HiT 300: 'The View' - Where Free Speech and Insanity Collide - Hollywood in Toto with Christian Toto

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This week on the Hollywood and Total Podcast, I can't
quit the view, but I think the show has finally
gone too far. And we talked to actress Martha Byrne
about a Hollywood story with a potentially terrible ending. We'll explain.

(00:21):
Welcome to the Hollywood and Total Podcast, entertainment news and
reviews without the.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Woke Hollywood narrative.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
Free speech, free expression. Now that's entertainment. And here's your host,
Oh Lord. Winning film critic Christian Toto. I confess I
can't get enough of you clips. I just can't social media, Instagram, specifically,

(00:50):
x YouTube, you name it. There are view clips everywhere.
It is the dumbest show on TV, and I'm a junkie.
I can't get enough. Give me more, give me more.
So many great moments to savor. I think one of
my particular favorites was when Whoopy Goldberg thought that doctor
Jill Biden was a real doctor. It's classic Whoopee Whoopy

(01:13):
being Whoopie. I just can't get enough. But lately, the
dumbest show on TV, well it's still dumb. It's been
getting under my skin in a way that takes away
some of the enjoyment. I'm not loving it like I
used to. I'm not hate watching it with the enthusiasm
and vigor that I've been doing for so long, and
I missed that. So what changed? Well, I think part

(01:34):
of it is the world around us has changed.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
The world's going to hell in a handbasket.

Speaker 1 (01:39):
There's so much violence going on, so much of it
from the left, so much really incredibly irresponsible rhetoric coming
out of different portions of the left, and so all
the craziness of the View. It's landing a little bit differently.
Is the show going from dumb it's dangerous? That's a

(01:59):
really it's a hard thing to say, and especially for me,
I don't like to put limits on free speech. And
you know, there are certain obvious examples where you can't
directly threaten someone, and I know there are certain guardrails
that exist on speech and the whole thing. You know,
hate speeches and even a thing it's just another buzzphrase
I use to try to clamp down in the real deal.

(02:22):
But I want to read just a little bit of
a recent View episode just to give you a taste
of what's going on the show. It's reminiscent of what's
going on outside the show's walls into the culture, into
the political space. I don't want to get too involved there.
I mean, this is an entertainment based program, but I
do want to share a little bit of what's going
on right in front of our eyes on the view.

(02:46):
This is just a few days ago. So it starts
with Sonny hostin who is I think words fail, but
let me just read a little bit what she said
very recently. I think Trump is trying to use the
might of the military to suppress people's rights. I think
that is very clear. When you use the military against
your own citizens, that is a sign of fascism. He's

(03:09):
Hitler again again, never takes a break. This guy is
Hitler twenty four to seven, Kyle Hiteler. Never mind that
he was president from twenty seventeen to twenty twenty and
didn't do any of the old Hitler stuff. I mean,
he failed miserably. Even when COVID came around. He could
have been as draconian and as authoritarian as all of

(03:32):
his peers on the left. No, no, no, he pushed
a lot of the rights to the states, and he
didn't lock us down directly. Athought to be fair. He
was under the spell of doctor Fauci, who in a
sense did all that so certainly not perfect, but far
less than what the left was trying to do. Just
check out California Circle twenty twenty twenty one. That was

(03:54):
a nasty time to be in that particular golden state.
But of course it's not just Sonny, it's other parts
of the show weigh in pushing the Hitler card again
and again. Here's Elissa Farro Griffin talking about Trump. Correct,
But I think it's very important to remember it's a
commander in chief that's made these decisions. They're following the orders.

(04:14):
Of course, she's talking about the military members. Of course,
we'll be fires back. Yeah, I think back, y'all, where
have you heard that before? Enter Joy Behar nineteen thirty eight. Now,
to be fair, she could have said thirty seven, thirty six,
thirty nine, but she went with thirty eight. I gotta
you gotta trust Behar's gut. She knows what she's talking about.
And of course Goldbergain's a little segment by saying, I'm

(04:36):
just following orders by my commander in chief. Again, we've
had Trump before, We've got him now he's trying to
shrink the government, he's trying to protect free speech. There's
a lot of good stuff going on. The Hitler stuff,
I just don't see it, and you don't see it too,
because it's not happening. And when there is a military

(04:56):
intervention on the streets with the particular protesters, it's because
they're getting violent. They're burning cars, they're threatening cops, they're
throwing bricks at cops. They're trying to enter federal buildings
again and again and again. They're stopping traffic, they're causing mayhem.
That's when you have to call in the cops, when
the local police officers are either told to stand down

(05:17):
or they're just overwhelmed, as one LA police commander said recently,
So yeah, I'm not laughing as much as the View
as I used to, and that makes me sad. Of course,
it's a bigger picture. Who cares about my sadness or glee.
There's always different ways to entertain ourselves. Watching the View
for fun, you can just kind of scratch that off
the list sometimes. But again, it is the atmosphere at

(05:38):
this particular time with left wing violence coming strong, whether
it's Jews being attacked on campuses and elsewhere, whether it's
people in Washington, DC being gunned down in cold blood,
whether it's a healthcare worker being gunned down in cold blood,
on and on and on. This is left wing violence.

