.

We're being taken advantage of all of us, not just
his supporters, boy, no truerwords have been spoken.
So, john, finally let's getdown to this and it comes back
to the question neither one ofus had a good answer for.
So the closest thing that wecan get to that and let's look
at some things, even though wecan't give the answer people are

(01:36:30):
looking for in terms of thingsthey can do that don't fit that
mold of it's this thing.
Would you agree that, as longas you are doing something?
Look, I mean, if you are 85years old and you walk with a
walker, nobody's expecting youto go to a rally on a weekend
right, and spend eight hours outon the curbside at a protest.

(01:36:54):
But even for someone like that,there's something you can do,
whether it's pick up the phone,call your senator.
I think if, because it's as muchas anything, it's the attitude,
it's to not fall into thatdefeatist, victim attitude.

(01:37:15):
I think that's where so much ofthe danger kicks in is when
people get to the point wherethey feel like, and that's what
I fear every time.
Someone says what can we as anaverage citizen do?
I can't know because I don'task each of them, but behind
that question.
I have to assume that there'ssomebody who currently feels

(01:37:36):
like there's nothing that can doand that's once we hit critical
mass in terms of enough peoplefeeling that way.
We're in big trouble.

I think it's.
We're too.
Our politics is entertaining,but it's national politics and,
honestly, it has, in general,very little to do with our lives
, like the voting and the laws,like our lives remain the same,
but we get too hyped up inwatching Fox News or national
news when it's local things thatmatter to us.
And so if we can focus onmaking our communities the best

(01:38:12):
they can be like, one of thethings I think people could do
like would be the best thing forthis country is be more
supportive and help teachers.
Man, they don't make enoughmoney.
They're working their heart out.
A lot of them are having toquit because they're getting
beaten down.
You know support teachers.
Get them the things that theycan do.
You know lead your life.
Focus on community things.

(01:38:33):
Don't get into thisentertainment game of being
angry, like the fact thatthere's people like in Iowa and
places that are screaming aboutthe border like an immigrant
says there's no immigrants there, there's no criminals chasing
you down the street.
Think about your life when youwalk out the door.
Are the things that you watchon the news actually things that
are affecting you?
They're not, and I get so upsetnow people I even see it around
here like I don't want to gothere.
You know, go to a red state.
Or like what do you mean redstate?

(01:38:53):
You go to the plate, good peopleand all this, even the people
who are Trump supporters.
If you talk to them, for themost part and they talk to you
face to face they're nice people.
They might think this stuff orhave gotten hyped up over this
stuff, but you know, spend timewith them, talk to them.
You know, don't write peoplelike oh, we get rid of Texas,
like what there's.
Like you know it's almost 50-50in terms of supporting national

(01:39:18):
politics.
Why would you write off allthose people who think like you?
And then certainly write offthose other people as if they're
some kind of enemies.
They're Americans, but so, yeah, I think it's just, for the
most part, is make yourcommunity better.
Yeah.

You know on that, a neighbor of mine lives across
the street but about two housesdown.
He's probably 70-ish and he andhis family own a big nail salon
.
And then there's also aVietnamese restaurant on another
end of it.
But classic story of he and hiswife came over, they rented a

(01:39:57):
building, they lived in thestoreroom of this building,
opened a nail salon back in theI'm assuming, probably the 70s
and continued to live there withnext to nothing until they
started to generate some income.
And then the rest of it isstories.

(01:40:18):
We've heard like that time andtime again.
He's now a successful man.
His family, he has a lot morefamily here.
They're successful, they're avery important part of our
community and when I was growingup in the 70s there was one
black family here and there wereno Hispanics.

(01:40:39):
There was one black family.
That was it.
Now we have, for a town of6,000 people, a pretty good mix
of different cultures who areall have a restaurant or have
some type of business, right,right.
And you know, when I think aboutnot just their businesses, but

(01:41:05):
these people as individuals, ashuman beings, when I think about
the possibility of them justall of a sudden not being part
of the community anymore, allbecause and some might say this
is taking it an exaggeration butfor the most part all because
of their skin color just beinggone.

