August 6, 2025 • 56 mins
Join Washington Examiner Senior Writer David Harsanyi and Federalist Editor-In-Chief Mollie Hemingway as they discuss the Department of Justice's decision to move forward with a grand jury investigation of key Russiagate players, review an update on the congressional Jeffrey Epstein probe, and analyze Texas Democrats' response to the state redistricting battle. Mollie and David also share their thoughts on the Pee-wee Herman documentary, House of David, Chief of War, The Naked Gun, and the book Gilead.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Welcome back, everyone to a new episode of Your Wrong
with Molly Hemingway, editor in chief of the Federalist, and
David Harsani, senior writer at The Washington Examiner. If you'd
like to email the show, please do so at radio
at the Federalist dot com.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
We love to hear from you, Molly.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
I think we should start today. And this is something
you brought up to me offline, was that we hate
using the term Russia collusion hoax. Been antiquated already, I
would say, but there really hasn't been. And I wrote
a comment about this recently, and I was kind of
grappling to find some something else to call it.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
I think I have an idea. What do you say
to Obamagate?
Speaker 3 (00:57):
That's so funny. While you were saying it, I was like,
what about Obama Gate? I mean, I've got my I
general opposition to Gates. Yeah, I think that's speaking of overused.
I really hate the word hoax, even though I think
I might have been one of the people coining that
term years ago, because I needed people to understand that
(01:17):
it was a hoax and a lie that Donald Trump
had cluded with Russia to steal the twenty sixteen election,
but now it just seems insignificant to the task of
dealing with the reality of what happened, which is I think,
in many ways even worse than a lot of us suspected,
just so many high level people knowingly lying and conspiring
(01:40):
to destroy a duly elected government.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
I mean, it's there is a there is a Watergate
era phrase.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
I believe it was a water Gate eraphrase for what
this was that I can't say on the podcast because
it has the F word in it, and it begins
with rat and that's really what it is. I mean,
that's the I would say, the technical term. And this
was the greatest rat et cetera project, I think in
the history of certainly of American political history.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Well, and unlike so many other things we've gone through,
it's still going on and basically nobody has been held accountable,
although we've had recent news in the opposite direction there.
So well, we've learned a little bit more about just
why it was never designed for anyone to be held
(02:33):
accountable Prior to this point. Well, okay, so we've already
talked about how a couple of weeks ago we learned
that Obama and his chiefs conspired to hide the real
intelligence about Russia, which is that, of course, yeah, they
did what they always do with elections, but not on
behalf of anyone in particular, and it didn't have any effect.
(02:54):
They hid that, and then they manufactured intelligence, immediately leaking
a lies to the media claiming that they had explosive
and conclusive evidence of the opposite, that Russia had interfered
in dramatic fashion, and that they had done it to
help Donald Trump. It was all lies. They knew it
was lies, and they then cooked up this intelligence community
(03:19):
assessment to substantiate these claims. They did so by leaving
out all the evidence that was to the contrary and
then overstating, if not just completely lying about whatever evidence
they had to support this claim. And then they included,
(03:41):
of course the Steele dossier, which was another set of
completely made up stuff, and then they briefed the president
and the President elect immediately told Jake Tapper at CNN
about it so he and his buddies could get the
Russi occlusion hooks going, and then proceeded to keep doing
this type of operation like years, and we've had document
(04:05):
releases that show that people knew what was going On
at the time and did nothing to stop it, or
you know, the people who committed this scam did nothing.
Obviously they did the opposite. So since we've spoken last,
hold On, we had the previous to the time we
(04:28):
spoke last, we had the House Permanent Select Committee on
Intelligence just destroying the ICA, how it was made, what
was included. I mean, it just completely obliterated it. And
that document had been kept hidden by the CIA for
many years so that nobody could see it. It's to me,
the most explosive document of the entire trench, other than
(04:51):
that issue of finding out that Obama and his team
suppressed the real intelligence. And then in the last week
we had the release of an and annex to the
Durham Report, which included all sorts of stuff about how
Russia knew that Hillary was cooking up this plan to
go after Trump on false claims of collusion with Russia,
(05:15):
and that the FBI knew that Russia knew, and that
rather than investigating her or alerting Trump or being public
about it, they just went along with Hillary slash Russia's
plan and opened up an investigation into Trump.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
And we've known for a long time that the Steele
dossier probably actually included Russian disinformation within it also, right,
So if you really look at this, it's like a
plot by Russia and Hillary.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
It's undermind.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
I think it sort of overstates it. Yes, Russia knew
by the end of July that Hillary was looking for
fake news on Trump, and so it was very easy
for them to insert it. But that kind of overstates
the quality of the Steele dossier to say that it
was like effect did this way. Really the Stiele Dosie
was just this one dude who lives in Virginia talking
(06:06):
to friends, some of whom are Russian and not and
being like, what could you make up about Trump that
I could put in here for money? You know, like
it's technically, I guess Russian disinformation. If you say a
Russian lying about something is disinformation because he was Russian.
And then we also learned that a grand jury has
(06:26):
been put together and is hearing things related to this case,
and that a US attorney, actually Sean Davis broke this
news at the Federalist yesterday. A US attorney has already
been collecting documents related to these crimes, and so that
(06:47):
shows also it's not just you know, we heard Oh,
they're going to open up a criminal investigation. Well, now
we know it's it's going and grand jury's in place,
and we don't know where the grand jury is, that
the US attorney is on the move, and we don't
know who the US attorney is.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
The reaction to this made me chuckle seeing Rachel Maddow
and others, and obviously I only see highlights of this
on Twitter.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
I wouldn't sit down and watch those.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Shows, but watching them just incredulous about how dare you know?
How fascism is creeping on us because people are looking
into maybe even arresting officials and their political opponents, like
the about faces they do. The hypocrisy is just mind boggling.
(07:35):
It's it's not even worth writing anymore, or really you're
talking that much about because they just do it and
don't care. But they try to arrest the Republican nominee
for the presidency and former president and with.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
A bunch of cooked up law. Fair. I don't think
this is cooked up.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
We'll see what happens, and you know, there has to
be evidence for this, but no one's above the law. Molley,
you know that we've been told that for a long time.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
Yeah, well, the raid of Mara a Lago turns out
that may not have been such a great idea for Democrats.
And yes, they were trying to imprison Donald Trump for
the rest of his life, to bankrupt him, to destroy
his family. They did charges against him for things that
(08:19):
weren't real. And then to say, well, when we lied
and knowingly lied and falsely claimed that you were an
agent of Russia, something that we ourselves said was treasonis
which for which the crime is death, you know, and
we risked global relations with the entire rest of the world.
(08:40):
You shouldn't do anything about that, you know, like an
actual We're talking actual crimes here that are being investigated,
not the made up stuff. And then also the raid
of Mara Lago. I think there's a lot pointing to
this having been done precisely because they thought Trump had
(09:00):
a copy of the Hipsie Report that showed how made
up the ICA was, and they wanted such control over
that document and other documents showing this, showing what happened here,
that they were willing to raid the former president's house
like that totally backfired. But I think that's what was
going on. And you've heard Devin Nunez and Cash Pattel
(09:22):
and a few other people intimate that. But they were
willing to do these horrific acts against the former president
in order to protect everyone that was involved in what
they did against the former president.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Is it right to say or is it plausible that?
And it seems so to me that the whole Russia
thing was basically invented. I think it worked out far
better than they ever thought it would, probably, but it
was essentially concocted to deflect attention away from Hillary's actual
criminality in that summer where Colemy let her go, and
(10:03):
now we know there was essentially no real investigator.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
I mean we knew it then.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
I was writing about how they had just handed out
all these immunities to her staffers retroactively, like it was
just obviously.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
She was let to slide.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
So they invented this thing to deflect attention from her
criminality or try to even it out, and it just
blew up into this thing that was better than they
had ever hoped.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Is that fair to say?
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Yeah, I think that's fair. And then so the entire
thing was invented as a way to cover up for
what Hillary had done then and that's that explains the
campaign portion of this, which in many ways to me
is the least bad portion of it I know. Then,
But having said that, they had already used this scam
(10:45):
to begin spying on the Trump campaign by going after affiliates,
getting Phiza warrants, you know, that kind of thing, and
then once he was elected, I think they continued it,
partly just out of partisan animosity towards someone who had
embarrassed them, and partly to cover up the crimes they
had already committed. So like Brennan had already lied to
(11:11):
the Gang of Eight and falsely claimed that he had
secret super intelligence that Trump had that Russia was messing
around with our elections to help Trump, and that was
a lie. That's just not true. He did not have
that evidence. But he'd already told powerful people that, and
the FBI had already started spying on the Trump campaign,
(11:32):
and the FBI had already botched, like, you know, they
knew Hillary was doing this plot, and rather than investigate her,
they investigated the victim. Like they were all trying to
cover up what they had done and what they had
leaked to the media. And so it just became this
thing and to this day, they need to cover it up.
And since in addition to these bad actors at the
(11:55):
spy agencies and the Democrats, you've got the media that
none of this would have been possible for even a
millisecond without a completely complicit media. And so they're also
continuing it by saying, oh, there's nothing here, or this
is crazy that there might be an investigation. So they're
(12:15):
all still trying to protect themselves by what they're doing
to this moment. Although now now you've got whistleblowers who
are feeling safe enough to come forward.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
It's looking back, it just seems to me that they
were probably even surprised at how successful they were with journalists.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
Right.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
The whole echo chamber that Ben Rose was talking about
was a real thing, and they worked with the Iran
deal stuff, and it worked even better with the Trump stuff.
That mugshot that they wanted so bad of Donald Trump
to win that election backfired and in a massive way
for them. We'll see what happens down the road.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
Now, there's just another thing, can we talk about it
before we do that, which is I've noticed since I'm
doing TV on this that the talking point that Democrats
and their media handmaidens cling to is that you don't
need to pay attention to all of this explosive new
information about the Obama gait because Marco Rubio agrees with them.
(13:24):
And the reason why they say this is because during
the Russia, the horrible time of claiming Trump colluded with Russia,
there were only two really oversight committees that could do
anything about it. You had the president being destroyed by
(13:45):
this lie. You had an FBI completely overtaken by left wingers,
you had spy agencies completely dominated by left wingers. You
had a Republican Party that was kind of okay with
all the drama happening to Trump, can't really affect them,
And you had this. In the midst of this, you
had Devin Nunez and the House Permanent Select Committee on
(14:07):
Intelligence just pushing back against it all under unbelievable circumstances
including I don't know if you remember this, they sidelined
Devin Nunez for him telling the truth about this, so
that he couldn't actually run the committee.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
That's the moment, that's the moment I became very suspicious
of everything.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
I went back.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
I just remember saying to myself, like, well, let's go
back for a second. Let's be fair to some Republicans, right,
this is a different time. The idea that you have
intelligence agencies making something up essentially about a presidential candidate
and calling him a seditious traitor, You're like they in
your head, You're like, they wouldn't just make that up,
(14:49):
Like there's got to be something there, so, you know,
you you're nervous to say, oh, that's nuts, that's you
don't know.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
But Nunez had access to things.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
That public didn't write, and he wasn't really allowed to
share those things. Right, someone's leaking little snippets that make
Trump look bad and he can't do the same whatever,
And wasn't it you had to go to this like
special room to read stuff. I think it was always yeah,
And then Nunaz released his like what would you call that?