(05:58):
It just is. There samples of right wing violence, I'm
sure there are, but right now, looking across the culture,
it's the left wing violence. And a lot of these
people they don't necessarily watch the View, but they're basically
reciting the View's talking points. Trump is Hitler, Trump is
a dictator. Trump must go. We must stop them some way.
The No Kings protests, hey, they seem mostly peaceful. For

(06:21):
good for them. I always applaud a peaceful protests, even
if I vigorously disagree. But the violence is there. It's
all over, and it's not stopping. And if you're told
again and again and again by a responsible, seemingly press organization,
remember the View is under the wing of ABC News.
If you're told these Hitler again and again, what do

(06:42):
you do? Goes back to the old quasi joke if
you saw baby Hitler would just strangle them in his crib.
What if you saw Hitler and could do something to
stop the death of six million Jews and stop World
War Two? When you do it? Well, aren't we in
that moment? According to Whooping Company, we're in that moment.
We've already seen two assassination attempts against President Trump, We've

(07:03):
seen people dying from the insane rhetoric going on right now,
and they just keep pushing it out now again. I
don't want this to be clamped down. I don't think
the show should be taken off the air, none of that.
But by god, can we have an adult in the
room take charge and step up and tell these people
on the show to stop their incendiary, unfounded claims, just

(07:24):
maybe for a week or so. Could the ratings be
worth it? I don't even know. If the show gets
big ratings, it certainly gets big enough to keep themselves
on the air. Good for them. This is wildly irresponsible
broadcasting and it's time someone stood up. And it's been
going on for months and months. There were rumors that
they were going to hire another conservative to add to
the view panel. We didn't see that. They kicked out

(07:45):
Megan McCain a long time ago. There's no one like
her coming back, for sure. There was another story I
don't even know if I believe it, where they want
to do kind of dampened down the political talk. I
don't think that's changed at all. It's gone from dumb
to dangerous. It really has. That's the trend position we've
seen at the View, and I have to say I
fear what comes next. Actress Martha Burne's soap opera Days

(08:15):
never ever prepared her for this. Her husband, Michael McMahon,
was a decorated police officer in New York City, and
then he retired and became a private investigator. And then
a few years ago he took up a case which
seemed pretty benign. It involved money that was stolen from
a Chinese based construction company, pretty standard stuff. He seemed
to work through the steps. Nothing was really outrageous or

(08:37):
out of the ordinary about this particular assignment. And then
life moved on and didn't give it a second thought.
And then the FBI came knocking one day and said
he had broken the law. Now he's facing significant jail
time for what he did, and Martha Byrne insists he's innocent.
She's been fighting in the press in the courts for
years now to clear her husband's name. This particular case

(09:01):
hasn't gotten a lot of press attention. I think the
New York Post has covered at a time and too
they might be among the bigger outlets to give this
some oxygen. But other than that, hasn't been a huge story.
It is also not the kind of story I usually
cover here. I mean, this is more entertainment driven. We
don't kind of dig deep into these events. But the
fact that Martha Burrne is a soap opera actress, the

(09:21):
fact that she's using her ability to communicate to share
spread the word about the story, and the fact that
we've seen a lot of FBI overreach in recent years, well,
I decided to kind of shake things up a little
bit on this show and include her story in this
particular episode. Now, like I said, this is her story,
and I really recommend you dig deep into this wherever

(09:43):
you can find information about it online to get the
full picture. I'm not an investigative reporter. This is not
an investigative podcast. I did want to bring out her
perspective on things, but definitely look it over see what
you can see online. I will have a couple of
links on the show notes page, so you can kind
of start your information gathering process, but definitely find out
some answers for yourself, but by Spider sentence is retriggered

(10:05):
by the story. What Martha has to say is pretty compelling,
and I really want to share it with you, the listener,
so you can make up your own mind and just
find out more about what's happening within our government. I
think that's important. In recent years, I've covered some Nick
Searcy documentaries that talked about the overreach involving January sixth.
This is certainly a very different case, but there are

(10:27):
echoes of maybe the FBI going far or way too
far against what could be a very innocent man. So
I hope you listen to this podcast, hope you check
out the other information I've teased here, and just consider
what's happening in our country, in our culture, and why
these stories they shouldn't be ignored. Martha, thanks for joining

(10:48):
the show. I've given the listeners a bit of a
tease about what this really horrifying story is, but I
think we need to hear it in your own words,
and maybe we'll start at the beginning. When this nightmare
first began. I imagine that you thought, oh, it can't
be this bad. It'll be simply explained away but just

(11:09):
take us back to the early days and we'll get
into the heart of the matter.

