'You're Wrong' With Mollie Hemingway And David Harsanyi, Ep. 160: Great Jeans

Join Washington Examiner Senior Writer David Harsanyi and Federalist Editor-In-Chief Mollie Hemingway as they explain the manufactured scandal over Sydney Sweeney's "great genes jeans" ad campaign for American Eagle, outline how corporate media weaponized "fact-checking" to advance the censorship regime, and discuss The New York Times' mealy-mouthed statement about its "starving in Gaza" lie. David and Mollie also review more Russiagate bombshells and share their thoughts on the new Billy Joel documentary. 

If you care about combating the corrupt media that continue to inflict devastating damage, please give a gift to help The Federalist do the real journalism America needs.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Welcome back to everyone to a new episode of You
Were Wrong with Molly Henmingway, editor in chief of The
Federalist and David Harsani, senior writer at The Washington Examiner.
Just as a reminder, if you'd like to email the show,
please do so at radio at the Federalist dot com. Today, Molly,
we have to start with someone I did not know
existed until about twenty four hours ago, Sidney Sweeney or

(00:36):
I did not know her name, I had never seen
her anything. But now she's famous.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
You are so wrong to not know who Sidney Sweeney is.
I love Sidney Sweeney, but yeah, she's famous. Or everyone's
talking about her right now because there's this like totally
obvious but simultaneously brilliant ad campaign where she's she's so
she's a very hot lady and she's advertising genes for

(01:04):
American Eagle and everyone's really upset because she is a
hot lady and it's a total The ad campaign is
a total rip off of the old Oh, this is
a very early part of the show for me to
forget names. Brooke Shields is that who it was?

Speaker 1 (01:25):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:25):
Yeah, so Brooke Shields did a Calvin Kleine ad that
was all about evolution and.

Speaker 1 (01:30):
Jean's and I think it was Jordash or something Jordash
maybe Calvin Klein.

Speaker 2 (01:35):
It was okay, And so it's talking about like survival
of the fittest. And the point is that this gene
brand is the most fit and it is a super
awful Like this Sydney Swingey ad campaign is nothing compared
to that original one because that one was very hot,
very sexy, a little like risque, and just you were

(01:57):
dealing with someone who was very talent at pulling it
all off. Okay, So this one, though, is just her
in jeens doing different things, talking about how she has
good genes and so is she talking about her parents
giving her hotness or is she talking about the genes

(02:17):
she wants you to buy for American Eagle. H And
so everyone's freaking out and saying that it is Nazi.
It escalates very quickly. They're like, well, this is a
Nazi ad campaign.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
It's Nazi coded.

Speaker 2 (02:31):
Yeah, what do you think about it?

Speaker 1 (02:35):
What do I think about it? I saw an MSNBC
opinion piece that the headline is Sidney Sweeney's American Eagle
ad shows a cultural shift towards whiteness. So obviously I
think the main problem for people here after years of
and listen, there are hot people in all colors and
all racial makeups, etc. But that she's blonde, probably blue eyed.

(02:57):
I didn't look at the eyes and hot, right, So
the problem is she's white. And I think it's more
that there's been a cultural shift from the beginning of
time or the beginning of print ads and television that
women and men like to see hot people they are
selling stuff, and this to me seems like a return

(03:21):
to like twenty fifteen, you know where how do I
say this without insulting you have to put weirdos on
TV all the time, like you weren't sure were gender
they were, or they had like piercings everywhere, and they
had this Actually though it's all sex stuff for sure,
seems really sort of retro wholesome in a way. I
don't know if you viewed it that way. She's wearing
jeans like very Americana. She's talking in a way that

(03:45):
people used to talk to us when we were young
in commercials, remember those like Herty's Burger commercials with was
in them. What was her name, Paris Hilton or whatever.
I think it was in one of them. Yeah, it's
just it's this ridiculous woken I feel like we're over
it though, Like this is the anger is sort of
coming from one faction of society, not the whole. Did

(04:07):
you see American Eagles stock just spike after this aired.
I mean this has been great for their company. I
hope they don't apologize. I hope she doesn't apologize. I
don't know enough about her to know.

Speaker 2 (04:21):
Oh, I have so many thoughts. Okay, so it's not
just okay. For a long time we have been putting
ugly people into ads, and then for fashion, we've been
putting ugly, fat people into ads. And I think the
idea there is that so many Americans are fat that
we have to be honest and we have to like
show what and we have to like be aggressive about it.

(04:46):
They replaced the idea of beauty in advertising and aspirational beauty,
like oh if I put these genes on, would men
like me? Like they like Sidney Sweeney? With oh if
I put you know, these like fat ugly people and
so then it's like, oh, that person looks like me,
and so that's what it would look like on there.
But also sort of like a rejection of beauty, a
hatred for the good, the true, and the beautiful, and

(05:09):
so everything became ugly, and then people started feeling ugly
about themselves, like they thought they were ugly, and you
just have like a complete societal breakdown. I'm not saying
that I think it's great how sexualized some ads have
been or have gotten or anything like that. But what
we're really talking about with this Sidney Sweeney thing is
more beauty than sex appeal, although sex appeal is part

(05:30):
of that obviously, and she is kind of honestly dressed.
As you point out, the genes are actually downright baggy.
And she's the perfect person for this because she's not
like the hottest woman who ever walked the earth, but
she's very pretty, and she's got this amazing spirit about

(05:52):
her that just makes it seem like she likes men
and that she likes life. And I love that spirit,
very attracted to that spirit, and so even that for
a long time, we were taught that everything about the
so called male gaze, basically the propagation of the species,

(06:13):
is evil and bad, and so we had to do
whatever it took to fight it, including putting really ugly
fat women in advertising, and just speaking that truth that
we don't exist without male pursuit of beauty is feeling
very revolutionary at this time. And the other thing I
thought about is like, why should they even care. It's

(06:34):
one ad out of the billion that we're subjected to
where you have a pretty woman. Why is it such
a big deal that you have one ad with a
pretty woman? And I think it's because in order to
run the operation that they were running against humanity, it
required complete conformity. And so you know, we've talked before
about Vaslavjavel and the Greengrocer essay, which is a large

(06:58):
part about the power of a scene dissident to bring
down an oppressive regime. So like, what you know, it's
just the emperor has no clothes. One person says, I
think this is wrong, and it can have outsize power.
And so one pretty woman and one company showing a
pretty woman reveals all the rest of the advertising agency

(07:19):
product to be corrupt and awful. And so I would
not be surprised if you start seeing other people rediscover
the idea of putting beauty in ads instead of awfulness
and wokeness and ugliness and whatever it is. We've been
subjected to. And then the other thing. So I think
this is primarily about her being beautiful, and how frustrating

(07:42):
the left finds it that people could have a beautiful
woman and talk about her, and then the fact that
she's not just beautiful, but she's not in a favored group.
So she's a white woman, which you're not supposed to
put white people in ads right now, or you can't
put them in ads and any sort of way that
would suggest that there are a lot of white people

(08:05):
in America. So you can you can have like remember
when we were young and there were the United Colors
of Benetton ads where they would show people from every
different culture and the idea was, this is a global
company taking you know, being inspired by global fashion. And
also it had this thing like we are very egalitarian,

(08:27):
and it was one company and that was their stick.
And now, of course every advertising thing we see is
you can show a white person so long as they're
married to a black person. My best friend, her mom
is black and her dad is white. There aren't like
that many interracial companies in America.

Speaker 1 (08:48):
But I mean they are sorry couples.

Speaker 2 (08:50):
Marriages, but like relative to to two black people getting
married or to white people getting wried. But in advertising,
I think it's like one hundred person of the couples.
It's kind of fun.

Speaker 1 (09:03):
I feel like companies are if we don't do this,
we're going to get in a lot of trouble. So
they just automatically do inter racial couples.

Speaker 2 (09:09):
Now where you see the survey showing that the younger
you are, the more you think that like literally half
of the population is gay instead of two percent or whatever.
And I do think advertising plays a big role in this.
And also when we were in college, I'm sure you
took all of those courses on you know, how advertising
shapes everybody's understanding of everything, And so it became this

(09:31):
place for people who were pushing an agenda to do
their work, and agenda has been pushed very well for
a long time.