(01:41:26):
They didn't do anything elsewrong and the people that I'm
talking about are here legally.
But the reason I throw theminto the mix anyway is because
we've seen instances of wherepeople were here legally but
again because they look like thepeople they're after.

But if you weren't watching that national politics
news, they would just be part ofthe community and you would
deal with them as you deal withthem, and if they're bad people,
they're bad people and ifthey're criminals, they're
criminals.
But we've created thisentertainment game of the other
someone to blame.
There's these horrible peopleand probably you don't blame the
people you know all the timeand you think there must be

(01:42:08):
these awful other people outthere and therefore it's just
too easy if someone's faceless.
And then you and I have grownup we're a little bit older.
Now social media allows peopleto get on anonymously and say
things to each other that theywould never say face to face,
like horrible things to eachother.
You and say things to eachother that they would never say
face-to-face, like horriblethings to each other.
You know, I don't know Somehowwe've got to like.
I think hopefully the youngergenerations are less, they

(01:42:30):
understand that, they don't getcaught up in it as much.
But like, yeah, the fact, theblaming and the thinking there's
these awful people out there,when your day-to-day experience
is not that like, maybe askyourself like am I being
manipulated?
Like how is it possible thatthere's all this awful stuff
happening, but I never see itRight.

You know when I will get mildly confrontational
with somebody that I know almostcertainly voted for Trump in
this last election here in thecommunity, about immigration,
for example, and I'll say so.
Are you telling me, then, thatthe couple that have the Chinese
restaurant are you telling meyou are in support of them

(01:43:10):
losing their business and themgoing with?
And more times than not, thecomment will be the reply will
be not them, and which is kindof exactly where I want them to
go, because at that point I go.
But see, here's the problem.
It's not people like you and Ithat are assessing on an

(01:43:31):
individual basis and sayingthey're good people.
We don't want them to go, thiscluster of people at the top
that have an agenda and they'renot looking at people on an
individual basis.
If you fit, we're coming.

Well, you see, with the ice stuff it's funny.
So you're from a small townlike me, like you know that at
the end of the month on thehighway, the guys are out there,
they're going to get theirquota of speeding tickets, so
you drive a little slower, youdrive a little slower toward the
end of the month or whateverright.
What's happening, it soundslike to me, is these people in
the White House have gone to ICEand say you know what?

(01:44:13):
I'm being embarrassed Everymonth they're showing me that
actually the previousadministration kicked out more
people every month than you'rekicking out.
I'm running on the fact thatwe're going to get rid of
illegals.
You're not getting out enoughof them.
Therefore, you need to do more,more, more, more.
And so, essentially, you'vecreated ice into, like the
highway cop at the end of themonth trying to meet his quotas,

(01:44:33):
and so they're running around,going to Home Depots in place,
arresting people who aren'treally criminal.
I think Americans voted for Idon't want illegal aliens here
who are criminals, and I thinkwe all agree on that.
Get them out of here, and thesystem is set up to do that.
Now what you're doing is you'veput quotas on people.
You need to throw out millionsof these people.

(01:44:54):
And so they're running to meettheir quota.
They're running to places wherethey know they're going to find
immigrants they're not runningto places where they're
necessarily going to findcriminal immigrants and it's
creating friction in our cities.
And then they're bringing inthe military and like we may
find ourselves, you know, with acivil war here over the cop on
the highway getting his quota atthe end of the month.

Great, great analogy Boy.
Yeah, that's spot on.
Great analogy Boy.

(01:45:44):
Yeah, that's spot on In kind ofleading to wrapping things up
here.
John, there are a lot of peopleout there.
I told you earlier I'm amongthem.
I find the whole world ofintelligence, especially the
clandestine services,fascinating, deeply fascinating.
What's a story from yourexperience, your career, that
you can, to the extent that youcan talk about it, that's about
as spy-like as what people mightimagine, and I preface that
with saying I assume the bulk ofyour career is not like the

(01:46:08):
movies.
But what's the most movie-likeor spy-like experience that you
had?

