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Senator Eric Schmitt: Exposing the Biggest Censorship Scandal in US History Podcast Episode Description
(0:00) Sacks and Jason welcome Senator Eric Schmitt
(2:34) Biden v. Missouri, uncovering government censorship as Missouri AG
(6:06) Section 230 and social media, the legacy of Russiagate, big tech censorship in the age of AI
(18:44) Behind the Hunter Biden laptop story and COVID censorship
(30:17) The NGO “Leviathan” and how censorship requests were laundered, Hamilton 68
(36:38) Russiagate and the Obama intel report on the 2016 Election
(47:15) Russia-Ukraine War, possible peace deal, and US foreign policy
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Senator Eric Schmitt: Exposing the Biggest Censorship Scandal in US History Podcast Episode Summary
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Senator Eric Schmitt: Exposing the Biggest Censorship Scandal in US History Podcast Episode Transcript (Unedited)
Speaker: 0
00:00
I put on a jacket because, you know, we’re interviewing a senator, but I see that,
Speaker: 1
00:04
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It’s polo day.
Speaker: 0
00:05
Senator Schmidt’s pulled a Zelensky here.
Speaker: 2
00:07
Ai yeah. I did, but I told him I do have the stiff I have the stiff collar on the polo, which
Speaker: 1
00:13
is You look great. It looks great. And, you know, I lost the weight. Thanks for noticing, senator. And, I’ve been hitting the weights ai Sai, and so I am too trying to get the gun show going like you have, achieved there. There. Ai, besties. I think that was another epic discussion. People love the interviews.
Speaker: 1
00:31
I could hear and
Speaker: 0
00:32
talk for hours. Absolutely. We crushed your questions
Speaker: 1
00:35
a minute. We are giving people ground truth data to underwrite your own opinion. What’d you gonna say? That was fun. I’m doing all of it. Ai, everybody. Welcome back to a very special interview. Yeah. You know, we’re doing these interviews here, with me, my amazing cohost and your czar of crypto and AI, the rain man himself, David Sacks.
Speaker: 1
00:59
David, how are you doing, brother? How’s your summer wrapping up?
Speaker: 0
01:01
Good to be here. The summer ended way too soon. Way too soon. So sad.
Speaker: 1
01:05
Isn’t it? It’s just, like,
Speaker: 2
01:06
sitting for it
Speaker: 0
01:07
to be over.
Speaker: 1
01:08
Kids going back to school, all vatsal. And look, you’re a civil servant now. You are working for the people, and they Public servant. The people demand you’re a public servant. Yes. And the the people demand results. And, hey, we have another civil servant here. David, why don’t you introduce our guest today?
Speaker: 0
01:22
This is senator Eric Schmidt from the state of Missouri. How did we meet? It was it was through another former senator, now vice president JD Vance, I believe. That’s right.
Speaker: 2
01:31
That’s right. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:32
And you guys you guys entered the senate together at the same time.
Speaker: 2
01:36
We did. And, got to be very close and, shared a lot of, life experiences. And, and our freshman group got, you know, pretty tight. We go to dinner once a month and try to keep that going now that he’s even VP, which is a lot of fun. But, yeah, we got introduced through him and, have enjoyed getting to know you.
Speaker: 0
01:52
And you now have a new book called The Last Line of Defense, which is about your time in your previous job, which was as attorney general of the state of Missouri. And I remember talking about, before I even knew you, on the all in pod when we were dealing with censorship and talking about that issue, the Twitter ai.
Speaker: 0
02:09
This is back in I don’t know. This is, like, three or four years ago.
Speaker: 1
02:12
2022, I would say. Yeah. Three years ago now.
Speaker: 0
02:14
We Our time is moving. We talked about the case Ai v Missouri, which you were the one who brought that case when you were attorney general. When I met you and then found that out, I knew that we had some views in common, let’s say, about free speech and the need to avoid censorship.
Speaker: 1
02:28
And you went right at the shah meh, don’t tell me what your fans to speak, what’s going on. You went directly to discovery. So maybe you could talk a little bit about the approach, from the senator from the show me state. There were rumors and ai of this feeling people were being censored, but nobody knew exactly how it was occurring.
Speaker: 1
02:46
So you had some intuition that if we do some discovery here, there’s gotta be something under the surface or had somebody leaked something to you? How did you know to go after this? I guess was my question.
Speaker: 2
02:56
Yeah. And one of the reasons I wrote the book was just to, you know, I think it’s it’s easy. The book starts with, you know, in November 2024, the fever broke. And so if you think about the four previous years, you know, this was a time of lockdowns and compulsory COVID shots and forced masking of five year olds, but also this vast censorship enterprise that existed that, in my view, was the greatest affront to the first amendment we’ve ever seen in the history of our country.
Speaker: 2
03:23
And so if you go back in time, right, to to in 2022, you had seen, to your point, Jason, you had seen, sort of Jen Psaki at the podium talking about, hey. We’re flagging this for Facebook. There were rumors of a disinformation governance board, with the Mary Poppins herself, right, talking about how this misinformation and disinformation
Speaker: 0
03:50
Ai think. Right? Right. Wasn’t there anything?
Speaker: 2
03:52
That they needed to to flag this stuff and do something about it. We knew that if they were willing to talk about that stuff so publicly, there had to be something much more beneath the surface. Sai in May 2022, when I was attorney general in Missouri, we sued the Biden administration and sort of this Ai of agencies that were working to censor American speech.
Speaker: 2
04:12
And we filed the lawsuit, and we knew that it would be, you know, highly scrutinized, be called sort of furthering conspiracy theories, but we knew that there was something there. And a really important strategic decision in the case was normally when you file a lawsuit like that, you immediately seek a temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction to get the government or another party to stop what they’re doing.
Speaker: 2
04:33
But we felt like we needed to get evidence first. Right? We had the allegations in the complaint, so we sought discovery. And the judge granted that discovery. And what we found from that discovery was shocking. Right?
Speaker: 2
04:45
We got reams and reams, tens of thousands of documents, emails, text messages about this communication, the special portals that existed for, you know, these folks in big government to work with big tech to silence Americans. And so it really was shocking. And then, of course, we got to the point where we were able to take depositions. We took the deposition of Anthony Fauci.
Speaker: 2
05:04
We took the deposition of Elvis Chan, who was the FBI agent, in charge of Northern California that was prebunking the Hunter Biden laptop story even though the FBI had the laptop in 2019. Right? So we took the deposition of a CDC official who was basically flagging specific words and phrases that the government would then censor and then agencies like CISA.
Speaker: 2
05:25
All of these groups were part of this ai, and that’s one of the reasons I wrote the book, The Last Line of Defense, that people can get on Amazon right now. If you we go inside those deposition rooms. You go inside the prep for that. What we what were we trying to find out? What did we find out?
Speaker: 2
05:40
How we uncovered this? Because you gotta remember, this was before Elon bought Twitter. Yeah. And before the Twitter was Yeah.
Speaker: 1
05:47
We we
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05:48
we joined the band
Speaker: 1
05:48
for those first couple days. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
05:50
What’s interesting about this is that you were taking the discovery from the government ai. So you were getting the government documents. You were deposing government witnesses, and then Elon released the Twitter files, I don’t know, about six months later, and then we saw it from the Twitter side.
Speaker: 2
06:04
Yeah.
Speaker: 1
06:04
And this was happening at Facebook too. Right? Like, you had Oh, yeah. Information on the Facebook side. Yeah.
Speaker: 2
06:09
Yeah. You had Meta. You had YouTube. We you know, all the this was all happening. And and the way it was working was, as you guys know, these big tech platforms have something called two section two thirty protection, right, which is basically in the nineties when the Internet’s becoming a thing, Congress sai, you’re not a you’re not a publisher.
Speaker: 2
06:27
You’re a platform, so you can’t be sued. That is a huge advantage. And ai the way, if they’re actually acting as a platform, as a proponent of free speech, almost as a free speak absolutist, that’s a great thing. The problem was a lot of these entities were then becoming publishers. They were throttling things they didn’t like.
Speaker: 2
06:45
They were taking down opinions they didn’t support, that sort of thing. And so what you had was Joe Biden saying maybe there’s criminal liability. You saw these text messages in the lawsuit from from Rob Flaherty, who’s the deputy communications director of the White House, cussing these guys out, saying, you you need to know that from the highest levels of the White House, we see this.