Speaker 1 (09:39):
Well as quickly you said, you know, she was dressed modestly,
wearing baggy pants. This is just like a little separate thing.
I think that sometimes people are under the impression that
some sort of hyper sexualized vision, you know, image is
the most alluring to men. I don't think that's really true.

(09:59):
I think this sort of image is far more alluring
to men, you know what I mean, because you there's
something left to be seen there, but you get what's
left to be seen there. And the thing that you
said about they put a lot of fat people on TV,
it's true, and I don't want to marginalize. I guess
you know, people are overweight and there's beauty there as well,
But I want to marginalize all ordinary people because on TV, right,

(10:24):
I could see that every day. I mean, we want
to see models, We want to see people who are
the ideal and say aspirational that we should look like
them in some way. There's nothing wrong with that, even
though we can't do it. But that's always been the way,
and that's the way of paintings, it's the way of art,
that's the way, you know, of all kinds of things,
but ugly. And I'm a fan of a lot of

(10:45):
modern art, but a lot of discordant things and ugly
things have made their way into our imagery in a
sense that and then I think people got confused about
what was actually beautiful. You know, I don't know if
that makes sense, but I just I think even us
talking about this, we're overthinking it away. It's just so
obvious it's just not they would know how women on

(11:07):
TV and geans you haven't had blonde hair and be white,
and they got mad about it. But do you think
it has the same resonance or the same power where
the people are as fooled by all this now as
they would have been in twenty fifteen or twenty eighteen.
I just don't think so. I think we're kind of
over it.

Speaker 2 (11:23):
Well, there could be too that thing that it's not
that people are embracing again the good, the true, and
the beautiful so much as they're just tired of the
advertising campaigns that they've had for the last ten years,
like when they started, and maybe it's more like twenty actually,
I think is when you know, even you mentioned Hardy's.
I think the Hardy's decline started more like twenty years ago,

(11:45):
where they moved away from having beautiful women in ads
and being really campy about it, and then their company
also seemed to struggle as a result. But this is
just seeming to be like revolutionary to people because they
haven't seen it for such a long time.

Speaker 1 (12:04):
One thing I am curious about, curious about if they
will continue this ad campaign, will they walk it back somehow?
You know what will they do. I don't know. We'll see.

Speaker 2 (12:15):
Actually, I think there is no way in h e
double hockey sticks they will walk it back. And it's
been so successful that I was actually wondering if they
paid people on the left to freak out about it
so that it could get even more successful. Like they
know exactly what they're doing, and I think they're thankfully

(12:37):
there are a ton of hot women out there in
the world. Oh, there was one other thing you'd said
that I was thinking about with. Okay, so God made
women beautiful all over the earth. We can agree. It's
kind of the cool thing about women, right, they're really pretty,
or they can be pretty all over the world. But
there's also this American thing about it, which is we

(12:59):
used to we used to have a particular kind of
domination in the hot women market, which was this really
beautiful women who have their own mind but love life
like a certain joyful spirit and less like stereotypic. Like

(13:21):
sometimes when you think of like a hot woman in
France or something like, a very particular image comes to mind,
whereas the particular image for an American hot woman was
very independent, free spirit, fun loving, but the fun loving
thing I think is very us. There's like a confidence
that you have to have to have that kind of

(13:41):
fun loving attitude. And growing up in California, you know,
there were just a lot of these hot women that
you would encounter in your day to day activities. But
also they were featured in pop culture, and so I
think it would be cool for America to bring back
that particular I don't even know if that makes sense
at all what I'm.

Speaker 1 (14:01):
Trying it does. There were used to be mass culture
in the old days, right, we all shared kind of
because there weren't that many choices, But now everything's so adomized.
I just feel like maybe they'll just be different tracks
and appealing to different sorts of people. So you'll have
these kinds of ads directed at good Americans and terrible

(14:24):
ads directed to people who who have different I guess
ideals of beauty. It's hard for me to believe that
a lot of those people are considered that, you know,
represent those ads are considered beautiful because humans are humans.
But I guess you can convince yourself of anything, right. Still,
there are ideals, and this actress who now is probably

(14:45):
going to command a huge salary for whatever she's doing.
I don't even know what she's in or what she's done.

Speaker 2 (14:49):
I know she was a Sydney I've seen a Sydney
Sweeney movie and it was We talked about it on
the show. She's not the world world's best actress, but
she's very pretty.

Speaker 1 (15:03):
Oh.

Speaker 2 (15:03):
Actually, it's funny that I said that she's giving off
these American vibes, because there is a thing about her
look that reminds me of some of those like sixties
nineteen sixties British models.

Speaker 1 (15:15):
What do you mean with Twiggy? Yeah? Really, yeah, no,
those they were very angular compared to her.

Speaker 2 (15:21):
Now, well, I'm just talking more about like a vibe,
the facial, the mouth.

Speaker 3 (15:27):
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Speaker 1 (16:06):
Let's talk about something else that is basically the opposite
of this, I guess, very unsexy, very Unamerican. Now, let's
talk about the fact checking business in media, which I
guess was came into four around the time. I mean,
I think it was around before, but you know, in

(16:27):
the early twenty tens, but really found its footing when
Donald Trump became president. Glenn Kessler worked for the Washington Post.
He was their lead fact checker. I forgot what that, Patriots.
He's the guy came up with Pinocchio's how many Pinocchios
you get for saying things that are untrue? Has accepted

(16:49):
a buyout from that paper and is leaving. I would
say that he was he like I think he called himself,
or people called him like the dean of fact checkers, right,
It was kind of he was. He didn't invent he
might have even invented the term. You know, obviously fact
checking is as far as a journalistic endeavor. I've always

(17:09):
despised that because I think journalists should be fact checkers.
By default. I'm just going to say I've dealt with
Glenn personally, and he on a personal level is seems
like a very nice man. But what he did I
think was incredibly dishonest quite often, and sometimes I wonder
did he do it on purpose or was it just

(17:31):
how he saw the world. I don't know, and it
doesn't really matter to me, but I guess i'd ask,
do you think fact checking is dead? I mean, what
did you make of it?

Speaker 2 (17:41):
So just first off, I think he's called the Dean
not because he was the first, not because he was
the quote unquote best, although I guess the Washington Post
was considered a little less easily dismissed than politi fact
or something like that. Maybe I don't even know if
that's true. I think it's that he was nice, just said,
and all the other people who were doing it were

(18:02):
like twenty three year old left wingers who were so
stupid they didn't know how to even make a commencing argument.
So that's kind of where I got the idea that
he was treated a little bit differently. And then also
it was actually that the fact checking started, and Mark
Hemingway gets into this in his piece for the Federalist

(18:24):
on this. It started because of the rise of alternative
sources of media. So when Obama's running for office and
everyone in the media was acting as part of his campaign,
but you had people like, oh my gosh, you know what.

(18:46):
I think it actually started maybe even earlier than that. Yeah,
it was because when did John Kerrey.

Speaker 1 (18:51):
Run two thousand and four?

Speaker 2 (18:54):
Was that already two thousand and four.

Speaker 1 (18:57):
I mean they were around in the two thousands. I
think the Washington Post was.

Speaker 2 (19:02):
Okay, well, John Carey when he runs for office, there
are these other people who point out his bad Vietnam service,
which the media had decided that they would not cover
accurately or honestly, and so people start hungering for these
other sources of information that they're not getting from left
wing media and so sorry, my phone is dinging here.

(19:25):
And so that also happened during the Obama care debate.
People were very frustrated that other sources were coming into play.
But I think it, yeah, started more like early two
thousands in response to the rise of the Internet, and
they were very frustrated that they weren't able to control
the complete conversation, and they did it in the frame

(19:47):
of like, Okay, when we tell you what's up, that's
the truth. And when other people say what's up, they
need to be fact checked and we are going to
effect check them. And from the very beginning, the whole
process was completely corrupt, meaning, like you point out, isn't
journalism by definition supposed to be the place that checks

(20:09):
the facts. And it was the failure of the journalists
that were leading to these alternate sources of media getting
the news out. And then also they would do things
like they would they would fact check a political prediction, so,
you know, someone to say, if you vote Republican, things

(20:31):
will be better for you, and then they would fact
check that is, if you could truly know what the
future holds under two alternate scenarios, you know what I mean.

