← After Party with Emily Jashinsky
After Party with Emily Jashinsky
2025 “After Party” Year in Review: A Look Back at Some of Our Top Interviews and Favorite Moments
01:19:48
On this special episode, Emily Jashinsky takes you behind the scenes of some of our most memorable interviews and how they came to be. After Party launched on June 23, the day after the U.S. strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, and our very first guest was Tucker Carlson. Emily also shares moments from a Megyn Kelly discussion on Pam Bondi and Epstein, Matt Taibbi breaking news on Brennan and Comey, Mike Benz’s take on the Biden DOJ’s efforts to destroy the GOP, and the Adam Carolla comments about Ellen DeGeneres that went viral. Emily wraps up the show with a message of thanks to all our viewers and listeners. See you all soon! Masa Chips: Ready to give MASA or Vandy a try? Get 25% off your first order by going to http://masachips.com/AFTERPARTY and using code AFTERPARTY Cowboy Colostrum: Get 25% Off Cowboy Colostrum with code AFTERPARTY at https://www.cowboycolostrum.com/AFTERPARTY
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Looking for a last minute gift for your people.
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You know, your people, that weird bunch of friends and family that you love dearly.
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Well, here's an easy idea.
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Oregon Lottery Holiday Scratchets.
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Because your people, they're the ones that.
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Amidst all the holiday crowds and endless.
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Notifications, help you find the fun.
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Which calls for a little gift that brings big cheer.
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Oregon Lottery Holiday Scratchets.
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You know where to find them. Grab some today.
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Must be 18 or older to play.
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Lottery games are based on chance and should be played for entertainment only.
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Hey, Ryan Reynolds here wishing you a.
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Very happy half off holiday because right now Mint Mobile is offering you the.
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Gift of 50% off unlimited.
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D
To be clear, that's half price, not half the service.
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Mint is still premium unlimited wireless for a great price.
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So that means half day. Yeah. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment of $45 for three month plan equivalent to $15 per month required new customer.
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Offer for first three months only.
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Speed slow 135 gigabytes of network's busy taxes and fees extra.
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See mintmobile.com foreign. Welcome to a special what do we call this time of year? The time between Christmas and New Year's. A special liminal episode of Afterparty. It's great to be with all of you and I hope you're having a very, very special time with your family and your friends. Now first, if you haven't subscribed yet, give me a little Christmas gift. Wish me a happy New Year. Throw a subscription our way. It means a lot of you subscribe on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. Helps us a ton on the podcast feed. You're going to get episodes of Happy Hour every Friday. That's where I talk to you through the questions that you send in to emily@devilmaycare media.com we appreciate it so much when you send those questions in because it gives me fodder for great discussion on Happy Hour, which drops every Friday around 5pm just in time for you to have a drink. Okay, today's show we are going through a best of because you may or may not remember this afterparty started on June 23. What was happening in mid to late June? Nothing much. Nothing much. Just the 12 day war in Iran. So you may remember at that time there was deep, deep, deep, a very deep divide among those of us on the right about the decision, the Trump administration's decision obviously to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities. And this was before the ceasefire in Gaza as well. So there was deep ongoing disagreement over the the Further prosecution of that war, the US's support for Prime Minister Netanyahu and his government. So just luck of the timing. And I'm actually not making this up because, you know, as we go through this best of, I'm going to give you a little bit of behind the scenes stuff too. I mean, we just aired, I think, our 50th episode of After Party. It's crazy. We started like at the perfect time and truly behind the scenes before we, I think before we even knew what was going to be in the news cycle. In fact, I know before we even knew it was going to be in the news cycle, we said, let's try Tucker Carlson for the first guest. That man is constantly making news. Constantly making news. He's a very compelling guest on any show and he is fascinating to listen to. Now, Tucker happened to be on the episode the Monday we started on Monday, June 23. That was the Monday after, if I'm remembering correctly, Trump made his decision to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities. And everyone, when it was announced that it was Tucker Carlson, my friends were like, how did you pull this off? And I was like, it was booked a week or two ago. So it was perfect, perfect timing. And I think that episode live, I mean, the amount of concurrence we had watching it was probably competitive with cable channels because it was Tucker Carlson. Not cable news channels probably, but cable channels in general. Because here you had Tucker Carlson weighing in live on these questions and he was tossing barbs back and forth with Mark Levin and others. And so everyone was like on tenter hooks waiting to see what Tucker Carlson, who. I asked him in that interview if he had. It was conversations with the President, with the administration. And I think that's a big part of why people were waiting sort of with bated breath to hear from Tucker. Because it's not just that he's an interesting commentator in his own right. He's completely influential with maga and he's influential with the President himself. So to hear from the horse's mouth, so to speak, about some of those discussions behind closed doors about his assessment of the GOP and the White House's decisions just in the last 70, 72 hours at that point, I mean, it was electric. It was electric. And before we went to air, Tucker was advertising ELP to all of us, which you don't use rectally like Zen. ALP is, is not applied rectally, but not enjoyed rectally like Zen. But it was just jolly as can be while pitching ALP to us. Um, and I have, yeah, it's a. It was, it was very, very funny. And then he just was all business in a second. Uh, so we were, we were very lucky to have that as our first interview and appreciate Tucker doing for doing it. Uh, a couple weeks later, we had the great Megyn Kelly, the one and only Megyn Kelly. This is an MK Media show, after all. The MK stands for Megyn Kelly, as you know. So Megan was reacting to Pam Bondi's weird comments about Jeffrey Epstein. This was in early July. It was right after the 4th of July, July 7th. And to have Meghan at that time, who Megan has since said she thinks that Pam Bondi overall is doing a good job. And right now, clearly, unless something's changed between the time I tape this and when it airs, has been continue to have, you know, normal skepticism of power, but confidence in Dan Bongino and, and Cash Patel overall. But this Epstein story was popping and it was bizarre. And having Megan again with her lawyerly instincts to kind of parse the language and try to make sense of what was happening, I found that personally really helpful. I imag a lot of you found that helpful from Megan as well. A couple days later, we had Matt Taibi join to talk about those FBI investigations into John Brennan and James Comey, and then also react to the way the media was spinning it as Trump like, frothing at the mouth, out for blood with absolutely no justification whatsoever. It's all retribution. So Taibi has covered that story very, very closely and skeptically. Speaking of Epstein, by the way, Taibi over at RAC is doing some very uncomfortable journalism when it comes to the Epstein story, if you haven't seen that lately. But this is why we appreciate Matt Daibi, because he doesn't care what people are going to say. He cares about the truth. He cares much more about the truth than he cares about what people are going to say. So I'm expecting that some of what Matt is continuing