Speaker 2 (11:12):
So I met my husband when I was twenty two.
He was an NYPD sergeant, very highly decorated, and gotten
a severe car accident on the job and became a
private investigator, which he loved. It was a totally different
aspect of using his brain in a different way, and
he was so good at it. And he got a
routine case in twenty sixteen. A translator had called and

(11:35):
her client wanted had stolen money, had money stolen from him,
and he was looking for assets. He wanted to know
how many houses, how many cars, And Mike just did
his usual. It was very routine case, very basic actually,
and tired to NYPD retired detectives who were pis to
work with him on it. Did a couple of days
of surveillance, background checks, provided invoices summaries to his client,

(12:02):
and that was in twenty seventeen. April finished the work
and never thought about it again until the FBI came
to our house on October twenty eighth, twenty twenty during
a pre dawn sort of raid. I say sort of,
and I explained that in a minute that it was
very odd. The whole process was very strange, not what
you see in the movies, for violating FARA, which is

(12:24):
a Foreign Agent's Registration Act, and interstate stocking, which was
baffling for many reasons. There was no evidence he was
hired by a foreign government. We looked at every email,
there was no evidence of that. And he's a private investigator,
so parking on a public street is not a crime
for anyone, including a private investigator. So he had notified

(12:47):
the local police when he was doing surveillance. So he
was putting the puzzle together, going what is this about?
And of course, like you said, you think, well, they
just have made a huge mistake. This will be taken
care of and in a minute. And we are still
fighting this almost five years later, because once.

Speaker 1 (13:04):
You fight, we've seen some I mean, I've seen footage
from various documentaries on a different subject, different people in
the crosshairs of the FBI, where it's it can be
rather warlike and rather sort of aggressive. Was your FBI
rate like that or was it more.

Speaker 2 (13:20):
Calm, extremely calm? The agents walked in our foyer, did
not put handcuffs on my husband. They're having conversations petting
my dog. My children were home, they didn't go to
their rooms, and then Mike was like, what's going on here?
And they said, just get dressed. We'll talk about it later.
And he goes, do you want to go to my office?

(13:43):
My guns are there, you know. Do you want my computers?
Do you want my phone? Nope? So he offered up
his guns, his computers, his notes. They didn't even go
to his home office. He walked out of the house
without handcuffs on. So nothing. Somebody, my husband's like, I've
done I mean in his career, how many search warrants
has he done? Hundredths? This was not normal for me

(14:06):
to be able to walk around my house freely. My
children's one was sleeping, you know, and it was just
nothing like you would ever believe or scene with other
people who have been victimized, and I say victimized, there's
a lot, there's a lot of trauma that goes into
these raids, especially when they know the person's innocent. And
you've seen that a lot with other cases that have

(14:26):
been out there now where they just ram the door,
they shoot the dog, they throw you on the ground,
They anything could have happened, anything like that could have
happened that morning, which is frightening to me because it
didn't have to happen. My husband has worked on many
federal cases, not just as a NYPD, but also as

(14:47):
a private investigator, so his experience in the federal system
as an investigator was very well known by the FBI,
so they were aware that a phone call would have
been fine. He would have happily come down and talked
to them and work with them. That would have been
the best option in sixteen seventeen when they found out
that he was connected to this case. But they didn't

(15:07):
do that. But yet they made a scene and scared
my children and traumatized them. I find that, I'm sure
some of them are parents, and to traumatize my children
by choice, I find that something that I don't know
if I'll ever be able to forgive them for that.
So it was nothing. It was very strange.

Speaker 1 (15:27):
It wasn't guns ablazing, but at the same time, there's
still was a threat involved, and there still was a
really comprehensive effort there does this is not my air
of expertise, I cover Hollywood. Was that a typical either
what you thought then or what you've learned since then
totally atypical.

Speaker 2 (15:47):
I mean, they know he has guns in the house,
wouldn't you be the first thing you do? Secure the guns?
I mean, realistically, the arresting officer, I honestly believe this.
I'm sure I'll find out something because I found out
everything else. I bet you this was the first arrest
warrant he ever executed in his career as an FBI agent,

(16:07):
based on his actions which put everyone else in danger,
not just our family, but the other agents who were there,
the local police who were outside knowing there were guns
in the house. And if you truly believe what you're
charging this man with it, he's an espionage spy for
the Chinese government, why would you not secure those guns,

(16:28):
gather all the evidence if he's offering it, why would
you not do that? But I feel like he was
extremely inexperienced, and his inexperience put everybody in this situation
at danger in danger.