Speaker 1 (20:39):
Yeah, And.

Speaker 2 (20:42):
They also had trouble with like take something like someone
saying President Obama saying, if you like your doctor, you
can keep your doctor under Obamacare, and the fact checkers
PolitiFact rated that statement true six times, like six different

(21:08):
fact checks before eventually calling it their lie of the
year when they sort of had, you know, when they
were trying to pretend to be bipartisan, but like in
the fight when it mattered. They kept saying it was
a true statement and then after the fact, admitted that
it was not true.

Speaker 1 (21:26):
Yeah, just a couple of things. Obviously, media, all these
people who are out there with large audiences, they do
spread sometimes spread things that aren't true. The problem is
that the legacy media spreads things that aren't true, so
we can't trust fact checkers. Specifically fact checkers. Well, I
would say got three of the biggest stories of the

(21:48):
last decade, if not longer, completely wrong and covered up
for people it was. One was the Biden mental decline story,
where they accused people who pointed it out it being liars.
The COVID stuff, which they were all on board with
in many different ways, and the Russia collusion hoax stuff,
so where they called people conspiracy theorists who were just

(22:12):
pointing out facts. Right, So that's when they were part
of the cover up. Not even wrong or biased, but
part of a cover up. Right, And you mentioned some
of the things they did. I'd written a piece a
while back on the things that they did that I
think were more subtle than people realize. So, for instance,
hyper precision fact checking of every single thing a Republican says, right,

(22:33):
and then offering a broad picture of the Democrats giving
the rich context to things that are completely untrue. Then
they constantly did this. They were fact checking subjective political
assertions by Republicans. Do what I'm saying, Like, so, if
a Republican made some political argument like this is an
urgent national crisis or whatever whatever they're talking about, they'll

(22:56):
be like, no, actually it's not. That's if you're going
to be a fact checker at.

Speaker 2 (22:59):
Least to like statistics one standard, yeah.

Speaker 1 (23:02):
Exactly, or in one standard. And then what was the
last them, sorry, would say? Then what would they would
do was fact check Trump on a completely factual statement
he made by saying that he hadn't given other information
that helped Democrats do. I mean so like he hadn't
given in the context that they demanded that he give.

(23:23):
But they never did that for Democrats obviously, So I
don't think anyone trusted fact checkers. It became useless. All
they became was Democrats could take the link from like
some you know, Washington Post fact check and like stick
it into your Twitter feed to show you you supposedly
were wrong. So I'm happy that. I don't know if
it's over, but I mean, there's that guy Dale his

(23:44):
first name at CNN who's probably the worst of them,
but they become useless.

Speaker 2 (23:51):
Yeah. I used to spend a lot of time debunking
various fact checks and fact checkers, and then they became
such a joke where everybody knew that they should not
be trusted, or anyone with a pulse knew that they
shouldn't be trusted. So I just spent less time reading them.
But just last week I read Glenn Kessler's fact check
of the document like an early document release in the

(24:13):
latest Russia Gate scandal, and his fact check was so
weak that I think I might have to write up
a response to it, and so circular he's saying. She
says it wasn't a good like the quality of the
Russia Gate investigation, the russiaclusion hopes, like the quality of
all that stuff wasn't very good. But in fact it

(24:34):
has been looked at by Bob Bueller and it was good.
It's like, you get the feeling these people don't even
know what they're talking about, that it's very that they
have not done their research. They're just trying to say
things for political points. And you know, related to that,
The Washington Post did a lie tracker on President Trump's

(24:59):
first term. And President Trump, like all other politicians, is
not known for his veracity. Plus he's hyperbolic and you
know all that stuff. But they said that he lied,
like I think it was like a hundred times a
day we would break down to and almost all of
the ones that they got him on was him saying

(25:20):
that the Russia collusion hoax wasn't real and someone was lying,
and it was the Washington Post which was running that hoax.
So the quote unquote fact quote unquote checker there just
completely did not do their real did not do a
real journalism job. They did a propaganda job, and they
are good at propaganda. Oh and I do want to

(25:41):
point out we say nobody takes them seriously. In fact,
fact checkers were a major component and are continued to
be a major component of the censorship regime. So let's
say that you say, well, the CDC wants me to
tell you that COVID happened because a bat was in

(26:03):
a soup in a wet market in Wuhan. So you
regurgitate a lie, you will not be pinged by a
fact checker. If you say you think the Wuhan Institute
of Virology might be worth looking at because that's where
the COVID virus launched, and there's a coronavirus lab there.
They would rate that four pinocchios four pinocchios, and then

(26:25):
the four pinocchio standard would mean that anyone who had
published that type of thing was then unable to get
advertising revenue forever, like maybe some people had a three
strikes you're out policy. So let's say that you wrote
that Brett Kavanaugh that the evidence did not show that
Brett Kavanaugh was a serial gang rapist, and then you

(26:47):
also said that the Russia collusion hoax was unsubstantiated, and
then you said that you thought COVID maybe came from
a lab that had received US funding. Your publication cannot
be found. But if you're the wash Can post and
you perpetuate the lies, you get like a top rating
from the censorship organizations, and the advertisers will give you

(27:08):
like the Lexus ads. You know what I'm saying, like
we shouldn't act, you know, And I know my husband's
always like Glenn Coesler's a nice guy. Well he's a
nice guy. That's making it hard for our kids to eat,
So I don't think that's very nice. But I have
a different standard, you know, like hurting my ability to
care for my family, and there's like a person doing it.

(27:29):
It makes me angry.

Speaker 1 (27:31):
You're rightfully angry. My I don't want to share the
you know, off the record conversations, but I think that
a person who's willing to engage or even though honestly
I don't do that, I try to engage people in public.
I think that's where debates need to happen. And I
what I say my self self aggrandizing statement right now,
but what I say in public is what I believe,

(27:52):
and I'm willing to defend that in public. I mean,
I think that's what every journalist should be doing. But
you know, just the willingness to talk about things in
that way whatever it doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't erase
the things that he did. And you know, for years
we were told misinformation was the most die or threat
to our constitution and to our freedoms and all of

(28:14):
this stuff. And maybe they're right about that, except they
were the they, legacy media were the ones engaged in
it in a way that is far more powerful than
anything some you know alternative site can do you know?
They they we were stuck in the Russia Gates thing
for whatever, Russia coclusion thing for years because of them

(28:36):
over a lie, and they silenced anyone who tried to
push back.

Speaker 2 (28:41):
And like the Biden dementia thing, there were there was
a small group of us that looked at the evidence
and were able to report accurately in real time that
it was a lie that Biden appeared to be having decline,
that there were legitimate questions about COVID's launch, like we were,
there were. It wasn't like everybody struggled, but those of

(29:05):
us who were reporting accurately and honestly were persecuted by
these people. And the persecution is ongoing because once you're
like in the system, as someone who deviates from the
government narrative, you're in there forever like there's no coming
out of it. And so even if he's retiring the
effects of what he did against freedom of expression and

(29:26):
free debate they are ongoing, and so there's not enough
reason to celebrate just because he's retiring.