to write about Epstein I'll probably have some disagreements with, but I just like, can you possibly find someone that is more committed to the truth over convenience, comfort, popularity? No. I mean, Matt Taibbi is a special kind of journalist. Used to be a much more common kind of journalist, but we're very lucky to have Matt Taibe. We've been very lucky to have him on our show, especially when it comes to these very weedy, naughty questions about these Russia collusion investigations. There have been multiple investigations into the investigations, and in order to really, I think, explain it, you have to be able to get deep into the weeds. I think that's, I think that was intentional. I think it's always intentional coming out of the FBI and the CIA and the NSA and dni, all those fun three layer agencies. These things are convoluted intentionally because it makes it impossible for journalists to follow. But then even more importantly, it makes it impossible for the public to follow. Because when you start talking about Russia, collusion, some, sometimes if you're not careful, you sound like you're wearing a tin foil hat and smoking a crack pipe outside the 7 11. So Taibi is thankfully not one of those people because he knows the story in and out like the back of his hand and is able to, was able immediately to smell the rat in the mainstream media's coverage of this, quote, unquote, mainstream media's coverage of this. And step back, give the big picture assessment of what's really happening. And by the way, that's especially helpful from Taibi because let's not pretend that there aren't some real tinfoil hat people hitting the crack pipe or partisans who are milking this as partisans do for every last drop of political advantage that they can. And so to cut through all of that noise, you can't find anyone better than Matt Taibi. So as more of this information was being disclosed, he came by and I think broke down information that's helpful to just remind ourselves of, especially as the year comes to a close. We're heading into a midterm cycle. So much has happened in the first year of the second Trump administration that even just going through these clips now, I'm, I'm reminded of how helpful it is to look back, take stock before another extremely busy year. And it's going to be even busier, I promise, because there's also a midterm election cycle layer, a multi billion dollar midterm election cycle layered on top of all of this. Trump is a huge question mark on Trump's political future. What does he do after he's president, after this? What does that mean for the current Secretary of State, the current Vice president, maybe the current Secretary of Transportation? All kinds of Secretary of the Interior. There are all kinds of people in this administration right now who could end up being in a race in 2028, which again, guess when that happens, 2027. That is a year from right now. A year from right now, we will be talking about freaking Iowa and New Hampshire. Yeah. So good to go back a little bit, pause, take stock of this last busy year, prep for the busy year ahead. Rumors abound that there are Republicans looking for the exit in the House of Representatives. There's a lot, as I'm typing this, there is a whole lot of consternation on Capitol Hill, frustration with the House Speaker, Mike Johnson in particular. There could be a ton of retirements. Could potentially be looking at a midterm bloodbath for Republicans or, or a surprising staving off of a, quote, midterm bloodbath for Republicans. That tells us a little bit about where the party goes in the future. We'll see. We'll see. I mean, Donald Trump is promising more of an economic turnaround in the year to come. This is a long wind up to the Matt Taibbi clip. But I just say that because he's so detail oriented and in the weeds of the story that just thinking about his journalism, his reporting on this, helps me take stock of what happened in year one of Trump 2.0. We had Mike Benzon pretty recently. You may remember this, it was before Thanksgiving. And we started to see these Arctic Frost revelations, which I continue to believe are the most undercovered story of the entire year. I mean, historic proportion, because this is, this is state surveillance of historic proportion. Weaponized partisan state surveillance of historic proportion of a vast scope. Sort of like the story Taibi was talking about going back to Brennan and Comey. And the corporate press has barely touched it except to like debunk it. I mean, it's, this one is truly bizarre. And that's why Ben's has an audience, by the way, is that they're looking around and thinking, wait, am I reading this correctly with the Senate? The senator's phone was surveilled and all of these people, all of these people at these conservative nonprofits were being surveilled and nobody knew about it because a judge said it was okay to keep it secret. Am I looking at this Excel spreadsheet of like hundreds of names? Is that right? And you guys aren't talking about it at all, at all. So having Ben's on as those Arctic Frost revelations were coming out, that was incredible. So it's a, he's another person who gets really into the muck, into the weeds, and helps make the bigger, the bigger picture a bit clearer. On stories where the bigger picture is very, very hard to discern. Also because you're not getting corporate press coverage of it. And I think that in and of itself biases people against a story. Like when you're only seeing it in conservative media, sometimes people normies assume that it must just be a silly red meat Conservative media story. But, you know, the Arctic frost is something that the left of the 1970s, if the shoe was on the other foot, would be obsessed with, and rightfully so. And it's incredible. Incredible how nobody talks about it at all among journalists right now. Like, one of the subpoenas was for conversation. No more than one of the subpoenas was for conversations that conservatives were having with journalists, their communications with journalists. Journalists should be apoplectic about that level of state surveillance and barely a peep, if anything. I mean, I Honestly, it's been so little. I think that really biases people against these stories, like, taking them seriously. And that's. I hope that's fading away, but it is actually insane. And finally, we're gonna play this clip that went unexpectedly viral, I have to say. So one of our first shows, and we had the great, the legendary, the man, the missile legend, Adam Carolla on, and he started going off on Ellen. I don't even remember how he started talking about Ellen, but we were talking about Ellen, and he spilled the tea on what it was like going on Ellen back in the day. That went mega viral. It was one of our first shows. And I was watching those numbers, I was like, damn. I had this, like, foggy sense that it might get picked up by, like, TMZ or something. When he said it, I was like, oh, that's a. That's dishy. And it was out of. If I remember correctly, it was, like, kind of random that we were. We got into, like, dishy gossip about Ellen. But it's, of course, not gossip when it's about a very powerful person, because that's why the story is compelling. It's that you have someone who, you know, Ellen has been torn to shreds in the press in recent years, but that was after decades of being lauded by the press. And, you know, she's still somebody who tried. Tries to wield some influence. And so it's not gossip at all to say, here's how this powerful, influential person treats people behind closed doors, and here's what the massive corporation that supported her put up with knowingly behind closed doors for a long time. So it was, yeah, I definitely want to get Adam back on the show when he can do it, because he has so many insights through his years in. In Hollywood, and he's not afraid to talk about them all. Not afraid of talking about them at all. We also got him talking about Kimmel a bit. His friend Kimmel. He was. You know, he was pretty respectful of Kimmel. I think they're still friends. I think he talked about how they were still friends. So if you want to go back and watch that interview, if you missed it, I thought it was really interesting. I'm going to start with a question that everyone, I'm sure, has on their mind right now. Now, Donald Trump posted on True Social at 6:02pm that about 2 hours from actually right now. So around midnight, east coast time, Israel and Iran will enter a, quote, complete and total ceasef. Now, Tucker, you recently predicted, and people are, of course, recirculating this now, quote, the first week of a war with Iran could easily kill thousands of Americans. It could also collapse our economy as surging oil prices trigger unmanageable inflation. Consider the effects of $30 gasoline. But the second week of the war could be even worse, end quote. Now, Ted Cruz is already taking a victory lap. He says, quote, it turns out that Tucker was wrong. I just want to get your thoughts on this, Tucker. Did Trump prove you and all of us who doubted the wisdom of this strike wrong tonight?