It was like ten points or something about what was
(15:20):
going on?
Speaker 2 (15:21):
That kind of.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
Diffuses all the theories right away. You read it now
and it's all correct, basically correct, right, And I remember
I went back I read the column, like can we
just see this? Can we just talk about this? Like
they wouldn't even let you ponder what he was saying,
like to even accept it at all. They smeared that guy,
They smeared anyone who even brought it up. And so
(15:42):
if Mark or Rubio had different opinions, it might be because
he didn't have access to all this stuff or he
was just being careful.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
Yeah, but to just explain it, you had a Senate
Select Committee on Intelligence that was completely unlike the House
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. How's Permanent Select Committee on
Intelligence just starts being like, this isn't true and we
need answers. Senate Select Committee kind of waits a while
to start, and then they're like, we're going to totally
(16:11):
accept this syop from Hillary Clinton Democrats in the media
that Russia colluded to help Trump, and we're going to
investigate it. Okay, we're going to investigate it, and we're
going to do it in a bipartisan fashion. So I
forget who the first chair of the committee was. It
must that be Burr, really bad Republican was the chair
of the committee during the basically during this period, and
(16:35):
they put out five volumes of just here's how we
agree with Hillary. You know, it's just like massive, massive
document and the media are like, oh, thank you God,
thank you god, thank you God, like, we have needed
a single Republican to support us on this, because you
would never have Republicans be like Devin Nunas, but they
(16:56):
would be like, I don't know about this, you know.
And then the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence their report
comes out many years later, and it's like all about how, actually,
when Russia bought ten thousand dollars of Facebook ads, it
was the worst attack on our country that you've ever seen.
And the media were like, see, it's not just us
(17:18):
at the New York Times winning Pulitzers for this, it's
also the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. And like the
backstory there is that they called it bipartisan and it
was technically Republican run, but the Republicans on that committee
were worthless, basically, and the Democrats on that committee knew
what a prize it would be if they could get
(17:39):
this report out, and so they just put all in
on it, and they kind of worded it in a
mealy mounted enough fashion that they could convince stupid Republicans
that it wasn't that big of a deal. And then
the moment it came out, they blared it to the
New York Times like this is the most explosive report ever,
and Volume five of the report is done while Rubio
is technically the chair that committee, even if the work
(18:03):
maybe had been done prior to him becoming chair, and
that volume says something that is what Brennan had said,
And we now know that what Brennan said, based on
the intelligence that Brennan had, that that was just not true.
So Brennan said Russia interfered to help Trump, and so
does this report. Now we later learned the intelligence for
(18:25):
Brennan's claim, and it's what we went through previously. First off,
there's a fragment of a sentence saying that ahead of
the Republican convention, he's counting on Trump winning, and that's
used to say that he's not counting on Trump winning
the nominating convention, but that he's going to the way
(18:47):
that Brennan interprets this is not what it says. He
interprets it as I'm going to make sure Trump wins
by interfering in the election in the general election. Okay,
So that's like the main basis for his outlandish claim there.
And there's the thing where they say Russians always love Republicans,
which is silly. And then there's the unsigned email with
(19:08):
like an idea that maybe the Russian should put a
Russian on the Trump campaign, which went to nobody important
and was an outlandish idea. So that's like the entire
basis of the Brennan claim. But the Senate report says
the same thing, and so people are saying, well, Marco
Rubio said this, and he's Secretary of State, and Sean
Fleetwood asked a question about this at the State Department
(19:31):
briefing this week and didn't get like a full answer,
But we're still working on it, which is going to
be like, was there any evidence to support what the
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence said? Was it just the
same stuff that Brennan used? Did they even have access
(19:51):
to that or did they like interview people who told
them trust us, you know what I mean? Like, were
they getting the same to your point, were they getting
the same bad intelligence and how having it presented in
a carefully curated way, or did they have some new intelligence?
Like if they have new intelligence, I mean, I certainly
think everybody would be interested in hearing that. And if
(20:13):
instead they were manipulated by the CIA or didn't really
do a good job on this, I think they should
say that too.
Speaker 4 (20:23):
Ronald Reagan was right, and it's worse than we thought.
The Watch Dot on Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski
every day Chris helps unpack the connection between politics and
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The government spends one hundred and eighty one billion dollars
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(20:44):
DC or down on Wall Street, it's affecting you financially.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Be informed.
Speaker 4 (20:48):
Check out the Watch Dot on Wall Street podcast with
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Speaker 1 (20:56):
Just take a quick step back. The Facebook ads, which
were so a big topic. And you know, obviously you
remember there were like posedly this shop in Britain that
was like, I forgot what's called creating all these ads?
Well the ads were just not even pro Trump. They
were usually just I don't even know what they were.
They were just really weak do you love America type ads?
(21:16):
But people forget that before that election. They may forget
before that election, Like you mentioned, Republicans were far tougher
on Russia than Democrats. It was Biden who actually went
to Russia to lead the reset. It was Hillary, and
obviously Obama made fun of Romney and so on. And now, look,
(21:37):
I mean, you may disagree with what Trump's doing, but
does he look like someone who's folding to Putin? I mean,
the whole entire thing, the history is just proving that
the entire central charge that Trump was some kind of
Putin Lackey is nonsensical. So anyway, I saw today or
yesterday that Joe Scarborough of Mourning Joe said that this
(21:58):
is a really bad topic for Republicans to be worried about.
You know, it's going to undermine their momentum, and that
politically it's a dead end. The same guy who spent
years saying that Donald Trump had been blackmailed by Putin
wants you to drop the topic. What do you make
about the politics of this? Do you think that Republicans
(22:19):
care now? Are they over it?
Speaker 2 (22:20):
Is it work?
Speaker 1 (22:21):
I mean, I think it's worth it for the historical
record at the very least, and hopefully Brennan goes to jail.
But do you think it's something that matters in an election,
for instance, like in the midterms.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
So I value what happens in elections less than justice.
So for the sake of justice, absolutely, you have to
have true accountability. There's a process for that, and we
haven't really actually gone through that, despite the fact that
there have been two massive investigations into this. First one
(22:55):
was from Michael Horwitz, an Obama crony who's a very
bad inspector general and is very good. All inspector generals
are good at protecting agencies. Michael Horowitz is like the
master of the craft. And when he was dealing with
the horror of what the FBI did in this story,
he wrote a four hundred page report utterly eviscerating the
(23:19):
Steele dossier and its use and like all sorts of things.
But he wrote it in like a really bland fashion,
and he was very clear like everything about this was wrong,
but didn't really recommend any or many criminal I think
he recommended only that Kevin Kleinsmith, the guy who actually
lied in the FISA warrant for action. The action that
(23:41):
ended up being taken was that he had his law
license suspended for a year or something like very minor,
but so like if it had been a real inspector
general doing real stuff, everybody involved would have been recommended
at that time when it mattered. And then you have
the Durham investigation, which is done at the height of
co COVID, is done very slowly, is easily led astray.
(24:06):
Like I've been told that he really did think at
the beginning that Brennan and Clapper were places he should
be investigating, and then he was kind of like moved
off of that because he couldn't find anything. Well, I'm
sorry the House Permanent Seleckt com being on intelligence that
explosive report, they found everything you needed to show the conspiracy.
And so I don't know if he was like too
(24:27):
dim or too weak or what. I don't know. I mean,
it wasn't the worst because that report also came out
saying everyone involved here behave poorly, and of course has
that famous line about how new rules are not going
to help the FBI and Department of Justice, like we
need better quality people who would never even think of
doing these kinds of things. But again very limited. He
(24:48):
prosecutes a couple of people for their rule, has to
do it in DC and Northern Virginia, So you know
in the in the DC case, he has this guy,
Michael Sussman just lying to the FBI. He has him
dead to rights. Michael Sussman on behalf of the Clinton
campaign goes to the FBI and says I have knowledge
of this like collusion with Trump and Russia, and then
(25:12):
tells the FBI I am not doing this on behalf
of the campaign and bills the campaign for his visit.
Right dead to rights. And the jury fore woman is like, well,
we just don't really think lying to the FBI is
a big deal. The only prosecutions you ever got in
Russia Gate were lying to the FBI, right, isn't that
the Flynns.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
Whole Flynn thing was about that.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
Yeah, which, by the way, he didn't but still.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
Yeah, he was a setup.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
But yeah, and so and then you have the the
guy who created the Steele dossier getting away with it
in Northern Virginia.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
But I believe Harwood said that they had fabricated evidence
for the FAISA warrants that they were.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
That was the Kevin Kleins Klinsmith, whatever his name is.
So the first part of the process, now for like
a US attorney working with a grand jury, is really
to collect all the evidence that you can, and we
know a lot of what's out there. We need to
(26:14):
find more supporting details and we and Sean Davis wrote
this piece at the Federalists already that they're doing that.
You know, they're following up with the criminal referrals that
they've gotten and asking for more information. Once you have everything,
you have a real clear picture of how it happened,
then you think about your prosecutorial strategy, and we are
nowhere near that right now. So I think it's important
(26:38):
when you commit this level of crime against the country,
something that destroyed American politics and has caused very major
international stuff, like we're on the brink of bad things
happening with Russia that are related to the Clinton Obama
People's willingness to lie about Russia. Right people act like
(27:01):
it's no big deal what they did. It affected all
sorts of disputes, you know, whether it's Ukraine or Russia,
and you have to hold people accountable for it. So
I am retaining hope. I mean, I'm not sure what
I think will happen, but we're not at the part
where we can dispary it or hope. Really like, we
just have to be collecting the information and having people
who are smart enough to know what's going on. And
(27:22):
I do think this is a different environment than Durham
at the end of the Trump administration, when COVID was
happening and everybody was wearied by all the shenanigans, Like
are people are in a different place, and also inside
the agencies, they're in a different place. Nobody is leaking.
I mean, you might just this sorry to keep going
(27:44):
on all this, but no, So we're here Sean Davis
sneiber recollecting how during the first phase of this lie
we would report something really explosive and then within hours
some bad actor at the FBI or CIA would leak
to their buddies at the New York Times something that
made it seem like what we had written was not
(28:04):
that big of a deal. Think about that relative to
what's been happening these last few weeks. Absolute like craziness
coming out about what they did to suppress real intelligence
and invent fake intelligence. And you haven't had leaks from
the FBI like you used to or CIA. I think
a big part of that is that the FBI and
(28:26):
DJ like they cleaned house there. They got rid of
a lot of people, and I think that that meant
that they got rid of some of the people who
would be leaking. And also the people who are remaining,
even if they were inclined to leak lies to the
media to help continue this, they're terrified right now. And
so it's just it's a different public environment that's very cool.
(28:47):
And also I have personally talked to people who are
in leadership at these organizations, saying, whistleblowers who had been
treated so horribly while this was going on, you know,
if they so much has raised their head and said,
are we sure we want to make this lie? They
were told your career is over, We're going to destroy you.
(29:07):
We know things you don't know. And so now that
the environment is different, you have many more people saying,
you know, when I said something about this, I was
told there was secret intel, or I was told to
shut up, or I was moved off of this project.
