MLK and Liberty versus Tyranny

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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(00:22):
to the buck Sexton Show. This is Ben wein Garten
in for Buck Sexton here on this Monday Martin Muth
and Luther King Junior Day. Hope you all had a
great weekend, maybe enjoyed some football, some time with the family.
Nice relaxation, a break from the craziness in the world
and probably in your own personal lives as well. As

(00:43):
we head into this twenty twenty election cycle, of which
the impeachment is inextricably interlinked. I want to start today.
We'll talk about a few different things. I want to
pick up on some threads that we talked about on
Thursday and Friday. In particular, we're going to talk about
the Afghanistan Papers, maybe the most overlooked critical story that
has emerged about not only American national security and foreign policy,

(01:07):
but also what kind of government we have and whether
we're really represented ultimately when they're trillions of dollars in
treasure and all this blood sacrificed and what have we
gotten for it? And I talked about the link between
General Michael Flynn and those Afghani standpapers last week. We'll
pick up on that thread today as well with Julie
Kelly just a little bit later in the hour. We're

(01:28):
also gonna again look at China, but actually through the
lens of Taiwan, a country we don't talk about a lot,
but which is actually the front line in the Chinese
Communist Party's march first for regional hegemony and then for
global dominance. And why should we as Americans care about that?
And what should the US relationship with Taiwana look like.

(01:49):
And there were recently presidential and broader elections there as well,
which have not gotten a lot of press in the US,
but are actually quite significant and a good news out
of that part of the world. So we'll talk with
Steve Yates about that a little bit later in the show,
and then also talk with Margot Cleveland of The Federalist,
a senior contributor there, colleague of mine, who is doing

(02:10):
some exceptional work parsing going through page by page of
the four hundred and seventy eight pages or whatever it
is of the IG report on FISA abuse and also
looking at potential corruption in the FISA court itself, huge
vital matters that are not being addressed. People are not
going in and doing the journalistic homework that they ought

(02:32):
to do. And Margo has a very extensive legal background
looks at this or the eyes of our eyes the
way that we look at these issues and doing some
vital work on this. We'll talk about that in our three,
but I want to start with this being Martin Luther
King Junior Day. A little bit about the politics of this,

(02:53):
and I don't believe that national holidays should be politicized.
I think that politics should be taken out of all
of these major cultural benchmarks, these celebrations that we have.
But the Left has injected politics into everything. So if
we're going to talk about the political aspect of a
day like Martin Luther King Day, I would suggest that

(03:13):
this should be an anti identity politics holiday, because that
is actually what Martin Luther King Jr. Espoused, certainly in
the most famous speech he ever delivered. He talked about colorblindness,
content of character mattering more than color of skin, skin pigmentation.
You and I have no control over that. What we

(03:36):
do have control over is what we contribute society, to
our families, to our communities, what we bring to the
table based upon our individual merit, and that truly is
the basis by which we should be judged, not things
that are completely out of our control, arbitrary by nature.

(03:56):
Thomas soul the great economist who grew up at Harlem Back,
I believe in the thirties or forties, came up through
the ranks of basically militant black nationalism leftism, had an
epiphany and switched and became one of this nation's leading
free market economists, written some of the finest books there

(04:19):
are on these subjects. And he wrote something back in
twenty thirteen on the fiftieth anniversary of Kings, I have
a dream speech. Then I think it is worth reading
at some length, because it puts in context how distorted Americans,
particularly on the left, have got in on issues of race,

(04:41):
how far away they have traveled from Martin Luther King's
ideal where color blindness used to be the highest ideal,
the virtue that we sought, the principle that we sought.
And now what is the most virtuous is the opposite.
It is, let's judge everything explicitly on the basis of
what the races of one person versus another person. That's

(05:03):
really identity politics and multiculturalism. What, at the end of
the day, is it really about. Yes, they've come up
with this academic veneer to try to rationalize the views
that have pervaded our law schools and all of our
schools and now all of our cultural institutions since the
Civil rights era. It's actually about dividing us. It's about

(05:24):
dividing us and then conquering us, rubbing the wounds, old wounds,
historical wounds for political gain, playing one group and I
hate the term group because we're individuals and we should
be judged individually. Pitting groups against each other and that

(05:44):
is totally antithetical to what King argued in that speech.
I want to read a little what soul Is said
back in twenty thirteen, because it's just as relevant today,
and it's going to remain just as relevant until in
athless we thwart the identity politics obsessed multiculturalist focus march
and get back to judging people by who they are
caring most about. The smallest minority, the minority of one

(06:08):
the individual under assault by this group ideology of identity politics,
which of course is just a ruse a guys to
cover their leftism. It's using the veneer of being virtuous
because you're supporting the oppressed, as a means of justifying

(06:28):
tyrannical collectivism, where the individual is destroyed, the smallest minority
is destroyed. Here's a widow of what Soul wrote, Judging
individuals by their individual character is that the opposite poll
from judging how groups are statistically represented among employees, college students,
or political figures. Yet many, if not most, of those

(06:49):
who celebrate the I have a Dream speech today promote
the directly opposite approach of group preferences, especially those based
on skin color. He goes on, what was historic about
King's speech was not only what was said, but how
powerfully its message resonated among Americans of that time across
the spectrum of race, ideology, and politics. A higher percentage

(07:11):
of Republicans than Democrats voted in Congress for both the
Civil Rights Act of nineteen sixty four and the Voting
Rights Act of nineteen sixty five. To say that was
a hopeful time would be an understatement. To say that
many of those hopes have since been disappointed. Would also
be an understatement. There's been much documented racial progress since
nineteen sixty three, but there's also been much retroaggression, of

(07:33):
which the disintegration of the black family has been central,
especially among those at the bottom of the social pyramid.
Many people, especially politicians and activists, want to take credit
for the economic and other advancement of blacks, even though
a larger proportion of Blacks rose out of poverty in
the twenty years before nineteen sixty than the twenty years afterwards.

(07:54):
We should add to that these trends have only gotten worse,
and that the great society itself, when measure in terms
of the racial progress, has really been a flop. But
no one wants to take responsibility for the policies and
ideologies that led to the breakup of the black family,
which had survived centuries of slavery and generations of discrimination.
And we cannot downplay enough by the way, the disintegration

(08:16):
of the black family is a trend that has accelerated
across Americans of all races, and the disintegration of family
ultimately means the disintegration of communities, society, and a nation. Altogether,
because absent that family structure, everything else collapses. He goes on,

(08:37):
many hopes were disappointed because those were unrealistic hopes to
begin with. Economic and other disparities between groups have been
common for centuries and countries around the world, and many
of those disparities have been and still are larger than
the disparities between blacks and whites in America. Even when
those who lagged behind have advanced, they have not always
caught up, even after centuries, because others were advancing at
the same time. But when blacks did not catch up

(08:59):
with whites in America within a matter of decades, that
was treated as strange or even a sinister sign of
crafty and covert racism. Civil rights were necessary, but far
from sufficient. Education and job skills are crucial, and the
government cannot give you these things. All it can do
is make them available. Race hustlers who blame all lags

(09:19):
on the racism of others are among the obstacles to
taking the fullest advantage of education and other opportunities. What
does that say about the content of their character? Soul
goes on a little bit to talk about the passage
of the Civil Rights Act and how high hopes were
following that act, He says, the bitter anti climax that

(09:43):
did follow provoke no rethinking. Instead, it provoked all sorts
of new demands. Judging everybody by the same standards came
to be regarded in some quarters as racist because it
precluded preferences and quotas. That is, we should judge everyone
by different standards, and that's supposed to be anti racist.
It's absurd on its face. Soul goes on. There are
people today to talk justice when they really mean payback,

(10:05):
including payback against people who were not even born when
historic injustices were committed. By the way, this applies to
a criminal justice system, for example, in New York, where
I mentioned, we now have this no bail reform where
criminals get protected under the guise of justice, but innocent
victims walking the streets have to deal with these repeat
offenders going out and committing all sorts of crimes through

(10:27):
no fault of their own, and the criminal is treated
as the aggrieved. So it pervades a lot of things.
It's not just the racial relations in this country, Soul concludes.
And this was talking back in twenty thirteen. Remember, so

(10:47):
this was the Trayvon whole hullo below Trayvon Martin case transpiring.
The nation has just been through a sensationalized murder trial
and fard on which many people took fear positions before
a speck of evidence was introduced based on nothing more
than judging those involved by the color of their skin.
President Obama did that himself, by the way, in the

(11:10):
case of the Trayvon Martin Travails tragedy. We have a
long way to go to catch up to what Martin
Luther King said fifty years ago, and we are moving
in the opposite direction. And I think the record absolutely
proves what Thomas soul was saying. Take for example, something
we've talked about in the show before, the sixteen nineteen project.
It is a project by the New York Times to

(11:30):
reframe history as if American history really begins when slavery
was introduced to the shores of at the time Virginia,
and slavery actually had existed here decades, if not a
century or more prior to that point. But that is
the point at which The New York Times traces our history.
So seventeen seventy six isn't the start of America sixteen

(11:50):
nineteen is our original sin of slavery is that's where
America and history should start. So it suggests from the
very beginning that we were built on tyranny, not liberty,
and that every evil aspect of America derives from its
this original evil seed of slavery being introduced here, rather
than the fact that America was an experiment in liberty

(12:12):
where slavery was the great exception to it, where the
founding fathers themselves said it was basically intolerable, completely incompatible
with what our founding principles were, completely incompatible with the
Declaration of Independence with a constitution not referenced in the
Constitution by name, because they knew that it was a
blight on our nation, and most of the founders, in

(12:37):
particular the abolitionist founders all said basically they found this
to be an abhorrent system, one that had to be
tolerated or there would not be a union. And then
they had language specifically in the Constitution to phase out
the slave of trade within twenty five years. The document itself,
of course, could not support slavery on its own merits

(12:58):
on the words in it, But the Times instead wants
to reframe our history and introduce a curriculum in to
school is consistent with the sixteen nineteen Project, which explicitly
says that America was basically a country founded on and
built in tyranny, that capitalism and all of our other
institutions spawn from it, that ultimately it is a deplorable experiment.

