Journalists: Stop Bending the Knee to Trump and Grow a F*cking Spine! (w/ Jim Acosta)

Black Man Spy welcomes Jim Acosta, former CNN Chief White House Correspondent and current host of “The Jim Acosta Show.” 

In this episode, Jim Acosta speaks with Malcolm Nance about the state of journalism in the era of Trump. He discusses transitioning from CNN to independent journalism, the countless journalists and institutions who have bent their knee to Trump and the need for collective action among journalists to resist Trump's authoritarian administration. 
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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
When we saw the Associated Press get booted off of
Air Force one and out of the Oval Office. You
know what did the White House Correspondence Association do. They
put out a strongly worded statement. My god, No, at
that point, you need collective action. You need the networks
to get together and say, Donald Trump, I know how
much you love your pictures and how much you love
to get your picture taken. Guess what, You're not going

(00:21):
to get these pictures. We're not sending our world class
photographers into the Oval Office. These major news organizations just
sort of rolled over this phenomenon of bending the knee
that we've seen since Trump has gotten back into the
Oval Office. Major corporations, law firms, universities, the press. My god,

(00:41):
grow a spine. What the hell is going on. It's
a guy who smears orange shit all over his face
every day and plays the president of the United States.
Why in the hell are you so afraid of this guy?

Speaker 2 (01:00):
This is black Man Spy.

Speaker 3 (01:03):
Welcome to another episode, an exciting episode of Black Man
Spy Podcast. I do not want to spend a lot
of time introducing this person because he really needs no introduction.
I know I've said that in the last few podcasts,
But Jim Acosta is an American icon. If there was
ever a person who could claim, or we would elevate

(01:27):
to say that he is the moral clarion in US
news media right now, it's Jim Acosta. Because he is
no longer in US news media.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
Like Edward R.

Speaker 3 (01:39):
Murrow, he has been a very clear voice in the
dangers that are coming and the things that are plaguing
the United States.

Speaker 2 (01:46):
But more importantly, he.

Speaker 3 (01:49):
Explains why journalism is under attack in this current era
that we find ourselves in.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
So I don't want.

Speaker 3 (01:58):
To waste any more time you with CNN's chief White
House correspondent. He is author of a book Enemy of
the People, The Dangerous, Dangerous Times for telling the Truth.
And he is now the host of a substack that
I want you the minute you're finished here on black
Man's Spy.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
I'll remember you at the end.

Speaker 3 (02:20):
The Jim Acosta show on Substack is mandatory. You must
watch it if you want true journalism, objectivity, and you
want to understand from the Edward R. Murrow of this
particularly turbulent period of American history what's going on his
substack one hundred percent mandatory. You can sign up for free.

(02:42):
You don't have to pay for it, but do go
there and hear what he has to say. And without
any further ado, let's interview Jim Acosta. Jim, thank you,
and welcome to black Man's Spy. I'm a little horse
right now because I just spent the last thirty minute
shouting my head off off on the Stephanie Miller radio

(03:03):
show as we discussed whether we are either tiptoeing, sliding
or already on the express train to dictatorship in the
United States. And she has a way of choosing subjects
to just make me really angry. Yeah, So I've adopted

(03:28):
I've been adopted by the or given the moniker of
shouty mixed shout face.

Speaker 1 (03:34):
And there's lots of about these days.

Speaker 3 (03:38):
And unfortunately that laugh is probably going to be the
last laugh we have this hour. I had Dolly a
Litwo go on last week, and that's as close as
I'm going to get to a podcast radio version of
Going to Auschwitz. And you know, when we were discussing
the demise of the Supreme Court and to start really

(04:01):
shocking parallels between the Supreme Court of nineteen thirty six
the National Socialist Court, which.

Speaker 2 (04:09):
Came from the Weimar Republic. These were very old jurists.

Speaker 3 (04:14):
And Stephanie Miller's father, who ran as vice presidential nominee
to Barry Goldwater, was a prosecutor in Nuremberg on the
jurist trials, the trials that were going after the Nazi
lawyers who made every law in Nazi Germany legal, and

(04:39):
Dolly and I discussed the how Anne Frank was a criminal,
that she was hiding, she had not turned herself in,
her father had not registered her as a Jew, had
not registered themselves for transport to a death camp, and
how they were violating the laws of both Netherlands and

(05:03):
occupied not you know, occupied Netherlands, and all of the
Nazi laws which were spread out by the German ports
to cover any occupied area, and that it was her neighbor.
I believed it was a woman who finally turned them
in so that they could legally be transported to Bergen

(05:25):
Beltzen where they could legally die from disease. I think
they died from typhoid in the last weeks of the war,
just weeks before liberation, along with millions upon millions of
other people. And that discussion of the legality of all
of the horrible things that were done and that were

(05:48):
discussed and openly allowed by saying, you know, the right's
fewer has the ability to do whatever he wants because
he has executive authority and a rubber stamp from the
you know, from the Reichstag, which you know which the
German parliament literally was a Nazi party machine, and of

(06:11):
course every other person in the country.

Speaker 2 (06:13):
Now I'm going to ask you.

Speaker 3 (06:14):
These questions I've taken to things are so serious that
I'm writing my questions down.

Speaker 2 (06:19):
That's how serious thing are.

Speaker 3 (06:22):
I'm usually pretty happy, go lucky, and you know, I'm
not a pro. I'm I've taught interrogation and resistance to
interrogation for years and so I just know how to
elicit the right questions that make me people angry or
give me information they don't want to know want me
to know. But this is information I want our audience

(06:45):
to know. And let's just go cut right to the
heart of it. You come from news media, I do
not I am. I was on MSNBC for six seven years.
I think I'm what I call a spy who talked
on television. Yeah, I am not a journalist, even though
I've written ten books. You know, I'm just a t

(07:05):
I transport information. You are a different animal. You are
a journalist. You have professional standards, education and ethics which
go along with the job, which led you to being
a guest on black Man's Spy because you obviously maintained
the education, standards and ethics which were important to that job.

(07:26):
And so that brings me to my first question. We
are clearly living in a time that is unique. In
the entire two hundred and forty nine years of American history,
there has never been a point where a president had
this much consolidated power, where we have not a Congress,
but a pollit bureau arguably which.

Speaker 2 (07:47):
You know, not a cabinet, but you know, a.

Speaker 3 (07:49):
Rubber stamp to the decisions of a single individual.

Speaker 2 (07:54):
And now we find that the our bond.

Speaker 3 (07:58):
Slash putin play book, which is just a repetition of
Nazi Germany's and Mussolini's, where now it is the media's
turn to be brought into the system, to be made
part of the machine, to effectuate whatever plans or designs

(08:20):
that this leader, if you want to throw that name
in question, has, Yeah, is the media openly complicit or
are they being.

Speaker 2 (08:27):
Strong armed into this.

Speaker 1 (08:30):
Well, well, Malcolm, first of all, thanks for having me on,
and you know, that is a very important question, and
I don't want to disappoint you, but I'm going to
give a bit of a nuanced answer. I do think
that Trump has cracked the code in terms of how
to hurt the media, how to hurt the corporate media

(08:50):
in this country. Now, we do have independent media in
this country. We have folks like you and me doing
our thing, and thank god we still have that in
this country. And you know, I put my life on
the line to defend the First Amendment, the free press,
the role of independent media in this country. But we
have a different thing going on when it comes to

(09:11):
the corporate media in this country. We have a broken
information system, as I've been describing at on my podcast
and the stuff that I've been writing about over the
last several months. When the President of the United States
has the ability to bring bogus, ridiculous, bullshit lawsuits against
places like ABC and CBS and force those very large companies.

(09:33):
I mean, Malcolm, you and I have been around for
a while. Those are very large companies to pay essentially
bribes to the President of the United States to make
these lawsuits go away and essentially to grease the skids
for media deals. In the case of Paramount, that's exactly
what took place. The President has found a pressure point
and he knows how to now bring to bear leverage

(09:57):
on these companies. He forced out the pre in the
CBS News, he forced out the executive producer of sixty minutes,
And as I've been saying, when sixty minutes is in.