Geez well, a lot of them, and that's why, actually,
I work with a couple formercolleagues and we have a company
called Spycraft Entertainment.
We're trying to work withHollywood to make more authentic
movies and TV shows and we'velearned that Hollywood is way
more screwed up than theintelligence community.
It's like it's such a hardthing to work through.
It's fun and creative andinteresting, but it's been a
slow goal.
So, yeah, I mean I guess youknow if I was to try to, you

(01:46:37):
know, hit some vignettes to talkabout sort of what it's like
being overseas.
So your job as a case officer,which is in the spy?
The CIA has a big analyticcadre, a big science cadre and
then the people who you know.
It's actually a pretty smallorganization of people whose job
is to go out and recruit, runspies that give us secrets that
we can't get any other way.

(01:46:57):
So we can get stuff fromsatellites and we get stuff from
diplomats.
We don't need people like me tomeet a spy that gives us
whether it's an Iranian orRussian who is working secretly
with me to give me information,but working in a place like
Moscow.
For example, I served in Moscowat the American embassy there.
What they believe is Americanespionage, that it's not

(01:47:25):
hyperbole to say that whenyou're there as an American
official and certainly if theysuspect you might be a CIA
officer you are under a constantsurveillance 24 hours a day.
So I was there, lived there forlike two years Every single day
, every hour of the day.
I was under surveillance.
So my house had audio video init, like if I was in the
bathroom they were watching it.
Whatever I was doing.
It was completely.
If I walked out at two in themorning, there was cars there

(01:47:47):
ready to take me and follow me.
If I went around a corner andthey didn't see what I did
around the corner, they'd bringdogs and people after to do to
see if I'd left something there,left a signal for a spy or some
kind of things.
So one of the stories I tell,for example, is it was actually
a colleague of mine was a runnerand we live in that sort of.
We got to be real carefulbecause we live in that you

(01:48:08):
can't give out information orsecrets in your house because
they're listening and stuff.
And he knew he lived in thatworld and so it's a pretty big
city long winters.
He was a big runner, muchthinner than I was.
And finally the spring wascoming on and he decided he was
going to start running and so welived in these big, tall, nasty
, old Russian apartmentbuildings.

(01:48:29):
So it was his first day he camehome from work and he went for a
run.
And he had a route where he'dgo sort of across out of his
building, across the street,into Gorky Park and run along
the river.
And so he went to work the nextday, came back the next night
to go for a run and one of hisshoes was gone and he's like I
can't, I couldn't find it.
He's asking his wife where's myother shoe?

(01:48:51):
So next day he went to work andit was.
You know, it's a busy, big,huge city but there's not a lot
of place.
But he found a place to go buysome running shoes and so he
went home that night and did arun again, came home again the
next night, one of those newshoes was gone.
He's like, okay, I know what'sgoing on, my surveillance is

(01:49:12):
pissed at me.
So he went to his in his livingroom, knowing he's being
monitored, and said listen,here's the deal, I'm going to
run every night and here's myroute I'm going to go out of the
building, across the the street, into Gorky Park, through the
gates, run down along the riverand come back, and I'm going to
buy shoes every day if thiskeeps happening.
And so he came back the nextnight or after work and both

(01:49:33):
sets of shoes were back in hisroom together.
And when he went for a run,when he got to Gorky Park
through the gates, thesurveillance cars pulled up and
they opened their trunks andthey had little foldable
bicycles to follow him through.
So what had happened is thesurveillance were embarrassed,
because their job is to followthe American and never let him
out of their sights.
And the first day he wentrunning they weren't ready for
it and so this was their way ofsending a signal to him to do

(01:49:57):
those kind of things.
And that's a joking way to talkabout the kind of.
You know, we do meet sources inplaces like that and we put
incredible time and effort anduse disguise and things to meet
sources who are really willingto help America out because they
understand the corruption andthe danger of their country,
that they're willing to takepersonal risks.