And so you also have a wealth of whistleblowers that
even like Hipsei didn't have.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
So in another investigation, the Clintons, both of them Hillary
and Bill, have been subpoenut to talk about Epstein. Jeffrey Epstein,
the case which somewhat surprised me. I know that the
guy had a weird painting of Bill Clinton in his house.
I don't know if you've ever seen this where he's.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
Painting of Bill Clinton wearing the blue dress of Monica lilinsy.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
Yes, I want. I hope that they will show up.
I doubt it. But if this is in October, I
believe maybe.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
But if they do, I hope they talk about that
painting because I'm very interested in knowing more about it.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
Why them, do you think? Do you have any theories
on that?
Speaker 3 (30:13):
Why would they invite? Oh? I don't know. I didn't.
I mean, I see, this is.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
Why I need leaks. I need leaks. I want to know.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
The reason why you would invite Bill Clinton to testify
in the Epstein stuff is that Bill Clinton and Jeffrey
Epstein were extremely close friends for a very long period
of time, and they traveled together, and you know, he's
never really talked about it. The real reason why you
would do it if you're the House Republicans, is that
(30:49):
Democrats have been totally uninterested in the Jeffrey Epstein drama
except insofar as it can be used to attack Republicans,
and you you can easily prove this because Jeffrey Epstein
and Bill Clinton were very very very close friends, very
very tight. They traveled together, they hung out together, and
(31:12):
they did so at a later date than Donald Trump.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
Did you know.
Speaker 3 (31:17):
Donald Trump famously was social with Epstein and then they
had a falling out over Epstein stealing his staff, I
think from our lago. And also Trump says a long
time ago, like before anybody really knows what's going on,
including like before he was ever prosecuted. Trump says something
(31:38):
mean about him, like he he likes scrolls on the
younger side or something, you know, just kind of like
distancing himself from him. But Clinton keeps that friendship going
much longer and later and much tighter and different than
just that they live in the same town, but like
they're actually making effort to be spending time together. And
(32:00):
if Democrats cared about this story for any reason other
than a belief that they could use it to distract
from the Russia story, they would have not cheered Bill
Clinton when he spoke at their convention last summer. There
would have been stories about the Democrats inviting a friend
of Jeffrey Epstein's to speak at the convention. You know,
(32:21):
he would have been booed off stage. He would have
not been allowed. It's just the easiest way you can
show they don't actually care about this story in any way.
They don't actually care about the Epstein thing in any way.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
Right, Yeah, I mean, the people who tried to put
Donald Trump into prison for the rest of his life
probably would have if they had their hands on the
Epstein files, if there was anything in there to implicate
that Donald Trump had acted in some sort of criminal
way or done something wrong, they would have leaked that
(32:52):
a million year, you know, they would have leaked that
long long time. They would have leaked that during the whenever.
And I'm anti Epstein conspiracy. I don't think there's going
to be anything really there. I'm not saying there's nothing
there that Bill clin didn't do anything wrong. I think
that most of the conspiracies people entertain are kind of ridiculous,
(33:17):
and the investigation into this is largely a waste of time.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
I think we know what he did. He was a horrible,
horrible human being.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
So anyway, I mean, maybe they're doing this to kind
of counter what Democrats are up to as far as
Donald Trump is going. I mean, maybe it's more political
than anything.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
I don't know. I don't think it's.
Speaker 3 (33:36):
Quite that simple, Like, obviously that's part of it. But
they are wasting time on this.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
Sorry.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
There really are things that need to be understood about it,
and it's a legitimate thing for Congress to do this,
but they're wasting time on this. And wouldn't it be
amazing if James Comer was actually helping with finding people
accountable for what they did with the Russia lie. Wouldn't
that be just amazing? And instead all of his effort
(34:06):
is on Epstein stuff.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
But why why do you say it's legitimate? Why is it?
Speaker 1 (34:11):
Why is the Epstein case more than many other cases
of similar.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
How the government prosecuted that case and did such like
a bad job of it over the years, I think
is legitimate government in court.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
And I don't think they did a bad job though,
I mean everyone tells me that. But when I looked
into it, he was going to maybe get off. He
had a dream team of lawyers.
Speaker 3 (34:29):
I actually think it's more like a local and state issue,
to be honest, with federal issue, Like it's weird that
we get mad at the FED because usually that type
of crime is prosecuted at the local or state level.
I think it is interesting that the first federal prosecution
I think is in part because that wasn't happening. It
can also be it can also be federal, and it
(34:50):
should have been. But I don't think anyone thinks there
was a Really they did a really great job of
like interviewing people and investigating it and finding finding out
for sure whether these girls were just trafficked to Jeffrey
and Glane or also to other people as some of
them claimed, you know what I mean, like it could
have been done better. And I think that's what I
(35:12):
don't have inquiry.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
I don't have expertise to know how, you know, if
they did a great job, and that sense probably they didn't.
But the way that people often frame it as this like, oh,
they just gave what he wanted, it's just not true.
He might have gone off. There was a good chance
he was going to get off, and they got him
as you know, they made up. They plead plead him
out in a way that he would at least be
registered as a sex offender spend some time at present.
(35:34):
It was Florida that led him not not really serving
the very.
Speaker 3 (35:38):
Least you would concede that if you or I or
someone we knew had been involved in something like this,
we would not get that sweetheart deal.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
Likely not rich people get off.
Speaker 3 (35:51):
Okay, Okay, So that's at least a legitimate line of inquiry, right,
and super rich people get super off weight that sounds because.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
The great lawyers and all the money they need. Absolutely,
I don't deny that that is a problem. My only
point is the bigger point is that people's expectations of
what happened are so large that attains how they view
I think the prosecution because their expectation is that there
should have been like all these big names, you know,
trafficking in young women. We don't know that's true at all,
(36:20):
and we smear a lot of people who knew him
or were around him simply because of that.
Speaker 3 (36:27):
Anyway, I don't think it's just this desire to embarrass
Democrats that led to these subpoenas. But are these yeah,
these invitations to testify, But also constituents are legitimately calling
their offices expressing concern about this. So I think part
of the reason why Republicans are wasting their time on
(36:48):
this is because they have constituents that are concerned about it.
I doubt it's that high of a percentage, But members
of Congress aren't very good at determining what's important based
on phone calls and whatnot.
Speaker 2 (36:58):
Yeah, for sure, social media thing going.
Speaker 3 (37:01):
The other big story is about what's happening in Texas.
The Texas legislature is trying to do a mid mid
decade redistricting and that will lead to them having many
more Republican seats than Democrat likely, and so Democrats know
(37:22):
they're about to lose this vote, and so Democrat legislators
fled to the most jerrymandered state in the nation, Illinois,
or one of the most to plead their case that
jerrymandering is not good if it's done by Republicans, only
if it's done by Democrats. What do you think about that?
Speaker 1 (37:42):
I don't Okay, people need to wait till my second
statement here before sending an email. I don't love this
kind of thing in general, because in the end we're
just going to turn the elections will just be these
you know, states, turning Congress essentially into the Senate in
a way. But Democrat complaints are hollow, completely hollow. They
(38:04):
are the most aggressive jurymander when you reach stories I
don't know, I'm sure you've seen this. You'll read political
stories during the year I have nothing to do with,
you know, or during the buying years when people are
talking about democracy as being threatened, and they'll always throw
in Republican gerimander because if they don't do it, Texas
should do it, because Illinois did it, others have done it.
Speaker 3 (38:27):
Yeah, So just generally speaking, the way things work with
election administration is that Democrats do something that's maybe frustrating
to a lot of people, but you know, legal, such
as gerrymandering, and they do it nationwide. They do it
so well that they literally can't do it anymore. There's
(38:49):
not a single additional seat to be gained through creative
play with districts. And then once that's done, Republicans had,
you know, maybe like a couple of years ago, started
doing some of that themselves, but they have a lot
that they could do. They could squeeze a lot more
districts out of states they control, and so once they
start doing it because Democrats can't do anymore, they're like, well,
(39:12):
now we're opposed to it. Now that we've done everything,
we can do it reminds me a bit too of
what happened with mail out balloting. Do you remember? Okay, So,
for decades Democrats have had this problem where their voters
are very disinclined to vote, and so they put a
lot into their operations for get out the vote on
(39:34):
election day, they would have vans going around and incentivate,
and they would try to incent their voters into coming
and showing up to vote. And what they really needed
and they pushed for for a long time, was mail
out ballots, unsupervised mail out ballots, because then they could
do get out the vote for weeks, if not months, right,
And so this is a big part of the twenty
(39:55):
twenty election. They massively expand the mail out balloting and
they fund Democrat groups to kind of administer the process,
but only in the blue areas of swing states, or
they emphasize the blue areas of swing states. Well, then
everyone's so freaked out about how weird that twenty twenty
election was. That Republicans are like, what if we did
ballot operations too? And Republicans are finding voters all over
(40:19):
the place who are like Democrat traditional Democrat voters, and
that they're not very inclined to vote, they're helping them
get their ballots in the box, and then all of
a sudden, Democrats are like, we don't need to do
so much of this. You know, you had New York
Times stories freaking out that Democrats ended up collecting ballots
for people who were voting Republican and stuff. Republicans are
(40:39):
always late to these games, but then when they start
playing them, then they get criticized. And so Republicans have
not done what they can do. There's a lot more
they can do. And I don't love gerrymandering period. Actually,
I mean I understand that it's something you can do.
I don't like it. But if you're going to have
(41:00):
and we do, and we've had it for a very
long time, like hundreds of years, then Republicans should play
that game too. And so the only way to fight
it is to is to do it, like it's absolutely
insane not to do it. And yes, you take a
state like Massachusetts that had four in ten voters voting
for Trump. Do you know how many members of Congress
(41:23):
or Republican in Massachusetts?
Speaker 2 (41:26):
Zero?
Speaker 3 (41:26):
I guess zero. So yeah, Democrats are good at this,
and there are actually I think probably about. I don't
know how many Republicans there are in Illinois, but probably
something like that too, with only what two members of Congress,
like they they excel. California has a reputation for being
only Democrat, but really they also have. In fact, they
(41:48):
have more Republicans in California than any other state in
the country, and they there are very few members.
Speaker 1 (41:54):
The percentage of Republicans in California, I believe, is larger
than the percentage of Democrats and flow or maybe even
texts I forget exactly, but's that sort of thing. I'm
listen gerimandering. It's somewhat subjective. I mean, all of these
districts are man made and they're not like organic borders
by a river or mountains or some other you know.
Speaker 2 (42:14):
So that's what it is.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
But so in some sense I don't hate it because
it diffuses democracy even more a bit. That's what these
people are doing. I mean, they can pretend it's something else,
but when you gerrymander, as for instance, in New York.
Speaker 2 (42:29):
I think they tried a couple of years ago. I
think maybe the courts.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
Knocked it down, but they knocked out a Republican district
all you're doing is diffusing democracy, making each state more
senate like, which is you know, in the end, is
fined by me. One of the complaints I see from
folks is that a few years ago, Democrats tried to
pass something I think it was HR one.
Speaker 2 (42:50):
Actually it was.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
Like the Integritive Election Act, and within it there were
some anti gerimandering in it, which I actually opposed because.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
The state issue not a federal issue in my view.