Speaker 1 (16:42):
After this, you assembled all your paperwork, everything, got as
much data as humanly possible. You submitted that. At what
point during this process did you start to think, oh,
this isn't this is serious and we could be in trouble.
Even though they don't have a case. There's something going
on here that feels alarming.

Speaker 2 (17:04):
When we did a presentation for the prosecutors within months
after his arrest, which had all his evidence in there
in a PowerPoint forty page PowerPoint presentation to the government,
that we thought that would be it, because now they
know he has everything, he saved everything, he has more

(17:27):
than what they thought he had to prove his innocence.
This should be it, this should be done well. They
filed a superseding indictment against him after that, so that
was their way of telling us, we're going to do
whatever we want. We're going to pressure you to take
a plea deal, which ninety nine percent of people do
in these cases because they're scared to death or they

(17:49):
don't want to go broke. There's threats, you know, there's
threats of more charges. But they couldn't charge him with
anything else because he didn't do any he could. The
guy had every t crossed and dieded I He kept
stellar records. This was not a sloppy guy, and he
was not a typical, you know, guy who's following cheating

(18:11):
wives like he had worked for the Vatican, done a case,
he worked for the presidential candidate. He worked for the
Parkland shooting survivors. He was their security. This is a
guy who was a high level, you know, respected. So
when they did that, that was kind of our first
clue that we were going to be fighting this tooth

(18:31):
and nail. So we started filing motions like prosecutoral misconduct
motions and venue motions and anything we could to stop
them from continuing. They never spoke to Mike, the case
agent in this case. The FBI case agent never spoke
to Mike. He never spoke to the two other NYPD

(18:51):
detectives that were with him on this case. They never
spoke to the two federal agents that Mike had discussed
this case with back in twenty sixteen seven. The FBI
never spoke to them. Okay, if this is such a
high security, oh, national intelligence, Oh we're all in danger.
But the Chinese Communist Party, wouldn't you want to bring

(19:12):
in these highly decorated US law enforcement members to understand
what happened here and like learn more. Nope, they did
not do that, the FBI, and they failed. They chose
to speak with the Chinese agents who were involved many many,
many times, who lied to them and told them different stories,
they fled the country. So this whole case is backwards

(19:36):
and it's shocking to read. So what happens is they
send you discovery that's like your first batch of discovery.
You're like, Okay, where is it? What are they going
to try to put together? Every single interview, every piece
of evidence in this case shows he's innocent, proves it.

(19:57):
So they know what happens is in federal cases. This
is not state, this is federal. When you're dealing with
the Department of Justice FBI, they will suppress, they will manipulate,
they will do anything they can to prevent you from
submitting that evidence for your defense, and they withhold many things.
Let's say you have a statement from someone who exonerates Mike,

(20:20):
but that person has fled the country on their watch.
You can't put that into evidence because that person isn't here.
So I don't think people understand. It's like, well, just
defend yourself. No, no, no, because when the system is
manipulated to have you fail and they win ninety nine
percent of their cases. Federal government wins ninety nine percent

(20:42):
of their cases. The indictment is that insane, that's insane,
But there's.

Speaker 1 (20:48):
A reason for other officers that your husband enlisted to
help with this particular case. Did they get any sort
of similar treatment at all.

Speaker 2 (20:56):
No, only they only spoke to them after my husband's arrest.
And one of them called the FBI back and said,
am I and something happening to me? And the agent said,
you are not out of the woods yet, which is
I'm sorry, that's a threat too. Yeah, okay, that's like
you better, you better just stand back. And again, this

(21:22):
is an NYPD retired detective. They're doing this too, who
have happened to work in intelligence in the NYPD too,
So when the FBI is treating them that way, you
got to wonder do they have any any level of
not just like brotherhood with other cops. And there was

(21:43):
also something that was shocking and so many things, but
two of Mike's my husband's former co workers from the
NYPD worked in the same field office as the FBI
in New Jersey and they were never spoken to in
four years. So if you know there's two people who
work in the building and they wouldn't, you say, wait

(22:04):
a minute, these he worked with, these two men, let
me just talk to them and see, like what's this
guy about? Like what's his Is he good?

Speaker 1 (22:11):
Is you know? What's your vibe? What you can find?

Speaker 2 (22:13):
Now?

Speaker 1 (22:14):
Can you briefly talk about the Chinese connection here and
how it's important to this case.