Speaker 1 (29:33):
And you get on something important. I think the if
you are a fact checker and you say, listen, there
was no evidence that this thing. You know, there's no
evidence that this thing came from a lab yet, right
or there, And it may well have jumped from some
animal in a market or whatever. I don't know. I
don't know science, right, who knows. That's one thing. But
to say that now, saying that it might have come

(29:55):
from a lab is disinformation, misinformation racist. Now you're in
case something very different because, for instance, I wrote about
the Epstein file the other you know week, and I
wrote that we have no evidence for a B and C.
That doesn't mean that it couldn't pop up. It doesn't
mean we shouldn't debate it, does it if you want
to bring in or bring it up. I mean, that's
one thing. The second thing is, yeah, so you think

(30:17):
about that and then think about what they did with Biden.
I it sounds like hyperbole, but I think the Biden
cover up of his cognitive state was one of the
biggest uh scandals in presidential history. You had a guy
who could not do his job running the country and
they participated in this knowingly. So that is not fact checking.
Oh yeah, that's what I want to say. I'm all

(30:38):
over the place. If you have a fact checking outfitting.
Glen Kstler is on there constantly hyper you know, pedantically
fact checking everything Republicans say. Hire a conservative to do
the same thing to Democrats at least, right, have a
person on there pedantically fact checking everything Democrats are saying,
then you have a whole you know, then it's a
true fact checking organization in a sense. No, not one

(31:00):
of these organizations did that. And occasionally they throw a
bone to you and like do some fact check on
Democrats That was like so mild and so you know
what I mean, just to pretend that they are. It's
like when I was on an editorial board, occasionally we'd
like endorse some Republican in like a city council race
or something, and pretend that we were even handed, you know, more.

Speaker 2 (31:21):
Like I pointed out with the Barack Obama thing when
it actually mattered, right, or when they were defending him.
And then once everything, all the damage was done and
there was nothing you could do, they were like, oh,
did we lie on behalf of someone else who was lying?

Speaker 1 (31:34):
Websie So speaking about if we can move on a
media manipulation and propagandistic efforts, if that's how you say
that word, let's say about the New York Times, to
think is obviously one of the worst and has been forever,
but probably worse than ever last week, and CNM was
part of this as well. I just want to make

(31:56):
sure that we mentioned that they published a picture of
a starving Palestine child. I think his name was Mohammed
Matowac or something of that nature. I'm not mispronouncing it
on purpose. A gods and child, you know who is
like you could see his spine. He had been completely
you know, he was in malnutrition because of starvation that
the Israelis had deliberately inflicted in their genocidal aims and

(32:18):
the Palestinian people there. Well, it turned out that I
initially thought that the boy had cystic fibrosis, but it
may have been cerebral palsy. And they published this piece.
I think it was on the front page, but I'm
not one hundred percent sure of that because I don't
get the physical York Times, and it was a horrifying

(32:41):
picture in that context, and it was everywhere. Well, I
jumped the gun. I guess it turned out that he
wasn't starving. His brother was in that picture to the side,
fully healthy, cropped out of the picture to create this,
to create this image, this powerful image that I'm sorry,

(33:05):
you know, has helped, you know, fuel anti semitism in
this country. It's that's simple to blood libel. But so
they corrected it yesterday. And when I say corrected it,
they barely.

Speaker 2 (33:18):
Had a mealy mouthed correction.

Speaker 1 (33:20):
Yeah, he had some pre existing health problems. You know,
we put ourselves at personal risk to report. They were
the heroes of this story. And they sent it out
on their pr PR Twitter account, which has forty thousand
something followers, not their regular account where they had the
original picture, which has fifty five million followers. You tell

(33:42):
me they didn't do this on purpose. They did it
on purpose, and this whole genocide. Listen, there are problems
in Gaza with getting people food. I'm not denying that.
I don't think there's starvation yet, but or I don't
think there will be. It's just it makes me so angry.
I can't even tell you. I mean, and this goes
on and on. This has been going on forever there

(34:03):
in different ways, but now it is at a dangerous
level here in the United States, and you know, I
don't even know what can be done anymore. The Times
has Times is one of the successful newspapers that are
left and has a lot of people reading it and
a lot of people following it.

Speaker 2 (34:16):
So I don't know, Well, the thing that you noted,
which is the photo for publication was cropped to exclude
the evidence in the photo that didn't tell the story
they wanted to tell. It is very difficult to interpret
this journalistic story as anything other than showing that there

(34:42):
was malice in how they reported it, because if you
have evidence that goes against what you're trying to say.
So if they're trying to do a story about how
Israel is evil and children babies are starving because of
how evil Israel is evidence that contradicts that, and you

(35:02):
don't consider it and you don't let the reader see that,
that is a huge problem. And then also, as someone
was pointing out on Twitter today, it is not that
people think that journalists can't make mistakes. They're human and
anyone can make mistakes. It's that the mistakes supposedly mistakes.
I don't think this is a mistake. I think this,
like I just said, it's wilful. They always go in

(35:25):
one direction on different stories, but like always in the
same direction and.

Speaker 1 (35:31):
You remember every story on Russia collusion that had to
be corrected skewed in one direction, every story on Kavanaugh
skewed in one direction, etc. There is almost never a
correction that ever they have to correct something like that
is anti Hamas, that is anti Republican.

Speaker 2 (35:46):
It's soever we talked about this last week. But I
think that this type of behavior runs the risk of
destroying press freedoms writ large, because when you don't you know,
it's like how the biggest threats to Second Amendment rights
happen when there's a mass shooting, right when someone's irresponsible

(36:11):
with something is when people start thinking about constraining that.
But the media are acting like that because they claim
themselves to be journalists, they can participate in crimes or
in really bad actions that can lead to horrific consequences
in war, you know, and this is not the first

(36:33):
time in even just this war that they have done
stuff like this. There are other examples since October seventh,
twenty twenty three, and it affects. It's like you heard,
you know, Trump has repeatedly said like you can't look
at these images and not feel something, right, So you

(36:54):
have the president of the United States reacting to this
false picture, and obviously a lot of the global pressure
with other people comes into play too, although they might
just be pro Palestinian no matter what was going on
in the media. Huh.

Speaker 1 (37:11):
But yeah, I mean you have so I see polls
that show that, you know, there's less sport for Israel.
I mean, it just is what it is, not among
Republicans as much as others. And that's fine, it is
what it is. But I mean the numbers are actually
pretty impressive for Israel, considering you have the entire legacy
media old media going after them in this kind of way.

(37:32):
You have Quitar dropping billions of dollars into the into
college as all higher learning is this way. You have
these massive influencers all over the place engaging in this.
You have TikTok, which is like a place but the
chi cooms. For some reason, that site has the most
anti Semitic and anti Israel stuff going on. I mean,

(37:52):
I don't really know how you fight it, because you
can debunk something like this and no one will care.
If someone told me, well, oh it's okay to starve
someone with cerebral paul, you know, they'll ignore the you
know what, happened and just go back on points. So
I don't know, It's just it's it's overwhelming and I'm
not really sure how you can fight back if you're

(38:13):
you know. And again I'm not saying Israel's perfect in
all it's doing. I wish they had wrapped this thing
in GZ up already. It's really hurting them as far
as like the pr of it goes. I mean, they're
trying to eliminate Hamas. I either you do it or
you don't, and it's very difficult, not difficult. I don't.
I can't think of another and I can't think of
a historical analogy where a nation fighting a war has

(38:34):
to both save and feed the civilian population while trying
to root out an army that hides within the civilian population.

Speaker 2 (38:42):
There are people, Okay, So let me first off say
that I'm not even a Zionist, right, so I'm not
like where a lot of Americans are, where they have
days in my view like kind of radical ideas about Israel.
I am horrified by the plight of Palestinian Palestinians in

(39:03):
the Gaza strip. I hate to see starvation, Like I'm
actually like right there with everyone. What I don't get
is not with everyone. I'm not making sense here. But
what I don't get is if Hamas wants this to stop,
why haven't they returned to all the hostages and why
didn't they do it like a year and a half ago.

(39:25):
It is very hard to take people seriously when the
one thing that they could have done and could still do,
they refuse to do. Like is it working out for
them to keep holding innocent Israeli's hostage? Why is there
not massive pressure every day from every corner of the
earth to get every single hostage or their body released

(39:47):
back to Israel. And when they're not doing it, it's like, well, okay,
so you want me to believe that you're all starving,
but you're also not willing to do the one thing,
the one thing that everyone kind of agrees might change
things here? Am I crazy?

Speaker 1 (40:01):
Well, you have it slightly wrong. It is working out
for Hamas. They want martyrs, They want people to suffer
as a way to manipulate the West to get a state,
and France and Britain now will say Israel has to
give Palestinians a state where we'll recognize that one exists.