(01:50:18):
And I can think of one sourcethat was before my time.
There's a great book called theBillion Dollar Spy about this
Russian military scientist whowas working for the CIA.
He believed his country wasfalling apart and was evil and
he wanted to do damage to it,and so his way of doing that was
to meet secretly with us andpass us intelligence

(01:50:40):
Intelligence that was soimportant that when the Pentagon
got it they said, hey, thisintelligence could be the
difference between victory anddefeat in a war with the Soviet
Union back then.
And one of the things he did ishe insisted in part of the
relationship with us that he hadwhat we call an L-pill ability
to commit suicide, a pill tokill yourself, because he knew
if he was caught he would betortured.

(01:51:00):
And the book talks a lot ofback and forth where we tried to
say, hey, do you really needthat?
We talk you out of it.
Like you know, here's how we'regoing to keep you safe.
But he insisted on it becausehe understood his you know the
viciousness of his country andhe got to a point where he was
trying to do as much damage ashe could and there was security
around where he was worried thatthey might be getting onto him.

(01:51:20):
Security was getting tighter inthis institute where he worked
and when he would get calledinto his boss's office from his
office every day he would takethat pill and he'd put it in his
mouth by his teeth.
He'd go in to see his boss andit was a routine request or
something the boss would be likeokay, and then he would walk
back out and take the pill backout and put it away.
But that shows the intensity ofsome of these people who work

(01:51:41):
for us secretly that he iswilling to kill himself at any
moment to continue to stealinformation and give it to the
Americans.
And there's a lot of peoplearound the world that think
America is something special.
They think America is theanswer.
And if I live in a corrupt,oppressive regime, the Americans
can help and therefore I'mwilling to risk my life to help

(01:52:03):
America and I worry now thatsome of this administration
might be.
We are becoming that corruptcountry.
It wasn't that I was anythingspecial overseas trying to get
people to work for it.
It was.
America was special and peoplewere willing to do incredible
things to help America.
But if America looks just likeevery other corrupt place, is
just trying to make money andjust trying to screw everybody,

(01:52:24):
it's going to be harder forthose people to justify putting
their life at risk to work forus.
So that's sort of a story aboutyou know a place like Moscow
where you're under surveillanceall the time.

I don't know if it is apparent on camera, but I'm
aware that my eyes started towater a little bit there when
you said that there are peoplewho think America is special and
, as a veteran, when you saidthat, my mind instantly went to

(01:52:56):
what you said.
I'm not sure that that mindsetis holding right, that that
mindset is holding right.

And boy that hurts, right in right here.
These are foreigners that arewilling to do things that
Americans won't even do for theUnited States.
You know they're puttingthemselves at risk to help us.
They're heroes Like Ioftentimes will be done.
This stuff with Hollywood stuffoh, thank you for what you did.
You guys are heroes Like no.
On this stuff with Hollywoodand stuff, oh, thank you for
what you did.
You guys are heroes Like no, no, no, no, no.
You don't understand.
We had a job to do.
Part of our mission waswonderful and thank you for

(01:53:30):
saying that.
But the people who are heroesare the ones that risk their
lives every day.
These foreigners in thesecountries essentially commit
treason against their owncountry to help America.
Those are heroes becausethey're, you know, and too many
of them have been caught andarrested and things and tortured
over the years, and it's ourobligation to keep them safe.

How would you be with this statement that it as a
partial answer to people whosay what can we as the everyday
citizen do?
How would a response of?
To take a story like you toldabout this man who, every time
he got called in, would put thatpill you know he'd cheek it

(01:54:10):
just in case to try to betterunderstand the level of
commitment those people havemade who don't even live here.

They've never, been Right.
They've never been Right.

They've never been yeah, because would you agree
that, if not saying the averagecitizen's going to get to that
point, but the closer people getto that level of commitment to
this country and theConstitution, that in and of
itself helps generate the answerto their question.