Speaker: 2
07:03
You’re not doing enough. And so as much as I think some of the the people at these big tech companies were willing participants, there was a coercion that was happening. And that’s the basis of the lawsuit, which was we all know the government can’t censor speak, but you also can’t outsource that censorship to private companies, which is exactly what was going down.
Speaker: 2
07:22
And I think exposing that was really important. Of course, Elon and all the work that he’s done in making that a true free speech platform then, and then, of course, the congressional hearings that followed. I think all of this has sort of laid the groundwork for this kind of free speech renaissance that we’re experiencing.
Speaker: 2
07:38
One of the things, you know, when I was in college, you know, in the late nineties, I was, I was always pretty conservative. One thing I was kinda jealous of of liberals was that they kinda had the high ground on free speech. They’re viewed as sort of ai the vanguard, and even the ACLU actually did things like protect free speech. That’s all gone now.
Speaker: 2
07:56
Like, that there’s no like, it’s about power and control and limiting and labeling things misinformation, disinformation to to suppress speech. So I think it’s an interesting moment right now for this new coalition that came together to elect president Trump, which is, for me, exciting.
Speaker: 2
08:11
It’s kind of a working class coalition.
Speaker: 1
08:12
So Just a steel meh, senator. We know that our foreign adversaries, this is bipartisan for many decades, interfere in our elections. We know they do that. You would agree. Yeah. The same, like, something certainly
Speaker: 2
08:24
would try to influence of course.
Speaker: 1
08:25
Ai. Right. Of course, we could be like, hey. Is it possible in 50 different states with 50 different set of regulations? Pretty hard to actually tip an election, as we’ve seen. Right? If you look at that, if we steel meh a foreign adversary because this is the cover that they were seeking. Hey. We’re doing this to protect America and democracy.
Speaker: 1
08:45
But the truth was, you know, they were doing it for their own personal reasons and their affiliation with one particular party. If you just look at the percentage of people who are Democrats at those companies, it’s ai eighty, ninety, 95%. So I think we all agree on that. Is there a way for the FBI, for the CIA, for our government to say to Twitter, to Facebook, hey, you’ve got people here who are foreign adversaries.
Speaker: 1
09:09
They’re doing something, that is against the American public. We need you to monitor this account and take them down. What would have been the proper channel as opposed to setting up a covert back channel where they kinda threatened them? One layer here that I’ve never heard anybody connect, but when I was listening to your, Tucker interview, it just dawned on me. They also put Lean to Khan in.
Speaker: 1
09:31
Now Zuckerberg is a cutthroat business executive. He likes to buy companies. That’s his thing. And Twitter was known for buying a lot of companies. So now you got Lean to Khan saying, we’re gonna we’re gonna come down hard on you, not let you buy anything.
Speaker: 1
09:42
And at the same time, this other group from the Biden administration is saying, hey, take this stuff down. So they had two really big clubs to to to threaten these folks. But what would be the proper channels to say, hey. These things are stolen. Right?
Speaker: 2
09:57
Yeah. There’s there’s a difference between sort of making people aware, versus the coercion, that was happening under the threat of investigations or losing section two thirty protections. Right? That was that was that was our argument, which was this went beyond informing.
Speaker: 2
10:13
And this was about colluding and and coercing, which, of course, then crosses the line of what the government can do, you know, as far as violating the First Amendment. There’s also to your point, there’s a couple of things that are happening at the same time here. The first is ai of this, honestly, is kind of legacy of the whole Russiagate hoax stuff in that they concocted this, this theme, that is playing out now.
Speaker: 2
10:40
Like, Tulsi Gabbard is exposing a lot of stuff. But that gave them the in their view, that gave them the guys to talk about Russia this, Russia that, everything that they don’t like is misinformation, disinformation. Right? The other thing that was happening with Zuckerberg in particular you know, you gotta remember. If you go back to 2016, a lot of people blamed him.
Speaker: 2
10:57
If he didn’t like Trump, they blamed him because they thought that somehow, what was happening on Facebook contributed to his election, and it shouldn’t have happened. But then, of course, he he then is part of the whole Zuckerbucks movement in the lead up to to 2020. Then he comes back around, and Biden’s in office, then he’s pressured.
Speaker: 2
11:15
And and he kind of, you know, on the road on Joe Rogan, kinda talks about the the the lengths at which they went to pressure him. And now it seems as though maybe he’s been red pill pilled again. I don’t really know where that’s at.
Speaker: 1
11:27
No. No. No. He I can tell you. He’s a weathervane. That’s just how you know which way the wind’s blowing. Right. So, yeah, like, it’s out of his feet. Behind his
Speaker: 2
11:34
disappointment. Interesting, like, him as sort of this ai of, maybe that’s the right word of kinda how this was vacillating from from one place to the next. But the point is
Speaker: 1
11:42
If Kamala won
Speaker: 0
11:43
I’ll I’ll give you he would
Speaker: 1
11:44
have been all in for Kamala. 100%, he would have been at the inauguration for her. He would have donated it to her. Trust meh, we know him. It’s my opinion.
Speaker: 0
11:51
Well, I I give him I give him a little more more credit in in the following sense, is that Zuckerberg gave a speech a while back where he talked about how social networking was the fourth estate. And you’ve got the media, and then you’ve got social networking, and it’s very disruptive, and therefore people want to censor it.
Speaker: 0
12:07
And he basically supported that we should have freedom of speech for social networking like we do for the press because it’s equally important. And I think that is his actual view. It’s just that the question is, you know, how much stomach does he have for fighting the government when it’s pressuring him and coercing him, and some other part of the government is basically threatening to break up his company.
Speaker: 0
12:29
Right? Yeah. Right. Like a fifth estate. Right?
Speaker: 0
12:32
And so I think that if he wasn’t being pressured by the government at all and just left his own devices, I think he’d be fairly pro free speak, but I just think that he wasn’t really willing to take up the banner and fight the way that Elon was. You know? And and
Speaker: 1
12:47
he really isn’t in that speak. Because he ain’t telling Elon. He cares about his stock price. He cares about money. This is my interpretation. And he’s gonna protect the franchise and the stock price.
Speaker: 0
12:57
What most business people would do. I mean, I think Elon was an outlier in terms of being willing to fight for principle, which is why I think that going back to the central premise of Biden v Missouri, when the government is jawboning these companies, instructing them to take down content or highly suggesting it and basically threatening that there’ll be repercussions if they don’t, Most business people are gonna give into that.
Speaker: 1
13:18
Of course. Yeah. And it
Speaker: 0
13:19
is and it is de facto censorship.
Speaker: 2
13:21
Well, and if you think about it too, I mean, there’s just a couple of things if they didn’t happen, all of this stuff would still be considered a conspiracy theory or we wouldn’t know about it. Like, if we didn’t, nobody else had ai. If we didn’t file that lawsuit and seek discovery, and if the richest guy on the planet doesn’t choose to buy Twitter and expose all of that, people would still be claiming that this was some conspiracy theory.
Speaker: 2
13:43
Right? Like, we wouldn’t if you just think of the world would be a much different place right now. And so I think that’s a big success.
Speaker: 0
13:50
Well, I agree. And just to take you all back, you’re exactly right that conservatives were called crazy and conspiracy theorists for believing that Twitter, you know, then Twitter, was shadow banning and throttling traffic. And I remember when Elon took over, you know, we had the Twitter transition and Jay Tyler and I were there, and, we were just helping out first couple of weeks.
Speaker: 0
14:12
And it was mostly just getting org charts and trying to rationalize the org structure and Elon went in and started making cuts. But then Ai think I left around Thanksgiving and we were all kind of with our families and, you know, I think we went down to Mexico. And Elon was still there working. And I remember I got a text from him at, like, two in the morning, like, are you up? You up? You up.
Speaker: 0
14:36
You
Speaker: 1
14:36
up? And, I’m like ai be a banger.
Speaker: 0
14:38
Yeah. I’m like, sure. Yeah. So anyway, he calls. And basically what he told me was that all the conspiracy theories are true. That we’ve now gone into the admin tools that the trust and safety team was using, and they literally have check boxes to throttle accounts based on exclude them from search, and they had all these different tools that they created, again, to throttle traffic, which was effectively shadow banning.