Speaker 4 (10:05):
Trouble, my god, we're all in trouble in this country.

Speaker 1 (10:08):
And so I do think to some extent what you
have going on in some of these media outlets is
that they are looking at what took place over at
CBS and ABC and saying, ooh, you know what, Wait
a minute, Especially in the executive suites, they're saying, oh, gosh,
wait a minute. You know, if we push too hard,
if we go too far, we asked too many questions,
We're going to get a call from the White House.

(10:29):
Trump may come after us. And so what you end
up with is a situation where I think you have
some self censorship going on, and that to some extent
does make the corporate media complicit in what the Trump
administration is doing in this country. I mean, take a
look at what just took place yesterday during the cabinet meeting.
This ridiculous situation where you know, Trump is asked about

(10:52):
and Pam bonni is asked about the Epstein files and
the Epstein client list, and Trump jumps in and says, hey,
why why are you asking this question?

Speaker 4 (11:01):
And so on? Can we get over this?

Speaker 1 (11:03):
And you know, there were a couple of follow up questions,
but my goodness, nothing remotely close to what we did
during the first Trump presidency, where we hammered him on
all sorts of issues.

Speaker 4 (11:15):
And if I had been in that.

Speaker 1 (11:16):
Cabinet meeting yesterday, I would have said this President, you
said on Fox in twenty twenty four that you want
to declassify these files. Your own vice president said three
weeks before the election, we have to get the client
list out there.

Speaker 4 (11:29):
This is very important.

Speaker 1 (11:31):
Your own Attorney general back in February says, the list
is on my desk.

Speaker 4 (11:35):
And the follow up questions just weren't there.

Speaker 1 (11:38):
And it just leads me to believe it's because they
know if they step out a line, or if they
feel like they step out of line, the White House
is going to come after them and so you know,
I could go on and on, but my feeling is, Malcolm,
is we have something less than a free press in
this country. A lot of free rights groups around the world,
you know, they put those color coded maaps that say,

(11:59):
you know, if you're right blue, you have a free press,
and if you're slightly you know, light blue, you have
a little bit less of a free press. That if
you're read like in China or Russia, you have state
controlled media. And so we're somewhere, We're somewhere in the
middle right now. We have a bit of a state
compromise or compromised media in this country that is under
the thumb of the President the United States. We still

(12:21):
have independent media, thank goodness. We still have public broadcasting.
And one of the things I've been saying lately, Malcolm,
is I would love to see the public broadcasting enemies
in this country, like PBS NPR be built up to
the level where say the BBC is or Canadian Broadcasting
is in those countries, make them so big that it
makes it extremely difficult for the Republicans to tear them down.

(12:43):
Right now, PBS puts out what one hour of news
a day, the news out, which is a wonderful show,
but my goodness, public broadcasting should be putting out a
lot more content than what it is right now to
combat the right wing disinformation that we're seeing right now,
to combat the bs that we see on Fox. So
long story short, but I think the media is in
a lot of trouble right now, and I think part

(13:04):
of it is because, yes, these companies have decided to
go along to get along.

Speaker 2 (13:09):
You know.

Speaker 3 (13:10):
That's funny because I'm often asked by by by my followers.

Speaker 2 (13:13):
I've got a few million followers.

Speaker 3 (13:15):
And they say, what's what's the source of news we
should be listening to?

Speaker 2 (13:20):
What source of news? Would you get that subjective?

Speaker 3 (13:24):
And now I have to literally say BBC, trans twenty
four and.

Speaker 5 (13:31):
Deutsche Vella, Yeah, I cannot trust they do. They do
straight work, that's right, Hey, they do straight in straight news.

Speaker 2 (13:42):
They're going to give you the facts that's as you
want them.

Speaker 3 (13:45):
And here I could not say that there was a
US media outlet.

Speaker 2 (13:51):
I was at MSNBC for seven years.

Speaker 3 (13:53):
I saw in twenty twenty one the shift to the
middle that took place there. That's why I left ms
A part of the reason I left MSNBC first went
and joined the Ukrainian Army that was not handled well
by them. I left, I didn't resign my contract, and
I said I have something that's more important to me here, right,

(14:15):
And they just.

Speaker 1 (14:16):
Remember when I interviewed you during that I thought it
was just terrific that you went over there and did it, Malcolm,
you know.

Speaker 2 (14:23):
For me.

Speaker 3 (14:24):
But they need help, They needed help, and I wasn't
a propagandist, right, I helped a rifle for the better
part of a year, so you know. But the problem
that I had was you could see that the wave
of media. Initially as we were going towards the war
with Ukraine, they were already becoming more conservative. CNN had

(14:45):
its moment with its president, and then when they saw
that Zelensky and Defense became so popular, they jumped on that,
and then step stept on right.

Speaker 2 (14:53):
Up to twenty twenty four, then immediate abdication.

Speaker 3 (14:57):
My question is this, is there ever we ever going
to get to the position where traditional journalists who are
in the White House, who are at these press conferences
are going to are going to reach an enough point?
Are they or are they so compromised that rebellion, like

(15:17):
you know, standing up and going I'm sorry, mister President.
That's a load of bullshit, and you need to secure
that right here, you're lying to us.

Speaker 1 (15:27):
Yeah, I mean, that's how I lost my press pass, Malcolm.
I mean, you know when I called him out on,
you know, saying we're under under invasion in this country
and so on a press conference right after the midterms,
they got so pissed at me they took my press
pass away. We had to go to a federal judge
to get it back. I mean, to some extent, I
do worry about my friends in the White House Press
Corps because there's some really good people there who do

(15:48):
really good work. But you know, when we saw the
Associated Press get booted off of Air Force one and
out of the Oval Office, you know what did the
White House correspond Association do. They put out a sort
of a terse letter, and they put out a strongly
worded statement. My god, No, at that point, you need
collective action. You need the networks to get together and say,

(16:10):
Donald Trump, I know how much you love your pictures
and how much you love to get your picture taken
with all that horn shit you put all over your face,
Guess what You're not going to get these pictures. We're
not sending our world class photographers into the Oval Office
to take your picture if you boot the Associated Press
off of air Force one and out of the and
out of the Oval Office. If I had been a
bureau chief at one of those networks, I would have said,

(16:32):
God damn it, Caroline Levitt, Donald Trump, You're not going
to get away with kicking the Associated Press off of
air Force one and out of the Oval Office. And
I'm sorry, I'm sorry to report that these major news
organizations just sort of rolled over and they said, Okay,
go ahead and beat up on the little guy. Go
ahead and beat up on the Associated press, pick up

(16:55):
on you know, pick on the little kidd in class,
and get away with it.

Speaker 4 (16:58):
That's the message that they sent.

Speaker 1 (17:00):
And that is that's this, this phenomenon of bending the
knee that we've seen since Trump has gotten back into
the Oval Office. Major corporations, law firms, universities, the press.
My god, grow a spine. What the hell is going on?
It's a guy who smears orange shit all over his
face every night and plays the president of the United States.

Speaker 4 (17:22):
Why the why in the hell are you so afraid
of this guy?

Speaker 3 (17:25):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (17:25):
And what is the purpose of the hagiography.

Speaker 3 (17:27):
I mean the New York Times doing things you know
of this about Elon Musk and insane people like Curtis
Yarvin and talking about how these people run Washington and
Trump has the control. This is literally the New York
Times article about Adolf Hitler in nineteen thirty six, only
talking rhetorically about the Jews. The news media has a historical.

Speaker 2 (17:52):
Path to this. Look, we're already off my we're already
off my list.

Speaker 1 (17:57):
But yeah, what I mean if you look at you
look at what just what was just a hit show
in Broadway in New York good Night and good luck.

Speaker 2 (18:03):
Good night? Say would you please, for God's sake be
Edward R. Murrow? Edward not not go to these shows?
Did they not watch the movie?