(13:20):
And if it's a deplorable, evil experiment, then obviously the
answer is you have to turn it on its head.
You have to shred the Constitution, you have to repudiate
the Declaration of Independence. These documents aren't viewed as the
answers to discrimination and to a society that is flourishing
and tolerant and truly pluralistic and judges people on their merits,
like King asked for, and like Douglas identified centuries before,

(13:45):
over a century before, they'd have us believe. It's the
exact opposite, Totally inconsistent. I would argue the sixteen nineteen
project with what King called for. Robert Woodson wrote a
great editorial on this in the Wall Street Journal recently,
and he talked about sixteen nineteen. He said that today
the progressive left wants to ignore the achievements and pretend

(14:07):
that Blacks are perpetual victims of white racism sixteen nineteen
Project essay series. It's the latest salvo in this attack
on America's founding, claiming anti black racism runs in the
very dna of this country. This statement is an abomination
of everything doctor King stood for. When come right back,
we'll talk a little bit more about doctor King sixteen
nineteen project and context of it and the importance of

(14:29):
the content of character over the collar of his game.
Right back, this Ben Wangarton in for Buck sex And
on the Buck Sex And Show. Back in just a second.
You're in the Freedom Hut. This is the Buck Sexton
Show podcast. Welcome back to the Buck Sex And Show.
This is Ben Wangarten in for Buck Sexton. We've been

(14:49):
talking about the ideals and principle as that Martin Luther
King stood for and the left standing in contradiction to
those principles today sadly, and I was talking about this
Robert Woodson Wall Street Journal editorial and he quotes from
King and juxtaposes it with a sixteen nineteen project says,

(15:10):
in sharp contrast to the claims of sixteen nineteen which
disparages the American Revolution and Declaration of independence and insists
America's hopelessly racist king believed deeply in the need to
remain true to the founder's vision, quoting him the Patriot
Dream that sees beyond the years. To him that that
was the only evidue toward fulfilling America's promise, As he
wrote in his nineteen sixty three Letter from a Birmingham jail,

(15:31):
one day the South will know that when these disinherited
children of God sat down on lunch counters, they were
in reality standing up for what was best in the
American dream and for the most sacred values in our
Judeo Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those
great woes of democracy which were dug deep by the
founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the
Declaration of Independence. Okay, well, our leftists today who would

(15:53):
claim to carry the banner of king say that the
Constitution and the Declaration are inherently evil documents based upon
the people that drafted them and what they derived from
Judeo Christian heritage. They'd say, that's code word for white
nationalism and ethnocentric Europeanism and these other assinine concepts that

(16:15):
they've come up with to try to create an academic
veneer that legitimizes they're just anti Western ideology. At its core,
our sacred American values in the American dream, our understanding
of the American dream as conservative Americans, as traditional Americans,

(16:35):
is the American nightmare. In the left's reading of things,
King added, we will reach the goal of freedom in
Birmingham and all over the nation because the goal of
America's freedom, abuse and scorn, though we may be, our
destiny is tied up with America's destiny. And then whitson
goes on. Doctor King, who saw full participation in America,
would never have indulged today's grievance based on any politics
whose social justice warriors use race as a battering ram

(16:57):
against the country. In fact, in a letter from Birming M. Jail,
King is explicitly warned against the type of group think
that characterizes identity politics. Individuals may see the moral light
and voluntarily give up their unjust posture, said King, But
as Ronald niber has reminded us, groups tend to be
more immoral than individuals. I would say to the left,

(17:18):
how can you look at what King said and what
he wrote, and then support an ideology that is inherently
about color of skin, maybe to the total exclusion of
content of character, certainly to some extent to the exclusion
of content of character. But merit and the individual worth
and dignity of a person should be all the matters
at the end of the day in America. And we

(17:39):
might not always achieve that ideal, but that should be
the ideal, not the opposite, not the antithesis. We're gonna
switch gears here and just after the break we're gonna
have Julie Kelly on to talk about something I talked
about last week, which does deal incidentally without our individual
liberties and civil rights in context of General Michael Flynn certainly,
and also in context of the government versus the people

(18:02):
in the Afghanistan papers. This Ben Weegarden in for Buck
Sex and on the Buck Sexton Show. Back just after this.
Thanks for listening to the bus Sex Show podcasts. Remember
to subscribe on Apple podcast, the iHeartRadio app, or wherever
you get your podcasts. Welcome back to the Buck Sexton Show.
This is Ben Weingarten in for Buck Sexton, and as

(18:23):
you recall, on Friday, we did a very deep dive
into the plight of General Michael T. Flynn and in
particular went into great depth on what I think is
a document that in and of itself explains why Flynn
had to be targeted as persona non grata the number

(18:43):
one priority for the deep staters in the Trump administration
based on this one interview alone, and that interview was
a product of the Afghanistan Papers, one that was flagged
for me by a great writer, one of the best
trolls certain way on the conservative side, but also someone
who writes just fantastic editorials and does some great journalistic work.

(19:05):
And that's Julie Kelly, a senior contributor to American Greatness,
and she joins us now, Julie, thanks so much for
coming on the program. Thanks Ben, thanks for having me on. Well,
it's my pleasure. And I want to start actually with
a news story that I'm sure you saw, you know,
one of these stories rolled out once or twice a week,
This one about just these bombshew revelations about President Trump

(19:29):
defying the generals and other senior officials in the administration,
in particular leading national security and foreign policy officials. I
wonder if you put that well, first of all, isn't
that what he was elected to do? Right? He absolutely was,
and you know he was right to question. I mean,

(19:52):
we all support the military. We know what a hard
job they've all had to past two decades, from Afghanistan
through Iraq and other kind of like. But look, we
now know, thanks to the expose that's been published in
the Washington Post, what did debacle the Afghanistan war has
been from the beginning. And Trump promised his base and

(20:12):
his voters that he would look to end these perpetual wars.
And I think that that was the crux of his
questioning of these military officials in twenty seventeen. And so anyway,
that questioning, I think perfectly parallels what General Flynn asserted
in his interview with the Aspects Special Inspector General for

(20:34):
the Afghanistan reconstruction efforts, because basically what he was calling
out is, look, we've spent now seven trillion dollars in
treasure and all manner of blood, and you know, at
the end of the day, what did we get for it?
It's or what is the return on the investment of
our nation's resources. I wonder if you would summarize for

(20:54):
us what you've found in parsing the Afghanistan papers thus far. Well,
just so everyone can understand where these keepers came from.
So this is, as you said, the Special Inspector General
who was tasked in two thousand and eight really to
look at all the reconstruction efforts, what was what's been

(21:15):
going on in Afghanistan since really two thousand and two
after the invasion. So this Special Inspector General has conducted
hundreds of interviews not just with US officials but LA
forces and Afghan government officials as well, looking into what
worked and what didn't work. And unfortunately we found out

(21:36):
that most of what we've been doing there has not worked.
So these interviews give really some insight into what has
been happening for almost two decades. And one of those
interviews was Mike Flynn, who has been an intelligence officer
for decades and served in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and

(21:58):
so he also worked in the Obama administration for James Clapper.
So his interview was very interesting and we can get
into some of the details, but it makes more sense
of why the Obama White House targeted him in twenty fourteen. Yeah,
it's amazing in some ways to my mind that he
rose to be the head of DA the Defense Intelligence Agency,

(22:21):
on the Obama administration. Given his outspoken views. The only
thing to which I can attribute it is really that
he was so competent that that competence overcame the political
correctness that would normally pervade a decision like elevating him
to that role. Do you see it that way as well?
I think that that's true, and his experience really is unmatched.

(22:43):
And so, but he was founding the alarm early on
and how the intelligence was being manipulated and politicized coming
out of Afghanistan, and how it was causing people to
make really bad decisions. And he alerted not just the
Obama White House, but also CIA officials. I believe it
was probably John Brennan, because I mean they weren't exactly equals,

(23:06):
but pretty close, and questioning why the intelligence was being
manipulated and politicized, and as it got higher up the chain,
meaning to the president, he was not getting the truth.
Therefore he was not telling the American people the truth either,
And thus far in reviewing those Afghanistan papers, what's been

(23:28):
the most remarkable thing that you've been that you found?
You know? But I have to say, these are a
lot of the same people, and I'm going to have
a piece on this later in the week as well.
These are the very same people who have been criticizing
Donald Trump since he first announced he was running for president.
And I hate to make everything about Trump, but he

(23:50):
is such a good clarifying figure. So a lot of
these same former diplomats and national security officials, state Department
officials who've been high critical of Donald Trump and his
kind of ad hoc approach to foreign policy and diplomacy.
These are the same people who have been misleading US,
who now admit they really didn't know what was happening

(24:12):
in Afghanistan. They really didn't know how to fix the
problems that they had helped perpetuate, and now we're still
in this disastrous war. I mean, we had two US
soldiers killed earlier this month. We had twenty three kills
in the country last year, not that anyone in Washington
is paying attention. And so you really see this permanent

(24:35):
ruling class in Washington at every level just really doesn't
know what they're doing. Yeah, one of the things that
struck me in reviewing in great detail the General Flynn interview,
was he basically showed that there is rampant policization, as
you mentioned of intelligence, there's out and out corruption in

(24:55):
terms of the billions of dollars and ultimately trillions of
dollars that were poured into Afghanistan and where it all went.
And then there's the other aspect which is uncomfortable to discuss,
which is the fact that the bureaucracies themselves, like any bureaucracy,
has vested interest in growing bigger, in claiming issues where
they may not be there necessarily, or in basically defining

(25:19):
a mandate which demands then greater and greater funds, because
every government agency and every bureaucracy period is subject to
those kind of pressures, and bureaucracies don't shrink themselves, they
only expand. What did you make of his interview generally,
I mean, he was extremely candid in what he told

(25:40):
the interviewers, and he addressed all the topics you just said,
the corruption, the opiate industry that we've also poured billions
into trying to help Afghanistan's production of olbiit and destroy
their poppy fields. That's been a complete disaster. And so
he really touched on the intelligence, the ongoing corruption, the

(26:03):
failure to address all of the other rampant problems there,
and the notion that he alerted top officials about this,
and so, just to give people the timeline, so this
would have been between twenty twelve and twenty fourteen when
he was sounding the alarm. And he basically says in
the interview in one passage, if we're if everything seems

(26:26):
to be going so great, why does it feel like
we're losing? And he was not just telling, and he
also was testifying. I couldn't get a copy of it.
I believe it was behind closed doors to the Homeland
Security Committee in twenty fifteen about this issue too, and
so he you know, so the Obama people were aware

(26:50):
Mike Flynn was making this public to lawmakers on Capitol
Hill and also to the press. So they viewed him
as a problem. And as I wrote in my first piece,
he really was essentially a whistleblower, and at a very
precarious time. So this would have been, you know, around
twenty twelve, twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen, the surge was over,