Speaker: 0
15:01
So they could just ban you ai, or they could prevent your content from being seen. In other words, everything that conservatives had claimed was true.
Speaker: 1
15:10
And to just to to add to that, senator, before you respond, the thing that’s particularly interesting about this is you talked about two thirty. We want platforms to have two thirty. But when you start making editorial decisions, when you’re the New York Times and you say, hey, this is going on the front page, it’s an editorial decision.
Speaker: 1
15:24
When you assign the story, that’s an editorial decision. The two thirty was given to platforms that didn’t make editorial decisions. This is an editorial decision to say Milo Yiannopoulos or Laura Loomer or Alex Jones, whatever the reason is. They could be anti Semitic. They could be crazy.
Speaker: 1
15:40
They could, you know Or
Speaker: 2
15:41
the president of The United States, which was ultimately a great
Speaker: 1
15:43
ram one for sure. Yeah. I guess there’s a lot of good questions there.
Speaker: 0
15:46
This is one of the things that Elon had done that very day was he opened up the Twitter jails and let Trump back onto the platform. And I think there were some others. Jordan Peterson was censored. Jay Baracharya.
Speaker: 1
15:58
Ai Arya sai. You did let a couple of crazy people back onto.
Speaker: 0
16:02
No. All the bad boys of free speech were let out. Yeah. I I mean, it was Trump, Tate, Jordan Peterson, Jay Bellatoria, folks like
Speaker: 1
16:09
that. Sai don’t think The
Speaker: 0
16:11
public doesn’t need to be protected from any of these people.
Speaker: 1
16:13
I mean I mean, Milo Yiannopoulos and Alex Jones, you may find them loathsome or funny or anything in between, but it is freedom of speech. But, senator, this has led to a discussion of two thirty being repealed, and this is where I think, you know, the lawsuit you did and there could be further work is clarifying the nuance of two thirty.
Speaker: 1
16:33
Should an algorithm meh facto be an editorial decision? So if you have an algorithm and you say, hey, I’m gonna show you more MAGA stuff. I’m gonna show you more AOC. That’s an editorial decision in my mind. Should that break section two thirty?
Speaker: 1
16:50
If somebody decides to build an algorithm that shapes the content you see when you open the app, just like the New York Times editors do.
Speaker: 2
16:58
Right. That’s sort of like in in the last ai of defense book, it’s sort of ai, what are the solutions are? We talk about what’s the proper role of section two thirty. Because I actually think if you are a true platform as somebody, again, that believes in free speech, it’s a very important thing.
Speaker: 2
17:09
One of the concerns like, I’m I’m not a doomsday guy on on AI. I think there’s, think you can add to human flourishing. I think it can actually make us more productive, and there’s a lot of there’s a lot of opportunities that roll with it. One of the things I’m most concerned, though, is about censorship creeping in to AI. Right?
Speaker: 2
17:27
And so I think you have to be very clear that if you’re going to start making these out whether it’s, you know, somebody individually is flagging it or you have an algorithm that is essentially excluding 50% of the points of view, you should not get the multibillion dollar subsidy that effectively what section two thirty protection is.
Speaker: 2
17:45
Right? It’s a huge advantage, and it should. And ai the way, I’m all for that. But I think this manipulation that, by the way, is sort of sewn in the arts.
Speaker: 1
17:53
Though the algorithm because you know what an algorithm is.
Speaker: 2
17:55
You’re Yeah.
Speaker: 1
17:56
Like, a tech savvy ai, and it’s great enough senators. Who are
Speaker: 2
17:59
But you can’t, but but, like, just like government can’t
Speaker: 1
18:02
algorithm that’s designed to produce a certain output, how can you have that coexist with two thirty ai my question. I have my own answers, but I’m curious in in your answer.
Speaker: 2
18:10
Ai. I think I think you gotta get back to one of the first amendment principles, which is it has to be content neutral. That’s how I view it. Now you can have protections that you you know, you there are certain public safety protections that are gonna be in play. You could have protections against people, you know, sort of pedophilia that that, you know, would violate terms of service.
Speaker: 2
18:27
Sai there is a way ai
Speaker: 1
18:28
laws. Right? I mean Correct. Yeah.
Speaker: 2
18:29
And but I also think what’s interesting is when you go back and look at this case, the pressure on the platforms wasn’t just about phrases. They made them alter terms of service to actually meet what the desired outcomes that they wanted. And and also and and David, you guys were you saw this.
Speaker: 2
18:47
Interestingly, the kind of how deep the rot really was. Let’s just take Twitter for an example. James Baker who’s James Baker? James Baker was the general counsel for the FBI during the Hunter Ai, or I’m sorry, the briefings during the Russiagate back then, at the 2016. He then, after a stint at, some think tank, becomes the general counsel at Twitter.
Speaker: 0
19:08
He was the one inside Twitter, we now know from the Twitter files, was advocating to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story, even though he should have known, based on his time at the FBI, that the laptop was authentic, I e it was Hunter Biden’s actual laptop. And the grounds upon which that story was censored was that the laptop was Russian disinformation.
Speaker: 0
19:34
This was the tried and true tactic for years is that any speech that was inconvenient and that Democrats wanted to censor, they just called Russian disinformation, even though the Russians had nothing to do with that laptop.
Speaker: 2
19:47
And and to dig even further into that, what’s interesting is so Elvis Chan is the guy at the FBI in, in in late two thousand 2019, 02/2020, is briefing the big tech companies, monthly, at least monthly, then it becomes weekly. And and we took his deposition in the Missouri versus Biden lawsuit, and it was kinda shah. You read about it in the book.
Speaker: 2
20:09
But, like, what he what he talked about was they had the they had the Hunter Biden laptop in in November 2019. The FBI did. They knew it was real. Like, they’re they knew it was real. It’s Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Speaker: 2
20:22
Yole Roth, as you remember, who was, like, the integrity guy at Twitter, signs an affidavit with the FEC after complaint was filed against Twitter, noting specifically that the FBI was telling them that this could be a Hunter Biden. So this wasn’t just gonna be some random hack and leak operation for the Russians. It was related specifically to Hunter Biden.
Speaker: 1
20:40
Senator, in fairness, the Russians did hack Hillary Clinton’s email. That was confirmed. And
Speaker: 0
20:45
We don’t know that.
Speaker: 1
20:46
We of course, we do. The FBI confirmed it. Absolutely was confirmed.
Speaker: 0
20:49
That’s I think that’s all part of the hoax.
Speaker: 1
20:51
Oh, okay. Well, let me give you a couple of reasons why I could see the New York Post, or Ai sorry. We could see the platform saying, if the FBI calls and says it’s a Russian hack, and we’ve had a bunch of Russian hacks before, and the president said, you should, hey, Russia.
Speaker: 1
21:09
If you’re listening, send me the emails. And you had Paul Manafort be indicted
Speaker: 0
21:15
You’re like the half person who believes in this Russiagate hoax. No. No.
Speaker: 1
21:18
No. I’m not gonna keep my point.
Speaker: 0
21:19
Which is the laptop was authentic and the other guy knew was off the net.
Speaker: 1
21:22
Finish mine. Let me finish mine and you can give me the key point and tell me why I’m wrong. There was a bunch of noise around Russia. I think Russia did this on purpose to cause chaos here. I don’t think they cared who got in. I think they just want chaos. That’s my sana view.
Speaker: 1
21:34
But if you were Twitter and the FBI calls and says, hey, this was hacked and we have these previous instances of hacking that the FBI has confirmed and has told the world this is what happened and you have Paul Manafort being indicted, and you have all this other noise. It’s a reasonable thing for Facebook or Twitter in my mind to say, okay, maybe we wait a speak. Maybe this is ai the the Russians really are doing this.
Speaker: 1
21:57
I don’t blame them as meh. Do you?
Speaker: 2
21:59
Well, the truth is, like, there’s parallel tracks here. First of all, we know now, that the Russia that that Trump was some some Russian asset. Oh, that’s totally fake. That’s ai it like, it’s
Speaker: 1
22:12
not an asset. We all agree on that.