Speaker 1 (18:13):
I think they all they all were. I mean you
go all over social media. They were all lining up
to go to George Clooney's show and have their picture
with George Clooney and good night and good and everything
and and and and God bless him for reminding everybody
what Edward R. Murrow did during the Red Scare and
standing up to McCarthy. That's that's exactly what we need
today and.

Speaker 4 (18:33):
We just we don't have it.

Speaker 1 (18:35):
But that's the example set set by people like Murrow,
people like Walter Cronkite, people like Dan Rather, And it's
just I don't know, Malcolm, it's just the damnedest thing.

Speaker 4 (18:46):
I know.

Speaker 1 (18:46):
We're probably straight from your list of questions, but it
is highly, highly depressing to me. And I've been just
so totally disappointed in the way corporate media has behaved
throughout all of this.

Speaker 2 (18:57):
Is it fear? Is it just let's be honest, Okay,
it's fair. I've worked in every third.

Speaker 3 (19:03):
I've worked in some pretty bad places on the other
side of the world. Uh, you know, Iraq, Siria, Olivia,
all these places, whether they knew I was there or not,
their their population was either fraid or proud on either way.

Speaker 2 (19:20):
We're not talking.

Speaker 3 (19:22):
Are we at a point where where people are afraid
of having the Saddam Hussein moment? Saddam Hussein used to
have these nationally televised, you know, uh, people's socialist rallies,
and then he would come up to the stand. He
would say, Joseph Blow, you know, Abdul Blow is a

(19:43):
trader to to to Iraq, and the guy would jump
up and he'd be surprised he was designated sacrificial lamp,
and they would everyone in the audience would start shouting Trader, Trader, Trader,
and the super police would come and grab him, Papa
or not would grab him and physically out of the audience.
For journalists afraid they are going to have that moment,

(20:07):
or alternatively, here's an even more provocative question, or because
then overwhelming preponderance, ninety eight percent of journalists are white,
and they just think that they are going to navigate
these rapids because they don't actually feel that it's impacting them.

Speaker 2 (20:27):
They're not Hispanic, they're not black.

Speaker 4 (20:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (20:30):
Well, you know, I was the first Latino chief White
House correspondent at a major network, and you know I
had a I had one of the members of the
press Corps say to me one time, I think I
know why Trump goes after you. I think I know
why he goes It's because you're Hispanic. I had never
thought of that before. I'd never I mean with me either,

(20:51):
you're Hispanic. Yeah, my dad is Cuban. He's a Cuban
immigrant and came over here in nineteen sixty two, three
weeks before the Cuban missile crisis as a refugee, and
you know, I you know, I approached this as the
son of a Cuban refugee. I don't want this country
to become a Castro like dictatorship. You want to talk

(21:13):
about Saddam Hussein. Fidel Castro wasn't that friendly to the
press either.

Speaker 3 (21:19):
Do you know why I'm shocked at you admitting this
or at least exposing this on this channel. Do you
know why I'm shocked because you're a journalist and I
would never have known that, and your level of professionalism
was so profound. I never gave it a moment's thought.

Speaker 4 (21:33):
Interesting, That's why.

Speaker 3 (21:35):
Yeah, but I'm running away with that with the rest
of these guys.

Speaker 1 (21:39):
I do wonder sometimes what is going on, and I
think some of it has to do with people just
trying to protect their cushy gigs. Oh Jesus, you know,
I think, you know, some of it is just driven
by these media deals and a lot of money that's
that's slashing around in corporate me And I do think

(22:02):
if you're going to rescue and we need we need
an information system in this country where people who have
been sort of brainwashed by the rush limbbaws and the
far right talkers like Sean Handy and Fox News. I mean,
you know what has the damage that has been done?
And so many far flung places in this country. And
I've traveled all fifty states covering politics. It's pretty extensive

(22:23):
in terms of what people will believe. And we part
of it is because we just don't have a reliable
We don't have the mob bell of information in this
country we have, you know, we have phone lines running
here and there, and electrical lines running here and there.
We don't have information lines. And I was in Norway
earlier this year doing a journalism conference. I was invited
to speak there and I was talking to them about

(22:45):
these disinformation issues and so on, how we're drowning and
disinformation in the US. And you know, part of the
discussion boiled down to they don't have Fox in Norway.

Speaker 4 (22:56):
You know, so a lot of these countries, you know.

Speaker 1 (22:58):
You traveled a lot of places in Malcolm, So why
a lot of places cannot relate to what we're going
through here in the United States Because they don't have Fox.
They don't have a massive right wing disinformation megaphone in
their faces. Twenty four hours a day, and I think
it makes a huge difference, and I think it's part
of the reason why we've so veered off course in

(23:18):
this country. Unless you solve what the quality of the
information that people are receiving in America, it's it's going
to be very difficult to pull this country back on
track in my view.

Speaker 3 (23:31):
Okay, Well, that being said, and now we're talking about that,
we have seventy six million people voted against Donald Trump.
Eighty nine million people didn't vote. That is the overwhelming
preponderance of Americans. He had thirty one out of the
thirty one point five ish percent of the overall adults
who could vote voted for him, almost the same statistic as.

Speaker 2 (23:53):
Adolf Hitler, which is quite surprising.

Speaker 3 (23:57):
You know, which tells you something about the psyche of
the American mindset. But that being said, you have countries
like Britain, which has Sky News, which is a British
version of Fox that talked them into Brexit, which has
economically damaged them to the point now where British would
would today would gladly rejoin the European Union.

Speaker 2 (24:19):
Same thing.

Speaker 3 (24:19):
For very long while they had Sky News Australia, which
was a well of course, Rupert Murdoch.

Speaker 2 (24:26):
Came from Australia, was an Australian. I lived in Australia,
taught down there for a while.

Speaker 3 (24:30):
But Australia has set up safeguards now in news media
and disinformation. You know, countering disinformation is a national platform.

Speaker 1 (24:40):
There where the Australians have apologized to the US.

Speaker 2 (24:44):
I mean, you've had.

Speaker 1 (24:45):
Australian politicians apologize to the United States saying sorry, we
gave you Rupert Murdoch.

Speaker 4 (24:51):
I mean it.

Speaker 1 (24:51):
You know, it's a real thing that's happened in this country.
I mean that Fox. If you look at the ratings
Fox News primetime program I mean, and I say Fox
News just to delineate between that and Fox broadcasting, their
primetime programming beats the broadcast networks, the ABC, CBS and
NBCs of the world in terms of what they put
out in prime I mean, it's it's a big deal.

Speaker 4 (25:14):
It's a really huge deal.

Speaker 1 (25:15):
It's something I shout about on the retobet at the
beginning of this program, shouting and shouting macshout face. I'm
shouting macshout face. When it comes to the quality of
the information that we have, the quality of the media
that we have in this country.

Speaker 4 (25:26):
It's so terrible. It's just terrible.

Speaker 3 (25:30):
Yeah, well, perhaps it's because let's look at it operationally,
from intelligence warfare and psychological warfare.

Speaker 2 (25:38):
There are seeres of there are information spheres which exist. Right.

Speaker 3 (25:43):
I wrote four books about this and how Trump manages
to dominate some of these information spheres, which started with
the help of the Russians who had crafted this policy
or this warfare policy.

Speaker 2 (25:53):
Hybrid warfare of.

Speaker 3 (25:55):
Sees the information space reft information around it using the
systems that modern technology has allowed us to.

Speaker 2 (26:04):
They couldn't do it back when they were the old KGB.

Speaker 3 (26:06):
Right, it teletypes and you know wires, right, they couldn't
do it. This information flowed to slowly. People read newspapers.
One of the greatest intelligence tools that I had my
career was the International Herald Tribune newspaper. Yeah, it had
just it was a you could sit down and read

(26:26):
it and it was like reading the old early Bird.

Speaker 2 (26:29):
Right.