Speaker 2 (22:19):
It's everything, It's everything because when my husband was hired,
all he knew when he found out the subject, he
googled his name and one picture came up on the internet.
One and it was a poster. We had one hundred
Chinese people's images on it, but it was about they
had were accused of financial crimes, embezzlement this man. So

(22:40):
when he gets to the call and he looks him up,
he goes, okay, I was hired to find assets. I
was fired to find money. This guy had stolen money,
he said, from his business. Kind of lines up right,
and that's all he thought about it. That was all
that was on the internet about him at the time.
So he just did his job. He worked for his client.
He provided the documents that he was looking for, which
was a financial chain of LLC's businesses, cars, So there

(23:08):
was a money trail there. Unbeknownst to us, there's a
civil lane to this case, like a civil matters, which
is what my husband was working on, and there was
a criminal lane that the Chinese CCP was doing to
allegedly again, there's much more to this to force this
man to go back to China. But Mike had nothing

(23:28):
to do with that. He was totally separate. And about
a year after he finished the work on this case,
the person he was following was sued civilly for thirty
million dollars and information in that civil lawsuit aligned with
what he had found. So we're like, well, this is great,
we could use this in his defense. Same LLC's money.

(23:50):
This Well, guess what. The government successfully kept that civil
lawsuit out of the trial, which was a gut wrenching
loss for us.

Speaker 1 (24:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (24:01):
Okay, So the Chinese government is not going to meet
my husband at a Panera bread in New Jersey, which
is where he met and say hi, got hey, would
you come on a harassment campaign with us to get
this guy to go back to China. And by the way,
the meeting we have tomorrow at the law office that
you're working out of, we're going to come hang out
there for the day too and meet you. They're not
going to give business cards going that's what we're here for.

(24:23):
So they didn't ask Mike to do anything illegal. They
didn't ask him because he never would, but they were
very interested in him being a licensed private investigator. Now
why is that Because the documents that he would provide
have credibility. They are and that's true. So they didn't
ask him to They didn't want him to be seen.

(24:44):
He was never seen by the subjects. We went to trial,
they couldn't identify him in court. So here he is
being arrested for stalking, but the people can't identify him.
They never saw him. That was shocking to me.

Speaker 1 (25:00):
It's almost gommical if it wasn't so harrowing. And so
it's so many. Yes, the implications are so severe. I
watched an interview with you. I think it was two
years ago. It might have been a Newsmax, and you
talked to the time and this was newish and you
were still in shock, I imagine, and you said, I
don't see this as being political. I don't know. Do

(25:20):
you feel the same way today or is there something
else that you've learned in the intervening years.

Speaker 2 (25:25):
That's a great question. So when we're not political, like
I we've never been political. It wasn't political for us,
but it was political for the Department of Justice about China.
In twenty twenty, there was a lot of buyer's remorse
regarding China with COVID going on in the United States

(25:47):
relationship with China and how it was a very complicated,
if lack of a better word, relationship that the government
had with China. But in sixteen twenty sixteen, Obama was
trying to bridge that. But when you're dealing with the
communist country, they're not going to play nicey nice with you.

(26:08):
So the Chinese government took advantage of that and over
the years kind of infiltrated our country with the spy
balloons and the property buying, and this under I mean
under the radar for our Department of Justice was like
working with them a little bit on other things. So
it became political because why would they arrest him a

(26:30):
week before the election in October twenty twenty twenty. COVID
was rampant, nobody was on the road, everybody, all the
bad guys that had actually fled. So for them, it
was a political move to show that they were doing
something on China, either to impress Donald Trump because he
was really upset that we weren't doing enough about China.
Or to tell the next president, which could have been

(26:52):
Joe Biden, well we're sort of doing something on China,
but because of your relationship with China, don't worry. It's
just an optics case. Okay. They were covering their and
I uncovered and I don't say uncovered. This was public
a letter that it's the FBIAA, which is the association
of I think eighteen thousand FBI former current FBI agents.

(27:16):
They wrote a letter the same day as my husband's
arrest on October twenty eight, twenty twenty. They wrote one
to Joe Biden's and to Trump's team about keeping Christopher
Ray in his position, whether whoever won the election. Okay,
so if you're Christopher Ray and you want to keep

(27:38):
your job, who are you going to go after China?
You're going to help Joe Biden if it's Joe Biden
to say, well, we're sort of doing something, but and
Trump's gonna be like, maybe they are doing something. So
this is my takeaway. Again, I've written a book about this.
You know there's more to it than that, and you know,
if you know it's so shocking is as I dug

(27:59):
the October twenty eighth twenty twenty. A lot of things
happened in the government on October twenty eight, twenty twenty, Like,
it wasn't just Mike's arrest, it was all these other
things going on with China, and it was political for them.
But you don't sacrifice an American family. You don't put
our family at risk. You know, there's something called the

(28:23):
Duty to Warn Act that we have in the United
States of America. If you are targeted by a foreign adversary,
the government has an obligation to warn you and let
you know. They never did that here, and by not
doing that, they put us all in a very very
dangerous situation.