Speaker 1 (43:03):
But they don't mention that that also compelled states to
bamfoot or ideas would let bureaucrats redraw all the districts,
would allow felons to vote, et cetera. So it was
quite authoritarian bill. I'd rather have states germandering than have
the federal government tell them how to run their business,
because in the end that never really works out. So
(43:23):
you think Texas still get it done. I mean, these people,
this has happened before.
Speaker 2 (43:26):
I swear.
Speaker 1 (43:27):
I remember people fleeing the state so they don't have
to vote on whatever they did.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
It was an abortion law there or something.
Speaker 3 (43:32):
We did it in Texas in twenty twenty one. I
think it was the same issue, but I couldn't go.
But I did mention this too, like it's very threatening
to abandon your state rather than deal with the reality
of what happened in democracy. You know that you didn't
have enough votes to stop this, but they took I
(43:56):
was told a private jet to Illinois and they're being
hold up there in nice accommodations. So I do think
it's worth looking into who's paying for this attack on Texas.
Speaker 1 (44:12):
I don't know it is, but just quickly, I mean,
and I saw some Democrat or some liberal person mentioned
I think it was Chuck Todd.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
Like when you're a.
Speaker 1 (44:21):
PR person and you're in the PR person says let's
leave here because of the redistricting fight and let's.
Speaker 2 (44:28):
Go to Illinois. That is really dumb.
Speaker 1 (44:32):
So these people obviously aren't aren't bright on that in
that way?
Speaker 3 (44:36):
Yes, but you need a media to be honest, and
we don't have a media that are honest. I looked
at stories on Monday, like Politico had a story about
this awesome thing that Democrats were doing, and it did
not mention that Illinois is known as the capital of gerrymandering.
It just didn't mention it. And so that's how propagandists work.
Speaker 2 (44:54):
You just don't tell people when Democrats do this.
Speaker 1 (44:58):
It's a major national When redistricting happens the other way,
as it did in New York, not longer or elsewhere,
it's virtually unmentioned. Most people don't even know what's happening
outside of their states or probably within their states. It's
just amazing, And that's part of the bias. I think
people need to understand. It's not just what you say,
it's what you cover how much intensity. Because every time
I'll mention, oh, you guys didn't talk about this in
(45:19):
the media, someone in the media will send me like
a link to a story that they did that was
probably we had a.
Speaker 3 (45:23):
Slight mention that is in a piece that was headlined,
please don't read this on page forty eight B, so
you can't say we didn't cover it.
Speaker 2 (45:33):
Yes, So that's.
Speaker 1 (45:35):
One of the main way is to create a perception
about things that for instance, Republicans are more prone to
German during than I mean, there are in New York
where I grew up, they were districts like in Queens
and Brooklyn that snake all around trying to avoid working
class areas where you know, or white working class areas
and things like that that still exist even though in
now everyone's you know, on the left there, okay, let's
(45:59):
talk about called sure enough of that, enough of the politics.
Speaker 2 (46:04):
Did you do anything this week? Cultural?
Speaker 3 (46:07):
I since last week? Okay. I chaperoned helped chaperone a
trip to Michigan for a Lutheran youth gathering that was
really fun. I was just the transportation chaperones. I just
worked while I was out in Michigan.
Speaker 2 (46:26):
I say quickly.
Speaker 1 (46:27):
I basically any state I go to I love, except
like Ohio, I think, and Michigan completely underrated by people elsewhere.
Speaker 3 (46:36):
It's just beautiful up there, agree, And I was in
Grand Rapids, which is particular. Oh yeah, beautiful, so then
let's see for although like also drove across the stake
because we had to fly into Detroit and drive over
to Grand Rapids because of how expensive it was to
fly into Grand Rapids. Anyway, I finished watching the he
(47:00):
We Harmon documentary and that did you see it?
Speaker 2 (47:08):
Not yet? No, It's on my list.
Speaker 3 (47:10):
Okay. It was interesting. So I am definitely like target
audience for Pee. We very much like him. His art
very weird, but I like it, and the movie definitely
made me think worse of him or the documentary.
Speaker 2 (47:26):
Like because of his personal life or.
Speaker 3 (47:29):
Yeah, and what I mean by that is not just
his arrests for what he did in a public theater
or his private erotica collection. But he seems like a
really disturbed individual. And the documentary does not explain that
he's mean to his friends, he's controlling, he's mean to
(47:52):
Phil Hartman, you know, and that to me is very difficult.
Speaker 1 (47:56):
If I may ask, if this is kind of a spoiler,
but did he have a traditional upbringing, like with like
a good family or like well.
Speaker 3 (48:04):
The documentary doesn't get into it. It just references one
sister who led the effort to redefine marriage to include
same sex couples and other groupings in Tennessee. Oh, and
she's she's a lesbian. He's gay and has had these
issues with run ins with the law. They don't mention.
(48:25):
I don't think that there's another brother, And they don't
really totally mention other than like a throwaway line that
his dad was one of the five founding pilots of
the Israeli Air Force. But like moves from Saratoga, I
think it was New York down to Florida. The parents
are a big part of the story, but like, you
(48:45):
don't quite get what happened here to make Peewee who
he is, or like the.
Speaker 1 (48:51):
Opposite of the Billy Joel one where his family and
his issues with his dad were so central too. And
I mentioned that because it's the same seems like the
same producers or whatever.
Speaker 3 (49:00):
Oh yeah, yeah, so and then he the Peewee documentary
also mentions that he's out he's living as a gay
man when he's very young, like in the I want
to say, the sixties, and then that relationship falls apart
and he goes back in the closet until the documentary
comes out. I guess you weren't supposed to know he
(49:21):
was gay until the documentary comes out and he says
for the first time publicly that he's a gay man.
And so, I'm.
Speaker 1 (49:31):
Sorry he passed away recently. So, but he's in it
being interviewed and all that.
Speaker 3 (49:34):
Yeah, he passes away during the creation of the documentary.
He dies during the creation. And he also becomes uncooperative
at some point, which you know, maybe had a was
challenging for them. But I think I mentioned this on
the Billy Joel documentary, that he wasn't willing to take
responsibility for his drinking problem, and that just kind of
disturbed me that he was still living in denial about
(49:56):
what an alcoholic he is. And there was an aspect
of that, not with addiction, but with his sexual lifestyle
that I felt about Peewee. It was weird to not
I don't know, he's like always the victim of bad
prosecutions and stuff, and there's just something it just made me.
(50:19):
It just left like, it left me feeling less favorable
toward him after.
Speaker 1 (50:26):
You're going to make fun of me on this one,
but I don't really care. It's amazing to watch and
it's a lot of fun. And it's called International house Hunters.
Years ago I had recommended a show where people moved
from England to France or something like that. They're moving
usually from the United States to some place in Europe
or Asia or whatever.
Speaker 2 (50:46):
You know, house Hunters. Are you able to watch that show? Yes,
billion million seasons.
Speaker 1 (50:51):
This is the same thing, but international, and it's cool
because you get to it almost gives you a better
insight into cities because people looking for how is like
where nice neighborhoods are or this or that. Then you
do in any kind of documentary where they only show
you touristy places, if that makes sense. So I enjoy
watching that. I started watching the show called House of
(51:13):
David on Amazon, which is about King David.
Speaker 3 (51:17):
That's a good idea because having recently read that that's
got everything murder sex.
Speaker 1 (51:24):
For years, I've been saying, I've even written columns about this.
There needs to be like an epic movie or series
about this. But this one has a kind of what's
that show called what's that religious show called about Jesus
the Chosen? It has that kind of production value and
feel to it, which is not be to say it's bad,
but I think it needs to be a little grittier
(51:47):
because the story of King David is quite gritty. Then
I started watching something called what does it say? Chief
of War? Jason Momoa is his name? Okay, it's about
it's about these kingdoms of Hawaii. I think before I
only saw the first episode. Yeah, yeah, I was next.
(52:10):
My hopes are high. But just a slight spoiler, he
like rides a shark in the first like scene in
the show, and I'm like, I wanted this to be
more realistic, like Apocalypto by Mel Gibson or something, but
I think it's probably gonna veer in somewhat of a
different direction, but we'll see. Ye yet to be determined.
But I did start watching that, and that's all I have.
Speaker 3 (52:32):
So I think I mentioned last week that I was
reading or rereading Gilead by Robinson.
Speaker 1 (52:40):
It's when you called me old and said I should
read it. You said I was near death and I
would appreciate.
Speaker 3 (52:44):
It, and I just like it. I think it has
a high wisdom to sentence ratio. Just interesting. And then
this might sound like a like it's it to not
what you'd say if you wanted people to read it,
but it's a really interesting exploration of Calvinism, which is
(53:06):
not something I was totally familiar with as a Lutheran.
But it's done in a very tender and touching way
and it's just interesting and I find her interesting and
so I liked it. And then I also I had
a birthday this last week and my husband was wanting
to take me out, and I asked if we could
(53:29):
go see the Naked Gun movie, and so we did that,
and it it's something I truly cannot recommend because of
one and a half profane sex scenes. So there's just
that and we're not obviously like total prudes on this stuff,
(53:52):
but it was. And it's also like weird because it's
not real. It's what you think is sex but actually isn't,
you know, in total naked gun style. But really well
in one case.
Speaker 2 (54:03):
Did you enjoy the original?
Speaker 3 (54:05):
Loved the original? That is my mother's sense of humor
to a t. And I she just loved Play Squad,
the TV show. I don't even think it lasted that long,
but she was definitely its most devoted viewer and she
would just guffa. She loved that, and we loved the
all the humor. Like I recently watched the Airplane movie
(54:26):
in the non made for TV version and it was
also pretty profane. But we used to watch this on
the you know, on the made for TV or on
the cleaned up for TV version, and this was really like,
apart from what I just said about how I can't
recommend it, I thought it was really well done. I
think Liam Neeson is hilarious. It was very much in
(54:46):
the style. Although Mark says that the originals by the
Zucker Brothers just you couldn't make it ten seconds without
a joke, and this you would sometimes go minutes without it. Oh,
it's slightly different in that way, but other than that,
very true to the original. Stupid puns, stupid jokes.
Speaker 2 (55:08):
I love.
Speaker 3 (55:09):
I love that part of it. And Pamela Anderson was
great and Liam Neeson was just wonderful.
Speaker 2 (55:16):
I uh.
Speaker 1 (55:17):
When I went to see the original, I was, I was.
I was not sure what it was exactly, though I
had seen Airplane and liked it and Kentucky Fried movie also.
I don't know if you've ever seen that one, which
is very funny, though very politically and correct, and I
don't think I ever laughed harder in a movie since
or before. I just was crying. I loved it so much.
I thought Leslie Nielsen was perfect at the time. Now
(55:39):
he is remembered for Naked Gun, but at the time
he had been in you know, like a serious kind
of act or so like it was in Kojak and stuff,
you know, So it was weird. It was just so
unexpected and funny. I guess I'll go see it, even
though there are those scenes that you don't like.
Speaker 2 (55:55):
Do you like Leslie? Uh?
Speaker 1 (55:55):
I mean, Leslie Nielsen was amazing and Liam Neeson is
such a fun act. I mean he plays any kind
of role. I just think the guy's amazing, so I'll
probably go see it.
Speaker 3 (56:04):
Yeah he's good.
Speaker 2 (56:06):
Yeah, all right, that's it. Yep.