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Well, you could ask Trump. I mean, was this fraught with, like, existential peril?
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Of course.
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B
I'm so grateful that he brought it in for a landing. I mean, I think we should be grateful to him. I think we should be grateful to God. I think we should understand how close we came. But I also think we should step back and ponder what we've learned. And what we've learned is who cares about the fortunes of the United States? And who doesn't? And Ted Cruz doesn't, obviously, the people who acknowledge no risk at all because they were so focused on helping another country, like Ted Cruz, or like, you know, the many people who revealed themselves in the last two weeks, Mark Levin chief among them. Like, those people should not have any access to power at all. Those people rolled the dice with your life and with the lives of your children. It's disgusting. And so, I mean, just ask yourself, is, is Mark Levin concerned at all about the United States? Like, at all? And the answer is no. Mark Levin is a repulsive ghoul whose entire sex life consists of watching other people get blown up. He was upset that there was a ceasefire and said so. How could you be upset with a ceasefire? How could you be upset that people are no longer dying? By the way, I think the ceasefire is real. We have no idea where anything goes in life. That's up to God. But as of right now, it's absolutely real and we should be thankful for it. And so if your first instinct is this is bad, then You've just told us who you are. And look, that's between Mark Levin and God. And I think it's going to be a tough conversation. But for our purposes, Mark Levin should not have access to power. I mean, he almost pushed the President of the United States into a path that would have destroyed the presidency and the United States and a lot of other countries too. So like a victory lap really. No, he was thwarted. John Potharts was thwarted. All the people who are thrilled by the direction this was going, Bill, you know, Bill Kristol, you know, people who are avowed enemies of Donald Trump and are not at all interested in the United States, like they were stopped before getting what they wanted, which was regime changed, military occupation of Iran. So like, you know, they can spend their professional liars. So of course they're lying. But the facts tell a very different story. They didn't get what they wanted and thank God they didn't.
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A
So why do you think the Mark Levins of the world didn't get what they wanted in this case at least as of right now?
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Because the President, just because Trump doesn't want nuclear war. I mean, as he said a million times, like, he doesn't want Iran to have the bomb because he doesn't want more bombs. Cuz he's afraid of nuclear war because he understands what it is. I've talked to him about this on and off camera many times and he has unique among world leaders, like an instinctive aversion to killing millions of people in seconds. And so he's worried about nuclear war. It's the reason Tulsi Gabbard supported him. It's the reason they hate Tulsi Gabbard now because she raises the actual, the very real specter of mass annihilation. And people like Mark Levin just don't care. They're nihilists, but they're hardly conservative. Think conservative about rolling the dice on your country, starting a voluntary war. It's like freaking insane. And so, you know, kudos, gratitude and more to Donald Trump for stopping that. But it's not because he was following the advice of Mark Levin or Ted Cruz. I mean, these people are buffoons who again revealed their priorities. And those priorities have nothing to do with the United States. They were absolutely willing to destroy the United States and including Donald Trump for an objective that had nothing to do with the United States. And I think every honest person knows that. I mean, that's what we just learned. Like under stress, you reveal who you really are, you show your real priorities and they did. And like, again, that's between them and God. But I think going forward, people like that cannot be allowed to steal the mantle of America first when America's interests are not first on their list of concerns. Like, not even close.
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A
So I think you're the first person to ever use the words Mark Levin and sex life in the same sentence.
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B
No, but I'm not being mean, I don't, I. Look, it's clear that there are certain people, for whatever reason, it's connected to age, that's obvious. All the people who are most excited about killing seem to be old. I don't know any 35 year olds were really excited when people die when their videos of dead people on the Internet, they don't get off on that. They're like, you know, they, because they are living their lives, they are in the truest sense, pro life. But there is something about some older people, and I've always had great admiration and respect for older people. I was raised that way. I revered my father, for example, who lived at 84. But there is a category of older people that would include Rupert Murdoch, it would include Lindsey Graham, would turn 70 next month. It would definitely include Mark Levin, for whom like killing obviously provides some sort of deep emotional charge. And I, I don't mean to be glib and say it's sexual, I'm not like the, the Freudian here, but I mean, clearly you watch Mark Levin talk about killing people and it's really dark and it's certainly not something that any Christian can be comfortable with because Christians are not for killing people. Just, period. Just. Just to remind you, and I know that there are a lot of evangelicals who are like very excited to kill people. You know, check yourself for a second. Is Jesus's message we need to drop more bombs on people? Is that what you, is that what you're arguing? I mean, I'm sorry to bring it to that, but, but I, I feel that I can say that as a deeply imperfect, flawed, ignorant Christian who's trying to understand the message of the religion, but I'm pretty certain it's not. Let's drop more bombs on people. And to see pastors saying that, you know, that the neocons, many of whom are Jewish, get all the attack, all the hate or whatever, but it's, boy, it's not just them. There are a lot of evangelical ministers who are worse than Mark Levin in my opinion. So I just want to say that because it's true.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And I think they should measure what they're saying. Against the gospel. And it's like, is there alignment there? There's not. There's no alignment there.
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A
What Mark Levin is already talking about Iran needing to be pushed to sign a document of unconditional surrender. And I wanted to ask you about our friend Dave Smith's reaction to today's news as it was unfolding. He said, quote, even if the strikes quot destroy a lot of equipment, the Iranians can rebuild and the regime will remain in power now more incentivized than ever to get nuclear weapons. So two part question for you here, Tucker. First, do you agree with Dave? I think I agree with Dave. And second point is, if that is true, then is Mark Levin not pushing us into a much more dangerous situation and will that have swayed in the beginning?