Speaker: 2
22:13
It it did it didn’t happen, But they use that, of course, then to spy on a presidential candidate. That’s what Barack Obama did. And then you had, of course, Brennan and Clapper and Comey continue this and really tried to sidetrack a a presidential administration. So I I think indictments are probably coming.
Speaker: 2
22:31
That’s a sort of a separate issue. The reality is because if because, you know, even though statute of limitation may have expired, a conspiracy, if ongoing, the statute of limitation has not expired. So we’ll see where that all goes. But if you’re making the point that the government shouldn’t be having that much, influence in coercing and threatening these big tech companies, I would agree with you that that’s a violation of the first amendment.
Speaker: 2
22:55
My point is I just the the the idea that the big big tech was so willingly going along with all this, though, right, is a little scary. These are some of the biggest companies in the history of the world. And the idea that something that the FBI knew to be true wasn’t out there for the American people to sort of weigh in on ten days before an election is ai Orwellian.
Speaker: 1
23:15
But that’s on the FBI, I think. Yeah.
Speaker: 2
23:17
Not the clock force. Ai totally unclean hands here. There’s no doubt about that.
Speaker: 0
23:21
Okay. Yeah. Let me jump in here with a couple of points. So okay. Let let’s just focus on this Hunter Biden story because I think there is a very plausible argument that the censorship of this story could have swung the results of the twenty twenty election. Okay? Because the Hunter Biden laptop showed a bunch of shady foreign business dealings between the Biden family and China and Ukraine and other countries.
Speaker: 0
23:46
And if that had been properly examined by the media instead of being censored by social media meh days before the election, who knows what the outcome would have been? So this was a major, major deal. Now why did that story get censored? We now know from the Twitter ai, this is the reporting of Matt Taibbi, who was given access to the Twitter files, that ai Eric is saying, the FBI knew in late twenty nineteen that the laptop was real because they had it in their possession and therefore authenticated it, what was their reaction to it?
Speaker: 0
24:16
In my view, they could have done three different things. Number one is they could have investigated the crimes that were suggested by the evidence on that laptop. They didn’t do that. Number two is they could have just sat on it and done nothing. They didn’t do that.
Speaker: 0
24:27
They did number three, which is they basically began a campaign to suppress the contents of the laptop. How do they do that? Elvis Chan, representing the FBI, was engaged in weekly meetings with these social networks. Again, this is from the Twitter files. And Elvis Chan represented the intelligence community.
Speaker: 0
24:45
One of the the emails described his group as the belly button of the conduit between the social networks and the intelligence community. And remember, Elvis Chan had something like 80 FBI agents who were submitting takedown requests to Twitter Yep. And other social networks.
Speaker: 0
25:02
So this is the scale of the censorship that was happening. In any event, in these weekly IC meetings, and a lot of the evidence has been destroyed because they were using that disappearing tool, teleport. In any event, in these weekly meetings, we now know that they were warning the social networks, be on the lookout for a Russian disinformation campaign in which Hunter Biden is accused of something.
Speaker: 0
25:27
And so they, for months, were priming the social networks to view any story, any revelations about Hunter Biden as being Russian disinformation. Now, why were they doing that? In fact, there was at one point, there was what was called a, quote, unquote, tabletop exercise where all the heads of trust and safety of these social networks were brought I think they were brought to the Aspen Institute, and they literally ran a tabletop exercise where they said, okay.
Speaker: 0
25:54
Two weeks before the election, the Russians are gonna do an oppo dump on Hunter Biden. What’s your response to that gonna be? And where they all ended up is that they would censor the story. I mean, this is, like, crazy Orwellian stuff. I mean, this
Speaker: 1
26:08
sense for just a steel sana, for them to want to do the right thing if the FBI is telling them it’s Russian disinformation.
Speaker: 0
26:16
Oh, I don’t blame the social networks. They would find
Speaker: 1
26:18
That’s what I’m try that’s the only point I’m trying to make. Believe in and Zuckerberg went on Rogan.
Speaker: 0
26:21
Remember when Bryden. Remember when Zuckerberg went on Rogen and he said, the reason why we censor that story is because the FBI had told us to. Most people in that situation would have believed the FBI.
Speaker: 1
26:31
All three of us would.
Speaker: 0
26:32
The point is, though, that the FBI again, they could have investigated the crimes on the laptop. They could have sat on the laptop and done nothing. That’s not what they did. Instead, they began this campaign to discredit the eventual revelations What happened? As Russian information.
Speaker: 1
26:47
Senator, what happened to those individuals at the Ai? I’m curious if you can get to that as well, who were involved in all this. Were they ever brought up on charges?
Speaker: 2
26:54
No. Did we ever figure out who
Speaker: 1
26:56
they are?
Speaker: 2
26:56
There there needs to be accountability here because I Ai also think it’s important to point out that so take CISA, which is the ai infrastructure security agency. No one’s ever heard of it. It was created effectively to protect infrastructure from ai. In that era when Trump was bryden underground, they work on, under the guise of Russian disinformation, what’s called the election integrity project. So they work with Stanford.
Speaker: 2
27:20
They work with University of Washington to flag posts to work with social media companies. Then when you get into COVID, they just flip the switch and turn it on any you know, if you’re questioning the efficacy of the vaccine or you’re questioning the efficacy of masks, they turn that around in the American people too.
Speaker: 2
27:35
So part of the point that’s outlined in the book, Last Line of Defense, which you can order right now on Amazon, the part of the point was exposing all this was this was a Leviathan. This wasn’t just ai one person making a phone call. This was all these agencies that were lined up with the regime’s narrative and then working and coercing and threatening social media companies.
Speaker: 2
27:56
You will take this down or there will be consequences. And so, you know, the CDC I mentioned the CDC. What were they doing? The government went to them and said, tell us the phrases that you want us to flag and take down, and and then we will work with social media companies effectively, right, to go do that.
Speaker: 2
28:13
And so the FBI was involved in this. CISA was involved with this. The CDC was involved with this. And then, of course, when, we had the opportunity to take Anthony Fauci’s deposition at NIH, that was mind blowing. It’s only the second time his deposition was taken, and we find out all the links at which he went to to undermine people.
Speaker: 2
28:32
Like, by the way, doctor Jay Bhattacharya, who was a plaintiff in Missouri versus Biden with me, to undermine his efforts to say things like, well, natural immunity is kind of a thing still. I mean, they tried to take down this guy’s career and anybody like that who would just sort of question anything other than what Anthony Fauci said.
Speaker: 2
28:49
So it it really was a time that was wild and crazy, and we can’t ever let happen again. That’s the sort of the point. And and for me, as you guys Sai I know believe this is a long is a I I told Jason first time, long time on the show now. The be the the first amendment really is the beating heart of the constitution.
Speaker: 2
29:08
One of the great tests of this American experiment is our ability to tolerate people’s point of view or their expression, of a point of view that we vehemently disagree with even if we think it’s dangerous. Like, that’s really a big part of what this whole thing’s about. And what you saw during COVID in particular was people who, who had, who never should have this power were exercising in ways that you would have thought was from another country.
Speaker: 2
29:32
You know what I mean? Like, this couldn’t happen here, but it was happening here.
Speaker: 1
29:36
I don’t I don’t know if you remember the foil lady. Literally, the person who was supposed to be policing, and making sure that things are on the up and up, at the CDC was teaching them, allegedly, how to use hacker speak or their personal email addresses to subvert freedom of information
Speaker: 0
29:56
Right.
Speaker: 1
29:57
Requests. I mean, I’ll put allegedly in front of it, but I think this was all, you know, discoverable and it was in the email. She just taught people how to lie and how to subvert FOIA requests. So when you start saying Orwellian, it does feel like this absolute power has that ability to absolute corruption.
Speaker: 0
30:14
The NGOs that are part of this Ai. I think that is a really important part of it because I think that one of the ways that the Biden administration was able to ai create cover for the censorship they wanted is to kinda launder those censorship requests through some of these NGOs in addition to using the FBI and the IC and their connections to trust and safety.
Speaker: 0
30:35
One NGO in particular I sana talk about or ask about is Hamilton sixty eight. Did you did you look at this at all, Eric, or
Speaker: 2
30:42
Remind me which one Hamilton sixty eight is.