Speaker 3 (26:29):
All the intelligence you needed globally that for your operations
was in that paper that day, plus Calvin and Hobbs,
so you had everything you needed.

Speaker 2 (26:40):
The world no longer reads newspapers.

Speaker 3 (26:43):
The world is reduced to I'm finding myself guilty of
this thirty second shots. The Russians understood that they assisted Trump,
and people always say, are the Russians controlling Trump's information sphere? No,
By twenty seventeen, Trump and his campaign had run away
with it. They had unders stood the you know, the assignment,
and have taken it completely out of the Russians hands.

(27:05):
And they are creating information spheres with Elon Musk and
their other influencers to where ABC News means nothing anymore.
CBS News is a legacy organization. You're speaking to an
audience much older than me, sixty five and above. You're
talking to people who are lifeblood. Is advertisement? Advertisement means

(27:27):
Middle America?

Speaker 2 (27:29):
Right.

Speaker 3 (27:30):
So, as a resistance tool to that, to read, if
we're going to capture the information sphere, the only way
to do that is through sheer utter disruption. Does there
have to be a focused, organized, national resistance effort that
will target specifically these legacy media channels like ABC, CBS,

(27:54):
NBC and say here's what's going to happen.

Speaker 2 (27:58):
You're going to get the target tree for exactly ninety
days on day X.

Speaker 3 (28:04):
We want everyone to not just black you out that
when they mention you in social media. It will be
negative when they will go after your specific advertisers.

Speaker 2 (28:14):
Now familiar. I stole it from World War Two.

Speaker 4 (28:18):
Well, some of this is happening. Some of this is happening, Malcom.
I mean, you saw with the Washington.

Speaker 1 (28:22):
Post when Jeff Bezos put the Kai bosh on the
endorsement of Kamala Harris right before the election, a lot
of people started to cancel their Washington Post subscriptions. I
think they just did like two hundred and fifty thousand subscribers.
You saw some You've seen over the last six months,
some really good people leave the Washington Post. You've seen
Gen Ruben go over and start the Contrarian. They basically

(28:45):
brought those subscribers from the Washington Post to the Contrarian.
And I think it's starting to happen now with Paramount.
I mean, I think a lot of people are canceling
their Paramount plus subscriptions as we speak.

Speaker 4 (28:59):
That has been happening.

Speaker 1 (29:00):
Since, uh the since the fallout of the of the
settlement that came out late last week, you know which,
of course they buried during a Fourth of July holiday week.
I think some of that is starting to happen. I
do think you're right. Collective action is what is needed.
I also think that these these major networks and these
major news organizations are looking, like looking at models like

(29:21):
substack and looking at what's happening over at YouTube, and
they're saying, oh gosh, you know, uh, these places are
starting to steal our bacon. And you know, I've already
been approached by one network executive saying.

Speaker 4 (29:33):
Hey, Jim, can you help me? Can you help us
get on substack. I'm like, wait a minute, I said,
are you are? You shouldn't be. I said, you shouldn't be.
You know, you guys are in enough trouble as it is.
You know, you know, dependent media.

Speaker 2 (29:49):
And it's great. I'm gonna be honest with you.

Speaker 3 (29:51):
Yeah, I made double what I made at MSNBC as
a contributor.

Speaker 2 (29:56):
They're they're there. I didn't get fired.

Speaker 3 (29:59):
I left, but leaving going and coming back and becoming independent,
which now I guess love and.

Speaker 1 (30:05):
Some of it is telling people, and people are starting
to figure this out. You take your subscriber and advertiser dollars,
you move them to independent media. You moved right them
to subscription models. And I say to people all the time.
You know you hate ads, I hate ads. Great watch
on substack no ads, Janin Jo.

Speaker 2 (30:23):
Yes, and and your stuff is deep dive.

Speaker 3 (30:27):
I don't get shallow, thir You know I would on
air we might have five minutes total in an hour
where we're really speaking, speaking, speaking people who want to
read a fifteen hundred word article by me, or watch
a ten minute video of me shouting on a targeted subject,
or do a live space like I do with Michael
Cohen and Left Parnis, you know, our two felons in

(30:50):
a spy.

Speaker 2 (30:53):
People go and they want People.

Speaker 4 (30:55):
Love it and they want they want more of it.

Speaker 1 (30:57):
That's why I've found and you know, they're energized by it.
And I try to You know, I used to love
the old Tim Russer show Not to Meet the Press,
but he had another show where he would do like
these thirty minute conversations with people, and I used to
love that show, and I try to model that with
what I do. I try to do these deep dive discussions.
You should we should definitely have you have you come
on and I enjoy it because you're right in the

(31:21):
cable news model or a broadcast news model. By the
time you introduce the person, you get through the first
couple of questions, the producers already in eures saying.

Speaker 4 (31:29):
Rap, rap, we got to go sorry, commercial breaks coming out,
blah blah blah. We don't have any of that shit.

Speaker 1 (31:34):
Now, we can just keep talking and talking and talking
until basically we have a headache, which is what happens
with me.

Speaker 2 (31:40):
But let's just be honest.

Speaker 3 (31:42):
I mean, we don't have When I say we, I
mean everyone who is part of the coalition that does
not support Donald Trump in this path to dictatorship. So
why where are the billionaires within our sphere that can
monetize this?

Speaker 2 (31:58):
And say, I mean one America, They'll go.

Speaker 3 (32:02):
Network came out of thin air overnight and was put
on cable instantly.

Speaker 1 (32:09):
Yeah, you know, one of my favorite things to say
is that old line from Jurassic Park. Nature finds a way,
and the rich guys will go where the money is going,
and they're going to see independent media. They're seeing what's
happening on YouTube. I'm telling you, over the next couple
of years, Malcolm, when this people are sort of taking
a break from politics a little bit right now. They're

(32:29):
paying attention right now, but they're going to really be
paying attention when January first of twenty twenty six rolls around,
and as we march to January twenty twenty nine, and
that time period is going to be a hyper intense period,
and you're going to see the rich guys, the hedge
fund guys, the all of those those big mover and

(32:51):
shaker guys want to chase the almighty dollar. And if
that money is flowing towards independent media, they're going to
want a piece of that action. And that's when you're
going to start to see I think the marketplace change
a little bit, and you might see the ABC's, the
NBC's the CBS to say, you know what, maybe we
can't be as full of shit and and scaredy pants

(33:12):
of Donald Trump. You know, if Malcolm and Jim are
given a hard time and doing quite well for themselves,
well maybe we need to be more like those guys.
I just think that that I'm not a pure capitalist
or I'm not trying to want to get that message
across or anything like that, but I do think, you know,
you're already starting to see some of the networks that

(33:32):
we've mentioned during this discussion. Hey, why don't we have
one of our main stars host a podcast and.

Speaker 4 (33:40):
It's happening.

Speaker 2 (33:41):
That's for sets stuff, right, That's just fake.

Speaker 3 (33:44):
That's just you saying I want to move down to
your sphere and let's throw on you know, Jake Tapp
or somebody like that.

Speaker 2 (33:53):
This is not a place you can fake it.

Speaker 4 (33:56):
Okay, No, that's true.

Speaker 2 (33:59):
I've follow your podcast. I watch your podcast. I threw
Jen Ruben money in the first instant that I heard.

Speaker 3 (34:06):
The contrarian came because you know, But explain to me
why there are not forty other journalists moving over there.
Why are they not an independent online newspaper. Why are
they not so big they can challenge the Washington Post?
Is it just that we we consume enough to where

(34:26):
we're satisfied or a journalists? I mean nothing against them,
it's the other journalist I have a problem with. I'm
a member of the National Association of Black Journalists, gotta be,
and I take great issue at every punch that's being
pulled now. There's been better black journalism during the Civil

(34:47):
War than there is right now. As American democracy goes
down in flames? How do we get those other journalists
to come on board?