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B
And all this stuff about Iran can't have nukes. I mean, Donald Trump believed that for sure. He's been saying it for a decade. But I don't think a lot of the people who were pushing Donald Trump to further engage in a war with Iran were concerned about that. All what they want is regime change. They said it by the way they're saying it now. I mean, let's take them at their word. They want regime change. Well, what does that mean? You know, you don't change a regime by bombing it there. No track record of success there. You change the regime by killing the people who run it. And in the end, it's only kind of possible to steer that country in the direction you want by occupying it with people, which is to say troops. So they're arguing for a ground war with a country of 90 million people. And I know, I know it's not interesting, the population of Iran to Ted Cruz because the details don't matter because he doesn't care about the United States, obviously. But if you do care about the United States, you have to ask like, okay, regime change, what does that mean exactly? What does that mean for us? How do we do that? Like, how do you affect that? And the answer is by destroying your own country. So, like, let's start with no, we're not doing that. Let's do everything we can short of that to get the result that we want. But Levin, again, doesn't care about the United States. And they're all wearing the Trump skin suit right now because they think it suits their purposes. These are people who hated Trump, they're anti Trump, they're never Trump. And that would include a lot of people on Fox News who I worked with for 15 years. I know what their political views are. They're my colleagues. They hate Trump, they hate him personally, they hate his agenda, they hate his economic views, and they really hate his foreign policy views, which in private they describe as insane and isolationist. He's a Nazi and all this stuff. I mean, they really have contempt for him. They kept him off the air at Fox News while I was there against my protests. So that's just, that's all true. And it's very frustrating as a literal person who cares about what's true to see people jumping up, Mark Levin or Laura Loomer, that's world's creepiest human. I don't even know where she came from or who she is exactly, but she's running around. I'm Donald Trump's defender. It's bizarre.
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Champion.
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B
Champion. And I'm the arbiter of what it means to be for America someone who again, has no interest in the United States, demonstrated no interest. So I think it's just important. It's not a matter of score settling. And I don't, I don't care what Mark Levin does in his private life. I don't care what his opinions are. And Laura Loomer, I'm not even really sure who she is. However, if people like that are able to take over a political movement whose stated goal is to serve the United States, first and foremost, America. First, make America great again. If those people can take control of that political movement, first of all, it's an offense against reality and truth, but second, it's really dangerous for the country.
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Have you ever taken a look at the nutrition label on any typical bag of chips? Honestly, I don't recommend it, but maybe I do because it's so, so disgusting that it wakes you up. You will find a chemical cocktail, seed oils, msg, artificial dyes, vague natural flavors. Quote, natural flavors and ingredients that sound more like a science experiment than they sound like a snack. And who wants to snack on a science experiment? Not me. Masa is part of the growing movement to bring back real food. You know, I love masa with only three ingredients, organic corn, sea salt, and 100% grass fed beef tallow. Not only do these chips avoid the bad stuff, they taste incredible too. With Masa, you'll feel satisfied, light and energetic with no crash, bloat or gross sluggish feeling afterwards. Basically, snacking on Masa chips is nothing like snacking on regular chips at all. Personally, my favorite flavor of Masa is probably, I don't know, I can't choose the Carbonaro. They're really spicy and good. The Lime is just great. And the churro flavor, so good for dessert. If you love Masa, then you'll also love as I do. Clearly I have a chip problem. Vandy Crisps. Vandy is Masa's sister company. They make the most delicious three ingredient potato chip that I have ever tasted and I consider myself a potato chip buff of sorts. My favorite is absolutely 100 the smokehouse barbecue. These bags, by the way, make great Christmas presents because people hear about them on podcasts. Want to try them? So if you bring them over for like a dinner, they're perfect. If you're ready to give Masa or Vandy a try, use code AFTERPARTY for 25 off your first order at masachips.com or vandycrisps.com or simply click the link in the video description or scan the QR code to claim this delicious offer. If you don't feel like ordering online, Masa and Bandy are now available nationwide at your local sprout supermarket. Stop by and pick up a couple of bags before they're gone. In the memo, the language that Pam Bondi used, which was no incriminating client list, that really jumped out to me, actually, because it maybe gives her a little wiggle room between saying that she had a client list and then saying there's no incriminating client list. So I wanted to ask you if, if maybe that's what's going on here before we get into some of these other details.
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E
I don't know what's going on with her. I believe Dan Bongino's not lying to me. I really do. When Dan Bongino puts his name on something, I don't know cash as well. But I know Dan. I know him well. We've worked together many, many years. He's not, he didn't just turn around and start lying. That's not who he is. He's an honest guy and he takes this role very seriously. And I trust him and I trust him not to actively mislead me or you. However, Pam Bondi has definitely made multiple inconsistent statements. And I'm sorry, but she does not deserve the benefit of my good opinion and I'm not prepared to give it to her. She's yes, on camera saying that clip that Peter Doocy was referencing where John Roberts asked her, do you have the client list? Like, are you going to release a client list? And she said yes. He said, client list? And she said, yes, it's on my desk right now. So it was not as amorphous as Caroline to her credit, she's trying to cover for the administration, which is her job, but they put her in a very difficult position. It's not amorphous. It's very clear. She said yes. And here's what happened. What happened was Pam Bondi said that, and then a week later, she said she was going to be releasing some very interesting documents the next day when on Jesse Waters show, like six days after that first hit, he said, hey, what client list is coming out? And she was like, it's gonna be getting very interesting, and some interesting Epstein documents are coming out tomorrow. And that is when the influencers, right wing influencers, who had been very good to Trump, who amidst all the deranged media out there, were able to see through the bullshit and reported honestly and helped him a lot and did not deserve the humiliation that she heaped upon them. It was not through their own doing. She invited them there. I mean, who wouldn't go, right? It's Pam Bondi. Do you wanna come meet with the head of the FBI and the Vice President for an exclusive Epstein leak? Yeah. Yes. Most people in media would say yes to that. So they went, and in the classic line from Animal House, you fucked up. You trusted us. That's what happened. They fucked up because they trusted her. And they were humiliated because she gave them all these binders that read Epstein files, you know, volume one, and there was nothing new in there. Nothing. There was no scoop. Why would she do that? And it led to behind the scenes, like all the White House staffers, like the top people in the White House for Trump, distancing themselves from Pam Bondi immediately. Like, we don't know why she did that. And then it came out that they were urging her not to do it, but I don't know what she was up to. She wanted to have some moment where she looked like she was the one, and then she was in trouble and she knew it. So she said, all right, that's just the first tranche I'm really off. The FBI is the one who screwed me. They said everything was in there. Okay? Like, you need to know. You need to know that no lawyer just sloppily calls all these PR people in and says, here are the files, without knowing what's in there. But she wants us to believe she did okay. So she either was clueless or she intentionally embarrass them. I don't know which is better. And then she said, more is coming. More is coming. And we waited and waited and waited. Those people did not get an exclusive to Redeem them. And instead she got caught on camera by James o' Keefe saying there are thousands and thousands of videos, like, showing child pornography. And it was like, wait, what child pornography? No one's