Speaker: 0
30:44
The reason I ai to talk about this one is this idea of Russian disinformation because Hamilton sixty eight was another one of these groups. This is all exposed to Matt Taibbi’s reporting where it was set up by another former FBI official named Clint Watts. You know, these former FBI guys are arya kinda all over. And they claimed that they were tracking 600 or so Russian disinformation accounts, or bots.
Speaker: 0
31:10
And they claimed to know which accounts these were, and they would put out stories that whenever there was a story that Democrats didn’t like, they would accuse the Russians of being behind it, amplifying that story. And this was the the source for thousands of MSNBC stories, thousands of CNN reports, and so on, claiming that the Russians were involved in our politics.
Speaker: 0
31:33
They were engaging in disinformation. Well, why why is this relevant? Well, during the Twitter files, we found out there was, Yoel Roth, who you mentioned was the head of trust and safety and definitely not a conservative. There was correspondence inside of Twitter saying, hey. We looked at their so called API, and these are just regular accounts. And he said, basically, this is all bullshit.
Speaker: 0
31:52
I mean, I think he used that word, bullshit. In other words, the whole idea they were tracking Russian accounts was just total nonsense. These were you know, it was just a random smattering of some were conservative accounts, some were Canadian accounts. They were just random accounts.
Speaker: 0
32:05
And saloni time they needed to oppose conservative opinion on an issue, they would just supposedly point to this Hamilton sixty eight dashboard. Hamilton sixty eight created this dashboard that supposedly showed, you know, this, vast Russian influence campaign. It all ended up being nonsense.
Speaker: 2
32:22
Well, and I think it totally created
Speaker: 0
32:24
out of thin air.
Speaker: 1
32:25
I think it’s There’s a long track record of the Russians hacking, including the RNC recently. So, you know, I I I do think you arya painting a very one-sided picture here, Sachs.
Speaker: 0
32:36
Maybe it’s all bullshit.
Speaker: 1
32:37
You think the Russians are not hacking foreign adversaries at all?
Speaker: 0
32:41
You don’t believe any of it. Russia’s got a lot of good hackers in it, and I’m sure they have cyber operations and things like that. But, again, that’s a little different than saying that the Russians are heavily involved in our elections. I believe that that was largely a made up story.
Speaker: 0
32:54
Now look, do I wanna say that no Russian ever was involved in some sort of operation? I’m not gonna say that, but we know Hamilton 68 was total nonsense. In fact, it was worse than that. It was a hoax. Okay? It was a hoax.
Speaker: 0
33:06
And for years, it was the basis for thousands of stories that the Russians were interfering in our politics. We also know that the Steele dossier was a hoax, and that was the whole basis, once laundered through the FBI ai that whole investigation, that somehow the Russians had interfered in the two thousand sixteen election.
Speaker: 0
33:21
So when you start to peel away all these bogus accusations, Jason, yeah, I don’t really believe any of this stuff. When I hear the words Russian disinformation, what I hear now is red scare.
Speaker: 1
33:32
Senator, I’m gonna have you, senator, I’m gonna have you chime in here and and maybe balance out our two opinions. Obviously, the Russians have been hacking political organizations in The United States and other countries for decades. They did it to the RNC. They did it to Hillary.
Speaker: 1
33:46
They do it as a tactic. That is a fact. And also, I don’t think anybody thinks, like, Trump is a Manchurian candidate. So you tell me where reality is between The
Speaker: 2
33:58
Chinese do it too. There there’s no question Yeah.
Speaker: 1
33:59
Ai Chinese are big. They’re mature.
Speaker: 2
34:00
Of course. But I think what what separates this though was that now that we know what we know I mean, actually, in the documents that were released by released by Chelsea Gabbard, the director of, national intelligence, was that Hillary Clinton was the preferred candidate. They had the goods on her. They had her medical records, all this stuff.
Speaker: 2
34:15
They so Trump was not like this preferred Putin
Speaker: 1
34:19
The Russians had all that hacked information.
Speaker: 2
34:21
Correct? Yeah. They had that. And so what was done was Hillary Clinton knew that she had an email problem. And then she works with the Joros, George Soros funded, NGO. Right? They come up with this plan to say, well, Trump is is is cozy with Russia. The Steele dossier finds this oppo, whatever is fake oppo. Then they as David said, they laundered through intelligence agents. Then that became the thing.
Speaker: 2
34:44
And I think the problem is and why people have lost trust in a lot of these institutions, in many cases ai so, is because they were really weaponized against political opponents and they were weaponized against the American people. And there’s gonna be have to be a sort of a a lot of accountability, but I think before people gain that trust back.
Speaker: 2
34:59
So I think
Speaker: 1
35:00
That was my next question is how do we get past this? Because we’re sitting here with, like, one group who feels, hey, there’s all these really suspicious Russian connections to Trump and and the people around him.
Speaker: 0
35:11
And, Jason, can’t you hear that this was manufactured? It’s man you have to start with the
Speaker: 1
35:15
Some parts arya manufactured. Yes. And then some parts are very real.
Speaker: 0
35:18
Ai. It was a hoax.
Speaker: 1
35:20
We we meh it. There there’s
Speaker: 0
35:21
there’s Hamilton 68 and all the stories based on it. Manufactured hoax.
Speaker: 1
35:25
How do we get to reality where we
Speaker: 0
35:26
think the process you gotta peel back all the fakeness.
Speaker: 1
35:30
Well, I think also you have to accept that the Russians are hackers and don’t have our best interests at heart, and they actually want to come after us politically, David. Does I hear the Russians
Speaker: 0
35:38
have cyber operations? I’m sure they do.
Speaker: 2
35:40
That
Speaker: 1
35:40
they hacked Hillary’s and, you know, he knows, and this has all been confirmed.
Speaker: 2
35:45
The problem here is that that was used, as a as a as a predicate. Again, this is why it’s it’s so jarring. It was used as a predicate to spy Barack Obama authorizes to spy on a presidential candidate, and then as a predicate then to investigate a a a president in waiting, and then as a predicate to try to destroy his administration.
Speaker: 2
36:08
It was used, and it and it gobbled up so much time in those first two years. That to me is is a pretty unique circumstance. And beyond just, yeah, foreign nations are trying to get information.
Speaker: 1
36:17
There’s Since we’re here, there’s this lawsuit that is now happening, or this investigation, I guess, as a as an attorney and you were the AG. Explain to the American people what the case is right now that they’re going after, you know, with, this Russiagate allegations. And then where is it in the courts?
Speaker: 1
36:37
Give us the mechanics of it, and where do you think it winds up?
Speaker: 2
36:42
So the question is, was there was anything done, illegal, during this sort of Russiagate hoax stuff that could be chargeable? I think you’ve got, ironically, Barack Obama has presidential immunity because of the case that president Trump won at the Supreme Court, which, by the way, my solicitor general at the time in Missouri was John Sauer.
Speaker: 2
37:03
He’s now the solicitor general of The United States. He was also Trump’s lawyer who argued that presidential immunity case, about a year ago. But so, he probably has immunity from official acts when he was in office, but not when he’s out of office. So the the real question will be, sort of, a I think the most likely charge he can make the case is a conspiracy against a conspiracy to defraud The United States.
Speaker: 2
37:30
This is a a very elaborate scheme again to undermine people and and whether they get indictments or not, I think they should pursue them, and and we’ll see if that happens. But I think that, like, the most likely targets of that are Comey, Clapper, and Brennan, for their role.
Speaker: 1
37:48
And they’re being accused of what exactly?
Speaker: 2
37:50
Of manipulating this of meh and manipulating these falsehoods into actionable intelligence, again, against the president of The United States, Donald Trump.
Speaker: 1
38:00
What are they being charged with, I guess, is what I’m getting at, or has
Speaker: 2
38:02
that not made to that point? Yeah. You can’t be the head of the FBI or the head of the CIA and have information you know is false to then open up a criminal investigation against the president, which is what happened. Right? And so that’s a ai of a big thing. So, again, most people would say probably the statute of limitations has has run on on many of those charges.
Speaker: 2
38:25
But, again, an ongoing conspiracy is something different. And ai the way, the conspiracy doesn’t need to involve you from point a to point z once you sort of begin the conspiracy. So, like, you know, again, it just go down this rabbit hole a little bit. Like, what was Jack Smith looking for at Mar A Lago, when he went down there?