Speaker 1 (34:56):
Yeah, I gosh, you're asking the million dollar question there, Malcolm,
I do wonder if at some point, you know, enough
is enough for somebody's journalists and they decide they've got
to fight back. The problem is is that so many
of them are, you know, keeping themselves quite busy with

(35:17):
Donald Trump being the master of chaos. And you know,
I had Ryan's previous tell me years ago that Donald Trump,
you know, he whips up chaos at all times because
he likes to be at the center of the chaos
so he can control the chaos. And you know, just
as we're getting going with this Epstein story and trying

(35:37):
to get to the bottom of the Epstein story, he
tries to light another fire somewhere else, and you know,
now the press has to run over and cover this
thing over there. I mean, to some extent, I think
as much as we might want to crap on our
colleagues in the press, a lot of them I think
are genuinely trying.

Speaker 4 (35:56):
To do good work.

Speaker 1 (35:58):
It is the structure, sure, And this is what I
was talking about earlier, the structure that we are all
sort of trapped in in this country that is dominated
by corporate media.

Speaker 4 (36:07):
That's what has to change.

Speaker 1 (36:08):
If PBS and NPR had the kind of budget that
ABCNBC and CBS had. My god, that would really change
the equation in this country. If some of the folks
that are independent media places like substack and YouTube can
somehow form their own network that can compete and make
the cable newsers a little scared of their shadow, that

(36:29):
I think would have an impact. And so some of
this I hope evolves over time. I agree with you,
there are huge, huge problems. I'm not convinced that every
single journalist is, you know, hopelessly lost. I just maybe
I'm a little bit too romantic about my own profession.
I just I think that there's still hope.

Speaker 3 (36:49):
Perhaps not hopelessly lost, but certainly as you said, they've
got a day job, all right, and their day job
involves them having to pay the rent in Washington, d c. Right,
So if you're living up an Adams Morgan or you
know some other place where you've got to shell out
three thousand a month just to cover the White House.

Speaker 2 (37:07):
Also you have this, you know, we all know the
prestige factor.

Speaker 3 (37:10):
You know, of being in the White House correspondence pool
or even being at the Washington Post. My contention, which
which I and they said a few moments ago, was
I think we're at the point where we're going to
have to find a financially punish people like you might
be right.

Speaker 1 (37:28):
And part of this is because and you might be
onto something, because it's it's not the individual journalists who
have to pay the rent in Adams Morgan, it's their bosses.
And they have to stiffen their spines. They have to
have a little steel in their spines and all of
this because yes, when such and such reporter asks the
pointed question in the White House briefing room or in

(37:49):
the Oval office that pissues off Caroline Levitt and Donald
Trump makes them want to tear their hair out or
their hair extensions out. I'm sorry, you know that that's
the way it goes. And if the White House gets
pissed and calls this buera chief for that president of
this news company or whatever, and as you know, going
off and threatening and everything, you know what you say,
that person was doing their job. I told them to do.

(38:11):
I told them to ask that question. My old boss,
Jeff Zucker at my old place, was extremely supportive of
the work that I did, and he would all the
time say, listen, we've got your back people, They would say,
we have your back. You got to have that in
the corporate executive offices of these of these companies or
you're going to continue to see sort.

Speaker 4 (38:33):
Of this man be pamby. You know, well, mister President,
you know.

Speaker 1 (38:38):
Asking these sort of obsequious questions that don't really get
to the heart of them out he has. He is
a threat to this country. He has to be treated
as such. He is a threat to democracy. He has
to be asked questions that get to the heart of
those issues. It can't be about so what are you
going to do today?

Speaker 4 (38:53):
You know, gosh, what are you gonna do about Ladimir Putin?
Those questions are bullshit. They don't do anything.

Speaker 1 (38:58):
And you know, my mom used to tell me, don't
be the you'll let others be the wallflowers.

Speaker 4 (39:04):
She would say, let other others be the wallflower. We
need a little bit.

Speaker 1 (39:07):
More of that spirit, you know, and the people who
cover the White House right now, because the stakes are
as high as as you were saying earlier, The stakes
are as high as as I've ever been in this country.

Speaker 2 (39:16):
Okay, but I don't understand this from corporate side.

Speaker 3 (39:19):
Now, we're going to go into the inner workings of
where we were both contributors. But I don't understand how
ms how NBC and the president of MSNBC, uh don't
understand that there is a market.

Speaker 2 (39:32):
There is a.

Speaker 3 (39:33):
Market that is just shy of the market that Fox
had in the run up to the presidential election.

Speaker 2 (39:42):
And it wasn't because.

Speaker 3 (39:43):
You know, I worked in terrorism and I go six
TV denows all right. I had my television on twenty
four to seven practically at some point so that I
can consume the information that I need to make proper decisions.
Those people walked away from that delivery system, that market
from MSNBC.

Speaker 2 (40:03):
I'm gonna be honest with you.

Speaker 3 (40:05):
Haven't watched not thirty seconds of MSNBC that was on
air since the day of the election, And to be
quite honest, it was the day that Joe Scarborough went
over to win tomor a Laco.

Speaker 2 (40:18):
You know.

Speaker 3 (40:18):
I also was a regular on Bill Maher, you know
Bill Maher. I think people see the flow of power.
It's like watching a river and it's a piers calm,
but people can actually see where the strongest flows are
there and they want to reach that ride to that
flow because there's clearly devotion at that point. And at

(40:42):
the end of devotion there's money. I mean, these people
are being rubed left and right. And my question here
is simply this, how could you not how could you
walk away from seventy six million people?

Speaker 2 (40:57):
Right?

Speaker 3 (40:57):
Fire your top black contribute a host, Fire your your
your Morning Latino host, urget of your Asian Pacific Island hosts,
and then get rid of And I'll be honest with you,
most black male contributors have dropped out of their quietly,

(41:18):
have been dropped out quietly. When MSNBC would have those
Brady Bunch pictures with six contributors in a host on
them there, that was their single most popular time. It
was raking in money. I somebody doesn't like money, suddently,
you know, it's.

Speaker 4 (41:36):
The damnedest thing.

Speaker 1 (41:36):
But a lot of this and I you know, there's
only so much evidence that I can point to and
to me. You know, the settlements paid by ABC and CBS,
I mean paramount of Disney specific those are exhibit.

Speaker 2 (41:50):
A and B.

Speaker 1 (41:51):
And you have to assume that Donald Trump and his
people are going to every network in this country, every
major newspaper in this country, and applying pressure and not
only to the executives to the major figures at those
news organizations, and they are applying major pressure. And what

(42:12):
you're seeing, I think play out in the press right
now is, you know, individuals are kind of showing their
true colors. And I have been I have to tell you, Malcolm,
I have been personally deeply disappointed and some of the
actions and behaviors of some of the individuals that are

(42:33):
major figures in this country in media and how they've
behaved since Donald Trump came back into the White House.
When he comes into the White House for the second
time around, and the very first thing that he does
is pardon and commute the sentences of the January sixth
rioters and thugs. That to me, right there off the

(42:55):
bat tells you we're just in a different world. We
left Joe biden Land, where yes, you know, the President
was a little sleepy, there's no question about it, but
for Christ's sake, he wasn't a danger to this country.
And at that point, the major figures at the major
news organizations and news outlets in this country needed to

(43:16):
stiffen their spines. And what we've seen since then is
a lot of bending the knee. This has been the
year of like the knee pads, and I just to me,
I could not be I'm right there with you, Malcolm,
I could not be more just absolutely disappointed and furious
and pissed at some of the behavior that I've seen

(43:39):
since all this has taken place.

Speaker 4 (43:40):
But all I can tell.

Speaker 1 (43:41):
You is they are applying major, heavy duty pressure on
all of these institutions and we are seeing and we
saw this during the first administration a buckling what did
what did Lisa Murkowski say? We are all afraid, we
are all afraid. Well, I'm not afraid. And Malcolm, I

(44:04):
know you're not afraid, but you know, if you're crying
out loud, if you're a United States Senator.