(40:21):
Not one word in those not one word there is
directed at Hamas in the sense of saying we're Palestinians,
in sense of saying you need to do AB and C.
It's just Israel that needs to do a B and C.
And you know, I don't want to get into all
the history of it, but it's not going to work
because you can't have a Palestinian state.

Speaker 2 (40:39):
And also just reject this idea that so sometimes people
think that the humane thing to do is to engage
in a twenty five year war and occupation of another
people when they do something really horrific. So you know,
you look at what happened in Afghanistan. They harbored terrorists
who attacked our country, and then we gave like a
twenty year mission of funding their country, yes immediately in

(41:03):
the aftermath defeating the bad guys, but then staying there
for a really long time. And I don't actually know
if that was more humane in the long run than
if we had just bombed the country to the point
that they that the entire world understood that if you
harbor terrorists against America, it will be very very bad
for you. And then every country in the region would

(41:24):
have gotten that idea and would have led to more
self policing than America policing. And then likewise, I don't
know if I agree that the way to respond to
the horrific massacre of innocence on October seventh is to
help a country or help help the people continue on

(41:46):
like their need, the need. It's to me so obvious
that you can't have that happening ever in the future,
that type of attack funded and organized by Iron and
helped by all the proxy and murdering twelve hundred Israelis.

Speaker 1 (42:05):
And don't forget the constant missile barrage is since like
twenty twelve at Israeli cities and civilians, which no other
country on Earth would allow it to happen without some
kind of reaction.

Speaker 4 (42:17):
I think, unless you're going to do that and truly defeat,
you know, vanquish Israel, it's not even that surprising that
there would be this type of response.

Speaker 1 (42:30):
Well, people have a distorted outlook on this. Just quickly
to say that Israel has zero interest in occupying Gaza.
It gave Gaza over to the Arabs, It never had
any designs on Gaza in the first place. The idea
that they want to occupy that place is nuts. It
only puts their people in danger constantly. No one else
will take care of it, and you can't allow this

(42:50):
to exist in this way. But also there is no
starvation in Gaza. There is. There are problems with delivering food.
That exists because the UN allowed Hamas to make billions
of dollars over or at least hundreds of millions, at
least five hundred million I've seen off of selling and
controlling supplies and food. So Israel said, we have to

(43:13):
take care of this, and the UN will not do
it in the way that Israel wants to do it,
where Hamas doesn't get their hands on it. It's very simple.
Now they're just airlifting and throwing in food. They're not
going to let the people there starve. This is just
a propaganda effort. And another thing, the just quick thing
France and England say, or Britain say, Israel has to
agree to a ceasefire. Israel's agreed to like one hundred ceasefires.

(43:35):
There was a ceasefire in October seventh eighth, like sixth like.
There is there is nothing more they can do. Hamas
will not agree to a cease fight. Now you're incentivizing
them to hold out. They'll September when they'll be when
Britain will recognize the state for Amas for doing for
killing over one thousand innocent people. Right. So, last week

(44:00):
after we taped Molly, the House Permanent Select Commitee on
Intelligence released a new report on the Russia collusion hoax.
And you reported on as Telslo about it.

Speaker 2 (44:12):
So actually that's not quite what happened. It was a
release of a report from the House Permanent Select Committee
on Intelligence, but they didn't release it. They wrote it
in twenty seventeen, or maybe it was twenty eighteen, but
then it had been kept hidden in a vault for
the entire time since then, and it was finally released

(44:33):
by d and I Tulci Gabbard last week. People had
talked about this report. We knew it existed, but it
was kept so hidden. I mean there were only a
tiny handful of copies made, and Hipsy itself, the committee
itself didn't have a copy of the report because it
was so classified. So it finally gets released, and I

(44:55):
mean it is as someone who was on committee said
to me, like, so we didn't oversell it, did we,
you know, because they would say like it's it's really
something you want to get your hands on and what
the report showed. Okay, so we always knew about this
Steele dossier, right, that's the concocted dossier that alleges all

(45:17):
sorts of crazy stuff that Trump is doing, and that
had been kind of in public for many, many years.
But John Brennan, who was Obama's CIA director, said that
he didn't even see the dossier until December of twenty sixteen.
But we knew that he had been running around Capitol
Hill and elsewhere in August and September of twenty sixteen

(45:38):
claiming that he had explosive evidence that Putin was interfering
in the election to help Trump. And he kept saying,
I'm not saying this because of the dossier, so hey, yeah,
of course he could be lying, right, But a lot
of us were wondering, well, what is it? What is
this supposedly explosive supposed evidence of Putin trying to help Trump?

(46:02):
The Hipsy report reveals what it is. And it's amazing
because there are there are three things that he cites,
and he also cites the Steele dossier, by the way,
and the three things are even stupider than the Steele dossier,
and we had not known about it until last week.

(46:26):
So the three things are okay. The main thing is
this fragment of a sentence from a source who didn't
know Putin, but he worked for someone who did work
for Putin, and so he was considered like, that's actually
a pretty good source an intel world. One of the
things you learn when you're covering this story is that

(46:48):
what's considered good intelligence is what you or I would
called called third hand information. And you and I know
that third hand information can be extremely you know how
many problems with it, ranging from it completely not being
true to just not understanding the nuance of something or
not understanding the context. Right, Okay, So this third hand

(47:10):
fragment of a sentence that we based the entire Russia
collusion Hoaks on, was supposedly Putin said at the end
of June or early July twenty sixteen that he was
counting on Trump winning. It's a fragment of a sentence,
and the Hipsy report notes that five people looked at

(47:33):
this this piece of intel, and they had five different
interpretations on it. It's so ambiguous what it means. I'll
just go further Brennan was personally controlling this source. He
didn't even like have it be written down until mid
December twenty sixteen. So we've got his recollection of what
he might have been told six months prior, and then

(47:56):
when people look at it, they get five different interpretations.
And I'll just say, to me, it seems well. Let's
also know it doesn't say he prefers Trump winning. It
doesn't say he's intervening to help Trump win. But also
if you put it in context, like where were we
at the end of June or early July twenty sixteen,

(48:18):
do you remember where we were in the political environment
for the presidential race?

Speaker 1 (48:25):
Mass paranoia in hysteria.

Speaker 2 (48:29):
Well kind of, but I just mean we hadn't had
the Republican nominating convention yet that would happen a couple
weeks later, and there were many people trying to keep
Trump from securing the nomination, like he technically had the votes,
but the entire establishment was working to prevent him from

(48:50):
coming out of the convention with the win. So if
at that moment in time, that you've got massive campaigns
to keep Trump from coming out of the convention the
nominee and supposedly you have a third hand fragment of
a sentence of Putin saying he's counting on Trump winning.
Do you think they're talking about the general election that

(49:10):
would be held many months later, or do you think
they're talking about the Republican convention, you know what I mean,
like the idea that you And then also if he's
saying like I think he's going to pull out a
win here even though there are people fighting, that doesn't
mean he prefers it. It doesn't mean he's working to
help it, like none of it. Right.

Speaker 1 (49:28):
Well, and the other candidates were hawks more powkisha, I
know you don't like that word. Again, you know, as
far as Russia is concerned.

Speaker 2 (49:35):
Right exactly, Yeah, No, there were much more than Trump
wanted to take on China, and he had the approach
of the Kissingerian approach of you can't take on China
and Russia at the same time, so you cozy up
to one while you're going after the other, and vice versa,
and that was very threatening to a lot of people
in DC. But anyway, so that's the first thing. The

(49:58):
second thing is a claim that Russia always prefers Republicans,
which is not even true. And they say the reason
why Russia always prefers Republicans is because democrats are focused
on democracy. And as the Hipsie report points out, like
that's a really great point if you forget that Ronald

(50:19):
Reagan's most famous speech included the line tear down this wall,
and George W. Bush ran entire wars to implement democracy abroad, right, Like,
it's not even accurate, and.

Speaker 1 (50:31):
Even the first part of that is not accurate. And
the whole Romney Obama race, so Obama made fun of
him for treating Russia like an enemy.