Speaker 1 (56:12):
If you have any cultural recommendations for us better than
the ones that we just shared, please.
Speaker 2 (56:17):
Let us know at radio at the Federalist dot com.
We'd love to hear from you. We'll be back next week.
Until then, be lovers of freedom and anxious for the
Welcome back, everyone to a new episode of Your Wrong
with Molly Hemingway, editor in chief of the Federalist, and
David Harsani, senior writer at The Washington Examiner. If you'd
like to email the show, please do so at radio
at the Federalist dot com.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
We love to hear from you, Molly.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
I think we should start today. And this is something
you brought up to me offline, was that we hate
using the term Russia collusion hoax. Been antiquated already, I
would say, but there really hasn't been. And I wrote
a comment about this recently, and I was kind of
grappling to find some something else to call it.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
I think I have an idea. What do you say
to Obamagate?
Speaker 3 (00:57):
That's so funny. While you were saying it, I was like,
what about Obama Gate? I mean, I've got my I
general opposition to Gates. Yeah, I think that's speaking of overused.
I really hate the word hoax, even though I think
I might have been one of the people coining that
term years ago, because I needed people to understand that
(01:17):
it was a hoax and a lie that Donald Trump
had cluded with Russia to steal the twenty sixteen election,
but now it just seems insignificant to the task of
dealing with the reality of what happened, which is I think,
in many ways even worse than a lot of us suspected,
just so many high level people knowingly lying and conspiring
(01:40):
to destroy a duly elected government.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
I mean, it's there is a there is a Watergate
era phrase.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
I believe it was a water Gate eraphrase for what
this was that I can't say on the podcast because
it has the F word in it, and it begins
with rat and that's really what it is. I mean,
that's the I would say, the technical term. And this
was the greatest rat et cetera project, I think in
the history of certainly of American political history.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Well, and unlike so many other things we've gone through,
it's still going on and basically nobody has been held accountable,
although we've had recent news in the opposite direction there.
So well, we've learned a little bit more about just
why it was never designed for anyone to be held
(02:33):
accountable Prior to this point. Well, okay, so we've already
talked about how a couple of weeks ago we learned
that Obama and his chiefs conspired to hide the real
intelligence about Russia, which is that, of course, yeah, they
did what they always do with elections, but not on
behalf of anyone in particular, and it didn't have any effect.
(02:54):
They hid that, and then they manufactured intelligence, immediately leaking
a lies to the media claiming that they had explosive
and conclusive evidence of the opposite, that Russia had interfered
in dramatic fashion, and that they had done it to
help Donald Trump. It was all lies. They knew it
was lies, and they then cooked up this intelligence community
(03:19):
assessment to substantiate these claims. They did so by leaving
out all the evidence that was to the contrary and
then overstating, if not just completely lying about whatever evidence
they had to support this claim. And then they included,
(03:41):
of course the Steele dossier, which was another set of
completely made up stuff, and then they briefed the president
and the President elect immediately told Jake Tapper at CNN
about it so he and his buddies could get the
Russi occlusion hooks going, and then proceeded to keep doing
this type of operation like years, and we've had document
(04:05):
releases that show that people knew what was going On
at the time and did nothing to stop it, or
you know, the people who committed this scam did nothing.
Obviously they did the opposite. So since we've spoken last,
hold On, we had the previous to the time we
(04:28):
spoke last, we had the House Permanent Select Committee on
Intelligence just destroying the ICA, how it was made, what
was included. I mean, it just completely obliterated it. And
that document had been kept hidden by the CIA for
many years so that nobody could see it. It's to me,
the most explosive document of the entire trench, other than
(04:51):
that issue of finding out that Obama and his team
suppressed the real intelligence. And then in the last week
we had the release of an and annex to the
Durham Report, which included all sorts of stuff about how
Russia knew that Hillary was cooking up this plan to
go after Trump on false claims of collusion with Russia,
(05:15):
and that the FBI knew that Russia knew, and that
rather than investigating her or alerting Trump or being public
about it, they just went along with Hillary slash Russia's
plan and opened up an investigation into Trump.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
And we've known for a long time that the Steele
dossier probably actually included Russian disinformation within it also, right,
So if you really look at this, it's like a
plot by Russia and Hillary.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
It's undermind.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
I think it sort of overstates it. Yes, Russia knew
by the end of July that Hillary was looking for
fake news on Trump, and so it was very easy
for them to insert it. But that kind of overstates
the quality of the Steele dossier to say that it
was like effect did this way. Really the Stiele Dosie
was just this one dude who lives in Virginia talking
(06:06):
to friends, some of whom are Russian and not and
being like, what could you make up about Trump that
I could put in here for money? You know, like
it's technically, I guess Russian disinformation. If you say a
Russian lying about something is disinformation because he was Russian.
And then we also learned that a grand jury has
(06:26):
been put together and is hearing things related to this case,
and that a US attorney, actually Sean Davis broke this
news at the Federalist yesterday. A US attorney has already
been collecting documents related to these crimes, and so that
(06:47):
shows also it's not just you know, we heard Oh,
they're going to open up a criminal investigation. Well, now
we know it's it's going and grand jury's in place,
and we don't know where the grand jury is, that
the US attorney is on the move, and we don't
know who the US attorney is.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
The reaction to this made me chuckle seeing Rachel Maddow
and others, and obviously I only see highlights of this
on Twitter.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
I wouldn't sit down and watch those.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Shows, but watching them just incredulous about how dare you know?
How fascism is creeping on us because people are looking
into maybe even arresting officials and their political opponents, like
the about faces they do. The hypocrisy is just mind boggling.
(07:35):
It's it's not even worth writing anymore, or really you're
talking that much about because they just do it and
don't care. But they try to arrest the Republican nominee
for the presidency and former president and with.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
A bunch of cooked up law. Fair. I don't think
this is cooked up.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
We'll see what happens, and you know, there has to
be evidence for this, but no one's above the law. Molley,
you know that we've been told that for a long time.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
Yeah, well, the raid of Mara a Lago turns out
that may not have been such a great idea for Democrats.
And yes, they were trying to imprison Donald Trump for
the rest of his life, to bankrupt him, to destroy
his family. They did charges against him for things that
(08:19):
weren't real. And then to say, well, when we lied
and knowingly lied and falsely claimed that you were an
agent of Russia, something that we ourselves said was treasonis
which for which the crime is death, you know, and
we risked global relations with the entire rest of the world.
(08:40):
You shouldn't do anything about that, you know, like an
actual We're talking actual crimes here that are being investigated,
not the made up stuff. And then also the raid
of Mara Lago. I think there's a lot pointing to
this having been done precisely because they thought Trump had
(09:00):
a copy of the Hipsie Report that showed how made
up the ICA was, and they wanted such control over
that document and other documents showing this, showing what happened here,
that they were willing to raid the former president's house
like that totally backfired. But I think that's what was
going on. And you've heard Devin Nunez and Cash Pattel
(09:22):
and a few other people intimate that. But they were
willing to do these horrific acts against the former president
in order to protect everyone that was involved in what
they did against the former president.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Is it right to say or is it plausible that?
And it seems so to me that the whole Russia
thing was basically invented. I think it worked out far
better than they ever thought it would, probably, but it
was essentially concocted to deflect attention away from Hillary's actual
criminality in that summer where Colemy let her go, and
(10:03):
now we know there was essentially no real investigator.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
I mean we knew it then.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
I was writing about how they had just handed out
all these immunities to her staffers retroactively, like it was
just obviously.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
She was let to slide.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
So they invented this thing to deflect attention from her
criminality or try to even it out, and it just
blew up into this thing that was better than they
had ever hoped.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Is that fair to say?
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Yeah, I think that's fair. And then so the entire
thing was invented as a way to cover up for
what Hillary had done then and that's that explains the
campaign portion of this, which in many ways to me
is the least bad portion of it I know. Then,
But having said that, they had already used this scam
(10:45):
to begin spying on the Trump campaign by going after affiliates,
getting Phiza warrants, you know, that kind of thing, and
then once he was elected, I think they continued it,
partly just out of partisan animosity towards someone who had
embarrassed them, and partly to cover up the crimes they
had already committed. So like Brennan had already lied to
(11:11):
the Gang of Eight and falsely claimed that he had
secret super intelligence that Trump had that Russia was messing
around with our elections to help Trump, and that was
a lie. That's just not true. He did not have
that evidence. But he'd already told powerful people that, and
the FBI had already started spying on the Trump campaign,
(11:32):
and the FBI had already botched, like, you know, they
knew Hillary was doing this plot, and rather than investigate her,
they investigated the victim. Like they were all trying to
cover up what they had done and what they had
leaked to the media. And so it just became this
thing and to this day, they need to cover it up.
And since in addition to these bad actors at the
(11:55):
spy agencies and the Democrats, you've got the media that
none of this would have been possible for even a
millisecond without a completely complicit media. And so they're also
continuing it by saying, oh, there's nothing here, or this
is crazy that there might be an investigation. So they're
(12:15):
all still trying to protect themselves by what they're doing
to this moment. Although now now you've got whistleblowers who
are feeling safe enough to come forward.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
It's looking back, it just seems to me that they
were probably even surprised at how successful they were with journalists.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
Right.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
The whole echo chamber that Ben Rose was talking about
was a real thing, and they worked with the Iran
deal stuff, and it worked even better with the Trump stuff.
That mugshot that they wanted so bad of Donald Trump
to win that election backfired and in a massive way
for them. We'll see what happens down the road.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
Now, there's just another thing, can we talk about it
before we do that, which is I've noticed since I'm
doing TV on this that the talking point that Democrats
and their media handmaidens cling to is that you don't
need to pay attention to all of this explosive new
information about the Obama gait because Marco Rubio agrees with them.
(13:24):
And the reason why they say this is because during
the Russia, the horrible time of claiming Trump colluded with Russia,
there were only two really oversight committees that could do
anything about it. You had the president being destroyed by
(13:45):
this lie. You had an FBI completely overtaken by left wingers,
you had spy agencies completely dominated by left wingers. You
had a Republican Party that was kind of okay with
all the drama happening to Trump, can't really affect them,
And you had this. In the midst of this, you
had Devin Nunez and the House Permanent Select Committee on
(14:07):
Intelligence just pushing back against it all under unbelievable circumstances
including I don't know if you remember this, they sidelined
Devin Nunez for him telling the truth about this, so
that he couldn't actually run the committee.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
That's the moment, that's the moment I became very suspicious
of everything.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
I went back.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
I just remember saying to myself, like, well, let's go
back for a second. Let's be fair to some Republicans, right,
this is a different time. The idea that you have
intelligence agencies making something up essentially about a presidential candidate
and calling him a seditious traitor, You're like they in
your head, You're like, they wouldn't just make that up,
(14:49):
Like there's got to be something there, so, you know,
you you're nervous to say, oh, that's nuts, that's you
don't know.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
But Nunez had access to things.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
That public didn't write, and he wasn't really allowed to
share those things. Right, someone's leaking little snippets that make
Trump look bad and he can't do the same whatever,
And wasn't it you had to go to this like
special room to read stuff. I think it was always yeah,
And then Nunaz released his like what would you call that?
It was like ten points or something about what was
(15:20):
going on?