Read a book about our founding fathers.
I mean we're unusual in theworld because we're a country
that was created on an idea.
Like we're not.
You're not a Russian unlessyou're an ethnic Russian.
Like if you come in there andyou're telling you're not a
Russian, you're not a Chineseunless you're an ethnic Chinese,
but you can be an American tohave come from anywhere, because
if you believe in theConstitution and you're taking

(01:55:07):
the oath and you swore an oathto this country, you could
become an American, all of usfrom somewhere.
And it's because we're acountry that's based on an idea
and like sometimes it's good torefresh that idea and remind
ourselves like that's what makesus special and that's why
people around the world all wantto come here.
We're worried about immigration,illegal immigration.
That's because people want tocome here and it's incredible
strength for us, like one thingthat China can't compete with us

(01:55:30):
on like they are growing.
They got lots of people,they're doing all this kind of
stuff.
They've come a long way, a lotof people out of poverty really
moving forward.
But economically over time.
You know they have ademographic problem.
They can't continue to growbecause they don't have
immigrants.
People don't move there.
We.
Almost all of our growth in thelast several decades is based

(01:55:53):
on immigration, on people cominghere.
We have a demographic boon thatmost of the rest of the world
can't match, because people wantto come here.
Now, yes, there's a downside tothat.
There's illegals and there'speople who come here because and
they don't come in the rightway, but part of that's the
problem of us and our Congress.
We haven't created a systemthat's sensible, that can get
people here.
We're operating on this oldsystem that people have to come,

(01:56:16):
like you know.
So if you live in China, 12time zones away from Beijing,
you got to go to Beijing, get aninterview in the US Embassy and
then get on the list to try toimmigrate here, and so if you
don't have the resources to dothat, it's easier to sneak in or
just take a flight in and stay.
So we need to fix ourimmigration system.
Frankly, it's on us to do that,which would fix a lot of this,

(01:56:40):
and remind ourselves people comehere because we're special and
we should want people to comehere.
We just need to create a systemto get people here legally.

Yeah, and to your point.
I think it was last week Iskimmed an article.
Anyway, japan is experiencing aproblem right now.
People don't immigrate thereOlder, yeah, and the older
generation is reallydisappearing rapidly now.
Yeah, what was, if any, thepsychological effect of living

(01:57:09):
under that close of surveillancefor two years?

That's a good question.
Before we go to a place likethat, we go through regular CIA.
There's a lot of training andpreparation and polygraphs and
security and education andthings to get into.
But go to a place like that.
If you're going to go to aplace that's under heavy
security, we have a specialseries of courses, but also you
have to go through additionalpsychological testing and so if

(01:57:35):
you have a family, your familyhas to go through that too.
Plus, you're taking languageand you're taking preparation to
go there.
So there's a lot of ways tosort of not get, not be able to
get to one of these places.
But one of the psychologicalthings is like if you have a
family, how is it?
How is your wife and husband?
How are you going to be if yourealize you might be being
watched in your bedroom?

(01:57:55):
How is it you think thatthey're watching your kids?
You know.
You know that they're.
When you're not there, they maybe breaking into your house.
We've had people have theirdogs killed, all this kind of
stuff, and so it is.
You have to be prepared and youhave to understand the mission
is so important and you have tobelieve you're doing something.
That's so important that you'rewilling to put up with that
stuff.
And then eventually you developsort of a tougher skin for that

(01:58:18):
in for that.
So like if I'm in a party andI'm out, even if I have
colleagues, other CIA colleaguesthere, we all sort of know, you
know where we can talk, what wecan talk about, because people
are listening and not, and soyou develop that you know, even
like when I'm talking to you Isort of know I can know what I
can talk about and I know what Ican't, and sort of learn that
over time.
It's like even if I've beendrinking and I'm out and I know

(01:58:40):
I'm being paid attention to, Isort of have this governor that
says, oh, can't go past thatlevel.

So it sounds like a lot of the way you're kind of
the core concept, the way you'retaught to deal with that sounds
reminiscent of Viktor Frankl'sMan's Search for Meaning.
That's a great, important book.
Got a big enough reason why youcan bear the burden of any how.

I think that's an excellent, excellent connection,
and that's another thing peoplecould.
That book is really powerfuland important yeah.