Speaker 2 (50:40):
Okay. The third item is an unsigned email that apparently
was sent to someone in Ukraine that was like an
idea from someone that the Trump that Russians should try
to reach out to the Trump campaign just in case
he wins. Again, not showing preference, not showing anything. The

(51:06):
fourth thing is the Steele dossier. So the entire Russia
collusion hoax was based on things that weren't even true.
Then the Hipsie report shows that it ignores all sorts
of evidence to the contrary. So when the Obama team
launches the Russia collusion hoax we talked about this last week,

(51:28):
they suppress the real Presidential Daily Brief showing that Russia's
efforts to meddle had no effect and they weren't designed
for anything other than chaos. Right, So that's what the
real intelligence says. They hide that report because they knew
that report would go to Trump and flann. They decided
to put together an analysis of Russian interference, and they're

(51:50):
supposed to put everything in there, but they don't. They
put out they refuse to put in the avalanche of
information that they have on Trump and Clinton, right, and
they just make it about I'm sorry about Russia and Clinton,
and they make it just about Russia and Trump. But
that night they start leaking to the Washington Post and

(52:11):
the New York Times. To the Washington Post, they falsely
leak that the CIA has conclusively determined that Putin's trying
Putin's intervention was because he wanted to help Trump. That
was a lie. It was also a lie that they'd
conclusively determined it. And we go on to find out that,
in fact, a ton of analysts and senior officials were

(52:31):
screaming from the rooftops not to say that because it
wasn't true. To the New York Times, they say the
reason why we have this belief is because Russia hacked Trump,
got negative information and didn't release it. And not only
is none of that true, the opposite is true. They

(52:54):
hack Hillary, learn all sorts of horrific things about what
the Russians sorry about her, and they don't release it.
So if the basis for saying putin preferred Trump is
something that didn't happen, but it did happen to Hillary,
it just further shows you mean that.

Speaker 1 (53:11):
When you say they hacked Hillary, you mean put the
Podesta emails.

Speaker 2 (53:15):
So there's actually there's actually multiple things going on. So
and the Hipsie Report gets into this in large part
because Hillary Clinton was a very big figure for a
very long period of time, they were targeting her communications
and had multiple ways in and they totally separate from Podesta,

(53:38):
they had access to some other I think maybe even
to her. I don't actually remember. I don't want to
speak about it because I can't remember exactly what they had.

Speaker 1 (53:49):
I remember there was a report about her server where
I forget who, but maybe some intelligence agency said that
it was very likely that foreign nations had hacked her
her phones and so forth, And I wonder if Russia
is one of them.

Speaker 2 (54:04):
Okay, I think this is a reference to how I
think it was the Danish. The Danish had insight into
what Russia had on the US and one of the things,
and they actually get alarmed and they tell Brennan about it.

(54:25):
And one of the things they have is that Russia
knows that the Attorney General is communicating with the Clinton
campaign about her server hack. They know other embarrassing Oh
they know, oh so sorry.

Speaker 4 (54:39):
They know.

Speaker 2 (54:40):
The Danish know that Russia knows about the Russia collusion
hoax itself. They know that there's a plot that she
signed off on to make it seem like Trump is
colluding with Russia. Now, Brennan learns this in late July
twenty sixteen, right the the people tell him, and he

(55:03):
calls someone in Russian intelligence domestic intelligence oddly enough, and
tells them to quote knock it off, knock off what
they're doing. That's how he's always told the story. Immediately
after he calls this contact in Russia and supposedly tells
them to knock off their election medaling, Russia stops communicating

(55:30):
in a way that the Danes can pick up. Interesting
right now, So it sounds like if I were an investigator,
I would look into whether that phone call was actually
about letting them know that other people were seeing what
they were saying so that they would stop saying it.

Speaker 1 (55:49):
So just a few broad things here. So it's not
implausible that Russia would prefer Trump to Hillary. Right, hamas preferred,
and Iran and China prefer or Hillary probably were Democrats
in general, but they almost surely didn't think he would win,
I expect because no one really thought he would win

(56:10):
other than him. Right.

Speaker 2 (56:13):
Yeah, So on that note, you are totally correct that
it's not implausible that they might prefer Trump.

Speaker 1 (56:20):
And the point of that is, so what meaning, what
is Trump supposed to do about that? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (56:25):
Sure. However, the Hipsy report also shows that they had
a ton of intelligence, like a ton, including some from
the very same source that they built that like the
fragment of the sense that Putin had repeatedly said that
he had no preference to his advisors, that they felt
that they were well positioned no matter if Hillary won

(56:47):
or Trump won. They also, I want to point out,
they say that the false Icy report says that they
never gave up hope that Clinton might lose. Right. Well,
in the final days of the campaign, She's up only
like one and a half points, right, She was very vulnerable,

(57:09):
and they want us to believe that they never gave
up hope she could lose. That they had negative information
on Trump that they chose not to release, which is
just not true, by the way, and that they didn't
deploy it, really really like that doesn't even make sense.
So it's not implausible, but it turns out not to
be true. Every piece of intelligence suggests that he absolutely

(57:30):
did not care and felt well positioned either way. Now
knowing that they had embarrassing information on Hillary Clinton that
they didn't deploy, I will just point out that a
like even the most basic analyst would hear that and
think they didn't deploy it during the campaign when it
would have been useful for defeating her because they assumed

(57:52):
she would win and it would be more valuable after
the fact. So to do an intelligence analysis with like
little snippets of things here and there, you have to
include everything, and you have to think about the different
ways you could interpret things they didn't do. That they
had a ton of information confirming what their intel had
always said. Russia's attempts to meddle are about sowing chaos,

(58:15):
not about getting Hillary or getting Trump, but just sewing chaos.
They excluded all of that information and replaced it with
completely made up stuff. So this stuff is to me
absolutely explosive, and it answers a question I've had for
a long time, like, if you believe Brennan was not
basing this on the dossier, what was he basing it
on And finding out what it was and how weak

(58:36):
it is is like, oh, wow, this was even worse
than we thought.

Speaker 1 (58:40):
Just a quick addendum, if Russia had this information on
Hillary and they didn't want to release it during the
campaign because they it would be more useful later, or
because they didn't want to piss off someone who's going
to be president and they'd have to deal with by
doing it right, it would be such an obvious interference
in the election, which means that they were more I

(59:00):
get to use the word judicious about what they were doing, but.

Speaker 2 (59:03):
Well, it's not even It just means that that what
we've always kind of thought, that they don't like us,
all of us, whether we're Democrat or Republican, and they
want to cause the most chaos.

Speaker 1 (59:13):
But there was this, there was this idea that Russia
likes Trump better and that that makes Trump not just seditious,
but you know he you know, our enemies like him.
But no one ever mentions that. I am sure that Iran,
for instance, which has actually killed Americans, many of them
wanted Hillary. Does that not? Is that not the same thing? Yes, exactly,

(59:37):
there's no collusion. That the collusion was the next step
that there was never any even a hint of evidence
for like, you know, the thing they used against Trump
was when someone asked him that dumb question about the
hacked emails and would you want Russian help? And he said,
I forgot what he said. He joked around about you
if they like.

Speaker 2 (59:53):
If they have them, they should release them or whatever.

Speaker 1 (59:55):
Yeah, which isn't a great joke for a presidential candidate
to make. But you know, with whatever it is, it's
how we learn now that Trump speaks and it is
what it is, is me he's colluding with anyone.

Speaker 2 (01:00:06):
Also, that was about her deleting her emails to keep
them from being out there, and also about how other
countries did have access to it, all of which turns
out to be true. Anyway, I want to add one
more thing. I know a lot about the Russia colusion hopes,
and what has happened in the last week has absolutely
blown me away. And so I find it very weird

(01:00:30):
to see like what seems to be an organized campaign
to claim that we already knew this. I have spoken
with you know, those of us who were in on
it from the beginning, aren't that many. And when this
came out, you know, we all were talking, and every
single last person who's like a Russia collusion person like

(01:00:51):
I am, we were just shocked. We'd always wanted to
find out what Brennan's basis was, we never knew it,
and now we know it. And so when people go
we already knew this, that's a lie, and it's a
suspicious lie. And I'm wondering why you're seeing some people,
including some people on the right, saying it's a lie.
And I just want to keep going here, which is

(01:01:11):
I told you that there were only like five copies
of this hipsy report and that it was kept in
a vault. I'll first off point out a point of comparison,
there were two hundred and fifty copies at least of
the false intelligence analysis that were handed out to like

(01:01:33):
candy to everyone in Washington, DC, so.