Speaker 4 (44:10):
Why what are you afraid of?

Speaker 1 (44:12):
You are part of one of the You are part
of one of these three co equal branches of government.
My god, have a spine. There's so many people in
this country. Stop running scared. If you want this country
to stop going down the if it concerns you at
all to see these with these masked militarized Border Patrol

(44:33):
agents on horseback marching through MacArthur Park in Los Angeles,
and they had this and Mayor Karen Bash shows up
and they have to hurry the kids inside some building
because they're also terrified of this crazy militarized horseship and
the second largest city in this country. And when those
types of things are happening in this country, Malcolm, I'm

(44:53):
sorry the major figures that people who are leading the
leading institutions of this country, they have to be standing
tall and standing strong. This is no time to be
bending the knee. Well, so if you had told eighty
billion dollars to supercharge Ice to do more of this
crazy shit for the next three years, the leaders of

(45:16):
this country they this is you just have to stop
bowing down to this guy.

Speaker 4 (45:20):
We're going to I guarantee you will get worse.

Speaker 2 (45:23):
We're going to talk about the secret police here.

Speaker 3 (45:27):
I can't believe after nearly forty years of doing this
and I'm using no phrase secret police in.

Speaker 2 (45:32):
The United States, but here we are.

Speaker 4 (45:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (45:35):
But if you had told me last year that feelty,
all right, literally bending an fealty to a national leader
would become the defining trait of journalism and whether you're
a a will ever remain a corporate, local or national journalist,

(45:56):
I would have laughed in your face, because, of course,
Everyone wants to be Edward R.

Speaker 2 (46:02):
Murrow. Everyone wants to be the person that speaks to power.
But if power knows.

Speaker 3 (46:07):
That you know, you're not gonna You're not gonna be
buying Croissance at Tatday Cafe on m Street on your
way down to the White House, and that you're just
going to be sitting in your basement wondering if you
could get you know, more than fifteen thousand, you know.

Speaker 2 (46:21):
Free subscribers on substack. That makes fealty look a little better. Also,
you know, I know we're.

Speaker 3 (46:29):
Going round and round on the media's complicity here, So
to jump off of it, I have a quick question,
what was the current American version of Lord Hawhall, which
was the U In Nazi Germany had a British propagandist
named Lord haw Hall.

Speaker 2 (46:48):
They also had a woman whose name was Axis Sally,
and of course.

Speaker 3 (46:52):
Japan had Tokyo Roads. So we have a corporate media,
that corporate media in Russia. I know who they are,
right LOVV. They are uh not Maria Bhutita. Uh I'm sorry,
so a woman who actually played my segment on Russian
state TV.

Speaker 2 (47:12):
And they have key figures.

Speaker 3 (47:16):
I mean, we who is America's most most could I
put it boot licking media personality and corporate media.

Speaker 1 (47:28):
Well, you've got a lot of contenders in that category.
But I would you know, I would say that probably
Sean Hannity would take that title. I think he's the
king of prime time over at Fox, and yeah he is,
and perhaps before that was Tucker Carlson. I would say
that Tucker has probably shouldn a little more independence lately

(47:50):
than I, you know, expected from him, which has been
kind of interesting.

Speaker 4 (47:55):
But Sean Hannity.

Speaker 2 (47:56):
Goes out in a bad way.

Speaker 3 (48:00):
That's like, that's like saying, hey, listen, I was chilling
from Mussolini.

Speaker 2 (48:04):
But I've gone full breath now, y'all.

Speaker 4 (48:08):
I believe me Tucker. You know, Tucker and I've gone
after each other over the years. I don't know him
at all.

Speaker 1 (48:15):
He's just, you know, he's a mystery wrapped in an enigma.
But but you know, Hannity, you know, by and large,
you know, to me, one of the more shameful things
that I've ever witnessed in my career in news was
right after January sixth, when it was starting to come
out that you know, Hannity and some of these folks

(48:35):
were texting with Mark Meadows, the White House Chief of Staff,
and other people ever at the White House and saying,
you know, you know, Trump better stopped this the twenty
fifth amendment. You know, he's got to stop talking about
the election and so on. These people knew inside FI
this is what I'm talking about, how dangerous this is.

Speaker 4 (48:54):
People like Laura Ingram.

Speaker 1 (48:56):
I used to see Laura Ingram show up at White
House events all the time when I was White House respondent,
and she wasn't.

Speaker 4 (49:01):
There as part of the press corps. She was there
to sit.

Speaker 1 (49:03):
Among the dignitaries invited to Donald Trump events by the
White House.

Speaker 4 (49:09):
Lauren so they host on Fox.

Speaker 2 (49:11):
So was Lenny reefins Thall.

Speaker 1 (49:14):
Well, and you know, the parallels are quite staggering. I mean,
there's something to behold. And so when these folks they
recognize how dangerous Donald Trump was around that twenty twenty
election in January sixth, and then they go right back
to cheerleading him back into the Oval office and are
now once again his chief propaganda's Malcolm, you and I

(49:37):
both know, years from now, years from now, that footage,
the footage of them being bootlockers, being lap dogs for
this seriously undemocratic, dangerous president. It's just going to be just,
you know, a shameful thing, a cloud that hangs over
their legacy, if you want to call it that, but

(49:57):
that hangs over Fox for all eternity. I mean, they
are I coined the term the bullshit factory when I
was an anchor at my old place. Fox is almost
more dangerous than just being a bullshit bullshit sort of like, oh,
you're crazy, Uncle Easbu's bullshit at the end of the
at the end of the bar. Haha, he's a bullshitter.

(50:18):
It's much more. It's worse than that. Now they're a
propaganda They are there as as as much like state
television as you would see in any other autocratic society,
and to me, it is a It is a tragic
shame what they've become. And I don't know, I've offered
some suggestions on your show as to how to combat that,

(50:41):
but to.

Speaker 4 (50:41):
Me, unless you stand up and build.

Speaker 1 (50:43):
Up an apparatus, an information system and information infrastructure in
this country that can rival that, we're just going to
be really sort of cemented in this.

Speaker 4 (50:54):
Sort of you know, Earth one versus Earth two kind
of world, and it's it's tragic.

Speaker 3 (51:02):
You know, and that brings to mind that you know,
two points one. It's that I really hope that these
clips are shown and that they are compiled into you know,
a loop tape of them being complacent and actually talking
America into whatever is happening here at a future what
I would call the Plattsburgh Trials, right, a future war

(51:26):
crimes trial that'll be held because I think this is
taking us into a bad way. One of my missions
that so hopefully, if my memoir ever makes it off
off of Pete Headseth's desk where it's been for a
year now, we'll talk about. You know, I was involved
in the Operation Sapphire non combatant evacuation from Rwanda and

(51:51):
Radio mil Colleen, which was the national propaganda Kill your
Neighbor network, featured very highly in my book They Want
to Kill Americans, which was about the Trump propaganda machine
moving people towards violence.

Speaker 2 (52:05):
But you know, with and.

Speaker 3 (52:06):
Hopefully that that will be people can be held to account.
But I don't have any compunction, any any feeling that
other journalists will ever do this.

Speaker 2 (52:17):
I confront people when they come here.

Speaker 3 (52:19):
I had it out with Tucker Carlson once for some
strange reason, he made some comment about this NBC contributor
and I immediately went out on Twitter. It was like,
if I ever see you on the street, I will
physically beat your ass. Never heard from him, never right?
I mean if people understand that your speech had you know,

(52:42):
you can ring that bell in the fire, you know,
inside the inside the theater, but the last guy in
that theater may be waiting for you as you come
out with the satisfactor fied.

Speaker 2 (52:52):
Look.

Speaker 3 (52:52):
Fox News is equated as far as I'm concerned. They
remind me of that great scene in the movie The
Naked Gun where murderer is relieved, Who's gonna kill judge
or kill Chief Drebbin? And he goes, I'm gonna rip
his head off and ship down his windpipe and use
his eyes his fingers for a bowling ball. And the
journalists are all there with their MIC's, and the one

(53:15):
journalist finally speaks something and goes, are you a good bowler?