(27:11):
they were bringing troops home, the situation was deteriorating. Joe
Biden and Barack Obama were trying to make this sound
like a success, but it was not, and for many reasons.
And so now we know it's, you know, in worse
condition than when Obama and Biden left it, and another

(27:31):
mess for Donald Trump to try to clean up. Yeah,
it bears emphasizing the point that you made about General
Flynn being a true, true whistleblower, and you wrote a
column about this, which is what drew my attention to
Flynn's interview. I wasn't even aware that it was in
those archives in the first place. He was a whistleblower,
and he paid the real price for it, first in

(27:52):
the Obama administration and then subsequently for a short lived
time in the Trump administration. So he should be the
one that's really held up as the blower, not the
so called whistleblower that's at the core of a you know,
a sham of an impeachment process who will probably never testify.
It seems no, no, he won't. He's been protected and

(28:13):
heralded as a hero and a martyr, and so we
never have to hear from him. Meanwhile, Mike Flynn's life
is destroyed. Obama's FBI under Jim Callmey, as we know
know opened up an investigation into Mike Flynn. The targeting
of Mike Flynn actually preceded any of that. It really
started in twenty fourteen. So now you know, we see

(28:35):
the unequal fates of two whistleblowers. Well, why aren't the
Afghanistan papers in your view, given that it's living history,
it remains relevant and there has never been a lessons learned,
it seems, either in the executive branch or the legislative
branch on this issue. Why aren't they getting more attention? Well,

(28:56):
I think there's a few reasons. One, the Washington Poet
published this series in the beginning of December, so it
was buried amid the impeachment drama and also the Michael
Horrowitz report advisor abuse. So I think that that was
part of it. And obviously, you know, official Washington does

(29:16):
not want to bring attention to the documents and interviews
contained in that exposed a so they are willfully ignoring it.
I think that that's part of this distraction. Now with
what Donald Trump allegedly said to military officials in twenty
seventeen about the war, and these were excerpts from a
book that were published in The Washington Post, the same

(29:38):
paper that's published the Afghanistan Papers. So this almost seems
like a little bit of a cover up for what
you know, these officials are now being exposed as having done.
There's not one person to blame as far as the
Afghanistan War. I mean, this runs over three administrations and
hundreds of thousands of officials, so there's not one person

(30:01):
to really target here. Although I do have a piece
up tomorrow about Joe Biden. We can talk a little
bit about that. He's now trying to rewrite history. Big
surprise about his role in Afghanistan from the very beginning
two thousand and one, you know, up to the present date.
And so it's unfortunate, and that's why we are trying
to cover the papers a little bit more to bring

(30:22):
more attention, because it really has been buried since you've
given us that little tease about Joe Biden. We'll pick
it up on the other side of a short break.
This has Ben Weegarden in for Buck Sex and on
The Buck Sexton Show more with Julia Kelly. Just after this,
you're in the Freedom Hunt. This is the Buck Sexton
Show podcast. Welcome back to the Buck Sexton Show. This

(30:45):
is Ben Weegarden in for Buck Sexton, and we've been
talking with Julie Kelly, a senior contributor to American Greatness
about the Afghanistan papers. I think Julia just made an
excellent point that bears repeating, which is that there is
no one person to whom we should point a finger
at with respect to the morass. And frankly, the failure

(31:08):
called a success repeatedly for almost two decades of Afghanistan.
The fact that it has transcended administrations, secretaries of defense,
all manner of generals, folks at every level of government,
and in the military as well, and that we've ended
up in this situation. I think if anything speaks to
a much more pervasive problem, it would be even better.

(31:28):
It would be a much better situation if you could
actually point fingers and there would be lessons learned that
only implicated a few people, and we could make corrective
action going forward. But the fact is that it transcends
party year generation. That speaks to a serious failure that
we have currently in our government and in our ability
to execute wars to the extent we should be executing

(31:51):
the wars that we're entering in the first place. But
I want to bring back Julie specifically to talk about
something that is coming in a fourth coming calm, I believe.
And that is how Joe Biden is implicated in all
things Afghanistan. So Julie, take it away. So Ben, You'd
be hard pressed to find a politician in Washington who
has his fingerprints more on the Afghanistan War than Joe Biden. Right. So,

(32:14):
he has been a Senator since the nineteen seventies. He
was chairman and then ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee.
He voted to approve the authorization for the war in
two thousand and one. In two thousand and two, he
helped co author legislation that authorized this rebuilding effort that

(32:34):
now has cost over one hundred and thirty billion dollars
more than the Marshall Plan, if you can believe in
current dollars. And interestingly, in two thousand and seven, when
he was running against Barack Obama, Joe Biden wanted a
new surge of troops, a new influx of troops. He
called it a surge into Afghanistan, redirecting troops from Iraq

(32:59):
into Afghanistan. Now he's on a campaign trail claiming that
he opposed the surge, which there's some details about that
that he's kind of right but mostly wrong, because he
did he did support a search, just not to the
degree that the generals wanted and that Obama eventually settled on.

(33:20):
So again we're getting half truths from Joe Biden. And
I detailed this in a column tomorrow from Joe Biden
might qualify as successful. And when you consider his whole
record and foreign policy and national security, I mean, I
think it's almost safe to say that his only success
when it come with any implications for foreign policy, is
enriching his family members. Is that accurate? I think that

(33:42):
that's probably true, and I think that that was his interest.
And you know, it would be interesting for somebody to
go back in detail how anyone profited off of his
continued support of reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan, because he was
an early champion of this, and so I'm sure that
there's I'm sure there's some Biden family members who have

(34:04):
profited off of that too. But look now he's promising
to end the warren Afghanistan. Think about this, then, if
Joe Biden somehow miraculously takes the White House when he
is sworn in if Donald Trump does not bring all
of our troops home. If Joe Biden is sworn in,
he will inherit a war that he helped start two

(34:25):
decades ago that he has perpetuated, that he has approved.
His fingerprints are on every aspect of the Afghanistan War
since the beginning. But now he's allowed to, of course,
rewrite history and back away from his involvement. And he
shouldn't be, especially in light of these reports that we have.

(34:46):
You know, it would be great for someone to challenge
Joe Biden on the Mike Flynn interview and what he
knew about intelligence. I mean, he brags all the time
how he is, you know, Barack Obama's foreign policy whisper. Well,
what did he Oh? I'm sure that he would challenge
the person asking that question to a push up contest
and that would be the end of it. He'd say, Hey, look, Jack,

(35:08):
you know that's not true. Jack, come on, man, talk
about the facts. His favorite pivot. We've got about under
a minute left. I did want to touch on one
more piece that you wrote recently related to this, and
that concerns ice IG corruption. That is, the Intelligence Community
Inspector General who's implicated in the whistleblower that the quote

(35:29):
unquote whistleblower that we talked about before and bringing his
case forth tell us a little about that. So here's
the guy at the center. This is the one transcript
that Adam Schiff won't release, and this is the transcript
closed or testimony of Michael Atkinson, who's the Intelligence Community
inspector general who kind of helped launch this latest impeachment crusade.

(35:50):
He handled the complaint the whistleblower I use scare quotes
whistleblower complaint. He told Congress that it was a matter
of urging concern, tried to go over his body, his
head and bring attention to this. Michael Atkinson is closely
tied to many of the key figures in the Russia
Gate scandal. He worked directly for the head of the

(36:11):
National Security Division, which was in charge of handling Carter
Page's FAIZA. He was the chief counsel for Mary McCord,
who was the head of that division, who also oversaw
the Russian collusion bogus Russia collusion investigation, and he worked
for her for months. He stayed in that agency until
he was inexplicably approved by the Republican Senate to serve

(36:34):
as the watchdog for an intelligence community that's been trying
to destroy Donald Trump from the beginning. Anyway, my point,
and it's in my piece, is that Senate Republicans are smart.
That's a big if. Their very first witness, in my opinion,
should be Michael Atkinson asked him about his role in
Russia Gate from the beginning from July twenty sixteen, when

(36:54):
all of this really started happening, until he left at
the end of twenty seventeen. Here and we're gonna have
to leave it right there. Joy, Thank you so much
for coming on the program. This Ben one Garden in
for Buck Sex and on the Buck Sexton Show back
just after this. Thanks for listening to the bus Sex
Show podcast. Remember to subscribe on Apple Podcast, the iHeartRadio app,

(37:15):
or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to the
Buck Sexton Show. This is Ben Weegarten in for Bucks Sexton.
And although I hate talking about this topic impeachment, obviously
we're rolling right into it. This week is where it
really takes off in the Senate, and there was some
substantial developments over the weekend with the Democrats putting out

(37:37):
a brief explaining making their case for why Trump must
be removed from office, even though they know they can't
get the two thirds in the Senate. It's pretty funny actually,
if you look at some of what they discuss in
their brief. They say, they tell other senators follow the
constitution and rise above partisan differences. As you hear the case,

(38:02):
president Trump abused the power of his office to solicit
foreign interference in our elections for his own personal political gain,
thereby jeopardizing our national security, the integrity of our elections,
and our democracy. The impeachment manager said in a statement, So,
you want senators to rise above partisan differences and follow
the constitution, but you are putting forth an entirely partisan

(38:23):
impeachment process where you had Democrats in the House either
of staying or switch parties altogether. But you want senators
to rise above what does that mean? They want senators
to turn their backs and stab stab their voters in
the back, basically is what they're asking for senators to do. Really,
of course, you know this is just a charade to
try to throw as many things as against the wall

(38:45):
as possible while taking those going against for example, Joe
Biden off the campaign trail in the Senate as a
means of trying to inflict maximum political punishment rolling into
the twenty twenty election. So then the White House put
out a short concise, I think, pretty strong defense, and

(39:06):
they say the articles of impeachment violate the Constitution. They
are defective in their entirety. They're the product of invalid
proceedings that flagrantly denied the president any due process rights.
They rest on dangerous distortions of the Constitution that would
do lasting damage to our structure of government. And then
it goes on to say that in the first article
of the House attempts to seize the president's power on

(39:26):
Article two of the Constitution to determine foreign policy. This
is the abuse of power quote article. In the second article,
this is the obstruction of Congress. None of these are
high crimes defined as high crimes and misdemeanors, or any
of the other actual crimes stated in the impeachment quause
of the Constitution. Of course, in the second article, the
House attempts to control and penalize the assertion of the

(39:47):
executive branches constitutional privileges while simultaneously seeking to destroy the
Framers system of checks and balances. By approving the article,
is the House violate our constitutional order, legally abused its
power of impeachment and attempted to obstruct President Trump's ability
to faithfully execute the duties of his office. They sell
to undermine his authority under Article two of the Constitution,
which vest the entirety of the executive power in a