Speaker: 2
38:47
Like, he’s probably looking for some of the, the information related to the Steele dossier that they thought that he probably took with him. I don’t know that for certain, but that’s certainly a plausible explanation. So this and, again, you have to remember, Jason, that president Trump leaves office.
Speaker: 2
39:03
He announces he’s running for president in the 2022. Three days later, a few things happen then. The assistant district attorney in Atlanta in a state case visits the White House counsel’s office. The number three person at DOJ leaves the Department of Justice and goes work for Alvin Bragg, who then later brings a case against president Trump.
Speaker: 2
39:24
Jack Smith is appointed as special counsel who’s in prosecutor world, you know, he’s this hired gun. He goes out and tries to put president Trump in jail for the rest of his life. They try to bankrupt his family. So, like, it it is very obvious to anyone paying attention that this lawfare that was aimed against Donald Trump was meant to make sure he never got back in office again.
Speaker: 2
39:44
And ai the way, if he never got back in office again, all this stuff that Tulsi Gabbard discovered and and laid out there that Cash Patel found in burn bags wouldn’t be out in the open. So much like how we expose the corruption in Missouri versus Biden, I think that’s kinda where we’re at right ai.
Speaker: 1
39:59
This is a big jump, though, because the FBI raid on Mar A Lago was because Trump wouldn’t give back these, specific documents that
Speaker: 2
40:07
Right. What were the documents they were looking for? Right? What were the documents they were looking for?
Speaker: 1
40:10
And that he was obstructing justice and that they were, you know, needing video cameras, etcetera.
Speaker: 2
40:16
And that case didn’t didn’t get past a a motion to dismiss. Ai.
Speaker: 1
40:19
You’re making the jump from that that they were looking for something related to the Steele dossier. And Trump could have just given those documents meh. So I always wondered in that one ai he just didn’t give the documents back. Like, why was he so steadfast against He
Speaker: 2
40:33
didn’t classify anything as president, which was the likely scenario, but they but they did it anyway. I mean, I think
Speaker: 1
40:37
But why would he just I mean, if you were advising him, would you just tell him, like, hey. Just give the documents back?
Speaker: 2
40:41
Like I think he was in touch with the archivist, and and that was an ongoing conversation. And then Jack Smith, with the federal prosecutor down in in Florida, moved with guns to seize these documents. Right? I mean, it’s very unusual.
Speaker: 1
40:56
Dramatic for sure. I just don’t I I mean, I just never understood why he just didn’t give the documents back. It would just I mean, I know Trump does unique things in the world and but I would’ve just given the documents back, which is what every other president did when they were asked to give documents back.
Speaker: 2
41:10
Sure. But except, remember, Joe Biden, who wasn’t ever president, he was vice president, who can’t declassify ai, had
Speaker: 0
41:17
boxes and boxes
Speaker: 1
41:17
of meh
Speaker: 2
41:17
in his garage where Hunter Biden lived. So he boxes and boxes of classified ai in his garage where a Honda ai lived. So, you mean, he
Speaker: 1
41:22
had no idea what you’re
Speaker: 0
41:23
down to now, J. Cal. You started believing that Trump was a Russian ass, that he was a Russian spy based yeah. You did. You you were tweeted at the time for years.
Speaker: 1
41:32
No. No. I didn’t I if I I always thought that was, like, a crazy concept that
Speaker: 0
41:36
they didn’t mention. Tweets, but you did.
Speaker: 1
41:37
No. No. I always thought
Speaker: 0
41:38
ai were fooled by the media. It’s okay. Sai always thought you were fooled.
Speaker: 1
41:41
Ai sai this very clear on the pod. I always believed the Russians wanted to create chaos, like we’re experiencing here in this discussion amongst Americans to distract us and that they would do it even handily with anybody. They would do it
Speaker: 0
41:54
with creating the chaos were actually the people who perpetrated this coup attempt against the president, the people who perpetrated the Hamilton 68 dashboard fraud. Those are the people who perpetrated the chaos.
Speaker: 1
42:05
Sure. I I I think if
Speaker: 0
42:06
the Russians were having the evidence No. No. The Russians are hacking specific evidence. You don’t have specific evidence of a Russian hack. Go read Matt Tabey’s reporting.
Speaker: 1
42:15
I just gave it to
Speaker: 0
42:15
you. Refuted.
Speaker: 1
42:16
I just gave it to you. The the RNC the head of the RNC said, meh. We were hacked. Our our our, partners were hacked. They they they explicitly said this. This is all facts, David. But anyway, we got the we got the senator here. We we can have our our Russia gate debate forever. You could tell me that I think Trump’s a Russian asset. I don’t think Trump’s a Russian asset.
Speaker: 1
42:34
I think that’s insane. But I do think the Russians like to cause chaos. Moving on.
Speaker: 0
42:37
Bryden. I believe it was Brennan. And these Tulsi documents that just got released, here’s what I think is so notable about them, I mean, other people may have their own opinion, is that it shows that I think there’s a there’s a document there where Brennan Brennan ai, like, the head of the CIA.
Speaker: 0
42:52
Correct. He received an intelligence assessment from the organization in which they said, look, there’s nothing to this. It’s bogus. We haven’t The
Speaker: 1
43:00
Stiell dossier, you’re saying?
Speaker: 0
43:02
Not just the Stiell dossier, but the whole idea of somehow that the Russians had run this elaborate interference operation in the two thousand sixteen election, and that somehow Trump was compromised. In other words, the intelligence analysts did their job and came up with the correct conclusion.
Speaker: 1
43:19
Mhmm.
Speaker: 0
43:19
And nonetheless, Brennan said that the Steele dossier should be included in the official intelligence assessment because it had the, quote, ring of truth to it. Okay? So he was advised by his own analysts that this was nonsense, and yet he pushed to include it in the official intelligence report, and then that became the basis for opening the investigation.
Speaker: 0
43:43
You see how this worked?
Speaker: 1
43:47
Allegedly, and we’ll find out. He’ll have their day in court. I mean, I’m totally fine.
Speaker: 0
43:51
This is what’s in the documents.
Speaker: 1
43:52
Well, I mean, we’ll find out if this is a, a theatrical exercise or if it’s actually gonna go to court. What do you think?
Speaker: 2
44:00
Ai think it’ll go to court. I think this is, and and by the way, I think it’s one of the reasons why they were so obsessed in making sure president Trump never got back into office. One of the reasons. I mean, again, in the book, I talk about how there’s this, an emergency, real or perceived, then you other people, and then you try to silence dissent.
Speaker: 2
44:19
I think it happened with COVID. It happened with this anybody that that claimed that Russia didn’t have, you know, that that president Trump wasn’t a Russian asset, was a traitor and a Putin lover. I mean, this stuff, it it’s kinda wild, honestly, but I I think we’re on the other side of the fever dream, and but there does need to be some accountability now.
Speaker: 1
44:36
This is your first ram a senator, I Sai ai?
Speaker: 2
44:38
Yes. Yes. I was elected in 2022. Yep.
Speaker: 1
44:41
I’m curious. One, any great stock tips? Two, because we You have to
Speaker: 0
44:47
call We’re always here with the Russiagate now? Is that We’re just trying to
Speaker: 1
44:51
get some inside information to trade on number two.
Speaker: 0
44:54
Ai. I think one of the reasons why the Russia we can stop talking about Russiagate. But I think one of the reasons why it was so important. First of all, it was effectively a coup against the president of The United States because these were executive branch officials who owe a duty of loyalty to the elected president.
Speaker: 0
45:10
Instead, they were working to subvert and undermine and based on essentially, lies and and hoaxes and manufactured material. I mean, that is that is basically the definition of a of a coup. So I think that is a big deal in and of vatsal, but I think the other reason why it’s such a big deal is I do think that it helped create this intense Russophobia in The United States that has led us to the point we’re at right now, which is we are basically in a war with Russia, or at least we’re backing Ukraine in a war with Russia.
Speaker: 0
45:40
And actually, you heard this at the Alaska Sana. I think that this whole Russiagate thing, which we now know is completely bogus, poisoned relations between The United States and Russia for years because the media kept reporting this bogus idea that somehow Trump was a Russian asset and somehow they had interfered in our elections.