Speaker 2 (15:21):
That kind of.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
Diffuses all the theories right away. You read it now
and it's all correct, basically correct, right, And I remember
I went back I read the column, like can we
just see this? Can we just talk about this? Like
they wouldn't even let you ponder what he was saying,
like to even accept it at all. They smeared that guy,
They smeared anyone who even brought it up. And so
(15:42):
if Mark or Rubio had different opinions, it might be because
he didn't have access to all this stuff or he
was just being careful.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
Yeah, but to just explain it, you had a Senate
Select Committee on Intelligence that was completely unlike the House
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. How's Permanent Select Committee on
Intelligence just starts being like, this isn't true and we
need answers. Senate Select Committee kind of waits a while
to start, and then they're like, we're going to totally
(16:11):
accept this syop from Hillary Clinton Democrats in the media
that Russia colluded to help Trump, and we're going to
investigate it. Okay, we're going to investigate it, and we're
going to do it in a bipartisan fashion. So I
forget who the first chair of the committee was. It
must that be Burr, really bad Republican was the chair
of the committee during the basically during this period, and
(16:35):
they put out five volumes of just here's how we
agree with Hillary. You know, it's just like massive, massive
document and the media are like, oh, thank you God,
thank you god, thank you God, like, we have needed
a single Republican to support us on this, because you
would never have Republicans be like Devin Nunas, but they
(16:56):
would be like, I don't know about this, you know.
And then the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence their report
comes out many years later, and it's like all about how, actually,
when Russia bought ten thousand dollars of Facebook ads, it
was the worst attack on our country that you've ever seen.
And the media were like, see, it's not just us
(17:18):
at the New York Times winning Pulitzers for this, it's
also the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. And like the
backstory there is that they called it bipartisan and it
was technically Republican run, but the Republicans on that committee
were worthless, basically, and the Democrats on that committee knew
what a prize it would be if they could get
(17:39):
this report out, and so they just put all in
on it, and they kind of worded it in a
mealy mounted enough fashion that they could convince stupid Republicans
that it wasn't that big of a deal. And then
the moment it came out, they blared it to the
New York Times like this is the most explosive report ever,
and Volume five of the report is done while Rubio
is technically the chair that committee, even if the work
(18:03):
maybe had been done prior to him becoming chair, and
that volume says something that is what Brennan had said,
And we now know that what Brennan said, based on
the intelligence that Brennan had, that that was just not true.
So Brennan said Russia interfered to help Trump, and so
does this report. Now we later learned the intelligence for
(18:25):
Brennan's claim, and it's what we went through previously. First off,
there's a fragment of a sentence saying that ahead of
the Republican convention, he's counting on Trump winning, and that's
used to say that he's not counting on Trump winning
the nominating convention, but that he's going to the way
(18:47):
that Brennan interprets this is not what it says. He
interprets it as I'm going to make sure Trump wins
by interfering in the election in the general election. Okay,
So that's like the main basis for his outlandish claim there.
And there's the thing where they say Russians always love Republicans,
which is silly. And then there's the unsigned email with
(19:08):
like an idea that maybe the Russian should put a
Russian on the Trump campaign, which went to nobody important
and was an outlandish idea. So that's like the entire
basis of the Brennan claim. But the Senate report says
the same thing, and so people are saying, well, Marco
Rubio said this, and he's Secretary of State, and Sean
Fleetwood asked a question about this at the State Department
(19:31):
briefing this week and didn't get like a full answer,
But we're still working on it, which is going to
be like, was there any evidence to support what the
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence said? Was it just the
same stuff that Brennan used? Did they even have access
(19:51):
to that or did they like interview people who told
them trust us, you know what I mean? Like, were
they getting the same to your point, were they getting
the same bad intelligence and how having it presented in
a carefully curated way, or did they have some new intelligence?
Like if they have new intelligence, I mean, I certainly
think everybody would be interested in hearing that. And if
(20:13):
instead they were manipulated by the CIA or didn't really
do a good job on this, I think they should
say that too.
Speaker 4 (20:23):
Ronald Reagan was right, and it's worse than we thought.
The Watch Dot on Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski
every day Chris helps unpack the connection between politics and
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(20:44):
DC or down on Wall Street, it's affecting you financially.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Be informed.
Speaker 4 (20:48):
Check out the Watch Dot on Wall Street podcast with
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Speaker 1 (20:56):
Just take a quick step back. The Facebook ads, which
were so a big topic. And you know, obviously you
remember there were like posedly this shop in Britain that
was like, I forgot what's called creating all these ads?
Well the ads were just not even pro Trump. They
were usually just I don't even know what they were.
They were just really weak do you love America type ads?
(21:16):
But people forget that before that election. They may forget
before that election, Like you mentioned, Republicans were far tougher
on Russia than Democrats. It was Biden who actually went
to Russia to lead the reset. It was Hillary, and
obviously Obama made fun of Romney and so on. And now, look,
(21:37):
I mean, you may disagree with what Trump's doing, but
does he look like someone who's folding to Putin? I mean,
the whole entire thing, the history is just proving that
the entire central charge that Trump was some kind of
Putin Lackey is nonsensical. So anyway, I saw today or
yesterday that Joe Scarborough of Mourning Joe said that this
(21:58):
is a really bad topic for Republicans to be worried about.
You know, it's going to undermine their momentum, and that
politically it's a dead end. The same guy who spent
years saying that Donald Trump had been blackmailed by Putin
wants you to drop the topic. What do you make
about the politics of this? Do you think that Republicans
(22:19):
care now? Are they over it?
Speaker 2 (22:20):
Is it work?
Speaker 1 (22:21):
I mean, I think it's worth it for the historical
record at the very least, and hopefully Brennan goes to jail.
But do you think it's something that matters in an election,
for instance, like in the midterms.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
So I value what happens in elections less than justice.
So for the sake of justice, absolutely, you have to
have true accountability. There's a process for that, and we
haven't really actually gone through that, despite the fact that
there have been two massive investigations into this. First one
(22:55):
was from Michael Horwitz, an Obama crony who's a very
bad inspector general and is very good. All inspector generals
are good at protecting agencies. Michael Horowitz is like the
master of the craft. And when he was dealing with
the horror of what the FBI did in this story,
he wrote a four hundred page report utterly eviscerating the
(23:19):
Steele dossier and its use and like all sorts of things.
But he wrote it in like a really bland fashion,
and he was very clear like everything about this was wrong,
but didn't really recommend any or many criminal I think
he recommended only that Kevin Kleinsmith, the guy who actually
lied in the FISA warrant for action. The action that
(23:41):
ended up being taken was that he had his law
license suspended for a year or something like very minor,
but so like if it had been a real inspector
general doing real stuff, everybody involved would have been recommended
at that time when it mattered. And then you have
the Durham investigation, which is done at the height of
co COVID, is done very slowly, is easily led astray.
(24:06):
Like I've been told that he really did think at
the beginning that Brennan and Clapper were places he should
be investigating, and then he was kind of like moved
off of that because he couldn't find anything. Well, I'm
sorry the House Permanent Seleckt com being on intelligence that
explosive report, they found everything you needed to show the conspiracy.
And so I don't know if he was like too
(24:27):
dim or too weak or what. I don't know. I mean,
it wasn't the worst because that report also came out
saying everyone involved here behave poorly, and of course has
that famous line about how new rules are not going
to help the FBI and Department of Justice, like we
need better quality people who would never even think of
doing these kinds of things. But again very limited. He
(24:48):
prosecutes a couple of people for their rule, has to
do it in DC and Northern Virginia, So you know
in the in the DC case, he has this guy,
Michael Sussman just lying to the FBI. He has him
dead to rights. Michael Sussman on behalf of the Clinton
campaign goes to the FBI and says I have knowledge
of this like collusion with Trump and Russia, and then
(25:12):
tells the FBI I am not doing this on behalf
of the campaign and bills the campaign for his visit.
Right dead to rights. And the jury fore woman is like, well,
we just don't really think lying to the FBI is
a big deal. The only prosecutions you ever got in
Russia Gate were lying to the FBI, right, isn't that
the Flynns.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
Whole Flynn thing was about that.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
Yeah, which, by the way, he didn't but still.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
Yeah, he was a setup.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
But yeah, and so and then you have the the
guy who created the Steele dossier getting away with it
in Northern Virginia.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
But I believe Harwood said that they had fabricated evidence
for the FAISA warrants that they were.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
That was the Kevin Kleins Klinsmith, whatever his name is.
So the first part of the process, now for like
a US attorney working with a grand jury, is really
to collect all the evidence that you can, and we
know a lot of what's out there. We need to
(26:14):
find more supporting details and we and Sean Davis wrote
this piece at the Federalists already that they're doing that.
You know, they're following up with the criminal referrals that
they've gotten and asking for more information. Once you have everything,
you have a real clear picture of how it happened,
then you think about your prosecutorial strategy, and we are
nowhere near that right now. So I think it's important
(26:38):
when you commit this level of crime against the country,
something that destroyed American politics and has caused very major
international stuff, like we're on the brink of bad things
happening with Russia that are related to the Clinton Obama
People's willingness to lie about Russia. Right people act like
(27:01):
it's no big deal what they did. It affected all
sorts of disputes, you know, whether it's Ukraine or Russia,
and you have to hold people accountable for it. So
I am retaining hope. I mean, I'm not sure what
I think will happen, but we're not at the part
where we can dispary it or hope. Really like, we
just have to be collecting the information and having people
who are smart enough to know what's going on. And
(27:22):
I do think this is a different environment than Durham
at the end of the Trump administration, when COVID was
happening and everybody was wearied by all the shenanigans, Like
are people are in a different place, and also inside
the agencies, they're in a different place. Nobody is leaking.
I mean, you might just this sorry to keep going
(27:44):
on all this, but no, So we're here Sean Davis
sneiber recollecting how during the first phase of this lie
we would report something really explosive and then within hours
some bad actor at the FBI or CIA would leak
to their buddies at the New York Times something that
made it seem like what we had written was not
(28:04):
that big of a deal. Think about that relative to
what's been happening these last few weeks. Absolute like craziness
coming out about what they did to suppress real intelligence
and invent fake intelligence. And you haven't had leaks from
the FBI like you used to or CIA. I think
a big part of that is that the FBI and
(28:26):
DJ like they cleaned house there. They got rid of
a lot of people, and I think that that meant
that they got rid of some of the people who
would be leaking. And also the people who are remaining,
even if they were inclined to leak lies to the
media to help continue this, they're terrified right now. And
so it's just it's a different public environment that's very cool.
(28:47):
And also I have personally talked to people who are
in leadership at these organizations, saying, whistleblowers who had been
treated so horribly while this was going on, you know,
if they so much has raised their head and said,
are we sure we want to make this lie? They
were told your career is over, We're going to destroy you.
(29:07):
We know things you don't know. And so now that
the environment is different, you have many more people saying,
you know, when I said something about this, I was
told there was secret intel, or I was told to
shut up, or I was moved off of this project.
And so you also have a wealth of whistleblowers that
even like Hipsei didn't have.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
So in another investigation, the Clintons, both of them Hillary
and Bill, have been subpoenut to talk about Epstein. Jeffrey Epstein,
the case which somewhat surprised me. I know that the
guy had a weird painting of Bill Clinton in his house.