Speaker 2 (53:18):
And the next guy goes, have you ever bowled three hundred?
And that's all.

Speaker 3 (53:22):
The journalists want to talk about is his bowling scores,
because that's where US news media has come down to.

Speaker 2 (53:30):
Now they have they have elevated the figure who.

Speaker 3 (53:34):
Could be a mass murderer, who might kill people, to
the point where they are less of an important story
than their backstory, which could further more people eyeballs to
their to their channel. Look, we're not even off question one.
So one last question, yeah, before before we go, Why
are Trump's mass rallies failing? Why are his his military

(54:00):
hairy spectacle the parade? When did they fail on every
channel except Fox News?

Speaker 1 (54:08):
You know, it's a really good question, and I you know,
to some extent, I mean, I think we're already dealing
with Trump fatigue, and not just with people like you
and me. I think across the country people are are
you know, is polling is in the toilet. Even on immigration,
things aren't looking so good. I think there were there

(54:30):
was just a very tiny segment of the electorate that said, Okay,
we don't like inflation, Biden seems too old, and I
don't know who Kamala Harris is. Oh, but you know what,
I'm just going to vote for the TV guy again.

Speaker 4 (54:43):
And and I.

Speaker 1 (54:45):
Do think they were just just just enough people were
stuckred at that particular moment. You know, you take, you
take the election, you have the election two weeks earlier.
Two weeks later, you might have a different result.

Speaker 4 (54:56):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (54:57):
He might not have won, but enough people were Booker
to give him another shot. And they said, wait a minute,
what's what's with the pardoning of the January sixth people?
Wait a minute, you said you're going after the criminals
and the gang members. You're you're scooping up grandma and
and the guy that that is a day labor at
the home depot. That's not what I had in mind.

(55:18):
You're you're you're deporting little kids with cancer. That's not
what I had in mind. And and I just think,
you know, I watched I sat back and saw this
coming over a year that, you know, over a year ago,
I thought, yes, he could, he could win reelection.

Speaker 4 (55:34):
There's there's no question in my mind.

Speaker 1 (55:37):
And part of it is because of the hole that
he has on his base. They still show up at
his rallies. Not as many people showed up for his
military dictator birthday bashed down on the mall. But you know,
Maga is still there for Donald Trump. It's still a
potent political force in this country. What happens now with

(56:01):
this Epstein stuff.

Speaker 4 (56:02):
That is that is percolating.

Speaker 1 (56:04):
That is a very interesting villan. We'll have to wait
and see what happens with that. But by and I
think a lot of Americans have said, I just don't
want to deal with this guy. I don't want to
chuse with this clown. And I think I think there's
a tune out factor with him. Yeah, but if there's
one thing that makes him crazier than anything is when
his ratings aren't so good.

Speaker 2 (56:23):
But he now has control of the levers of.

Speaker 3 (56:27):
Power for the next three and a half years, you know,
you can do a.

Speaker 4 (56:32):
Lot of damage. There's no question.

Speaker 1 (56:33):
I mean, when the Supreme Court is rolling over. If
Joe Biden President Kamala Harris had said I want to
start shutting down departments and agencies of the federal government,
what would that six to three majority on the Supreme
Court have said. They would have said, no fucking way
are you doing that.

Speaker 2 (56:53):
They won't.

Speaker 4 (56:54):
There's no way.

Speaker 1 (56:57):
That they would have allowed Kamala Harris to shut down
departments and agencies of the federal government unilaterally.

Speaker 4 (57:04):
Right, But they are letting Donald.

Speaker 1 (57:06):
Trump do it because it is a maga Supreme Court.

Speaker 4 (57:09):
And when the Supreme.

Speaker 1 (57:10):
Court loses its aura of impartiality, which is what the
Supreme I mean, really any court in the United States
should have, but the Supreme Court more.

Speaker 4 (57:22):
Than anything else.

Speaker 1 (57:24):
Then people start to lose faith in institutions and people
start to tune out. And I do believe some of
that is starting to settle in.

Speaker 4 (57:33):
And I think.

Speaker 1 (57:36):
The pump has been primed for somebody, and I don't
know if it's a Mom Donnie type, somebody to take
this country by storm in a way that we saw
with Barack Obama in two thousand and eight, because I.

Speaker 4 (57:50):
Think people already are ready for.

Speaker 1 (57:56):
A radical and I don't mean politically, but just a
very dramatic departure from the status quo. They have lost.
They do not trust Donald Trump. They think he's a creep.
They think he's a jerk. They think the Congress, as
you were saying earlier, they're just completely They just weaken
the knees, can't get anything done. There are some Democrats, yests,
who are fighting the good fight, no question about it.

(58:18):
And then the Supreme Court as an institution, they've viscerated
the John Roberts Court has eviscerated its credibility. He has
done colossal damage to the Supreme Court. There's just no
question about it. I mean, it's just he just has
done it, you know.

Speaker 2 (58:33):
You know I saw Yeah.

Speaker 1 (58:34):
I think that is part of the reason why you're
seeing people say I don't want to watch these I
don't want to do this, I don't want to do that.

Speaker 4 (58:41):
I want to disengage.

Speaker 3 (58:43):
I saw a great cartoon, political cartoon that said that
Donald Trump being elected the first time was like was
like giving a child a loaded gun. And then in
twenty twenty we took the gun away from him, and
in twenty twenty four we said, let's give him a
fully automatic rifle and see what happens.

Speaker 1 (59:04):
Yeah, that's where we are.

Speaker 3 (59:06):
I often refer to him as a drunk monkey with
a AK forty seven dancing to you know, you know,
to YMCA.

Speaker 2 (59:17):
We are at a point.

Speaker 3 (59:18):
My my take and is that we're headed to a
very dangerous place, and I don't think people are going
to be able to tune out with as much devastation
has already happened. I mean, we're at what one hundred
and thirty days, one hundred and forty days into this,
People are dying and America is already losing its rights.

(59:41):
A mass protest movement has come up. We're almost hitting
that three point five percent mark, which staggers me. How
fifty percent of Kamala Harris voters are not on the street.
That'd be thirty five million Americans. We can shut this
country down, we could. We could call for.

Speaker 2 (59:56):
The people to reside. No.

Speaker 1 (59:58):
No, And Malcolm, people have been demor And I've said
this before and I'll say it again.

Speaker 4 (01:00:02):
What I'm not.

Speaker 1 (01:00:03):
You know, they say there's Trump derangement syndrome and so on,
which is a.

Speaker 4 (01:00:07):
Total cracis shit right? What is a real thing is
Trump depression syndrome.

Speaker 1 (01:00:13):
And I tell this to when I talk to audiences,
when I go do live events. I talk about on
my show from Timetime, and I'll say it here. If
people get so down in the dumps that they think
that there's nothing really that can be done, and that
it's over and this fascist oligarchy has.

Speaker 4 (01:00:29):
Won, then what are we all doing here? You have
to can't give up so easily. I mean, and you.

Speaker 1 (01:00:37):
Know, Malcolm, I mean, my god, you picked up a rifle,
you went off to Ukraine and fought with their resistance.
God bless you for doing that. But for the people
out there who feel as strongly about things as you
do about the and I call I describe it as
let's not talk about it as like let's fight for
democracy and so on.

Speaker 4 (01:00:56):
That's yes, that's all well and good. That's important.

Speaker 1 (01:00:58):
Let's fight for the American lay life, the way of
life that you and I grew up with. It's the
reason why you became a spy. It's the reason why
I became a journalist. It's because this means something. It's important.
And my concern is is that there are so many
people and knows exactly what you're saying, And is Charletne
and the god that was talking about losing people to

(01:01:19):
the couch, right, you know, not to not to go
Jade Vance, but fuck the couch, you know what I mean,
Like like, I'm.