Speaker 1 (01:01:35):
The ones Brennan, the one Brennan show, the one Brennan
showed Obama.

Speaker 2 (01:01:40):
Yes, okay, two hundred and fifty copies they go to everyone.
There are five copies of the Hipsy report, and not
even Hipsie gets to keep its own copy. They're kept
in a vault. But there were probably briefings of this
too a few people, and then during the end of
the first Trump administration there was probably pressure to release

(01:02:03):
this and so there might be a few people who
are Republican affiliated or who maybe like let's say, the
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence gets a briefing on this report.
There are a few people who knew this information and
also conspired to keep it hidden, and they are probably

(01:02:24):
Republican or Republican aligned, and they might be involved in
trying to tell everyone that this story is not new
or no big deal, so that they will not be
held accountable for their participation in keeping this information from
being released to the American public. And it's a bad
thing because had this information been released at the time

(01:02:46):
Hipsey wrote this report, that was so within the statute
of limitations that you could have wrung up everybody, and
so conspiring to suppress it so that justice will not
be enacted. Makes them look very bad. Name names. There
are some names of people who appeared to have been
involved in conspiring to keep this information hidden until they felt,

(01:03:10):
you know, at least during a time when it would
have caused problems for them or their friends.

Speaker 1 (01:03:16):
Seems like a lot of this pivots around Brennan, like
you sort of the kingpin here.

Speaker 2 (01:03:22):
Well, we've so known about Comy's malfeasans prior to this,
that the Brennan stuff, we're finally learning much more about
how Brennan lied, how he misled his own employees, how
he threatened them, you know, like we're learning more about
that now. So I think that's where people's interest is. Obviously,
Comy is still a very bad guy. And then Clapper

(01:03:44):
also was the organizer of this whole project, so he's
also very bad. And I have a story I'm working
on right now about how much of the bad behavior
that we learned about with Brennan last week also applies
to Clapper.

Speaker 1 (01:04:00):
It just seems to me coming up with the assessment,
omitting any kind of evidence and expertise that undermines your
lot and then handing it to the president is the
pivotal moment of this whole thing in a way, and
then everyone using that information to create the conspiracy as secondary.

(01:04:23):
But I don't know. You're the expert on it, just
as a person paying attention. Okay, you want to talk
about culture, sure, I really don't have a ton. I
will start by saying I watched the second half of
the Billy Joel documentary. I don't want to get too
into Billy Joel lookspt to say two things. One was
that I think he's the most normy rock star that

(01:04:45):
has ever existed. Right. I liked it very much. I
mean I'm not a big fan. And secondly, this is
something I did not realize in nineteen like ninety three,
he made his last pop album. He did one classical
album after and this guy who had for twenty years
written a string of hits, some of them like in
the American Songbook Forever, you know, like piano man let's say,

(01:05:07):
just says I am sick. He calls it the tyrning
of the rhyme. He's sick of writing songs, and he quits. Right,
he never made another album. That's years more than thirty
years ago. That's crazy. Just assumed he was doing what
all these old guys were doing because I wasn't paying attention.
And a lot of people, let's say, I remember The
Who announced their last tour in nineteen eighty their farewell

(01:05:28):
tour in nineteen eighty two, and I think they were
just touring this year. So a lot of these rock
stars come back in that way, and he never did.
He just sort of gave it up. And I don't know,
I have some kind of weird, begrudging respect for that.
The only negative I would say in this documentary was
that they, for a very brief moment, because he's Jewish
and all, that they talk about Charlottesville and they play

(01:05:51):
a clip of Trump. You know that the Trump pops
basically that he said they were very fine people. Did
you watch it?

Speaker 3 (01:05:58):
No?

Speaker 2 (01:05:59):
I tweet that people were laughing about because my husband
was apparently watching it while I was working, and he
was complaining about how he repeated that hoax and that
it was just included with like nobody fixed it even
though it's a lie, and so I was like, heck
of a way to find out that your husband is
watching the Billy Jewel documentary. But I did watch like

(01:06:22):
the end of it with him, and because it's a
two parter, right.

Speaker 1 (01:06:26):
It's long, like five hours or something.

Speaker 2 (01:06:29):
Yeah, okay, maybe a five part but I watched like
the last part of those last part, and one thing
that struck me was that he clearly is an alcoholic
who has not accepted that. So he gets mad when
people are very nicely pointing out that he has a
drinking problem or that that he is an alcoholic, and

(01:06:49):
that's you know, that's his business. And maybe he's got it.
He thinks he's got it under control, or he has
it under control. But it was just kind of weird
to see it. There was you saw that Tom Lara
died this week?

Speaker 1 (01:07:04):
Oh yeah, the PBS. The Johnson guy. Wait was he
Johnson Administration official letter?

Speaker 2 (01:07:11):
Are you talking about the the Wait? Am I making up?
What's the name? Oh my gosh, no, the guy who
does the satirical songs. Isn't that his name?

Speaker 1 (01:07:22):
Oh no, I don't I don't know, Yeah, go on,
I don't know. I don't know that.

Speaker 2 (01:07:25):
My husband loves Tom Lerr's goofy songs. And you know,
even there he was pretty lefty and everything, but he
also had that element song that helps you remember what
all the elements are, but.

Speaker 1 (01:07:36):
He like what I was thinking Bill Bill Moore. I
was thinking Bill Moyers for some reason. Sorry, I don't know.
Tom Larry is gone, but he.

Speaker 2 (01:07:44):
Does all of these songs and then he just stops
and he okay, he says. When asked why he had
abandoned his musical career in an interview, he replies, if
an idea came to me, I'd write, and if it didn't,
I wouldn't. And gradually the second option prevailed over the first.

(01:08:06):
Occasionally people ask if you enjoyed it, and I did,
why don't you do it again? I reply, I enjoyed
high school, but I certainly wouldn't want to do that again.
Because he's you know, he dies it like close to
one hundred, but he hasn't done any music for what
like fifty years. It's kind of crazy, maybe more, I
don't know. And he clearly had a gift in his youth.

(01:08:27):
There's also this sad thing that people who are you
are in my age have to realize, which is, you
know that there's a reason why so many of the
world's greatest discoveries are accomplished by very young men. Yeah,
I mean also mine works differently over time.

Speaker 1 (01:08:45):
When you think about music, for instance, most of the
great work of any kind of rock band or whatever,
it's usually not always when in their younger yers, when
they're bursting with new ideas and all of that, and
that's difficult to replicate. Though. I would say that Billy
Joel I think like fifty and that he still had
like number one hits and songs that aren't my kind
of songs but obviously are very well crafted and written

(01:09:07):
and performed pop songs, right right. I think also it's
like you know, when you're exercising, you're in good shape,
but then you stop for a month and it's almost
impossible to get back into it, you know, how older
you get. I feel like maybe he just got out
of the work right and it was just difficult and
easier for him just not to do that anymore, just
to play his hits. I mean, imagine how many times

(01:09:28):
that guy's played piano. Man, I wouldn't be able to
do that, so, but you know it makes them a
hundred yeah, I do.

Speaker 2 (01:09:34):
Sorry, Well, I just want to say I very much
liked the part where they're explaining how much he's influenced
by classical music and what he's trying to accomplish in
his music. And Mark always says that this line from
a documentary on Tom Petty sticks with him that every
single male rock star either has an absent mother or

(01:09:56):
a difficult relationship with his dad or both, you know,
or something like that. So every time he encounters it,
he's like, it's true. The difficult relationship with his dad
was also sad. You know that his dad just kind
of abandons him, and the hole that leaves in his
heart that he tries to fill with with drink and song,
you know, and.

Speaker 1 (01:10:14):
He finds his dad and not to spoil it in Vienna,
and every picture of them there's this like space like
everyone else is close together and they're apart there obviously
never mended anything, and you know, he was obviously a
difficult man.