been talking about that. I mean, we know he had like a predilection for very young girls generally, you know, 17. But the ones looked more like 14, but we hadn't heard like 8. So, you know, what exactly does she mean by child pornography? We don't know. When she found out from James o', Keefe, he was about to drop that on her the next day, she ran to the microphones and on her own was like, I've got all these videos. So it was very clear to me she was trying to make it look like I didn't say anything out of turn to the James o' Keefe operative. I'll say this right on camera. It was just very obvious what she was doing. But it was still a loop because it was like, what about. We're talking about client lists. We're talking about people who Jeffrey Epstein may have blackmailed. How have we taken a loop? Now over to weird, you know, inappropriate, disgusting pornography. Okay, so to me, that already seemed odd and like a slip. But it seemed like perhaps this is where she's gonna plant her flag now. Like, this is the extra stuff. Because either there is extra stuff that she decided she can't show us or there isn't and there never was. And she was lying when she was like, it's on my desk and trying to hype the story over. Hype, hype, whatever your word is. So that's March. She's now switched to like this thing with o' Keefe and on camera about the child pornography, sexual assault material. And the next. So we're waiting in April and May and June and now here comes July and we get the drop to Axios, a left leaning publication that is opposite of the influencers. Yeah, exactly. They're never gonna kick the same tires that right wing influencers who are the ones who care about the Epstein story would kick. Which they're not dumb. They know that. So they do this late holiday weekend drop through Axios, which is just going to, you know, lick, you know, their boots, saying, thanks so much for this exclusive, which we know is gonna get us millions of clicks. And now nobody's talking about it. So we. And in the memo, it's. We've gone from I have it. The client list. Yes, the client list. It's on my desk. To no, no client list and no names and by the way, at the same time all this was happening, Alina Haba, who was Trump's personal lawyer and at the time, in February, counselor to the president and would become part of the DOJ team working for Bondi within three weeks of these comments on Piers Morgan, went on camera to say, these are some very bad people. We've got names, we've got client lists, and the only reason you don't know about it is because there wasn't transparency. That's what Bondi had said, too, that this administration before us wasn't transparent. And Alina Haba said, I'm not gonna get ahead of letting them have their day in court. You know, I'm gonna let the guilt or innocence come out in court. But, yeah, like, people will be held accountable under Cash and Pam Bondi. Okay, so that was all the messaging prior to Sunday night. So my main position here, Emily, is people are right to be skeptical. They have every right to distrust now the messaging because of the way this was handled. But I do see a distinction, personally and professionally, between what Pam Bondi has said and done and what Cash Patel and Dan Bongino have said and done. Because while people want to bring up what Cash and Dan said while they were podcasters and out of the administration, I'm sorry, but it doesn't really reflect anything about what they knew or should know as FBI Director and Deputy Director.
- [35:47]
A
Bondi, for what it's worth, and it's very worth mentioning this, by the way, and Julie K. Brown pointed this out, actually, back in February when all this was happening was the Florida Attorney General during these, like, critical Epstein years. Julie K. Brown said she was Florida's AG 2011-2019, a period of time when Epstein started plane records became public, victims lawsuits were filed, and a lot of new evidence against Epstein surfaced. So questions should be asked about why she didn't take up the case or launch a probe when she was AG in Florida. And, Megan, just to, I think, ask about everything you laid out, it sounds like you don't see a. A sort of plausible explanation that will satisfy the public for how Bondi has conducted herself since, like, late February. February. She either knows or either. There's no good explanation.
- [36:32]
E
Why. Why did she say. It's all. Why was she leading the media along? The thing that I don't understand, if you want to put total faith in the memo that they leaked to Axios, there's not. There's no there there. And, you know, you may or may not know about me, Emily, but I am like the least conspiratorial person you'll ever meet. I believe in like almost all of the government lies. I do. Like, I do. So.
- [36:54]
A
Oh, that's what you get. You get 10 boosters. You're right.
- [36:57]
E
No, I did get a booster. One booster two Covid Johnson.
- [37:01]
A
A booster driving into the drink.
- [37:03]
E
I know. Me too. And now I have an autoimmune issue. Great.
- [37:08]
A
That's what the tequila is for. I think it is actually a medicinal. We'll have to ask Bobby about that.
- [37:13]
E
Right.
- [37:13]
A
Okay.
- [37:14]
E
So. But anyway, it's not like whatever. I mean, I believe Covid started in the lab and all that. I'm not a complete loon. But I'm just saying I'm not somebody who thinks we didn't have the moon landing or all that stuff. So my point is simply on Epstein. All along, I've been like, he might have killed himself. I don't. He might have. You know, he's facing a lifetime in jail. He's a miserable guy. I don't know if there's going to be client lists or not. I'm not sure, you know, so my simply point. My point in raising this is for me to be looking at her saying I don't believe you is telling. It's telling even in my own heart. Because I am trying to go down the non conspiratorial route to say, okay, there are no client lists. It was just Jeffrey Epstein and his own perversions. I'm just gonna forget all the stuff about the plains and the islands and all that. Okay. I'm just gonna say I know Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted of trafficking girls to Jeffrey. That is true. There was no evidence in that trial she was trafficking them to, you know, all the other names that we've heard and. Or any others that we haven't. So, okay, I'm going down the lane with you. What then makes Pam Bondi come out and do all those things, like, I've got juicy stuff is basically what she was saying. And get the influencers there to try to look like it's shit's going down. You know, like you're gonna get the truth from us. And then like doubling and tripling down. And then why did she switch it to child pornography? Which I do believe there is. I believe the FBI does have that of Jeffrey Epstein. But to me, I guess that was probably her out. Because now she's starting to realize either she is caught, that she doesn't have the other stuff, or someone has slapped her hand to say, you can't release that. And so now she's got to pivot to something entirely. It's not off topic, but it's not what was being promised. Client lists and blackmail material were what we thought. I mean, Jeffrey Epstein's sick, disgusting, felonious enjoyment of child sexual assault material is disgusting and horrific. But it's a pivot away from where we were going on the story and what she was promising. So I don't know. I wish I had all the answers. All I know is it doesn't make sense. And as my mentor, Judge Judy says, if it doesn't make sense, it isn't true.
- [39:35]
A
Pretty big news on one of your, like, signature beats. And that's FBI Director Kash Patel has opened criminal investigations into John Brennan and James Comey for, as you write, quote, offenses related to the Trump Russia scandal, colloquially known as Russiagate. The opening of criminal probes into the two of the most powerful enforcement chiefs of the Trump era marks the first steps towards consequences for the elaborate and historically unprecedented intelligence fraud that for years consumed American politics. And this follows the ICA scandal of the week. Before going to get into all of this because, Matt, you make it very intelligible to people who don't follow it as closely as you do. But let's just start with these investigations against Brennan and Comey. Seems like a pretty significant escalation. Tell us what's going on.
- [40:21]
C
So I was able to confirm this morning that they've opened up criminal investigations at the FBI pertaining to Brennan and Comey and that those were as a result of a criminal referral from the CIA director, John Ratcliffe, who, as you know, last week also released an eight page report on irregularities with the process of creating the intelligence community assessment of 2017. But it's a significant step forward for anybody who's followed this incredibly annoying story for the last nine years. Because, you know, this is now the boomerang coming all the way back. You know, once upon a time, everybody was waiting for indictments against Donald Trump or people in the Trump family. And now it looks like they're, you know, there's a realistic chance that there may be cases that end up in court against figures like James Comey and John Brennan. And that's good news.