Speaker 2 (01:01:28):
So going to joke it, but folks.

Speaker 1 (01:01:31):
We're going to laugh before the end of this. Folks,
get up off your asses and do something. You know,
No King's Day is every day. It's not just June fourteenth.
And I just I have a I just I'm with you,
Malcolm on that the threat is there and it could
be much more serious. I have not given up on
our fellow Americans just yet. I have not given up

(01:01:51):
on them, but I do want them to get up
off their asses a little bit more than where they
are right now, if I may say that absolutely.

Speaker 3 (01:02:02):
You know, I'm a son of Philadelphia, born and raised
around Independence Hall, raised born in a naval hospital, to
a family that spent a century and a half defending
this country. My problem right now is not that we're
not mobilizing. My problem is that people are not seeing

(01:02:22):
that we need, in my opinion, a second American revolution,
a peaceful second American revolution to save the values of.

Speaker 2 (01:02:31):
The first one.

Speaker 3 (01:02:33):
Because for all there seventeen seventy six, we the people
bullshit talk. It's we the people would like to be
the Soviet Union. We the people would like to be
you know, you know, the Fourth Reich. That's where I
have a problem with it, me too, man too. Now, well,
thank you so much for coming on, black Man, spy
past thirty minutes that I wanted to have with you.

Speaker 2 (01:02:55):
We got to question number one. But this is it's
in impartant.

Speaker 3 (01:03:00):
It really means a lot to me to hear from
a person who's a real journalist, and I have only ever, ever,
ever considered.

Speaker 2 (01:03:08):
You a real journalist.

Speaker 3 (01:03:09):
Didn't know anything about your background, didn't know about anything
about anything else other than left right center.

Speaker 2 (01:03:14):
You did what was right, and that's where I hope
that you.

Speaker 3 (01:03:18):
Can help bring your your fellow compatriots who are still
in the system along.

Speaker 1 (01:03:23):
I appreciate it, Malcolm, thanks a lot, and let's do
it again soon.

Speaker 3 (01:03:27):
All right, take care, all right you as well. That
was an exciting interview. And what I find most interesting
about that interview is I had eight questions and we
got into question one point two. That is how deep

(01:03:49):
the subject of the compromise of journalism and the media
in the United States is now. Media and harnessing the
information sphere and keeping the sitechological and propaganda pressure up
on your population is important to autocrats, dictators, potentates, and

(01:04:09):
want to be war lords. And that's why we find
people like Victor Worbond and Vladimir Putin immediately sees control
of the news media.

Speaker 2 (01:04:17):
Then the next.

Speaker 3 (01:04:18):
Place they go to is the university in education to
keep control of their population from learning information. Information is
a warfare tool. It is the most important tool that
you have in navigating the world. And if you become
a person, as we said, you know, Jim mentioned Charlemagne,

(01:04:41):
the God, the podcaster who said, we've become captives to
our couches. Then we are in dangerous trouble. And there's
nothing worse than watching the world be set on fire
from your couch and think.

Speaker 2 (01:04:54):
That's an interesting thing that's going on. I wonder what
they're saying.

Speaker 3 (01:04:57):
About it on Twitter or X while your whole world
burns down around you. This nation is in danger, and
he has spelled out some of those dangers from corporate
media in a way that I'm so proud to have
had him on this show.

Speaker 2 (01:05:13):
I look up to him.

Speaker 3 (01:05:14):
I'm not a journalist, you know the way educated journalists are,
but I am part of the news media world now,
and you know, it's important that we hear from people
who are true heroes.

Speaker 2 (01:05:27):
He of the true hero.

Speaker 3 (01:05:29):
By speaking his mind and informing us and telling us
that the King is not wearing any clothing. Thank you
Jim Acosta for being on this show. Please subscribe to
his substack, The Jim Acosta Show on Substack. With that,
we are going to go into our final pearl of wisdom.
Usually we end the show with a quote by Rudyard Kipling,

(01:05:50):
but I've now expanded that because even though Kipling was
a brilliant mind, and I'm a member of the Kipling
Society and have been for many years as a soldier, spy,
slash lover of poetry and common sense. Today I'm going
to give you a reading from a book that I
found in a small English bookstore in Vienna, Austria, of

(01:06:12):
all places. And that book is called Nazi German in
twenty two Lessons or how to Speak Nazi German in
twenty two lessons, And what it is is that there
are phrases which became very common during World War Two
in the rise of Adolph Hitler in Nazi Germany. To

(01:06:34):
the right now are part of the generic political political
lexicon unnutral behavior, collaboration, right, no further territorial ambitions, Who's
the last guy? I heard that from Vladimir Putin? Right,
And I like this the book. The book defines each
one of these key phrases. And I was not going

(01:06:57):
to mention this, but I did just talk about lesson
twenty no further territorial ambition right, which the book defines,
which was an actual phrase that was constantly used in
Nazi German propaganda and news media as a conversational phrase
meaning I intend to invade tomorrow.

Speaker 2 (01:07:19):
Well, that's exactly what Vladimir Putin said for Ukraine.

Speaker 3 (01:07:22):
But today's phrase of the day is coming from Lesson
twenty two of Nazi German in twenty two lessons, and
that phrase is the atmosphere of cordiality, or as they
say in German, right and hurts the atmosphere it right.

(01:07:43):
The definition of atmosphere of cordiality is when two men
conclude in agreement to the satisfaction of one of them,
the other having a gun and his ribs. The discussion
is said to have taken place in an atmos sphere
of cordiality. And that's what's happening in America in the

(01:08:05):
news media. Many people who are in media, who are
in journalism, who are in broadcast news, are trying to
both sides the descent that we're having into American autocracy,
or as I called it in the Plot to Destroy
I'm sorry, the Plot to Destroy democracy constitutional autocracy where

(01:08:27):
the constitution and laws are given to one side and
the other side has a gun in their ribs and
are expected to maintain an atmosphere of cordiality, and that
berts snicking atmosphering is exactly what many journalists find themselves
intimidated into as they are harassed, bullied, threatened, and even

(01:08:52):
having their lives.

Speaker 2 (01:08:53):
As well as their livelihoods threatened.

Speaker 3 (01:08:55):
We have to understand that we are no longer in
a position where we can.

Speaker 2 (01:09:00):
Accept the atmosphere of cordiality.

Speaker 3 (01:09:03):
If we are true patriots, if we are if you're
like me, my son of Philadelphia rant, you are going
to stand up to that and say, I'm sorry, You're
not going to sit here and insult me, insult my family,
insult our history, and worse, insult my intelligence. I tried
to maintain a both sides does it atmosphere of cordiality,

(01:09:26):
and we've seen people like Chuck Todd, Jake Tapper and
others fall into that trap, and they allow the dictatorship
to co op this good spirit to do bad things
to people who don't deserve it. And on that unhappy
and relatively sad note, I just want to thank you

(01:09:46):
for tuning into this week's Black Man Spies.

Speaker 2 (01:09:49):
You can see they're getting more serious.

Speaker 3 (01:09:51):
We're meeting more in depth guests due to the severity
of the situation that we find ourselves in. But please
subscribe to Jim Acosta's show on The Jim Acosta Show
on substack. You can follow me on substack on my
special intelligence Special Intelligence Substack at Malcolm Nance dot substack
dot com. You can watch on YouTube on the black

(01:10:14):
Man Spy Podcast. You can hear The black Man Spy
Podcast on Apple Stitcher and all of your other fine
podcasts spaces around the world, and in fact it's translated
into other languages with subtitles in Denmark.

Speaker 2 (01:10:31):
I have since fouled, so.

Speaker 3 (01:10:32):
Thank you again. I will see you next week. I
will be reporting from a secret location and with that,
please tune in. Maintain your dignity, maintain your strength. This
country has not folded, and we are the resistance, and
we will take back the decency and the dignity that

(01:10:52):
is befitting the United States of America.

Speaker 2 (01:10:54):
Bye bye,