Speaker 2 (01:10:29):
But he has a brother through that conductor who's like
a very good conductor. And then also when the brother
says I told him how much our dad was proud
of him, but he just didn't believe me, It's like, okay, yeah,
that dude, he only messed up. People usually make art
at that.

Speaker 1 (01:10:47):
Level, right again, you know, I grew up a lot
with him around on long Island and everyone loved him there,
but I never liked it. But I have a much
greater appreciation for him. How he broke down one of
his songs like Uptown Girl or something, and he played
it in a class style to show that that was
his influence. And I think he was an I never
you know, obviously plays piano all the time. Obviously songs

(01:11:08):
are based on the piano. But he was an amazing
piano player. And the thing that really made me admire
him was that when he wrote this classical suite or whatever,
he didn't think that he was good enough to play it,
so he let a classical musician do it for him,
which showed a kind of humility I think that you
almost rarely see with a rock star, right And I

(01:11:29):
liked his normy appeal. So I watched that, did you?
How about you?

Speaker 2 (01:11:36):
I also began watching a documentary on Pee Wee Herman.
Did you see that one?

Speaker 3 (01:11:46):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (01:11:46):
I actually have that on my list. No, I did
not watch it yet.

Speaker 2 (01:11:50):
I very much love Pee Wee Herman. I can quote
from his movies with my girlfriends like we were that
sort of some of my were in art school. You know,
he had that appeal to weirdos like us, and so
I really like him his art. I'm not loving the
documentary and I'm not loving him, but I'm not done

(01:12:12):
with it yet, so so we'll say about that.

Speaker 1 (01:12:15):
I loved him too, But just quickly, do you know
his I didn't watch this yet, but in his early
years he was much more like cutting edge and kind
of transgressive, like Phil Hartman was on his show like
a stage show, right, wasn't he? Like not really, We're gonna.

Speaker 2 (01:12:26):
Love this documentary, which is also long and in two parts,
which is why it's taking me so long. So yeah,
Phil Hartman was his best friend, and they did a
lot of their work. I mean Phil Hartman co wrote
the movies.

Speaker 1 (01:12:37):
Right, Diddy, I didn't know that exactly. Love the first one.

Speaker 2 (01:12:41):
Yeah, yeah, and and yeah, my gosh, why am I
forgetting Pee Wee's actual name?

Speaker 1 (01:12:50):
Oh? I don't know either right now.

Speaker 2 (01:12:54):
I haven't had enough coffee yet. Paul Rubins, so he
you know, he went to art school a lot about
it's you know, what his life was like early on
and who he was talking to and those influences. But
the more that he's talking, the less I'm enjoying the
actual product. Which is, you know, just don't meet your heroes.

(01:13:17):
And then did you get the note from one of
our listeners who is like, every time you guys are
going off on how much you watch, I'm always wondering
do they read?

Speaker 1 (01:13:28):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:13:28):
You know, so I will mention that I'm rereading Marilyn
Robinson's Gilead right now, and I'm really enjoying the reread.
It's something I'm not a big rereader, except for Moby Dick,
which is a book I like to reread because you
get new things out of it each time, but in
part because that has worked out so well for me.

(01:13:49):
Or I'm also rereading the Bible now from the beginning.
I was just going back to some other books that
I enjoyed, And did you ever read that Gillad?

Speaker 1 (01:13:58):
No, I've heard people, you know, admire it and love it.

Speaker 2 (01:14:01):
Yeah, I think it's good. And also it's a good
book about aging, and so you might enjoy that part.

Speaker 1 (01:14:07):
It's it's what he's saying, I am aging, you know,
It's like when I was when I was younger.

Speaker 2 (01:14:18):
Yeah, it's funny though too. And when I read it
when I was younger, I don't think I was appreciating like,
just to give an example which I was talking to
my friends about last night, but it's from the perspective
of a small town reverend writing letters to his son.
He's about the pastor is about to die and his

(01:14:40):
son is very young, and so a story unfolds about,
you know, he'd been married previously and he lost his
wife and daughter and childbirth, and then he marries this
much younger woman and they have a son. But he
tells this story about how he was swaying to music
in the living room and his wife says, do you
want me to teach you how to do that? And
so she and he danced together, and then she says,

(01:15:04):
why do you have to be so damned old? And
it's just a very touching, you know like story, and
it's nice to get. It's very well done to get
this perspective from this man. I also just love this
might sound something there was this period of time where
they that were still stuck in I think where there's
this idea that you can't write characters that you don't
know personally, that you can't write about someone who is

(01:15:26):
a different race or sex than you are. And I
think she shows such a great way of writing from
the perspective of this older man that it should. It
just proves that's not true.

Speaker 1 (01:15:43):
Maybe I will I that email was sent about reading,
but I've actually found that with audio books, so I'll
have a book, I'll get the audiobook and also put
it on my phone and having it on my phone
so if I'm chopping with my wife or something, she's
doing her thing and I'm reading as I walk and
follow her. So I do a lot more reading actually

(01:16:03):
than I used to when I was younger. And I
picked up an old book that I love called The
Friends of Eddie Coyle. Have you ever read that? It's
one of the crime novels. Yeah, yeah, just like super
realistic kind of story about a low level criminal who
friends of Eddie Coyle because he actually has no friends,
so it's kind of just anyway. It's a great book.
They made a movie was less less interesting in the

(01:16:25):
early seventies. The only other thing I have is I
watched I started watching the show called Untamed with Eric
Bonna and Sam Neil, and it happens. There's it's a
mystery that unfolds in Yosemite National Park, which maybe they'd
like have an American actor occasionally on new shows, but

(01:16:45):
apparently I.

Speaker 2 (01:16:46):
Grew up going to somebody a lot, so that might
be interesting. We lived far from there.

Speaker 1 (01:16:51):
It's it's beautiful. I can't recommend it, really, I mean,
so far, I've only watched two or three episodes. I
find it a little bit boring. But as I get older,
I lose my patience too with things that are not
immediately interesting to me. I've noticed. Maybe it's a Google effect.
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:17:12):
Okay, So I do want to just say two things
that seem fitting here, even though they're not. I don't
know why it's important to even share this, but one
is that I turned in my book on Alito.

Speaker 1 (01:17:25):
Congratulations, Like, can I ask one much?

Speaker 2 (01:17:29):
I I'm not sure if we have an official date,
so I don't know if I should say so. And
I'm so happy, and I'm also just just happy with
how it turned out, and that's always a good feeling.
And then my uncle Bob died a few days ago,

(01:17:49):
and I love my uncle Bob. He I guess you know,
some families, if you marry into the family, that's treated
as different than if you're blood relative. And technically he
married into the family, but he just always was like
one hundred percent my uncle and a wonderful uncle, and

(01:18:09):
he had been dealing with cancer and then he had
a heart attack this past weekend, and I think, you know,
when my dad called to tell me, I understood, well, hey,
my dad doesn't call me a ton like my mom
called me, so I kind of knew that it was serious.
And his son, who was my cousin in the same age,
died last year. So it's just been a lot for

(01:18:30):
this time for this family. But I I'm mentioning all
this because I'll be going to the funeral. And I
do think my mom gave me good advice when I
was younger, which was to always go to a funeral
or wedding of a family member if you're able, And
I think that's good advice I'd like to pass on

(01:18:52):
as well.

Speaker 1 (01:18:54):
Yeah, for sure, condolences. I'm sorry since like a tough
time for the family.

Speaker 2 (01:19:00):
Yeah, But so he he was a wonderful member of
his church and an elder in his church, just a
great guy. Great and his wife was is my aunt Catherine,
and she also did a lot of church work throughout
her life. And so there is comfort in that knowing
that he is with our savior. So that makes it

(01:19:21):
a lot easier for our family, but is still very
hard because he's so great.

Speaker 1 (01:19:26):
Anyway, anyway, now I'll have to segue to no, it's okay,
it's okay. No, it's good to recognize the people in
your life, for sure. Just as a reminder to listeners,
if you'd like to email the show, you can do
so at radio at the Federalist dot com. We love
to hear from you, and we will be back next week.
Until then, be lovers of freedom and anxious great tray

(01:19:49):
chance