Speaker: 0
45:58
And I think this helped create a a very hostile relationship between The United States and Russia.
Speaker: 1
46:05
Clearly, Russiagate led to the Putin
Speaker: 0
46:09
invading Ukraine. It led to it led to him crossing the border and
Speaker: 1
46:13
murdering It
Speaker: 0
46:13
led to a souring of the relationship. It led to a souring of the relationship, and it led to
Speaker: 1
46:19
doesn’t justify his murderous campaign in Ukraine, David. You would agree.
Speaker: 0
46:22
I’m not that’s not the argument I’m making.
Speaker: 1
46:24
I know. I’m but I’m forcing you to agree that he invaded Ukraine and murdered people and he’s a war criminal. And, you know, that those are just facts as well, David. I’m sorry.
Speaker: 0
46:32
I think those are cliches that that basically attempt to strip that complicated war of all of its context so that we can achieve a peaceful solution to it.
Speaker: 1
46:42
And, obviously, but you gotta accept reality.
Speaker: 0
46:45
Obviously, Putin invaded the country, but the conflict there goes back ten years. There’s a long history to it. Yeah. I’m not looking to rehash all of that. The point is we could have worked out a resolution to this conflict maybe before it started if we didn’t have hostile relationships with Russia.
Speaker: 0
46:58
And that’s the point I’m trying to make.
Speaker: 1
47:00
Senator, I’ll give you, the choice. I wanna talk to you about just the senate in general and, and then I sana to talk a little and your experiences there, or we could just go right into what’s happening with this, Russian peace deal and the status we’re doing.
Speaker: 2
47:13
We can do both. I I, I think I was actually I was on a Sunday show yesterday and and, I consider myself firmly in the camp of, being an American realist. I I think that a lot of the people that are really critical of president Trump’s efforts right now have been wrong about foreign policy for a very, very long ai.
Speaker: 2
47:32
Jake Sullivan included, right, who presided over the with the disastrous withdrawal in Afghanistan, who, by basically, on his watch, Russia invaded Ukraine.
Speaker: 1
47:41
Position, senator? What do you think their position is? Like, why are they sai tweaked ai he met with Putin, do you think?
Speaker: 2
47:47
I don’t know, because there is no plan. There’s never been a plan. The only plan they ever had was is that The United States taxpayer would continue to funnel over $200,000,000,000 without a plan. And I had a problem with that in my first couple years. The vice president Vance viewed the world ai similarly with that in in the same way.
Speaker: 2
48:04
I think we ought to focus on our core national interest, the homeland. We have to figure out a way to pivot to China. We have to get our NATO allies to step up in a much more meaningful way. I think one of the great ironies of all this is that, you know, the these European countries who are gonna be at the White House in the Oval Office today, they talk about Putin being this existential threat.
Speaker: 2
48:22
Well, they sure don’t act like it. They don’t, you know, they don’t
Speaker: 1
48:25
They don’t speak like it, you ram?
Speaker: 2
48:27
Correct. And it by the way, if they spent what we spent on national defense, that would free up about $300,000,000,000 for us to focus actually on the Indo Pacific where China now has a bigger navy than we have. Not a better navy, but a bigger navy. There is
Speaker: 1
48:39
This is Trump’s Trump’s biggest accomplishment is probably geopolitically getting NATO, to spend what they’re supposed to spend. Yeah?
Speaker: 2
48:48
Yeah. I went over to, I was actually at the, the, the Munich Security Conference. I went over there. I’m a bit of a contrarian there, I guess. I would say the ascending wing of the Republican Party on this ai of realism versus, this kind of Wilsonian adventurism that’s dominated permanent Washington for a long time just to tell them the truth, which is not what they wanted to hear, but the truth, which is the things I just said.
Speaker: 2
49:09
You need to step up in a meaningful way. You know, if you think about the Cold War, it was meant to sort of prop them up to defeat Soviet communism. Our trade deals were never renegotiated. We never expected much more from them, and all that’s happening now. So this is ai of the place that I’ve been hoping to be.
Speaker: 2
49:24
But I think president Trump’s trying to broker a piece here. The problem with the critics is they just don’t have an alternative. This is a meat grinder. This is a war of attrition. This is what Russia does. That’s what they’ve done for centuries.
Speaker: 2
49:36
So if you’re if you’re if your solution is that, well, we shouldn’t we shouldn’t talk to Putin, I don’t know how you get to a peace deal. Diplomacy means you talk to some people that you would never want your daughter to marry, but, like, you accept the world as it is and try to move forward, and I think that’s what he’s trying to do.
Speaker: 1
49:54
And, David, I think the chances of successfully negotiating anything with a dictator who gets to do whatever he wants is, like, five or 10% on on a good day.
Speaker: 0
50:03
Are you talking about Zelensky?
Speaker: 1
50:04
My lord. You have it in for the the emerging democracy that was invaded by
Speaker: 0
50:10
Zelensky is now in his, shah is it, fifth or sixth year of a four year term? Hold on. No. This is this is just me saying it. I’m not a tree or anyone else.
Speaker: 1
50:17
Know you’re out of your lane.
Speaker: 0
50:19
So Zelensky basically banned opposition political parties. He basically cracked down on
Speaker: 1
50:24
the press. Democracy.
Speaker: 0
50:25
You don’t get you don’t get to be a reporter in Ukraine unless you get a license from the government. He cracked down on, religion, on the Russian Orthodox Church, priests, nuns, sai forth. He’s basically seized the assets of his political opponents. And most importantly, he’s now in the fifth year of a four year term. He canceled elections.
Speaker: 0
50:44
So I’m not quite sure upon what exactly you’re making these highly moralistic condemnations. I just think the conflict is much more complicated than you would like it to be. And, you know, this whole idea that Zelensky represents democracy whereas Putin represents authoritarianism, that’s not what’s going on.
Speaker: 1
51:04
Just statistically, you’re wrong. If you were to look at any of the ratings of democracies in the world, Russia would be amongst the lowest scores, and the Ukraine would be in the high middle scores compared to the truly free countries ai ours.
Speaker: 0
51:18
Vatsal elections, but I’d have to you have to think twice about that since you can’t What’s the emergency democracy? There is no democracy in Ukraine right now. There’s just not
Speaker: 1
51:26
Well, they’re at war. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
51:27
Okay. Fine.
Speaker: 1
51:28
But fighting for their lives.
Speaker: 2
51:29
Yeah. But, Jay, we had we had elections when we were in, you know, the civil war, and we were we were in World War two. We had elections. I I don’t know that that’s a greater sana.
Speaker: 1
51:37
Senator, which is a more democratic country, Ukraine or Russia?
Speaker: 2
51:40
Russia is an authoritarian regime, but I think David makes some like, I will give you one example. When we were going
Speaker: 1
51:45
to the the question. I know I mean, I’m saying you’re
Speaker: 2
51:48
a senator. I’m in. Just just just
Speaker: 0
51:49
a second here. You’re using J. Cal, you’re using democracy as a bumper sticker and a buzzword instead of actually thinking about what it really means. And, actually, if we’re really gonna think about what democracy means, then let’s ask what the people of Ukraine think. That’s what, to me, democracy means.
Speaker: 0
52:03
You actually listen to the people. Gallup just did a survey of the people of Ukraine. Let’s put these numbers on on the screen. This is Gallup. This is and this is before the Alaska Summit, so this was not politically motivated in any way.
Speaker: 0
52:15
And what they found is that Ukrainians have lost their appetite for war. Support for the war has collapsed. A year ago, support for the war was in the sixties or seventies. Now it’s collapsed at 24%. So the vast majority of Ukrainians now want a resolution to the conflict, even if it means making concessions.
Speaker: 1
52:35
Yeah. Ai know. I I I well, I wouldn’t you can’t dispute this. Of course. They’re they’ve got war fatigue ai they should. This is
Speaker: 0
52:40
what democracy means to me is that we should actually listen to the desires of the Ukrainian people.
Speaker: 2
52:45
Russia has five times the people, three times the or three times the people, five times the munitions. They have an industrial base. This you know, for for Ukraine, I think the next step here is, there has to be a negotiated piece here. This this can’t go on forever. Europe is not in a position, I think, to provide what they claim to sana provide. In The United States Of America.