(40:09):
president of the United States of America, in order to
presume and I think this is, by the way, the
most important paragraph and the whole thing, in order to
preserve our constitutional structure of government, to reject the poisonous
partisanship that the Framers warned against, and by the way,
many of the House Democrats who were there during the
Quinton impeachment warned against. To ensure one party political impeachment

(40:30):
vendettas did not become the new normal, and to vindicate
the will of the American people, the Senate must reject
both articles of impeachment. In the end, this entire process
is nothing more than a dangerous attack on the American
people themselves and their fundamental right to vote. And that's true.
And again, what drives me nuts about this whole thing
is that this even has to be written. There shouldn't

(40:52):
have to be a brief because the whole process is illegitimate.
The process is illegitimate, the substance is illegitimate. It's a joke.
And it pains me that Republicans are being forced to
play defense by Democrats rules when Democrats don't control the Presidency,
and they don't control the Senate either, And that is why,

(41:12):
as I said last week, it is so imperative that
Mitch McConnell and the other Republicans step up and fight
the Democrats just as hard as the Democrats are fighting them,
whether they realize it's an attack on themselves or not.
If for no other reason, then protect the institutions, whatever
reason you have to find to muster the defense that
the President deserves, the American people deserve, the Constitution deserves

(41:36):
against an anti constitutional, poetical adversary. So there was news
that Mitch McConnell has built in a kill switch in
the rules governing the impeachment, and you always, the devil
is always in the details in a process like this,
And as I've said, McConnell knows all the different kind
of parliamentary procedures, how you can phrase the language properly

(41:58):
to fight the Democrats with the same fervor that they're
fighting the President and the Republicans. So he supposedly inserted
this kill switch. What does that mean? There's a measure.
According to Senator Josh Holly, Republican from Missouri who has

(42:20):
been very good on impeachment and many other issues for
that matter, a freshman senator who emerged as a top
eye of the president, had previously drafted a measure dismissing
the charges if the House did not formally transmit them
by changing Senate rules to do so. He said that
the rules package for the impeachment trial includes a measure
that allows for the president's legal team to quickly push
for a summary judgment or dismissal at any time should

(42:41):
things get wild. The way Hally describes it himself is
my understandings that the resolution will give the president's team
the option to either move to judgment or to move
to dismiss at a meaningful time. And it's sad that
it's come to this because we couldn't get enough Republicans
to dismiss the thing general. Now instead we have to

(43:04):
in some sense legitimize a charade, and that is what
really sticks in My craw about this whole issue is
that if it's illegitimate, the fact that we put all
these constitutional niceties on it, these bells and whistles, and
we're treating some we're treating an adversary who wants to
kill us, as if they're operating in some form of

(43:24):
good faith. And that's why it's not just about dismissing
or acquitting. It should be about punishing Democrats for putting
this thing forth in the first place. And again, sort
of like with Hillary Clinton, how she was never actually
brought to real justice. The only justice was her losing
the American people putting Donald Trump in the Oval office.

(43:45):
It's the same thing in twenty twenty. I have a
feeling that we're going to be the only ones that
have a say in terms of whether Democrats really pay
a price for this fraud that they've been foisting on
the American people. Another illustration of the fraudulent, the whole

(44:07):
fraudulent tenor of this quote unquote impeachment non impeachment, and
this is from Jonathan Turley, again a civil libertarian on
the left. He wrote a little post on Gerald Nadwer,
House Judiciary Chair. Complete phony in this by the way.
I wrote about this right after the mid term elections

(44:28):
when he was on a train ride back from New
York and Molly hamming Away, of my colleague at the Federalists,
reported that she just happened to be sitting in the
train car behind him where he announced basically that they
were going to be doing impeachment, and a bunch of
calls to supposedly private cause should have been private cause,
no discretion, I guess from nadwer were he telegraphed that
this is the way that we were going into impeachment.

(44:50):
And I wrote after that about some video that if
anyone go on c SPAN, take a look at the
impeachment proceedings during Quentin nat were made the most rigorous
defense you could ever have for President Donald Trump. Never
have it. You should never have a partisan impeachment. It
should never be one sided. It's a disaster for the
American people, it's a disaster for the constitution, it's a

(45:12):
disaster for liberty. Showing himself to be a complete hypocrite
now and so Turley talks about the fact that Nader
doesn't want Hunter Biden to be called as a witness.
He says there will be no trades of witnesses. Well,

(45:33):
here's what Turley says, if true, that nadver will not
do this trade of witnesses if Hunter Biden is a
part of the deal, witnesses to be called during the
Senate trial. So if Democrats get to call John Bolton,
Republicans get to call Hunter Biden. If true, is the

(45:57):
House prepared to give up on proving its case to
protect the Bidens from the ignoble moment of answering questions
about the Ukraine contract. That is a considerable price to
pay to protect Joe Biden. It's also another reason why
the decision to rushed impeachment vote was such a historic
blunder by Speaker Pelosi. They waited a couple of months,

(46:18):
They could have called these witnesses and not handed over
control of the Senate. Instead, they impeached by Christmas and
then waited a month. So why would they do that?
Was that a blunder a tactical blunder by Pelosi and
her colleagues. Well, again, I think it points to a
motive potentially for or pretext a justification for taking off

(46:42):
the fields Joe Biden's competitors. If you looked at impeachment
purely through a Biden prism, his competition has been taken
off the playing field. If this trial goes for weeks
and weeks number one and then number two, Biden unethical behavior,
real quid pro quo, real bribery is at the heart

(47:05):
of the whole impeachment sham. So is the impeachment sham,
like the more Special Council, in effect, another cover up
more special council tied up a bunch of loose ends
with respect to misconduct on the government side in pursuing Trump.

(47:26):
Is this again Democrat attempt to obstruct misconduct on their
side with Biden because qui quid pro quo and bribery
which Democrats would no longer apply to President Trump because
they know that it's not there and they know that
it doesn't fit their impeachment article. Is when they pull tests,
you know, what are the words that work? Could it

(47:50):
once again be that they engaged in the very behavior
that they accused Trump and Republicans of? And could it
be once again that they are trying to cover up
that malfeasance by claiming malfeasance on the other side. Urge
you to read by the way Peter Schweitzer's column on
how five Biden family members have all profited handsomely during

(48:12):
his time in office, sometimes directly and other times indirectly
related to the positions senior level positions that he's held
for decades and decades, and then I'll leave it with this.
On the impeachment subject, Byron York also wrote a great
column where he talks about two of the deceptions at
the heart of the brief that the Democrats put forth

(48:35):
explaining why it is imperative that we must remove the
president today even though they have no case, and they
say for protecting the integrity of the current presidential race
since last time he got help from Russia and he
accepted it. Read York's column, I urge you to read it.
He talks about these two deceptions, one of them being
that Trump wanted Ukraine to investigate quote unquote a debunked

(48:57):
conspiracy theory that Russia did not interfere in the twenty
sixteen presidential election to aid President Trump, but instead of
Ukraine interfered in that election to aid President Trumps opponent
Hillary Clinton. Okay, I would question that assertion York gives
them concedes the fact that effectively Russia was solely trying

(49:17):
to aid President Trump. I mean it doesn't say solely
in their quote, but trying to aid President Trump, when
in reality, Russia was trying to sow discord. And if
you look at it, they paid for ads for a
bunch of candidates, not just President Trump, including Democrats. But
weave that aside for the sake of argument. There's never
been an argument that Ukraine interfered to help Hillary Clinton

(49:40):
and not know Russia involvement. That's a flat out lie.
So that's York's first points, which was a very good point,
and it's very clear that there's absolutely evidence out there
of Ukrainian officials who did not want Trump to win
and put out words to records to that effect, including
I believe the New York Times reporting on this thrown
under the rug now shoved under the rug. And then

(50:04):
the other part is about asking Russia for help when obviously,
as you know, Trump welcomed Russian election interference. Was not
what Trump did, he said release the emails. It was
obviously in jest in a context of a much broader narrative.
So what York argues that it's totally misleading to say
that that was genuinely asking for Russian help and Russian

(50:26):
interference in the election. As he writes, Trump did in
fact welcome Russia based weeks, but grossly out of context.
The context is this Trump welcome Russia based weeks about
the Quinton campaign because the media were enthusiastically embracing and
repeating Russian based weeks about the Quintin campaign print, Internet TV.
Everyone was accepting, repeating and amplifying the material release by

(50:50):
wiki weeks from the Russian hack of top Quinton campaign
official John Podesta, and then he runs through a bunch
of articles talking about this as well. It's just representative
the fact that these two assertions would be at the
heart of the Democrats brief It's just so representative of
the fact that this whole thing is a sham. It's
a joke, and that's why it should be treated as such.
It should be taken seriously from the perspective Democrats are

(51:12):
going to fight tooth and nail and claw and do
everything they possibly can to extract as much blood as
they possibly can from this process. But it is a
joke on the merits and it should be treated as
such by us certain way. It's a serious attack on us,
the Republican Party, the president, representative of the forgotten man

(51:32):
in this country. But the way that it's being handled
exposes the nature of our opponent and they cannot be
dealt with is if we're fighting on an even playing
fielder here for them, it's always the ends justify the means.
We need to take that deathly seriously. This has been
one going in for Buck Sexon on the Buck Sexton Show.
Back just after this, you're in. This is the Buck

(51:56):
Sexton Show podcast. Welcome back to the Buck Sexton Show.
This has Ben Weingarten in for Buck Sexton. I want
to turn from domestic developments to international developments, and on
this show, I like to talk about China as the
main focus on the national security and foreign policy side,

(52:17):
because we should never lose track of it. Number one,
number two. Much of the main news stories that the
mainstream media is going to focus on are only seeing
through the Trump focus prism. Number one and number two
missed the context of just how substantial this reorientation in
US national security and foreign policy is towards viewing China

(52:38):
as the number one international threat to our liberty. That
is the essential story. It shouldn't be lost in the
fog of a disinformation war that the left has created
and propagated through their communications arm in the media. And
in just a couple of minutes we're going to bring
on someone who is, in my view, one of the

(52:59):
best China experts and very focused on Taiwan in particular.
But I do think again it pays to level set
always with what is the nature of this regime? And
last week I talked about some of the brutal human
rights abuses, the tyrannical totalitarian nature of the Chinese Communist
Party that controls every entity in China and then seeks

(53:20):
to control dissenters abroad and suppress them as well. There's
an article I really I urge you to read it
in its entirety because it is chilling and it should
underscore just how serious this threat is emerging and coming
on fast. There's an article in The Diplomat titled Exporting