- [41:28]
A
Yeah. And the question now is actually what some of these, what some of the investigations could turn up. And I think we have this of because you sent out a separate note today to Racket subscribers. People should subscribe to racketracket News. That was a clip of Cash Patel on Joe Rogan The FBI is, like, transferring buildings at the moment, and it's all, like, very bizarre. But this is Cash Patel maybe previewing something when he was talking to Joe Rogan recently. And we can go ahead and roll this clip and get your reaction map.
- [42:01]
F
We just think about this. Me as the director of the FBI, the former Russiagate guy, when I first got to the Bureau, found a room that Comey and others hid from the world in the Hoover Building, full of documents and computer hard drives that no one had ever seen or heard of. Locked the key and hit access and just said, no one's ever going to find this place.
- [42:28]
A
What?
- [42:29]
F
Yeah, so my guys are going through that right now.
- [42:33]
C
What's in there?
- [42:34]
F
A lot of stuff.
- [42:37]
A
This is amazing clip where Rogue is just the background being like, what?
- [42:41]
C
No, he's like Brad Pitt in True Romance in that scene. It's great.
- [42:48]
A
I love that you had that right at the top of your mind. You're like, oh, yeah, it's Brad Pitt.
- [42:55]
C
No, no. But that would. That was an interesting thing. And, you know, everybody is sort of passing that around the Internet. But then as I was calling around this morning, somebody close to the. One of the investigations told me, like, yeah, he was. He was actually. That was actually a slip. Or he did actually refer to this investigation when he was talking to Joe. So that is a true thing. It's not something that people are just saying on the Internet. And it's also interesting because it brings in. There are really two parallel tracks to this investigation. I think that's one of the things that's confusing people there. There was a huge investigation that was run out of the House Intelligence Committee for years. It began with, oddly enough, Cash Patel working for Devin Nunes. But all that stuff was housed over at Langley for years. It's been locked up there since 2018, and people haven't been able to get at it. Trump tried to try to declassify it. So that pile is now meeting this other new pile that the Justice Department just found, they say, in the old Hoover Building by chance, just because they happen to be moving out of the Hoover Building. It's so random. It's like the perfect ending to the.
- [44:13]
A
This.
- [44:13]
C
This idiotic story.
- [44:15]
A
I mean, it really is. The only way that you ever end up getting, like, certain classified information is that they just accidentally leave it in a room. They're moving the Hoover from the Hoover Building because it's the great. It's the greatest combination of incompetence and, like, secrecy. And that's really the story of the FBI.
- [44:33]
C
Oh, totally, yeah. No, it couldn't. There couldn't be a better resolution to this whole thing. If there's actually damning evidence on any of those documents or hard drives that Cash is referring to. I mean, that would be hilariously funny and kind of the perfect resolution to this whole thing. But we don't really know what's on there. We do have a pretty decent idea of what's on the other stuff, and that's probably going to be the predicate for these perjury conspiracy investigations that they're pursuing.
- [45:08]
A
Yeah, that's one of the things I thought you did a really good job of running down, and that's one of the questions I have for you right now, is what it's hard for me to believe that they open these investigations, Cash Patel opens these investigations and they don't end up in charges against Brennan and Comey, particularly for perjury over whether or not the Steele CIA was involved in this ica. That became big news last week because the CIA under Director John Ratcliffe, who is very well regarded in the MAGA world and is close to Donald Trump, frankly, released a matt. What was the document formally? It was like a memo.
- [45:46]
C
Yeah, it was called, it had some bizarre name like tradecraft, Shortcomings of Something, something, something. It was a very forgetable title, but, you know, it got kind of lukewarm reviews among hardcore corps Russiagate followers and even among people who had conducted the original House Intelligence Committee investigation. You saw Rick Crawford from the Intel Committee talking about how the CIA was attempting to whitewash everything that happened. He sent a letter, angry letter to Trump about that. But I think that was actually just a misunderstanding. It appears, from what I, what I hear today, it appears that, that Ratcliffe wrote that very short eight page thing in a way that was specifically crafted to give, in a narrow way to give Cash a way to open up some perjury investigations and then everything else can come in afterwards. But that document is not the be all end all of everything that they found. It's, it's just, just, it's designed to, for utilitarian purpose.
- [47:01]
A
So that's a really important point because the big picture zooming out of all of this is whether or not they said the Steele dossier was sort of immaterial to opening up the Trump Russia investigation when they did. And they were passing along what's called an ICA internally. And so there's a big fight over basically whether or not they used this opposition research to target a political opponent. A political opponent. And then the sitting President of the United States. That's one of the most undemocratic schemes that we've seen happening. And the Peter Strzok text message about an insurance policy basically tells you all you need to know about their mentality here. But I want to put two headlines up on the screen. This is F2. This is the Politico headline about the Ratcliffe Memo which said CIA review of 2016 Russia election probe finds no major flaws. Which Matt, you wrote about also. Apparently I hadn't seen this, but Kendall any and also known informally as Fusion Ken because of his obvious connections to Fusion gps, which was peddling all this opposition research. What he went on MSNBC and said the Ratcliffe report didn't show any. So Brennan had done any wrongdoing, let alone a crime. And you kind of fisked this. Let's put the racket headline, this is F3 up on the screen. But at the same time, there's something interesting about Politico reporting that essentially this was, this was a letdown, that there wasn't much in it that almost like didn't accuse anybody of wrongdoing because that's kind of what the people you were talking about said. Your reporting suggests that actually it was maybe the first step into investigating perjury regarded to the Steele dossier. Is that correct?
- [48:46]
C
Yeah, I think that's right. But by itself the Radcliffe Report is still pretty bad. And it also moves the ball forward significantly. There were some things, I mean, I spent a month on this question last year in February working with Michael Shellenberger on the question of what was in that House Intelligence Committee report. And it was very similar to the WMD story. Essentially Brennan Comey and the NSA, when they were putting together the intelligence community assessment that came out in the first week of 2017, you have to remember that Russiagate at that point had stalled out. All the various investigations had finished there. There had been a story in Mother Jones, David Corn by David Korn suggesting that the Russians had blackmail material on Donald Trump. And that didn't go anywhere. So there was nothing left. The Russiagate was about to be kind of a non stop story and then they dropped. You know, Barack Obama commissioned this report and the only way that they could say in the report that Russia specifically interfered to help Donald Trump was if they brought in material from the Steele dossier because they didn't have a source on this. So that's how this whole thing was put together. That's what's in the Radcliffe Report is, is essentially like documentary confirmation that John Brennan overrode his internal controls. They told him that they shouldn't use this stuff, that it didn't meet even minimal standards of anything. And, you know, he said no. And there's a written thing by him saying no. I think it warrants, you know, consideration. And that's the reason that's relevant, is because he's on the record saying otherwise in testimony. So there's your case right there if you want to make a perjury case.