Speaker: 2
53:07
I mean, part of the problem is, and other people have made this point that even if you spent let’s just say we wanted to spend another $100,000,000,000. The industrial base doesn’t exist to build all of the stuff that they need right now anyway. Like, they have a there’s a real problem here, and I think president Trump campaigned on the idea of negotiating the peace. I don’t know why that’s so controversial.
Speaker: 1
53:27
When,
Speaker: 2
53:28
And I’m not saying from you. I’m saying but the pundits
Speaker: 1
53:30
Yeah. No.
Speaker: 2
53:30
It’s like he he’s
Speaker: 1
53:31
a peace citizen.
Speaker: 2
53:32
You know, the idea you know, Russia has nuclear weapons. The idea that he wouldn’t have a one on one conversation
Speaker: 1
53:38
Yeah. That’s why I asked her that question. Like, is there any speak manning of this position that we shouldn’t meet with Putin or, you know, President Xi or Kim Jong Ai. We should obviously meet with all of them. It makes sense if we have even a 1% chance of making forward progress.
Speaker: 1
53:54
When should The United States sana say, enough is enough. We’re out. Figure it out for yourselves. You’ve got the EU right there. You got Europe.
Speaker: 1
54:04
They’ve got plenty of money. But, America’s out. If you wanna buy some weapons, we sell weapons. That’s fine. And I think Trump has done an amazing job of enforcing the loan lease that Biden set these up.
Speaker: 1
54:16
So when we keep saying we’re spending a 100,000,000,000, that’s no longer true. Right? We’re getting all that money back because Trump forced Zelensky to, the negotiating table. We we’re getting all that money back. But when should we, just so we have clear facts here that it’s not costing the American people, you know, this hundreds of billions of dollars anymore, thanks to President Trump, deaf negotiator, I’ll give him credit, where credit is due, but when should you, we, in your mind, step back and say, you know what?
Speaker: 1
54:43
Not our problem anymore. You guys figure it out. Because that seemed ai president JD Vance, sai friend of the pod’s position as well. At some point, we have to say enough and and Trump sort of said that too. He alluded to that. At some point, we’re out.
Speaker: 1
54:56
Are we at that point if this doesn’t get resolved this time around, do you think?
Speaker: 2
55:00
I think yeah. I think that, that’s what this phase is all about, which is to give a legitimate peace process a chance. But the idea that that we’re sana be voting on, I mean, I wouldn’t support it more a taxpayer aid to Ukraine, for a war that, you know, doesn’t seem to look like it’s ever gonna end and is a blank check is just unacceptable as a senator for a state in The United States Of Meh.
Speaker: 2
55:25
Right? Like, it’s just not now president Trump, I think, has opened up avenues to to sort of make it clear to both parties that there’s pressure that could be ramped up to try to bring this to a head. And I think that’s where we’re at. It’s not gonna all happen today. It’s not gonna all happen tomorrow, but that’s really what this diplomacy in in this TikTok age that we live in, I think we think it’s instant gratification.
Speaker: 2
55:46
But diplomacy is difficult when you’re dealing with other countries with their own national interests and their own sort of inner dynamics.
Speaker: 1
55:53
Possible we walk away this year from the situation, you think?
Speaker: 2
55:57
I don’t know. I wouldn’t wanna put a timetable on I would not wanna get in front of the president who’s actually sitting in front of the across the table from these world leaders. But Fair enough. Look. I I think that he’s been pretty clear. This is not our war. It’s not our war. Yeah.
Speaker: 2
56:08
This is in but I think that up to this point, we’ve wanted to try to provide, a time and space for a solution. And I do think if there’s anybody who can do it, it’s Trump. There’s nobody else on the planet. I mean, Macron could not broker this. I mean, you know what I mean? Like, so it’s the last best hope.
Speaker: 2
56:27
My hope is that you do get to a peace process because you’re just gonna have billions of more people die, in really a difficult point.
Speaker: 1
56:34
Sachs? You think we should walk away if we can’t get this resolved with this latest volume of negotiations? Or at some point should we should the president say enough? Because he’s he seems exacerbated based on his public statements about this. He’s kind of exacerbated with the two parties, it seems.
Speaker: 0
56:51
Well, look, you’re asking me what the president should do and I’m not on the foreign policy team.
Speaker: 2
56:56
Right.
Speaker: 0
56:56
I’m not gonna venture in wait into that. But Is
Speaker: 1
56:58
it a possibility?
Speaker: 0
56:59
I’ll just say this. I’ll just say this. Listen to what the Ukrainians want. I mean, Zelensky’s interests may not be the same as his people’s because as long as there’s a war, there’s no election. They’ve canceled democracy over there while the war is going on. And as long as that is true, he stays in power.
Speaker: 0
57:19
So he has incentives that may not be true for all of his people. His people want a negotiated peace.
Speaker: 1
57:26
And you think if, they give up the Donbas and whatever other regions, you know, are on the table here, do you think Putin stops here, or do you think we’ll see him invade another country? Do you worry about that, Sacks? Do you worry that this is enabling his behavior, his worst demons?
Speaker: 0
57:43
I don’t think the Russians have the intention to invade another country, and they don’t have the capability. Look at how much trouble they’ve had. We’re now three and a half years into the war. They’re definitely winning the war, but they’ve only conquered this Eastern part of Ukraine.
Speaker: 0
57:55
They haven’t made it
Speaker: 1
57:56
for them. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
57:57
They haven’t made it to the knee ai. I I don’t even think they can conquer all of Ukraine, or at least it’d be extraordinarily difficult and and resource consuming. So I just think that this threat of of Putin conquering or attempting to invade all of Europe, this is threat inflation.
Speaker: 1
58:12
That’s my, that’s my takeaway from it, senator. It’s ai, Putin couldn’t even take Ukraine? I mean Agree.
Speaker: 2
58:19
Look. This is this is part of the inconsistency of the argument that I’ve heard in in the sana for two and a half years, which is that he’s Hitler, that he’s about ready to march through Europe, and this is a we can’t be Neville Chamberlain, and this is the moment. But at the same time, he can’t get to Kyiv. Right? Like, both things can’t be true at the same ai.
Speaker: 2
58:37
And he’s got Sai, again, I think he just has a record
Speaker: 1
58:40
supposedly recruiting North Koreans to ai it on the front line? I mean, like, what? It’s so humiliating for him. Alright. Listen. Senator, you’re welcome. On the pod anytime. Great having you here. Everybody buy the book. It’s out right now.
Speaker: 0
58:53
I don’t know if this is the interview you were expecting, but
Speaker: 2
58:56
No.
Speaker: 0
58:56
It’s No.
Speaker: 1
58:56
We had a he’s no. I Sai I talked to him before he came on and I said, hey. Listen. Keep it not ai a a monoculture here, like, you know, Tucker and the senator were, like, high fiving the whole interview. But it was great. It was a great interview. It’s a great Tucker classic.
Speaker: 1
59:09
You need to have a little spicier to to take
Speaker: 2
59:12
care of it. Debate. Yeah.
Speaker: 1
59:12
I love free
Speaker: 2
59:13
speech, which is why I wrote the book, The Last Line of Defense.
Speaker: 0
59:16
How to
Speaker: 2
59:16
beat the left and quarter. I’m on Amazon right now.
Speaker: 1
59:19
Yeah. There we go. Alright.
Speaker: 2
59:19
Everyone check
Speaker: 0
59:20
it out.
Speaker: 1
59:20
Like it. Everybody buy the book. Alright. I’ll probably see you next time. Bye bye.
Speaker: 2
59:23
Great, guys. Thanks.
Speaker: 1
59:24
Great job, everybody. It was fun.
Speaker: 2
59:42
Ai a
Speaker: 1
59:42
moderate, truth be tyler. But right now, the Left calls me a MAGA retard, and then the right calls me a Libtard. So the only thing they have in common is they both think
Speaker: 2
59:55
Right.
Speaker: 1
59:56
I’m an idiot. Right. Yeah. So Ai,
Speaker: 0
59:58
well, everybody agrees, then maybe there’s something to it.
Speaker: 1
01:00:01
It could be consensus. We could finally there’s your cold open folks.