(53:41):
China's Social Credit System to Central Asia and the subtitle
is Beijing building a cross border social engineering system, one
software solution at a time. Now, you know, this social
credit system is basically where China collects intelligence, monitors, tracks
all of their citizens and assigns them a score based
upon effectively how closely do they adhere to the Chinese

(54:04):
Communist Party line and the aims of the states. And
if you don't, you pay all sorts of penalties, including
not being able to take flights outside the country. It
could impact your actual credit score, your ability to get
a mortgage. There every aspect of your life under a
microscope of the Chinese Communist Party. So here are a

(54:26):
couple of the anecdotes about that. By September twenty eighteen,
fourteen point six million untrustworthy Chinese nationalists were banned from
buying plane tickets. By December twenty eighteen, three and a
half million Chinese nationals have reversed their untrustworthy status through
various forms of community service, so they came in line
with the party. Many Chinese nationals have quickly adapted to
this new way of discipline. It works, and now China's

(54:47):
handing out a system to its neighbors, and that's the problem,
by the way, for us and the rest of the world.
So this article goes into all these other countries that
have been consulting with China in its near and further
abroad about implementing this sort of system. Theirself to judge
their own citizens. And who runs those systems operates four
of them. Where's the software coming from in the hardware, Oh,

(55:09):
comes from China. Can you imagine what China can do
with that information, that power, and that control. When they
say you are the product and China's offering this free
in many instances, you really are the product. Here take
a short break. This has been one for Buck Sex
on the Buck Sex and Show. More on China just
after this. Thanks for listening to the bus Sex and

(55:32):
Show podcasts. Remember to subscribe on Apple podcasts, the iHeartRadio app,
or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to the
Buck Sex and Show. This is Ben Weingarten in for
Buck Sexton, and before the break, I was talking a
little bit about China's social credit system, one of the
most Orwellian advents that we've seen in the twenty first century,

(55:54):
and they're exporting of that system abroad. And it speaks
to a more fundamental issue, which is at China does
not and the Chinese Communist Party itself does not just
desire to obviously dominate its own mainland, but it has expansionist,
you could argue imperialist ambitions as well, and one of
those imperialist ambitions concerns Taiwan. Here to join me to

(56:18):
talk a little bit about recent developments in Taiwan and
this theme that I just mentioned is former Deputy National
Security Advisor to the Vice President, Dick Cheney and CEO
of consulting firm DC International Advisory, Steve. Thanks so much
for coming on the program. My pleasure. Happy to join. So, Steve,
you were recently in Taiwan for their elections, which was

(56:41):
resulted and I believe a resounding victory for the DPP
Democratic Progressive Party. First of all, why should Americans care
about what just went down in Taiwan. Well, Americans should
care because, first and foremost, this is the only democracy
on the planet that the establishment deep state folks in Washington,

(57:04):
DC have convinced the US government to help isolate and ignore,
so we don't give them diplomatic relations. We've sent former
Secretaries and State when they were in office to negotiate
with the likes of the Iranians. We've established diplomatic relations
with Cuba, but somehow this self governing, free and democratic

(57:24):
island we've been complicit in isolating. So first and foremost,
I think as Americans, we should want to fix this mistake.
But second, the Communist Party of China has taken on
a very aggressive kind of all options on the table
approach to influence operations, in other words, trying to shape

(57:45):
politics and national security decision making in many parts around
the world to their favor. Their right to try, but
we have been slow in the free world to wake
up to this challenge. Taiwan is by far per but
of the most attacked territory on the planet by the
Communist Party of China in these ways, and so watching

(58:06):
the democracy of Taiwan and action is a good lesson
for us to basically be smarter about what we do
here in the United States and how to bolster our
allies to keep the pressure on the Chinese Communist Party
in Asia so they can't place so much on our
own turf. And I mentioned the Democratic Progressive Party their

(58:28):
president remaining in power and it being really a resounding
victory in contrast to the party that is viewed as
more aligned with the Chinese Communist Party and open amenable
to some form of a reunification. What were your takeaways
from the recent election. Well, I think the Communist Party

(58:48):
of China was on the ballot in this Taiwan election.
I take nothing away from President taining One, who did
indeed win a resounding reelection, but there are a couple
of unusual well things that happened. In most developed democracies,
we have polling that shows the youth vote going strongly
one way or another when it comes to their candidate

(59:11):
preference or party preference, but then they don't tend to
turn out to vote as well. Well. The developments of
Hong Kong changed that profoundly for the younger demographic in Taiwan.
They saw the youth of Hong Kong being willing to
risk everything and frankly continue to get arrested to stand
up for their fundamental rights against the Communist Party's encroachment,

(59:33):
and the youth of Taiwan felt even more committed to
turning out. There were a lot of people from Hong
Kong that were in Taiwan for the election. It was
really moving commentary to hear them tell Taiwan audiences about
why they need to protect the democracy that they have,
don't let themselves become the next Hong Kong. So I

(59:54):
think really Hijingping, the leader of the Communist Party, of
China and the party itself the ballot and overwhelmingly lost
in Taiwan, which represents the second popular massive rebuke of
the Communist Party if you count the local elections in
Hong Kong. Not that long ago. You mentioned real genuine

(01:00:16):
foreign interference in Taiwan's democratic election system and government. What
are some of the lessons for Americans based upon Taiwan's
experience dealing with in effect attacks, information warfare attacks, at
the very least from the Chinese Communist Party there? Well.
Number one, we have to stop playing sort of junior

(01:00:39):
high school games about the twenty sixteen election and whatever
was done by way of Facebook adds. What the Chinese
Communist Party is doing is much larger in scale in
terms of geographical reach, but also in terms of money
and assets involved. And they don't limit their information operations
or influence operations to just some online postings of fake news.

(01:01:03):
They have ways of trying to put pressure on our
academic institutions, putting pressure on our media organizations. And this
is what you learn when you watch things in Taiwan
up close and personal. They have learned that they have
to track what they call red capital money that comes
from the mainland directly or indirectly to control or shape

(01:01:26):
the information environment they operate in. And so they have
the classical spy versus spy stuff where former military officers
get induced to come to the mainland to sell out
their country. We have to watch out for that. But
they also have these modern techniques that are quite successful
in some ways, where they throw money at universities, and

(01:01:48):
the universities become less open to free speech and free thought,
and they basically conform to what their donors do. And
it's one thing if those donors are from free market,
free world. It's another thing if they're basically taking their
marching orders from the Communist Party of China. And that's
happened in American universities. But the Taiwanese have more educated

(01:02:11):
and engage population now taking it seriously. We can learn
from what they're doing to resist. I think it's worth
reiterating the point that's sort of implicit in all of this,
which is that information warfare is really a fight to
win a war of ideas, so that you can ultimately
triumph in the way of getting other nations to bend

(01:02:31):
to your will or even worse, without ever having to
fire a shot at the core isn't really what China
is attempting to do, to exert their power wherever they
see fit, whenever they see fit. At the end of
the day, I think it is. I don't think it's
much more complicated than that, and they have every right
to try. But we just need to remember that this

(01:02:53):
is not just two average athletes taking the field. We
have a force that is fundamental evil and taking free
will away from the people that governs, and another force
that sacrifices every single day preserve that freedom to choose.
It's not just for ourselves but others around the world,
and the Communist Party of China has been at this

(01:03:15):
for a long time. We have chosen, I think unwisely
to invest in ways that have made them more modern,
more capable, and more powerful to our disadvantage. And I
think we've sobered up a bit. But the challenge is
very real and we're at the front end of figuring
out how to meet it. And you're quite right to note,
if we're smart about this, we have a lot of

(01:03:37):
means at our disposal where this doesn't have to end
up in a classical military clash. We can and should
be doing more to make things more complicated for them
at home. After all, they're failing their people too, not
just challenging ours. Yea. And to that end, there were reports,
for example, of a directive from the National Security Council

(01:03:59):
that would have authorize the US engaging more an offensive
cyber warfare, which clearly would implicate China. What would you
advocate that the US government to do in terms of
going on the offensive as opposed to being reactive or,
as we've been in the past, wilfully ignorant or willfully
blind to it. Well, sadly, you're right, you have been

(01:04:20):
willfully ignorant and too passive. And I do support offensive
cyber operations, after all, our enemies are going to do
that to us. I just don't believe in the false
distinction between offensive versus defensive capabilities. If I have a
gun in my hand and the barrel is pounded outward,
it's defensive to me and it's offensive to somebody else.

(01:04:43):
And it's nearly no different with a lot of the
tools that are in the cyber world. But fundamentally, what
we're talking about is trying to break down the great
firewall of China that is keeping people in and under
control and basically turn some of these tools that were
men to promote freedom and empowerment and prosperity into really

(01:05:05):
meeting those ends. In other words, within China, the internet
and social media have really been used to create an
Orwellian surveillance and control state. But we have been complicit
and being passive about pushing information, choices and the truth
in the China so that the leaders would have to
be accountable to that truth. We're very behind that. On

(01:05:27):
the other hand, we've allowed our freedom in some ways
to be our vulnerability. We want people to like us,
we want them to have a taste of what we have.
We think it will influence them, and that works some
of the time. It just doesn't work as well when
you have a determined, basically ideologically committed enemy that's operating
against you. How one of the things, just to level

(01:05:49):
set a bit on Taiwan specifically, that our listeners may
not be aware of, is that China basically undertook a
campaign to other nations to a test you're either with
us or you're with Taiwan, and most people sided with
the People's Republic of China so called not Taiwan, and

(01:06:11):
thus Taiwan sort of is in diplomatic limbo in some ways,
in terms of not being recognized by many nations that
we see an official basis, including being in a sort
of fluid position with respect to the US. How much
of a propaganda coup would it be against the Chinese
Communist Party if nations started to recognize Taiwan one Domino

(01:06:33):
foul and then several foul, Well, it would be a
diplomatic cool of sorts. But I'm afraid it really would
just be a reclamation of common sense and truth. And so,
I mean, it's not something that you would do out
of any sense of malice towards China. It's something we
should do out of self respect and sort of looking

(01:06:54):
at this island nation of Taiwan as never having been
under the sovereign control the People's Republic of China. The
Communist Party of China declared revolution on the Chinese people
back in the nineteen forties. They did, in fact when
that civil war and took control of the mainland. They
never took control of Taiwan. And I think it's been