Speaker 1 (28:42):
I read a little bit about your case in the
New York Post, at least one or two stories at least,
and I mentioned the Newsmax interview, but I didn't see
much else. Have you reached out to other media outlets
for coverage? What's that been like has been it has
been reticence to kind of go into your case. What
have you found?

Speaker 2 (29:00):
It's actually worse than that. It's the fact that the
mainstream media didn't cover this case properly was deliberate. It
was a calculated effort to not cover it. Properly. And
I don't say that because I'm some tinoil wear and

(29:23):
a hat person. I know for a fact that the
Wall Street Journal started the narrative of this case in
July twenty twenty, July twenty nine, twenty twenty, and it's
they're working with the government to protect the CCP in
this case, which is shocking to say that out loud.
I really I'll give you an example. The subject of

(29:46):
Mike surveillance was a former Wuhan official who worked in
the district to monitor buildings. He was a high ranking person.
He was involved in fire codes and build You know
I'm going here, right, So he fled the country in
twenty ten China and as not as a dissident, but

(30:09):
alleged to have stolen all this money. Now he's the
alleged victim in our case. He testified at trial. Not
one media outlet covered him being there, what he said
on the stand? Was there to ask him any questions? Now,
if I'm in the media and I know a former

(30:32):
high ranking WUHAN official is in Brooklyn, New York, testifying
at a very high profile case, why didn't anyone cover it?
I was the only one in the courtroom. So to
get people to hear the truth and hear our version
was very, very, very challenging. So Newsmax was fantastic. They

(30:54):
had me on, and when the Pipe Pitterer Foundation, which
is Eddie Gallagher's foundation to help falsely accused first responders,
et cetera. When they took our case on, we started
getting a lot of media and on the conservative side,
and that was great, and they would let me tell
the truth, tell our story. And then Jim Acosta wanted

(31:15):
to have Mike on, and everyone said, oh, you know,
what are you gonna do? So I'm going to do it.
He's got to do it. And he was wonderful. He
was great to Mike. He asked great questions. Isabelle Vincent
from New York Post was the only one who actually
wrote the truth about this case from the beginning. She's amazing.
But yes, it was a challenge because I couldn't believe

(31:35):
that they weren't covering it. They were only attacking Mike.
So the talking points that was coming out of the
Eastern District of New York, you know, the DOJ, they
just parroted whatever they said, never called us for comment,
never wanted to interview, Mike never even't reached out. Do
you realize there's not one article since twenty twenty describing

(31:57):
my husband's seventy eight medals, a thousand arrests, his heroism
on the NYPD, his career. Nothing.

Speaker 1 (32:07):
I mean, that was shocking to you, and it should
be shocking. But this is We've seen countless examples of
journalists not doing their due diligence in this Oh yes,
oh yeah, that's just the world we live in right now. Obviously,
your book In the Interest of Justice is going to
share the story. I imagine this is just getting the
message out as far and as wide as possible. I

(32:28):
guess the million dollar question is there is there a
chance that the new administration could step in in some
point and do something.

Speaker 2 (32:37):
Do you have any definition of that?

Speaker 1 (32:38):
I mean, obviously it's your hope.

Speaker 2 (32:40):
I definitely do, and I'll tell you why. I've we
were invited to Trump's inauguration by the Trump transition team
to be there as their guests. I have met several
people I've in his administration who were friends before they
were even in the administration, who have been backing us,
who asked for nothing in return other than supporting him.

(33:04):
I reached out to hundreds, if not, I mean so
many congressmen. The Republican Party was tremendous to us and
supportive of us. Mike Lawler, Congressman Lawler before he was
even elected, said I'm going to help you, and he did.
We had the GOP Oversight Committee, James Comer. They did
a report on the CCP and guess what happened. The

(33:27):
dj got a failing grade in that report because of
Mike's case, and they went out and said it publicly.
They said, there is question whether this was the weaponization
of the government and whether mister McMahon ever should been
prosecuted under Farah in the first place. Well, when you
see that, that gives you hope. That gives you hope
that people are paying attention. And like Ed Martin, who's

(33:49):
now you know, part of attorney, these weaponizations are Trump's
weaponizations are and associate Deputy Attorney. I've known Ed for
couple of years now, and he's always been so supportive
of us, and he actually endorsed my book. He wrote
a great quote in my book, It's right in the beginning,
which is beautiful and supportive. So I honestly believe when

(34:13):
Trump hears the details of this case, he's going to
be horrified. He's gonna be hard because not only is
the support of the nypdight, but let's go, we would
further the law fare, the weaponization, the lying. It's the same.
They did the same thing to Mike Under with the
same players. So I believe once he hears the facts