Meaning in life is everything.
Absolutely, John.
How can people find you?
How can people learn more aboutyour company?
Where do they?

go.
Well, I used to be on Twitterand I had quite quite I don't
know why I had quite a bit ofTwitter followers because I was
just snarky or whatever.
But I stopped Twitter with sortof the Elon Musk thing.
It got really to be a rancidplace.
I'm on Blue Sky in true nameand I follow you and I've
followed you for years both onTwitter and Blue Sky.
I have a podcast with my otherCIA colleague, friend and a New

(01:59:42):
Yorker journalist called MissionImplausible.
It's on iHeart and Apple andall those things Mission
Implausible and it's aboutconspiracy theories and the
notion is that we were sort ofas CIA officers undercover, like
mini conspiracists right,because we were undercover and
things.
Let's try to look at and debunkand try to figure out what
makes sense about conspiraciesand whatnot.
Look at and debunk and try tofigure out what makes sense

(02:00:05):
about conspiracies and whatnot.
And my company is calledSpycraft Entertainment and we're
trying to make more authenticespionage and TV shows and
movies and that type of stuff.
And so, yeah, I'm not trying tomake myself more popular or
more public, but those are thethings that I do.
I also write occasional opinionpieces in New York Times and

(02:00:25):
Washington Post and Atlantic invarious places.

Well, personally, I've got to tell you what an
honor it is when somebody likeyou follows me, and I mean that
on a level I'm not sure that Ican convey, and the reason I say
that is because I know my styleof posting and the things that
I say are very unlike whatsomeone such as yourself, how

(02:00:51):
they go about posting, and sowhen somebody like you follows
me, whether it's true or not,but I think, wow, maybe there's
somebody who sees beyond thatand sees my core message and I'm
delivering it in a differentstyle, but they get where I'm
coming from.

That's the thing we got to remember as Americans.
People might say things inlittle different ways, but we're
on the same team and so, evenif you and I are following each
other and we don't agree witheverything, no, we're focused on
the right things.
We're on the same team.
We're trying to.
We care about the country,we're trying to move the country
in the right way.
We're scared of the dangers.
We see Too many Americans nowlike if there's one thing they
don't like about someone, theywrite them off and they say

(02:01:32):
nasty things to them.
Like maybe we disagree onIsrael or whatever, or maybe we
disagree on immigration orsomething, but like we got to
get over ourselves thinking thateveryone has to agree with 100%
of what I agree with or they'rebad people.
And so you know, I followed youfor a while.

I can see that picture up in the corner there,
that's very, very and you knowwhat's crazy about that and
that's been a topic of debatefor years.
I've never smoked in my lifeand in fact years ago.
I haven't been on Facebook foryears, but when I had one of
those little generators whereyou could put sunglasses on
whatever, and I did that one dayfor fun, and then I kind of

(02:02:12):
pursued this path, I thought,yeah, I'm going to use that just
for the hell.

That's fun yeah.

Yeah, yeah, and the only reason.
You know, occasionally I'llhave people say why are you
endorsing smoking and that typeof thing?
And I get that perspective, butI've had so many people who
know enough about what they'retalking about that I listen who
say that that's your brand.
Now you better not change that.

(02:02:37):
And I think there's some… thereal world today.
Yeah, so listen, I want toextend an open invitation to you
, as well as anybody at theSteady State, to come back
anytime for any reason, andwe'll just make it happen.
It's as simple as that.
I've enjoyed this thoroughlyand learned a lot, but I've also

(02:03:00):
enjoyed it.
You're somebody I know I wouldenjoy having a beer with you,
know.

Well, that's what we need to do.
We need to go to DenverRiggleman's place and get free
bourbon from him.
I think he owes that to us.
Yes, and I think I can get oneof the Vindmans there and maybe
I can get Abigail Spanberger.

She's going to be a good group.
That that would be incredible.
John, thank you for your timeand I've got a feeling, if
you're willing, we'll do thisagain sometime.
It might even be an episodethat just discusses the meeting
at Denver Wriglemoons.

We'll do it from here, yeah.

Yeah, he probably has a studio.
Yeah, hey, thank you and enjoythe rest of your day, john.

You too.
Thank you much, it was a.

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