(01:07:15):
weak minds, an appeasement mindset that has granted them the
latitude to control our language and our thought for the
better part of the last fifty years in trying to
say there is one China in the world and the
Taiwan is a part of it. What all you have
to do is look at a map and you'll see
that the island is significantly offshore. And if you just
read a little bit of history, you'll realize the Communist

(01:07:37):
Party has never controlled it. If they want to unify
with Taiwan, it's their business, but we should be there
to help insist that it be peaceful and with the
consent of the Taiwan people. I don't think that they'll
win that consent, but really that is where we need
to be. And I think the US government under the
Trump administration has made a significant shift in the right direction,

(01:07:58):
at least initially in pressuring Taiwan's remaining allies to stay
firm and not get bought off by Chinese inducements. But
we would do right by ourselves, not just as a
favorite of Taiwan, to say we're going to increase levels
of diplomatic recognition for Taiwan. And it's really only after
the United States leads the way that others will have

(01:08:19):
the courage and common sense to do so as well.
I think it would be an investment in ultimately peace
and prosperity and put the pressure on the mainland to
improve itself if it really wants the acceptance of the
Taiwan people and US. Lastly, looking just to our north, today,
March the beginning of the extradition trial of Huawei's CFO,

(01:08:41):
who is being held effectively under house arrest in Canada
based upon US brought charges involving both bank fraud and
then dealings with Iran that Huawei allegedly lied about. What
do you make of this trial and what is its significance? Well,

(01:09:02):
there are a couple of things that play in it.
Number One, we have the relatives of high ranking communist
leaders that get posh exceedingly well paid jobs to go
around the world pretending as if they're not affront for
the Communist Party of China and their commercial enterprise. That's
an important wake up call for people to look at.
The second, this company, Huawei, was actively engaged in avoiding

(01:09:27):
sanctions against the Iran. So we have the dublicity of
the Chinese government at the United Nations occasionally going along
with a broad based vote on sanctions related to counter
proliferation or otherwise, but then commercially actively working to undermine

(01:09:48):
those sanctions. And then the other thing I think is
really really important not to forget this high ranking Huawei
officer was, in fact looks pretty guilty of doing these
things that undermine our national security. But the Chinese, in
retaliation against the Canadian government took a couple of Canadian

(01:10:11):
NGO workers who haven't been seen since. And so we
have this dichotomy of Chinese commercial slash party person on
trial in Canada but living in Martha Stewart luxury prison accommodations.
And then we have these two poor NGO workers that

(01:10:32):
have been put into what I'm sure is a much
less humane environment in China and have been taken off
the grid. So that's what that stake in that trial.
Are we going to have rule of law and a
China that honors obligations and put outward. Are these companies
for real commercial or are they political and strategic? And

(01:10:54):
then we have this whole issue of retaliation that really
hasn't got the international attention to deserve. We're gonna have
to leave it right there. Steve, thanks so much for
coming on the program. Always appreciate it my pleasure to
take care of And this is Ben Wegarden in for
Buck Sexon on the buck Sexton Show. Back just after
this you're in the Freedom Hud. This is the buck

(01:11:15):
Sexton Show podcast. Welcome back to the buck Sexton Show.
This is Ben wein Garden in four Buck Sexton. I
want to transition from Asia to the Middle East. And
there was a story out of the Middle East that well,
someone was brought to justice who should have been brought
to justice. Let's put it that way. The headline on

(01:11:35):
American Greatness was Islamic State heavyweight nabed in Iraq so
fat he had to be loaded onto flatbed truck. The
Iraqi military have bagged a biggin the five hundred and
sixty pound Islamic state Mufti, known as Job of the
Hut or Job of the Jihad. I believe is the
way the New York Post wrote it up. It's so
enormously fat. After he was captured, Iraqi forces had to

(01:11:56):
load him on into a flatbed truck because he couldn't
fit in a police car. The ices heavyweight at Abu Abdullabari,
also known as Shifa Alima, put the fat in Fatua.
According to The New York Post, he was napped Thursday
by an AID swat team of the Ninevah Regiment in
the city of Mosul. Stars and Stripes reported on Friday.

(01:12:17):
Despite his more bid obesity, the Islamic state official was
known to be a cruel monster who raped and murdered civilians.
So I think this is a good representative of who
these Islamic supremacists are because this guy could not move
and he was a coward sending out people to commit
the most heinous of acts in the name of his religion.

(01:12:37):
This Islamic supremacist monster. We're gonna talk a little bit
more about some Islamic supremacist monsters right after this quick break.
This has been wager in for Buck sexon on the
Buck Second Show. Back just after this. Thanks for listening
to the bus Sex Show podcast. Remember to subscribe on
Apple Podcast, the iHeart Radio app, or wherever you get

(01:12:57):
your podcasts. Welcome back to the Buck Sexton Show. This
is Ben Weingarten in four Bucks Sexton and before the
break we were talking a little bit about this transition
from Asia to the Middle East, and in particular in
this case a little bit north to Iran, and there
was a video making the rounds over the weekend, being propagated,

(01:13:20):
of course, by the Islamic supremacist regime in Tehran's minions.
Let's call them Solomani because them Solomani holding his grandson
and cooing and coddling him. And so one commenter on
this was noting, Iran carefully shaped his image in life
and continues to do so in depth. And all I

(01:13:42):
could think to myself looking at these images and there
it's revolting to see them try to portray this man
as some kind of humanitarian. Remember, Solomani had the blood
of hundreds of Americans on his hand, Dad Americans from
roadside bombs that he was responsible for perfecting, thousands of

(01:14:06):
other Americans injured, maimed, not to mention thousands of other
civilians around the world. It's hundreds of thousands of people
in Syria, all of the Europeans who have had to
deal with the Syrian refugee crises themselves. This man has
done incalculable damage as a human being, as the leader,

(01:14:26):
the orchestrator of Iran's imperialist ambitions, growing them around the world.
And they put out this picture and all I can
think to myself is this man is a monster. And
you should read the comments because the comments in this case,
read the comments because those other people have hit the
nail on the head with respect to this sort of

(01:14:48):
jihadas propaganda coming out of Iran. And you know, the
sickening thing really when you think about it, is how
much different is this image being portrayed of him holding
his grandson. Well, first of all, again, how many people
will never be able to hold their child or their
grandchild because of what this man did in his life.

(01:15:10):
This monster did in his life. That's my real takeaway.
This man has destroyed an incalculable number of families and
nations for that matter. But also this is sort of

(01:15:31):
the way that our media portrayed him as well. Yeah,
not an austere religious scholar per se, but whatever is
analogous to that when it comes to being the architect,
the mastermind of Iran's imperialist global ambitions exporting it's Islamist
revolution around the world. There was other news out of

(01:15:53):
Iran as well, though that was overshadowed by some of
these other headlines, but is husually significant. So here's a
headline from the Daily mail exclusive secret document that proves
Iran was voting a nuclear weapon as far back as
two thousand and two, even while they claimed the technology
was only for peaceful purposes. Document was seized as part
of a raid by Israeli intelligence agents on a compound

(01:16:13):
in Tehran in twenty eighteen from an Iranian official. This
document requesting the parameters of a warhead fitted on a
missile in November two thousand and two, and scribbled in
the top life corners a note from its nuclear chief
who signs off on the plans. And this document is
apparently the centerpiece of an as yet unreleased report highlighting
Iran's quandestine nuclear activities. Once again, how could you have

(01:16:41):
a deal with a regime that's lied about and concealed
and obviouscated and deceived on every aspect of its nuclear
effort going back a couple of decades. It's the same
guys in power, and it is the supreme leader Kamane
running the whole regime. Yeah, when the Obama aministration tried
to create this moderates hardliners split within leadership, what they

(01:17:06):
failed to address is the fact that the elected leaders
quote unquote are only eligible to achieve those positions if
the malocracy controlled by Commander and others around him approve
of them. It's a rubber stamped regime. It's a puppet regime.
At the end of the day, it's a puppet regime.

(01:17:26):
So how can you have a deal with them? What
is the deal? The deal isn't worth the paper that
it's printed on. The deal is Iran continues to advance
his program more quandestine way, with one hundreds of billions
of dollars more, and then gets it legitimated at the
end because of the Sunset provisions that allow Iran to
be treated as a legitimate nuclear power to continue its

(01:17:47):
ballistic missile proliferation. And meanwhile, our media, of course headline
from the Atlantic this is pretty good. And this is
in context of the unraveling of the so called i
Ran nuclear deal, as even our European partners start to
suddenly realize, hey, maybe this isn't a regime that would
actually honor the garbage JCPOA. This is a tweet from

(01:18:15):
Mike Duran and the headline is from the Atlantic, which
grudgingly admit that the killing of Solomoni was a masterstroke,
but it can't bring itself to give Trump credit for
knowing what he was doing. So here's the headline, Donald
Trump stumbles into a foreign policy triumph that when you
have to resort to that, you know we must have

(01:18:35):
done something right. And the article is actually, I think
pretty revealing. This is from a European correspondent for The Atlantic,
and he writes, well, it's clearly too early to judge
the long term ramifications of the president's decision to order
the killing. The initial assessment among many in the foreign
policy establishment here in London is not quite what you

(01:18:57):
might expect. The attack, in the view of Anos and
British officials I spoke with the letter of whom requested
and inimitated discuss government discussions, has at a stroke reasserted
American military dominance and revealed the constraints of Iranian power.
Although Trump's foreign policy strategy, if one even accepts that

(01:19:17):
there is such a thing, of course, they have to
be snarky like this and question everything, legitimacy of everything,
has many limits. His unpredictability, and most crucially is willingness
to escavate a crisis. Okay, that's one way to portrait.
Another way is diffuse a crisis by using overwhelming force
such that Iran will think twice about doing anything hostile
to the US willingness to escavate a crisis using the

(01:19:40):
US military and economic strength have turned the table as
on Iran in away few thought possible. What is more,
the strike has exposed the gaping irrelevance of Europe's leading
powers Britain, France and Germany in this whole crisis. The
E three, which were the main parties to the deal,
along with the United States and Iran, which have long

(01:20:00):
sought to keep the Iranian nuclear deal alive by undermining
the US policy of maximum pressure in Iran, have so
far failed to do so. This week, they were finally
forced to admit the apparently terminal collapse of the Obama
era a nuclear deal, releasing a joint statement to announce
that they were triggering its dispute resolution clause because of

(01:20:21):
Tehran's failure to abide by the terms of the agreement.
The reality of the situation is startling. Europe's attempts to
keep the deal alive have achieved little in Tehran because
of the continent's powerlessness. In European opposition to Trump's Iran
policy has achieved even less in Washington. In an interview,
Boris Johnson all but admitted defeat in keeping the nuclear
deal alive, calling instead for a new Trump deal. In