I don't know if you've ever seen this where he's.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
Painting of Bill Clinton wearing the blue dress of Monica lilinsy.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
Yes, I want. I hope that they will show up.
I doubt it. But if this is in October, I
believe maybe.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
But if they do, I hope they talk about that
painting because I'm very interested in knowing more about it.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
Why them, do you think? Do you have any theories
on that?
Speaker 3 (30:13):
Why would they invite? Oh? I don't know. I didn't.
I mean, I see, this is.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
Why I need leaks. I need leaks. I want to know.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
The reason why you would invite Bill Clinton to testify
in the Epstein stuff is that Bill Clinton and Jeffrey
Epstein were extremely close friends for a very long period
of time, and they traveled together, and you know, he's
never really talked about it. The real reason why you
would do it if you're the House Republicans, is that
(30:49):
Democrats have been totally uninterested in the Jeffrey Epstein drama
except insofar as it can be used to attack Republicans,
and you you can easily prove this because Jeffrey Epstein
and Bill Clinton were very very very close friends, very
very tight. They traveled together, they hung out together, and
(31:12):
they did so at a later date than Donald Trump.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
Did you know.
Speaker 3 (31:17):
Donald Trump famously was social with Epstein and then they
had a falling out over Epstein stealing his staff, I
think from our lago. And also Trump says a long
time ago, like before anybody really knows what's going on,
including like before he was ever prosecuted. Trump says something
(31:38):
mean about him, like he he likes scrolls on the
younger side or something, you know, just kind of like
distancing himself from him. But Clinton keeps that friendship going
much longer and later and much tighter and different than
just that they live in the same town, but like
they're actually making effort to be spending time together. And
(32:00):
if Democrats cared about this story for any reason other
than a belief that they could use it to distract
from the Russia story, they would have not cheered Bill
Clinton when he spoke at their convention last summer. There
would have been stories about the Democrats inviting a friend
of Jeffrey Epstein's to speak at the convention. You know,
(32:21):
he would have been booed off stage. He would have
not been allowed. It's just the easiest way you can
show they don't actually care about this story in any way.
They don't actually care about the Epstein thing in any way.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
Right, Yeah, I mean, the people who tried to put
Donald Trump into prison for the rest of his life
probably would have if they had their hands on the
Epstein files, if there was anything in there to implicate
that Donald Trump had acted in some sort of criminal
way or done something wrong, they would have leaked that
(32:52):
a million year, you know, they would have leaked that
long long time. They would have leaked that during the whenever.
And I'm anti Epstein conspiracy. I don't think there's going
to be anything really there. I'm not saying there's nothing
there that Bill clin didn't do anything wrong. I think
that most of the conspiracies people entertain are kind of ridiculous,
(33:17):
and the investigation into this is largely a waste of time.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
I think we know what he did. He was a horrible,
horrible human being.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
So anyway, I mean, maybe they're doing this to kind
of counter what Democrats are up to as far as
Donald Trump is going. I mean, maybe it's more political
than anything.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
I don't know. I don't think it's.
Speaker 3 (33:36):
Quite that simple, Like, obviously that's part of it. But
they are wasting time on this.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
Sorry.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
There really are things that need to be understood about it,
and it's a legitimate thing for Congress to do this,
but they're wasting time on this. And wouldn't it be
amazing if James Comer was actually helping with finding people
accountable for what they did with the Russia lie. Wouldn't
that be just amazing? And instead all of his effort
(34:06):
is on Epstein stuff.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
But why why do you say it's legitimate? Why is it?
Speaker 1 (34:11):
Why is the Epstein case more than many other cases
of similar.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
How the government prosecuted that case and did such like
a bad job of it over the years, I think
is legitimate government in court.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
And I don't think they did a bad job though,
I mean everyone tells me that. But when I looked
into it, he was going to maybe get off. He
had a dream team of lawyers.
Speaker 3 (34:29):
I actually think it's more like a local and state issue,
to be honest, with federal issue, Like it's weird that
we get mad at the FED because usually that type
of crime is prosecuted at the local or state level.
I think it is interesting that the first federal prosecution
I think is in part because that wasn't happening. It
can also be it can also be federal, and it
(34:50):
should have been. But I don't think anyone thinks there
was a Really they did a really great job of
like interviewing people and investigating it and finding finding out
for sure whether these girls were just trafficked to Jeffrey
and Glane or also to other people as some of
them claimed, you know what I mean, like it could
have been done better. And I think that's what I
(35:12):
don't have inquiry.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
I don't have expertise to know how, you know, if
they did a great job, and that sense probably they didn't.
But the way that people often frame it as this like, oh,
they just gave what he wanted, it's just not true.
He might have gone off. There was a good chance
he was going to get off, and they got him
as you know, they made up. They plead plead him
out in a way that he would at least be
registered as a sex offender spend some time at present.
(35:34):
It was Florida that led him not not really serving
the very.
Speaker 3 (35:38):
Least you would concede that if you or I or
someone we knew had been involved in something like this,
we would not get that sweetheart deal.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
Likely not rich people get off.
Speaker 3 (35:51):
Okay, Okay, So that's at least a legitimate line of inquiry, right,
and super rich people get super off weight that sounds because.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
The great lawyers and all the money they need. Absolutely,
I don't deny that that is a problem. My only
point is the bigger point is that people's expectations of
what happened are so large that attains how they view
I think the prosecution because their expectation is that there
should have been like all these big names, you know,
trafficking in young women. We don't know that's true at all,
(36:20):
and we smear a lot of people who knew him
or were around him simply because of that.
Speaker 3 (36:27):
Anyway, I don't think it's just this desire to embarrass
Democrats that led to these subpoenas. But are these yeah,
these invitations to testify, But also constituents are legitimately calling
their offices expressing concern about this. So I think part
of the reason why Republicans are wasting their time on
(36:48):
this is because they have constituents that are concerned about it.
I doubt it's that high of a percentage, But members
of Congress aren't very good at determining what's important based
on phone calls and whatnot.
Speaker 2 (36:58):
Yeah, for sure, social media thing going.
Speaker 3 (37:01):
The other big story is about what's happening in Texas.
The Texas legislature is trying to do a mid mid
decade redistricting and that will lead to them having many
more Republican seats than Democrat likely, and so Democrats know
(37:22):
they're about to lose this vote, and so Democrat legislators
fled to the most jerrymandered state in the nation, Illinois,
or one of the most to plead their case that
jerrymandering is not good if it's done by Republicans, only
if it's done by Democrats. What do you think about that?
Speaker 1 (37:42):
I don't Okay, people need to wait till my second
statement here before sending an email. I don't love this
kind of thing in general, because in the end we're
just going to turn the elections will just be these
you know, states, turning Congress essentially into the Senate in
a way. But Democrat complaints are hollow, completely hollow. They
(38:04):
are the most aggressive jurymander when you reach stories I
don't know, I'm sure you've seen this. You'll read political
stories during the year I have nothing to do with,
you know, or during the buying years when people are
talking about democracy as being threatened, and they'll always throw
in Republican gerimander because if they don't do it, Texas
should do it, because Illinois did it, others have done it.
Speaker 3 (38:27):
Yeah, So just generally speaking, the way things work with
election administration is that Democrats do something that's maybe frustrating
to a lot of people, but you know, legal, such
as gerrymandering, and they do it nationwide. They do it
so well that they literally can't do it anymore. There's
(38:49):
not a single additional seat to be gained through creative
play with districts. And then once that's done, Republicans had,
you know, maybe like a couple of years ago, started
doing some of that themselves, but they have a lot
that they could do. They could squeeze a lot more
districts out of states they control, and so once they
start doing it because Democrats can't do anymore, they're like, well,
(39:12):
now we're opposed to it. Now that we've done everything,
we can do it reminds me a bit too of
what happened with mail out balloting. Do you remember? Okay, So,
for decades Democrats have had this problem where their voters
are very disinclined to vote, and so they put a
lot into their operations for get out the vote on
(39:34):
election day, they would have vans going around and incentivate,
and they would try to incent their voters into coming
and showing up to vote. And what they really needed
and they pushed for for a long time, was mail
out ballots, unsupervised mail out ballots, because then they could
do get out the vote for weeks, if not months, right,
And so this is a big part of the twenty
(39:55):
twenty election. They massively expand the mail out balloting and
they fund Democrat groups to kind of administer the process,
but only in the blue areas of swing states, or
they emphasize the blue areas of swing states. Well, then
everyone's so freaked out about how weird that twenty twenty
election was. That Republicans are like, what if we did
ballot operations too? And Republicans are finding voters all over
(40:19):
the place who are like Democrat traditional Democrat voters, and
that they're not very inclined to vote, they're helping them
get their ballots in the box, and then all of
a sudden, Democrats are like, we don't need to do
so much of this. You know, you had New York
Times stories freaking out that Democrats ended up collecting ballots
for people who were voting Republican and stuff. Republicans are
(40:39):
always late to these games, but then when they start
playing them, then they get criticized. And so Republicans have
not done what they can do. There's a lot more
they can do. And I don't love gerrymandering period. Actually,
I mean I understand that it's something you can do.
I don't like it. But if you're going to have
(41:00):
and we do, and we've had it for a very
long time, like hundreds of years, then Republicans should play
that game too. And so the only way to fight
it is to is to do it, like it's absolutely
insane not to do it. And yes, you take a
state like Massachusetts that had four in ten voters voting
for Trump. Do you know how many members of Congress
(41:23):
or Republican in Massachusetts?
Speaker 2 (41:26):
Zero?
Speaker 3 (41:26):
I guess zero. So yeah, Democrats are good at this,
and there are actually I think probably about. I don't
know how many Republicans there are in Illinois, but probably
something like that too, with only what two members of Congress,
like they they excel. California has a reputation for being
only Democrat, but really they also have. In fact, they
(41:48):
have more Republicans in California than any other state in
the country, and they there are very few members.
Speaker 1 (41:54):
The percentage of Republicans in California, I believe, is larger
than the percentage of Democrats and flow or maybe even
texts I forget exactly, but's that sort of thing. I'm
listen gerimandering. It's somewhat subjective. I mean, all of these
districts are man made and they're not like organic borders
by a river or mountains or some other you know.
Speaker 2 (42:14):
So that's what it is.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
But so in some sense I don't hate it because
it diffuses democracy even more a bit. That's what these
people are doing. I mean, they can pretend it's something else,
but when you gerrymander, as for instance, in New York.
Speaker 2 (42:29):
I think they tried a couple of years ago. I
think maybe the courts.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
Knocked it down, but they knocked out a Republican district
all you're doing is diffusing democracy, making each state more
senate like, which is you know, in the end, is
fined by me. One of the complaints I see from
folks is that a few years ago, Democrats tried to
pass something I think it was HR one.
Speaker 2 (42:50):
Actually it was.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
Like the Integritive Election Act, and within it there were
some anti gerimandering in it, which I actually opposed because.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
The state issue not a federal issue in my view.
Speaker 1 (43:03):
But they don't mention that that also compelled states to
bamfoot or ideas would let bureaucrats redraw all the districts,
would allow felons to vote, et cetera. So it was
quite authoritarian bill. I'd rather have states germandering than have
the federal government tell them how to run their business,
because in the end that never really works out. So
(43:23):
you think Texas still get it done. I mean, these people,
this has happened before.