- [50:47]
A
Yeah, there's such a circling back to that video of Cash Patel and Rogan. You also made a good point about this and I'm curious to hear more of what you think because, you know, the internal machinations of the media really well, and how government tries to spin reporters and, and the position that it puts reporters in when they're giving newsworthy information, even if it's also clearly trying to get ahead of something or to disrupt a bad news cycle. And so the obvious connection that a lot of people have made is this is happening amidst the fallout over Jeffrey Epstein, basically the DOJ basically, like closing the case on the Jeffrey Epstein investigation, saying there's, there's no more disclosures coming from us, nothing to see here, no incriminating client list, no credible evidence of a blackmail operation. It's all very ridiculous. But then we hear that from the FBI, they're opening this long awaited investigation into two of the major villains of the Trump era, John Brennan and James Comey. So your point, and flesh this out for us a little bit, is that clearly this was already percolating, according to your sources, when Cash Patel went on Joe Rogan's show. So maybe. Is it possible that the story that I think was originally given to Fox News, the exclusive on this, was Epstein related, but the actual investig or the actual investigations themselves maybe weren't?
- [52:00]
C
Yeah, what I was told is that the investigation has been going on for months. I don't know the actual, what the deal is with how the Fox story came out, but I do know that there were rumors flying all over the conservative media world this weekend that something about Russiagate, much bigger than the Radcliffe report was about to come out. So, yeah, it's possible that's politically related, that, you know, maybe the timing on the, you know, the announcement of an investigation that could be related to the Epstein fallout. But there's no question they were working on this and that they have been working on this. I mean, this is, this is the reason that Cash Patel was named FBI director. I mean, this is the case that put him in that office. And it would be an enormous shock if they weren't working on this from day one, frankly.
- [52:53]
A
When Arctic Frost revelations broke wide open from Senator Grassley's whistleblower documents, I think people had a hard time wrapping their head around exactly what the government appears to have had done in that case. And we keep getting more information. It seems like every single week now, there's a New York Times report suggesting subpoenas are landing in the laps of people who were. This is f0, folks, that people who were potentially implicated in the original Russian collusion hoax. Collusion hoax, some of which continue to be involved in shadow operations down the line. So, Mike, we're a couple of weeks now post Grassley whistleblower revelation. As we are approaching maybe the 30,000 foot view. How are you making sense of what we've learned just in the last couple of weeks? As somebody who's been very much in the weeds of this for a long time?
- [53:49]
F
Well, there's nothing surprising in it. It's simply validation of what I think folks felt but didn't have the documents to prove, which was that there was a full scale effort by the Biden Justice Department to completely destroy any aspect of the Republican Party that had some perceived allegiance or support network access around President Trump and his movement. This Arctic Frost investigation, you know, the Arctic Frost is a, essentially an orange tree that can grow in Florida. And it's, you know, it's kind of like an orange man bad. It's just like they named Operation Crossfire Hurricane after the Jumping Jack Flash lyrics from the Rolling Stone song. But then also the spy movie, the Whoopi Goldberg British spy movie. And of course, it was created by a British spy, Christopher Steele, and his British spy network with Richard Dearlove. They did the same thing with Arctic Frost to root out all the different roots and branches of the Trump tree. And so what they did is they spied on, they got subpoenas and basically got the phone communications, text, texts, basically everything you can dig up emails on 430 major GOP figures, not just in the media and in civil society, but also and in the Trump inner circle, but also in Congress. I think ted Cruz said 20% of Senate Republicans ended up having their phones secretly subpoenaed by the Biden FBI and Justice Department. And then Judge Boasberg, who is this very infamous chief justice basically in the D.C. court system, he then compelled AT&T and Verizon to not tell the senators that the FBI was spying on their phones. And I mean, I pointed this out, but this is a criminal violation. There's the Senate Oversight Committee has to be able to conduct oversight of the FBI when they're being spied on by the FBI. They can't conduct oversight of what the FBI is doing. And it looks like this was basically a conspiracy with Jack Smith and Judge Boasberg. I think that frankly, she's not. Judge Boasberg should not just be impeached, he should be indicted on those grounds. And what's important to understand is that this Arctic Frost investigation was launched a full year after the alleged event of trying to overturn the election results with alternate electors. A plot whose very idea was started by Democrats when they used the alternate electors attempt in 2016 to try to get, to try to negate Trump's victory, citing Russian interference. And then in 2020, with the transition Integrity Project kerfuffle, they literally war gamed how to get alternate electors to vote on January 6, 2021 for Joe Biden, even in the event of a clear Trump win. This is in their own manual, which was war gamed by no less than John Podesta himself, the campaign manager for Hillary Clinton, and who would go on to be the White House climate czar in charge of a $375 billion slush fund for his cronies. And that was organized by not just the Democrats, but the never Trump wing of the Republican Party. Participating in that war game for alternate electors in case Trump had a clear victory on election night in 2020 was Michael Steele, the former head of the DNC. Donna Brazile, the former head of the DNC.
- [57:38]
A
I was gonna say Michael Steele was sort of the rnc.
- [57:40]
F
Rnc. That's what I meant.
- [57:41]
A
Even better. Even better.
- [57:42]
F
You had both former heads of the party, Michael Steele, whose group was knocked out by Trump when Trump defeated not just the Clinton dynasty, but the bushes in 2016. So even if this thing, Arctic Frost was a crime, the FBI should have been going after their. Should have been going after the highest level Democrats. The, they should have been going after the highest level of the White House at the time, as John Podesta was the head of the climate basically slush fund of the White House. But, but what this was is they didn't target any of the Republicans who were perceived to be never Trump. What they wanted to do this was they waited a full year to launch this investigation because it wasn't clear whether Trump was going to run again. But once it became clear that he was going to run again, they needed a broad sweeping apparatus to spy on the campaign and in order to put pressure on every node in the, in the MAGA affinity network, in order to politically neutralize them.
- [58:42]
A
Right. So what struck me going through the whistleblower documents is actually how similar this looks to one of the operations the CIA via groups like USAID runs in other countries to interfere in civil society. And that sounds extreme and crazy to people, but when you're looking at the nonprofit organizations on the right that get swept up into this surveillance network which is vast and clearly very strategic, if you know the conservative movement and you're rifling through these whistleblower documents, you know they.
- [59:16]
F
So who's who.