(01:20:43):
other words, Trump exposed reality there was no deal to
be had. And as I've written in a couple of
articles recently at the Federalists and I'll share them, they
were cheating on the deal the whole time. We have
documentary evidence of it. But beyond that, we couldn't even
have visibility into any of the military sites where likely
the nuclear weapon work took place. So okay, they could

(01:21:07):
argue that they may be complied with some of the
terms of a deal, but we only saw the places
that they wanted us to see. Iran wouldn't let internationally
recognized inspectors certified under the deal to verify and do
actual checks at the sites where their malign activities actually
took place likely take place. So my friend Omri Seran,

(01:21:29):
who's the National security advisor for Senator Ted Cruz and
must read it on all things I ran, tweets out
news out of Iran. The regime is threatening to decrease
cooperation on nuclear issues if the Europeans pressure them over
their checks. Notes confirms yep. If the Europeans pressure them
over their lack of cooperation on nuclear issues, and that
was in response to an article I may review cooperation

(01:21:52):
with IAEA. That's the inspector body. If EU pressure mounts
so they didn't abide by the deal, they wouldn't let
us check if they were abiding by the deal. And
now now if we pressure them over lack of cooperation,
they might really get angry. There's no deal to be

(01:22:18):
had with Iran at the end of the day. The
only deal ultimately is either this momocratic regime stays in
power and advances towards nuclear weaponry, and ultimately we're probably
forced to engage in a military response, massive military response,
or and the Trump's policies, whether by design or as

(01:22:41):
part of a way to get towards forcing a surrender
of this regime, has destabilized this regime to an unprecedented degree.
And while a destabilized regime may lash out, at the
same time, Iran has been exposed to have major problems,
and the incompetence was on foe display. Tragic incompetence was
on fot display when they shot down a passenger plan

(01:23:02):
and killed dozens of their own people. As well as
people from all over the world, from Canada elsewhere. It's
a big deal that even for the European countries, Iran
has breached too many of the steps in the deal,
too many of the constraints, the strictures and the deal
at this point that even they can't stand by IDOI anymore.

(01:23:24):
And by the way, this dispute resolution mechanism that was
discussed in that Atlantic article I mentioned, ultimately it could
get towards the UN reimposing sanctions on Iran, crippling sanctions
which in a country that is already they lost Solamani,
They're overstretched abroad, dealing with protesters in all of the
different countries that they count as their proxies, Chaos in Iraq,

(01:23:49):
streets of Lebanon, on their own streets, having to resort
to murdering, persecuting thousands of their own people. Right now,
their coffers going dry, shut out of the international oil markets,
main source of revenue. They could be on the ropes
and worth it pointing out one more thing while we're

(01:24:12):
sticking on the Iran topic, this was a good piece,
a good reminder. Urge you to check out this article
on power Line Bernie's history with Iran. Like I said,
the left historically in our last episode always stands with
these horrible totalitarian regimes. This is in the Daily Beast

(01:24:35):
on April nineteen seventy nine. This is Powerline, quoting that article.
April nineteen seventy nine, the theocratic Islamic Republic of Iran
was proclaimed Aetola Rojola Commani, who had returned to Iran
from exile to assume command of the revolt, became supreme
leader in December of that year. His rise was accelerated
by the seizure on November four of fifty two American
diplomats and citizens and citizens of other countries at the

(01:24:55):
usmbassy in Tehran. Then we have the hostage crisis. Virtually
all American Democrats, Republicans and independence united and support of
the hostages and the international call for their freedom. One
prominent political figure on the twenty twenty stage, then almost
completely unknown, stood apart by joining a Marxist Leninist party
that not only pledged support for the Iranian theocracy but
also justified the hostage taking by insisting the hostages were

(01:25:19):
all likely CIA agents. Who was that person? It was
Bernie Sanders, Bernie Sanders, member of a Trotsky eight party,
stood with the Iranian moocracy. By the way, he's not
alone in that romance of those sort of regimes, none
other than Elizabeth Warren. And this this was unveiled previously,

(01:25:42):
revealed previously, but brought up again recently in an article
at front Page called on the Obama administration to clear
Ethel Rosenberg's record. Who is Ethel Rosenberg. Well, you'll recall
she was tried for treason essential in helping the Soviet
Union develop nuclear capabilities the Adam bomb. Rather, as the

(01:26:11):
article states, she could be the next commander in chief.
Caught on the Obama administration to formally exonerate Soviet atomic spy.
Ethel Rosenberg sent a letter data January ten, twenty seventeen,
on behalf of one of her sons, constituent request that
you provide a thorough review of their request that you
issue a proclamation exonerating his mother. Ethel Rosenberg, executed by

(01:26:33):
the US for conspiracy to commit espionage in nineteen fifty three,
effectively a treason this act. She wasn't alone, by the way,
in the Democratic Party. But that goes to show you
the nature of who we're dealing with on the other side.
Right now, once again there has been one going in
for buck Sex and on the buck Secon Show back
just after this, you're in the Freedom Art. This is

(01:26:56):
the buck Sexton Show podcast. Welcome back to the buck
Sexton Show. This is Ben Weiningerten in four bucks Sexton
and let's transition. We just talked about a little bit
at the Middle East, Iran's malevolence, the left embrace of
that those totalitarian regimes, be it Iran or elsewhere around

(01:27:17):
the globe, and there's another similarity in terms of their ideology.
And I'll get there by waye First of talking about
the fact that this week President Trump is scheduled to
be at Davos. What is the main topic at Davos
this year? Naturally climate change? The head of the World

(01:27:41):
Economic Forum, it's founder, Klass Schwab said, we do not
want to reach the tipping point of irreversibility on climate change.
We do not want the next generations to inherit a
world which becomes evermore hostile and ever less habitable. Just
think of the wildfires in Australia and we'll get to
that in a second. An annual risk survey published by

(01:28:02):
his organization, put climate and other environmental threats ahead of
risks posed by geopolitical tensions and cyber attacks the first time.
The survey found the top five long term risks were
all environmental. Talk about groupthink, from extreme weather events to
businesses and governments failing to mitigate and adapt to climate change.
Part of this is sustainability, the theme at this year's
Davos meeting to deal with grapple with global warming becoming

(01:28:26):
worse because of growing divisions among nations and businesses on
how to tackle it. The meetings, which will see over
fifty heads of state and government, including German Chance or
Angolo Miracle and Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, descend on
the Alpine resort, seeking to give concrete meaning to stakeholder capitalism,
a concept that businesses should serve the interests of all

(01:28:46):
society rather than simply their shareholders. Remember I talked about
woke chroning capitalism last week when it came to Blackrock.
That's the agenda on the table for all of the leaders,
the business heads, the politicians around the world meeting at Davos,
and I cannot wait for Trump to smash them. Into
smithereens during this meeting. Over this fifty three heads of

(01:29:08):
stayed at Davos, seventeen hundred business leaders, including CEOs from
eight of the ten most valuable companies in the world.
Eighty percent of the cars used by the World Economic
Forum are electric or hybrid. Climate is the excuse for
the totalitarian, anti capitalist system that they all they're all

(01:29:29):
like minded, all the globalist leaders, they're are like minded
on this. Why do they care about the environmental stuff
because it means power and control. It's a way to
use science to justify control over your life. And they
will profit, of course from it, because they're the ones
in charge of all of these green initiatives, invested in
the green companies. It's a wealth redistribution scheme to them.

(01:29:50):
In the process it impoverishes all of us. So I
was happy to see on this topic the Bernie Sanders
and as well AOC Alexander Acazio Quartez came out and
panned the USMCA that the Trump administration just was able
to push through in the Senate. Here's Bernie, not a

(01:30:12):
single damn mention of climate change in his tweets. Seems
like a happy guy and the Sanders suggested on the
campaign trail that fossil fuel executives are probably criminally liable
for climate change, and he's expressed interests in potentially prosecuting them.
That's totalitarianism. That's if you have wrong think, you should
be shut up stifled. So urge you to read this

(01:30:34):
article from Rupert Darwall in The Hill, and I've interviewed
him separately as well. Look it up on YouTube and
I can share it as well. Climate religion is fueling
Australia's wildfires. Getting back to that, and what he shows
is that the wildfires in Australia that have been husually
destructive to their environment are largely the consequence of environmentalist policies.

(01:30:54):
It's not because of climate change, quote unquote, it's because
they haven't been able to control the brush that has
led to these massive wildfires. They're not allowing people to
burn the brush which would prevent them there for being
these massive conflagrations. So environmentalism has real consequences. It is irrational,
is what Darwa argues in this article. It is a religion,

(01:31:18):
but it's a religion that the true believers truly believe
in science is infallible and that the science is settled
on this issue, which is not. But it's also a
religion that totalitarians use for control over all of us.
This Benegart in for Buck sex And on the Buck
Sex and Show. Back just after this. Thanks for listening
to the Bus Sex and Show podcasts. Remember to subscribe
on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get

(01:31:41):
your podcasts. Welcome back to the Buck Sex and Show.
This is Ben weine Garden in for Buck Sexton, and
we were just talking about totalitarianism of one kind, which
is the use of infallible science in furtherance of an
anti capitalist agenda that ultimately is about power and can
troll over you and for the people loarding those policies

(01:32:04):
over us and imposing them upon us to our great detriment,
impoverishing us while they benefit. We'll shift to a different
kind of creeping sort of totalitarianism, which is an assault
on our individual civil liberties under the guise of national
security while the bad guys actually remand get off scott

(01:32:24):
free and there's no justice. And that concerns the recent
Inspector General report on FIZO abuses, which comes of course
in the broader sort of mosaic around Spygate and what
we've been dealing with laboring under for the last three
plus years, and I fear we're going to continue dealing
with for many more years to come, unfortunately. So we're

(01:32:46):
going to talk with senior contributor to the federalistic colleague
of mine, Margot Cleveland, who spent nearly twenty five years
as a permanent lawkwork for a Federal Appellet judge on
the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals and as a former
full time faculty member and current adjunct instructor for the
College of Business at the University of Notre Dame. Margo,
thanks so much for joining us. Thanks so much, Ben.