Speaker 2 (43:26):
I swear.
Speaker 1 (43:27):
I remember people fleeing the state so they don't have
to vote on whatever they did.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
It was an abortion law there or something.
Speaker 3 (43:32):
We did it in Texas in twenty twenty one. I
think it was the same issue, but I couldn't go.
But I did mention this too, like it's very threatening
to abandon your state rather than deal with the reality
of what happened in democracy. You know that you didn't
have enough votes to stop this, but they took I
(43:56):
was told a private jet to Illinois and they're being
hold up there in nice accommodations. So I do think
it's worth looking into who's paying for this attack on Texas.
Speaker 1 (44:12):
I don't know it is, but just quickly, I mean,
and I saw some Democrat or some liberal person mentioned
I think it was Chuck Todd.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
Like when you're a.
Speaker 1 (44:21):
PR person and you're in the PR person says let's
leave here because of the redistricting fight and let's.
Speaker 2 (44:28):
Go to Illinois. That is really dumb.
Speaker 1 (44:32):
So these people obviously aren't aren't bright on that in
that way?
Speaker 3 (44:36):
Yes, but you need a media to be honest, and
we don't have a media that are honest. I looked
at stories on Monday, like Politico had a story about
this awesome thing that Democrats were doing, and it did
not mention that Illinois is known as the capital of gerrymandering.
It just didn't mention it. And so that's how propagandists work.
Speaker 2 (44:54):
You just don't tell people when Democrats do this.
Speaker 1 (44:58):
It's a major national When redistricting happens the other way,
as it did in New York, not longer or elsewhere,
it's virtually unmentioned. Most people don't even know what's happening
outside of their states or probably within their states. It's
just amazing, And that's part of the bias. I think
people need to understand. It's not just what you say,
it's what you cover how much intensity. Because every time
I'll mention, oh, you guys didn't talk about this in
(45:19):
the media, someone in the media will send me like
a link to a story that they did that was
probably we had a.
Speaker 3 (45:23):
Slight mention that is in a piece that was headlined,
please don't read this on page forty eight B, so
you can't say we didn't cover it.
Speaker 2 (45:33):
Yes, So that's.
Speaker 1 (45:35):
One of the main way is to create a perception
about things that for instance, Republicans are more prone to
German during than I mean, there are in New York
where I grew up, they were districts like in Queens
and Brooklyn that snake all around trying to avoid working
class areas where you know, or white working class areas
and things like that that still exist even though in
now everyone's you know, on the left there, okay, let's
(45:59):
talk about called sure enough of that, enough of the politics.
Speaker 2 (46:04):
Did you do anything this week? Cultural?
Speaker 3 (46:07):
I since last week? Okay. I chaperoned helped chaperone a
trip to Michigan for a Lutheran youth gathering that was
really fun. I was just the transportation chaperones. I just
worked while I was out in Michigan.
Speaker 2 (46:26):
I say quickly.
Speaker 1 (46:27):
I basically any state I go to I love, except
like Ohio, I think, and Michigan completely underrated by people elsewhere.
Speaker 3 (46:36):
It's just beautiful up there, agree, And I was in
Grand Rapids, which is particular. Oh yeah, beautiful, so then
let's see for although like also drove across the stake
because we had to fly into Detroit and drive over
to Grand Rapids because of how expensive it was to
fly into Grand Rapids. Anyway, I finished watching the he
(47:00):
We Harmon documentary and that did you see it?
Speaker 2 (47:08):
Not yet? No, It's on my list.
Speaker 3 (47:10):
Okay. It was interesting. So I am definitely like target
audience for Pee. We very much like him. His art
very weird, but I like it, and the movie definitely
made me think worse of him or the documentary.
Speaker 2 (47:26):
Like because of his personal life or.
Speaker 3 (47:29):
Yeah, and what I mean by that is not just
his arrests for what he did in a public theater
or his private erotica collection. But he seems like a
really disturbed individual. And the documentary does not explain that
he's mean to his friends, he's controlling, he's mean to
(47:52):
Phil Hartman, you know, and that to me is very difficult.
Speaker 1 (47:56):
If I may ask, if this is kind of a spoiler,
but did he have a traditional upbringing, like with like
a good family or like well.
Speaker 3 (48:04):
The documentary doesn't get into it. It just references one
sister who led the effort to redefine marriage to include
same sex couples and other groupings in Tennessee. Oh, and
she's she's a lesbian. He's gay and has had these
issues with run ins with the law. They don't mention.
(48:25):
I don't think that there's another brother, And they don't
really totally mention other than like a throwaway line that
his dad was one of the five founding pilots of
the Israeli Air Force. But like moves from Saratoga, I
think it was New York down to Florida. The parents
are a big part of the story, but like, you
(48:45):
don't quite get what happened here to make Peewee who
he is, or like the.
Speaker 1 (48:51):
Opposite of the Billy Joel one where his family and
his issues with his dad were so central too. And
I mentioned that because it's the same seems like the
same producers or whatever.
Speaker 3 (49:00):
Oh yeah, yeah, so and then he the Peewee documentary
also mentions that he's out he's living as a gay
man when he's very young, like in the I want
to say, the sixties, and then that relationship falls apart
and he goes back in the closet until the documentary
comes out. I guess you weren't supposed to know he
(49:21):
was gay until the documentary comes out and he says
for the first time publicly that he's a gay man.
And so, I'm.
Speaker 1 (49:31):
Sorry he passed away recently. So, but he's in it
being interviewed and all that.
Speaker 3 (49:34):
Yeah, he passes away during the creation of the documentary.
He dies during the creation. And he also becomes uncooperative
at some point, which you know, maybe had a was
challenging for them. But I think I mentioned this on
the Billy Joel documentary, that he wasn't willing to take
responsibility for his drinking problem, and that just kind of
disturbed me that he was still living in denial about
(49:56):
what an alcoholic he is. And there was an aspect
of that, not with addiction, but with his sexual lifestyle
that I felt about Peewee. It was weird to not
I don't know, he's like always the victim of bad
prosecutions and stuff, and there's just something it just made me.
(50:19):
It just left like, it left me feeling less favorable
toward him after.
Speaker 1 (50:26):
You're going to make fun of me on this one,
but I don't really care. It's amazing to watch and
it's a lot of fun. And it's called International house Hunters.
Years ago I had recommended a show where people moved
from England to France or something like that. They're moving
usually from the United States to some place in Europe
or Asia or whatever.
Speaker 2 (50:46):
You know, house Hunters. Are you able to watch that show? Yes,
billion million seasons.
Speaker 1 (50:51):
This is the same thing, but international, and it's cool
because you get to it almost gives you a better
insight into cities because people looking for how is like
where nice neighborhoods are or this or that. Then you
do in any kind of documentary where they only show
you touristy places, if that makes sense. So I enjoy
watching that. I started watching the show called House of
(51:13):
David on Amazon, which is about King David.
Speaker 3 (51:17):
That's a good idea because having recently read that that's
got everything murder sex.
Speaker 1 (51:24):
For years, I've been saying, I've even written columns about this.
There needs to be like an epic movie or series
about this. But this one has a kind of what's
that show called what's that religious show called about Jesus
the Chosen? It has that kind of production value and
feel to it, which is not be to say it's bad,
but I think it needs to be a little grittier
(51:47):
because the story of King David is quite gritty. Then
I started watching something called what does it say? Chief
of War? Jason Momoa is his name? Okay, it's about
it's about these kingdoms of Hawaii. I think before I
only saw the first episode. Yeah, yeah, I was next.
(52:10):
My hopes are high. But just a slight spoiler, he
like rides a shark in the first like scene in
the show, and I'm like, I wanted this to be
more realistic, like Apocalypto by Mel Gibson or something, but
I think it's probably gonna veer in somewhat of a
different direction, but we'll see. Ye yet to be determined.
But I did start watching that, and that's all I have.
Speaker 3 (52:32):
So I think I mentioned last week that I was
reading or rereading Gilead by Robinson.
Speaker 1 (52:40):
It's when you called me old and said I should
read it. You said I was near death and I
would appreciate.
Speaker 3 (52:44):
It, and I just like it. I think it has
a high wisdom to sentence ratio. Just interesting. And then
this might sound like a like it's it to not
what you'd say if you wanted people to read it,
but it's a really interesting exploration of Calvinism, which is
(53:06):
not something I was totally familiar with as a Lutheran.
But it's done in a very tender and touching way
and it's just interesting and I find her interesting and
so I liked it. And then I also I had
a birthday this last week and my husband was wanting
to take me out, and I asked if we could
(53:29):
go see the Naked Gun movie, and so we did that,
and it it's something I truly cannot recommend because of
one and a half profane sex scenes. So there's just
that and we're not obviously like total prudes on this stuff,
(53:52):
but it was. And it's also like weird because it's
not real. It's what you think is sex but actually isn't,
you know, in total naked gun style. But really well
in one case.
Speaker 2 (54:03):
Did you enjoy the original?
Speaker 3 (54:05):
Loved the original? That is my mother's sense of humor
to a t. And I she just loved Play Squad,
the TV show. I don't even think it lasted that long,
but she was definitely its most devoted viewer and she
would just guffa. She loved that, and we loved the
all the humor. Like I recently watched the Airplane movie
(54:26):
in the non made for TV version and it was
also pretty profane. But we used to watch this on
the you know, on the made for TV or on
the cleaned up for TV version, and this was really like,
apart from what I just said about how I can't
recommend it, I thought it was really well done. I
think Liam Neeson is hilarious. It was very much in
(54:46):
the style. Although Mark says that the originals by the
Zucker Brothers just you couldn't make it ten seconds without
a joke, and this you would sometimes go minutes without it. Oh,
it's slightly different in that way, but other than that,
very true to the original. Stupid puns, stupid jokes.
Speaker 2 (55:08):
I love.
Speaker 3 (55:09):
I love that part of it. And Pamela Anderson was
great and Liam Neeson was just wonderful.
Speaker 2 (55:16):
I uh.
Speaker 1 (55:17):
When I went to see the original, I was, I was.
I was not sure what it was exactly, though I
had seen Airplane and liked it and Kentucky Fried movie also.
I don't know if you've ever seen that one, which
is very funny, though very politically and correct, and I
don't think I ever laughed harder in a movie since
or before. I just was crying. I loved it so much.
I thought Leslie Nielsen was perfect at the time. Now
(55:39):
he is remembered for Naked Gun, but at the time
he had been in you know, like a serious kind
of act or so like it was in Kojak and stuff,
you know, So it was weird. It was just so
unexpected and funny. I guess I'll go see it, even
though there are those scenes that you don't like.
Speaker 2 (55:55):
Do you like Leslie? Uh?
Speaker 1 (55:55):
I mean, Leslie Nielsen was amazing and Liam Neeson is
such a fun act. I mean he plays any kind
of role. I just think the guy's amazing, so I'll
probably go see it.
Speaker 3 (56:04):
Yeah he's good.
Speaker 2 (56:06):
Yeah, all right, that's it. Yep.
Speaker 1 (56:12):
If you have any cultural recommendations for us better than
the ones that we just shared, please.
Speaker 2 (56:17):
Let us know at radio at the Federalist dot com.
We'd love to hear from you. We'll be back next week.
Until then, be lovers of freedom and anxious for the
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