(34:36):
and that an American family was sacrificed for the CCP
in favor of the CCP Chinese agents who are here.
I mean again, the subject he was following is not
obtained the legal green car. He's not a citizen. His
wife isn't either. They were named in a fraud case
in California as committing the immigration fraud. You know, back

(34:57):
in seventeen. Why is the FB helping them? I mean
even at trial it came out that the alleged victims
were communicating with the FBI and thanking them for their
help with their immigration and the civil lawsuit against them.
That's not America. I'm sorry. Why were they doing that

(35:18):
and not protecting an American family. And let's even go
beyond that, why would you not bring in a highly
decorated NYPD detective who has his resume as long as
his arm regarding cases. So I think Trump will be horrified.
I know he supports law enforcement, and we're working on

(35:39):
that very every single day. I wake up, I go,
wake up and go to bed at night, doing everything
I can too. You know, he's supposed to report on
June sixteenth to federal prison for eighteen months. I mean,
he committed no crime. So when he was sentenced, the
judge didn't tentence him because he could did anything wrong.
She said he didn't have remorse. I'm not kidding. He

(36:00):
said he didn't have remorse for the victims. And he
said afterwards, he goes, wait a minute, hold on, if
they had come to me in twenty sixteen, all the
things that happened to those people after the fact never
would have happened. So who's really who really put them
in danger? The FBI, not my husband. So he's like,
I can't apologize for something that I didn't do, you know.

Speaker 1 (36:22):
And that's just him being consistent with what he's just
shared over the exactly all these feels like this would
make a triumphant movie, but we're missing that happy ending.

Speaker 2 (36:30):
That's what Yes we are, Yes we are well doing
things like this help.

Speaker 1 (36:35):
I wondered before I let you go, I did want
to pivot and I have no way to successfully hit
it from yourship with this topic. But I but you're
a respected actress, You've you've had a great career saying
strong with different projects. I'm just kind of curious from
that perspective, and that is honestly more of what I
usually talk about in this program. But talk about how

(36:55):
you've been able to shift and pivot with the times,
because you know, respected a soap opera actress, and then
you've done other projects. You've gone online, you've done YouTube series,
and I think a lot of stars struggle with that
transition or resist it, and I think you've been able
to go with the flow and get more with your
hands dirty, getting you know, writing and direct or producing.

(37:16):
Just tell me a little bit about how you've pivoted
in recent years from a professional point of view, and
we'll and then what is hope on a good note?

Speaker 2 (37:23):
Yes, well, I've been in the business since I was
ten years old. I was an Annie on Broadway. I
loved performing, and when I was on Azer World Turns
for almost twenty years, I found this draw to the
creative writing side. So at two thousand and eight, I
was ready to do something different and I left Azer
World Turns. But I continued to act a little bit

(37:45):
here and there. But I started producing independent projects and
using my own money. I was one of the first
scripted dramas ever on YouTube, a show called Gotham before
the other Gotham, because I knew that there was an audience,
but there was no money. It was just about creativity.
So I just kept writing and writing, and I wrote
for Bold and the Beautiful, soaproper Bold and the Beautiful.

(38:07):
And I think now, as you to your point, it's
actors are becoming much more diverse in their you know,
their resume because they realized at some point, you know,
you're not going to be on TV forever. I mean,
that's just a reality. I was fortunate to have twenty
years of it, but really you don't have that long
of a career, especially women, I would say have even

(38:27):
less of time, which is just the reality. I'm not
you know, I had a great career. I had a
great career. I mean, I listen, there was no financial
disparity in our industry, and women made more than men.
In the daytime community. We led daytime women, right. So
I don't have any issue with that at all, quite
the opposite. But I felt that whether you are on

(38:51):
a soap opera, writing a book, writing a movie, if
it's true, you're constantly searching for the truth. And I'll
tell you you might find this very interesting that when
when I started investigating this case against my husband, I
looked at it from a perspective as a creative, as
a writer, not as an investigative reporter, but as a
person to find the truth in what was going on. Yes,

(39:15):
so I used my skill set for something that has
absolutely nothing to do with what I was tasked to
do here, which is monumental because of what I would
do is I'd say, well, why would that person do X,
Y and Z. Now, in an actor, you take a
scene and you go, well what do I want? And
what am I doing in the scene? And it's very
similar when you're trying to get information or learn in

(39:36):
a case when you're investigating, because you go, well what
do I want? Well, I want to find out X.
How do I find out X? I got to go
down why it's the X. So it's it's very similar
in that way. For instance, you go into a court
and you sit there and you see the judge, and
you see the prosecutors, you see the defendants, see you
see the jury. I mean, the jury would fall asleep
at times and laugh and not pay attention. And I'm

(40:00):
as an actor it's gold. As a person who's a victim,
it's hell, right, So you see the behavior of people,
and that's what I did for a living, for my
whole life, So it does kind of cross into both realities.
And when I was writing the book, I knew that