(01:33:07):
So let's start by level setting a little bit the
IG report on FISA abuse with respect to carter Page.
So it's seventeen significant and accuracies and omissions and the
bureaus applications for warrants to surveil carter page under FISA,
starting I believe back in twenty sixteen. What is the

(01:33:29):
most underreported element of the IG report that you've discovered
thus far in parsing it in great depth. So I
would say there's actually a tie for two. One is
that the IG completely missed that the DOJ FBI had

(01:33:52):
told the FISA Court that Steele has this network of
sources because he used to work as a spy for
the British government. And the reason that is such a
huge revelation is the five The court didn't really do
much here. They did pretty much a rubber stamp except

(01:34:14):
for the first goal round. And on the first goal
round they presented what they present a copy to get
some feedback, so they presented what they call a read
copy to a liaison at the court. The recopy gives
them a chance to go through and see if there
are any issues. And one of the issues that was

(01:34:37):
raised was how does your source, Christopher Steele have this
network of sources that he was able to get this
information from. And the response that was given is because
he used to work and it's redactive, but everyone knows
what it is. He used to work for m I

(01:34:57):
six and the liaison, the lawyer working for the FISI
court told of the government to change and put that
detail in there. I'll swear though in the IG report
is a finding that Steel was not using those sources,

(01:35:17):
None of those sources that he used for his dossier
had the connection of being from his former work with
the UK British intelligence and significant because the court cared
about that, they asked about it, and all the government
said was, oh, yeah, he has this network of sources

(01:35:39):
because he used to be an intelligence for our British colleagues.
Think about that as a judge, You're looking at and saying, well,
this subsource, this is going to be a legit because
British intelligence relies on the same people. But the truth
is no, they don't. They did not. Steel did not

(01:36:00):
use the same sources. So I would say that is
one underreported story that it should be huge. I think
that he should have called that out as an eighteenth mistake.
I think that was significant and maybe even more so
than other ones because the five courts specifically asked for it.
And then I would say the second mistake or second

(01:36:24):
underreported comment here was that in the IG report there
was this just little passage exchange where it said that
or Bruce Orr, who was one of the DOJ deputy
assistant Deputy Attorney generals, he was the one who was

(01:36:45):
kind of feeding stuff from Steel to the FBI. It
said that he had called a meeting an interagency meeting,
And the only reason we know about this is after
the meeting, one of his colleagues asked, Or, why would
we work with this Russian oligarch? And it was Olga

(01:37:07):
and I'm not even sure how to pronounce his name.
Ar Yes, thank you. So the colleague asked after the meeting,
why would the US work with him? And Or said
that the reason why was because there was corruption in
the Trump campaign. The question was all the way to

(01:37:30):
the president and he said yes. So there's a couple
of things here that no one's really picked up on.
Was he Or called this inter agency meeting? So who
was at this meeting? What other agencies were involved? And
it seems to tie back to Or's official role, which

(01:37:52):
was in charge of this interagency group. But Or said, oh,
I didn't talk to my bosses about Christopher Steele because
it had nothing to do with my real job. So
that's one component of it. But two, it looks like
Or was trying to push cutting a deal with the
oliguard in order to get Trump, because he told his

(01:38:13):
colleague that afterwards. The other part of the is the
timing of this. This came after Or had met with
a couple I think there were three other folks that
were looking at the charges against Paul Maniford and it
had nothing to do with them. Yet they were trying
to figure out how to get this pushed. And Andrew

(01:38:37):
Wiseman was one of the individuals, And one of the
things that the IG report said is they were trying
to come up with strategies of how to move that
case along. So one of the questions I have was
this reach out to these other agencies part of the strategy.
So I have two separate pieces over at the Federalists

(01:38:57):
there a couple maybe a week or so old. There's
been so much on the IG report that has gone unreported,
but those two really should be blockbusters and people should
be focusing on this, and I hope that bar and
Gurham are because those are a huge missing components to it.

(01:39:18):
How culpable is the fiz Accort itself? And I think
you have identified them as being culpable in some of
the abuses with respect to the case of Carter Page, which,
of course that invites the question of how many other
cases has the fiz Coort effectively botched or not held
to the proper standard that such important cases should be

(01:39:39):
held to how culpable is the court and what would
be the proper way for their culpability to be remedied
or for there to be justice for the FISI court
individuals personnel involved with this themselves. Right, So on the
latter point is, judges make mistakes. Lawyers who work for
judges make mistakes. There really is no culpability other than

(01:40:03):
that it's a black eye on them, and it should be.
But it's unfortunate because it doesn't seem as if they're
recognizing that they're pointing all the fingers at the DOJ
and the FBI, and their fingers should be pointed there.
The PHIZE Court trusted the lawyers, and they should have
been able to trust the lawyers. But at the same time,

(01:40:28):
someone should have caught that there was no established reliability
for these subsources. That Steele was the only one who
supposedly had reliability, and that's where it's the DOJ and
FBI's fault for misrepresenting that. But he cannot build up

(01:40:50):
the subsources and the sub subsources, and yet the phiz
A Court allowed what the subsources said happened to be
the basis for probable cause, even though the fires of
warrant or fies that applications were clear that neither neither
Steal nor his primary subsource had the direct knowledge of this,

(01:41:14):
and that actually ties back to the point I just
made about They likely thought that these subsources were ones
that the British intelligence information and intelligence, and because of that,
assumed that they were reliable and didn't go that next
step and say where in the application doesn't see that,
So there is culpability. I don't think it's nearly as

(01:41:36):
great as the DOJ's and the FBI because they made
so many mistakes, but they should learn from this and
hopefully look at things more closely. The other part of
it that I found in reading the IG report and
some of the kind of the text messages that were
going back and forth between the parties is it looks

(01:41:58):
like there was a little bit too They were concerned
about how one of the individuals involved in the process
would kind of lead the talk to the liaison. So
apparently someone from the group that handles the FISA applications
talks to the laison and they were concerned. Peter Struck

(01:42:20):
was concerned with how is he going to set it up?
Is he going to make it iffy or is he
going to make it sound like a done deal, which
to me indicates that there's a little bit too much
reliance on the DOJ's presentation and that they should be
looking at it a little bit more objectively. So I
think that again it's much more on the DOJ and FBI,

(01:42:43):
but the FISA Court definitely has some culpability for it.
Looking at the remedy is that the FBI proposed when
the fifth pointed the finger, as you said, back at
them and said what will you do basically to ensure
that the court isn't missweat again in the future. It
as a wayman, and your eyes can easily gaze over
looking at the sort of language that's used to explain

(01:43:05):
what the FBI is going to do down the road
to reform themselves. Is that they were basically toothless reforms.
Is that a fair assessment? You know? Then I'll have
to be frank, I have not looked at what they
suggested doing. I'm still so buried in what they did
in the past. And I also kind of look at

(01:43:26):
it as you're always going to say the nice stuff.
That's when the rubber meets the road. That I really
am going to care about it, and I think that
there's the more significant change would be that the FISA
court requires that you have and amycus someone who's arguing
on behalf of the person who's going to be tapped.
So I really have no idea if it's going to

(01:43:49):
be toothless or not. But there's there's so much that
went wrong, and until we know everything that went wrong,
it's hard to say how do you reform it. One
more point that I think is worth thinking is that
before this FIZO abuse report came out, there was another
IG report that didn't get nearly as much focus by

(01:44:09):
the media, which was on confidential human sources i e.
Informants i e. Spies. How significant is that report in
context of the FIZO abuse report. It was so key
And I guess now I'm going to have to say
it's a three way tie. What's the most underreported stories.
So the IG report that came out, I want to

(01:44:30):
say two weeks before the Carter page one made clear
that the FBI was not putting derogatory information in the
confidential human source files because it was harming the prosecutors
the US Attorney's ability to use them. Because they would

(01:44:53):
have to turn it over in discovery to the defendants,
and then it would make them not seem as credible.
That should be huge. We're not talking about one guy
who accidentally made a mistake or one guy who purposely
deleted or changed an email. The IG report made it

(01:45:14):
clear that this was a fairly prevalent approach, a very
prevalent opinion that the FBI recognize that they don't want
certain things put in these files, which means, how in
the world can the FBI say that this individual is credible,

(01:45:35):
that there is nothing derogatory when they don't put it
in the file. And to me, you read those two
things in conjunction, it makes the second report even more damning.
But everyone was so focused on what the Page report
was going to say and looking forward to that they
missed what the IG admitted the FBI was doing. So

(01:45:58):
there's so much that has gone unreported, and part of
it's just amusing to me that for two years, every
little thing that happened that maybe looked like Russia collusion
was blown up and just read into so much and reported.

(01:46:19):
The IG Report's been out from what two three weeks,
and it's old news and there's so much buried in it. Yeah,
and you've done it, just an exceptional job reporting on it.
I urge all of our listeners and viewers to check
out Margot's work at The Federalist. We're going to have
to leave it right there, but Margot, thanks so much
for coming around the program today. Thanks so much. Bennett

(01:46:39):
was nice to talk with you. And this has been
one in for Buck sex on on the Buck Sex
and show back with some closing thoughts just after this.
You're in the Freedom mund This is the Buck Sexton
Show podcast. Welcome back to the Buck Sexton Show. This
is Ben Weingarten in for Buck Sexton. And during the

(01:47:02):
break it was just thinking about what is sort of
the unifying theme that ties today together, and that is
really one of liberty versus tyranny, the tyranny of an
all powerful government that uses science as an excuse to
stifle our rights and profit personally from it. Whether it's

(01:47:25):
our adversaries, be they the Chinese Communist Party or the
Iranian molocracy and their malign imperialist expansionist efforts, or whether
it be our leftists at home not only in the
realm of under climate change, turning us into an anti
capitalist bastion, but as well seeking to divide us as

(01:47:46):
a means of conquering us through poisonous identity politics. And again,
what Martin Luther King Junior argued for was the antipthesis
of that. It was about freedom, individual liberty, respecting the
dignity of the smallest minority, the individual, consistent with what
our founders advocated for in those founding documents. And one

(01:48:07):
of these enemies of what unifying Americanism, which is the
strongest bulwark against all of this, is ilhan Omar. And
I tease this last week and I'll reveal the title
of my book now forthcoming next month is American ingrit
ilhan Omar and the Progressive Islamist Takeover of the Democratic Party.
And I'll be talking more about the book in the

(01:48:29):
coming days. But subscribe to my newswetter. I'll give you
a heads up when it's available. It's bit dot ly
slash bhw News. Urge you to subscribe there and you'll
be abreast when the book comes out. I want to
thank you for taking the time to listen or watch
us over the last few days, as I've had the
privilege to fill in for Buck. Want to thank Buck
for giving me the opportunity to fill his big shoes.

(01:48:52):
This has been ben wingaren in for Buck Sex and
on the Buck Sex and Show. Give me a follow
at BH Winegarden. Look forward to talking next time. Thanks
so much

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