(40:21):
a lot of the people who had followed me for
years decades might not be so interested in the case.
But if I tell it in a way that's a narrative,
similar to a fictional kind of story, maybe I'll keep
them interested. Because listen, I have never once had a
negative comment after my husband was arrested from any fan

(40:43):
that follows me on any platform. Now, if that's almost
an achievement in itself, right, because they know who I am,
they trust me, they know Mike. So I'm taking them
on this journey with me in this book because I
first of all respect them and I love them for
their support. But they want to know. They're dying to

(41:06):
understand what we were feeling and how we were feeling,
because that's what they miss about soap operas. I'll tell
you a quick story when I've met so many fans
over the years, and I went to a diner and
this woman grabbed my hand and she started crying. This
was years ago. Why are you crying? She said, I
was going through cancer, and you kept me alive because

(41:29):
I would sit and watch the show. I didn't have
to think about anything for an hour, and I could
cry with you, and I could feel with you, and
then I could turn the TV off and go back
to my own reality. But if you're good at what
you do as an actor, that's not an easy task.
Meaning you have to go into the deepest roots of
your heart and soul and open it up like a

(41:49):
wound to the audience to let them in and be
vulnerable or else they don't want they'll sniff that in
a second and go, ye, she's a bad actor. It's
a bad actor. So it connects you're going through the screen.
So now for the pages. I want to do the
same on the page. And I'm not a writer, you know,

(42:10):
I'm not a professional novelist or anything like that, but
I do know what emotion is, and I do know
what heart and feelings are because my whole life dissecting them.
So it's very similar in a sense of the outreach
to the human spirit that I want to touch, maybe
inspire or feel or you know, feel feel feel, let's

(42:34):
put just put feel. Like we were so detached now
in the world from you know, the feelings are zero
to eight a thousand, where's the nuance of the feelings?
What was it really about? When you're suffering and you're angry,
there's something else going on And if you can touch
that part, you win because that's where that's where the

(42:54):
that's where the soul lives. And I hope people, and
I say to use the word enjoy the book, but
I feel like I hope it speaks to them in
some way.

Speaker 1 (43:05):
Well, I mean, we've just scratched the surface of your
story here, but if you want to find more information,
to get the whole story and just get your perspective
everything that's going on with this particular case in the
interest of Justice, coming out June fifth at Amazon or
other booksellers, wish all the best. It's a terrible, terrible story.
I think you're doing everything humanly possible to write what

(43:25):
appears to be a horrible wrong and thank you. We
appreciate you sharing the story and give your best to Mike.

Speaker 2 (43:32):
Thank you so much for having me on. It really
means a lot. You know, every step is in the
right direction, is getting into the final destination of success.
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (43:44):
A quick update on the story after we recorded that conversation.
Michael McMahon has been told he must serve in a
Michigan jail that is five hundred miles from the family's home.
That seems egregious and punitive in and of itself. There's
been a two week delay. He's having some health issues,
so there's a brief window there that maybe we'll give

(44:04):
them enough time to keep investigating the case, keep fighting
in his behalf. But things do look grim for Michael
right now. Just want to keep you posted with the
latest information. I'll try to share more on social media.
You can follow me on Twitter, slash x at Hollywood
in Toto. If I get more information, I will update
you there. But that's where we stand right now. It's

(44:24):
a really sad story anyway, look at it.

Speaker 2 (44:38):
Well.

Speaker 1 (44:38):
Before we let you go, got to honor our character
actor of the week. This time it is the late
great Ned Baty. Well, that's it for this week's show.
Up again, thank you for listening, thank you for watching it. Also,
do check out Hollywood Intoto dot com. It is my
website formed at twenty fourteen, a mix at eleven years
old now. And what'll we try to do there and

(45:00):
certainly here to an extent as well, is cover the
stories and entertainment that aren't being covered elsewhere. And as
it turns out, there are a lot of stories not
being covered. If there's a new Star Wars news blast,
you're going to see it everywhere. But other stories, stories
kind of lurking just under the surface. That's what we'd
like to cover here because they matter too, and they
need exposure and they need people talking about them, like

(45:23):
Martha's story, like so many other situations which I've been
covering for years, a lot of censorship related stories which
the mainstream media just wants to look the other way about. Well,
not here, not at Hollywoodantoto dot com, and certainly not
of the podcast. And of course, if you want to
spread the news about the show, you can click on
the like button, you can subscribe, you can tell a friend,
maybe even share in social media. We do appreciate it,

(45:44):
but for now, have a wonderful week. Doctor's orders

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HiT 300: 'The View' - Where Free Speech and Insanity Collide

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}HiT 300: 'The View' - Where Free Speech and Insanity Collide