- [59:17]
A
Exactly, exactly. And so I think that's kind of interesting, Mike. And I know that you've looked at this in many other cases in many other countries. You've particularly been deep in Eastern Europe lately. I've seen. So is that, is that the sense that you got as well, that basically that it's almost a plug and play domestically?
- [59:36]
F
Oh, it's exactly a plug and play. Jack Smith himself was a plug and play. Jack Smith was a prosecutor at the Hague and was involved in these USAID rule of law programs in Kosovo. See, we, we have this. It is not illegal for the FBI, I'm sorry, for the CIA and USAID and the U.S. state Department to put pressure on foreign judiciaries to rule a certain way, to deem something constitutional or unconstitutional in that country to prosecute or not prosecute someone. That is standard fare, standard courts. We have whole programs that the American Bar association gets tens of millions of dollars to administer abroad. And the American Bar association has a spin out group called the World Justice Project. They're both funded tens of millions of dollars by USAID to go out and influence prosecutors, influence judges, influence ministries of justice in foreign countries, to go after the political opponents of the State Department in those countries. This is what you have. And I can go through a million examples of this, but one of them, perhaps the most famous, is the Viktor Shokin case in Ukraine. This was the prosecutor in Ukraine who was investigating Burisma, Joe Biden's son, Vice President Joe Biden's son at the time. And Joe Biden as vice president flew to Ukraine, met with the Ukrainian government and threatened a billion dollar USAID loan guarantee which was, which was conditioned on implementing certain governance and rule of law reforms, that they would not get that billion dollars in USAID bribe money unless they fired Victor Shokin, the prosecutor. So, and then, you know, Joe Biden famously told the Council on Foreign Relations, son of a bee. And that's exactly what they did. He was, they got rid of him.
- [61:25]
A
The next day at cfr he's saying that by the way, which is delightful.
- [61:29]
F
Right, right, yes, that's. Couldn't have picked a better venue. But it's the same thing everywhere. I mean the National Endowment for Democracy, which is a straight up CIA cutout, it was conceived by the CIA director William Casey in 1982. The legislation was written by the CIA Director William Casey's right hand man Walter Raymond, who had spent 30 years in the CIA operations and propaganda and disinformation division within the CIA helped draft the 1983 legislation that signed the NED into law. The head, the two founding co heads of the National Dial for Democracy told the New York Times and the Washington Post in the early, early 1980s that they exist to subsidize the groups that the CIA wants to, but doesn't want to get in trouble for funding.
- [62:14]
A
Right. They bragged about it to David Ignatius. Who else?
- [62:17]
F
Exactly. Right away. And the CIA gets a copy of every single national down for Democracy grant to this day. And this is a straight up CIA cutout. And one of the things that I published last year was the National Endowment for Democracy's in house journal called the Journal of Democracy which we fund as taxpayers because this is funded by the US government, by the State Department. It's an arm of the State Department that masquerades as an ngo. And it's basically this, the State Department giving a grant to the NGO so that the NGO can do what the CIA wants. So because the CIA is just the COVID action side of the overt diplomacy State Department. So this is just funny how this all works. But, but what they wrote to the Prime Minister of Poland, Donald Tusk was a command the month after he took office, this is December 2023 for him to arrest everybody in the PIs party in Poland, the Law and Justice Party, which was the right wing pro Trump party that had been in power for eight years. A comprehensive plan of everybody from the party to arrest senior party leadership, the judges who ruled in his favor, the heads of the civil society institutions in Poland in order to achieve a state of democratic stability and ensure that populism does not return in the next election. It was that explicit and I mean this is a CIA manual to the Ministry of Justice of a foreign country about who they need to arrest. And they even went through this list of names and talked about how easy it would be to actually secure a conviction in the various cases and basically proposed that in the cases where It'd be difficult to get a conviction. They should still bring the case anyway and try to be creative about getting people to squeal. I mean, this is. And this is the network that Jack Smith slithers out of, you know, like, you know, a sort of frozen snake that just gets unfrozen out of the box to do the same thing to the. Who is the President of the United States and then running for president and now president again? I mean, frankly, this is a criminal conspiracy.
- [64:28]
A
Yeah. And so right now, it's looking like, according to that New York Times report I just referenced, these are subpoenas for James Clapper, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page. So some very familiar characters. But also today, big news. Pardons were issued in the case of the alternate electors that Mike just mentioned. And if you're looking through the Arctic Frost whistleblower documents, you can match a whole lot of them up to what was going on, what was being investigated and surveilled. So, Mike, is the Trump administration, I mean, you were talking about this before Trump was reelected, but is the Trump administration now? People are very anxious. They don't know exactly what to think of what's happened from Trump 2.0's FBI and CIA and State Department. Do you think that this is a pretty sincere, robust effort right now that is. Is humming the way it needs to be to solve some of these really foundational problems in the roots, you know, really start digging up the roots of these problems?
- [65:25]
F
I don't know that it's humming the way that it needs to be. I think that, you know, there's, there's been a good effort to try to expunge the Justice Department of the worst apples. At the same time, I don't know that there has been an equivalent hiring spree in order to onboard the next necessary manpower. Because these are, these cases are very fact intensive. There's a lot of due diligence that needs to be done. There's a lot of strategizing about all, you know, all the different, you know, because you need to be ready for basically pro bono, infinity mega lawyers on the other side to find every technicality, you know, every jurisdictional or venue loophole to move things, you know, in their favor. Every, every way they can rig it is kind of what the Trump administration is up against, because the legal profession as a whole leans enormously pro, pro blob, pro foreign policy establishment. And, you know, as I was discussing, these USAID rule of law programs, which are prolific basically in every country on earth, are a way to get Promoted up the judiciary as I've, you know, covered. Even Norm Eisen, the chief, chief hatchet man for, you know, for all anti Trump lawfare and has been since day one. When Trump got into office in January 2017, you know, was, was flying over to Europe or flew out Chief Justice John Roberts on two occasions to have week long joint study, you know, study sessions on US EU law. I mean, just at the, at the highest levels of this thing, you see this relationship. I mean, right now on the board of the World Justice Project, the USAID funded programs to influence foreign judiciaries, four former Supreme Court justices are on the board of directors for that. I mean, this is a network. How do you end up on the short list to become a Supreme Court justice or to become, you know, a high level appellate judge in the United States? You move up through these networks, you get, get credentialed through them. You get, you know, the whisper networks and the donor networks and the political networks say, okay, this is a good solid guy. And so that is what you're up against in the United States judiciary. I mean, the fact is the American Bar association led the crusade to indict Trump and they have a legal monopoly on the ability to credential law schools. I went to law school. That law school had to be credentialed by the American Bar. Every single one in the country does. And this is the group partisanly crusading to indict for the first time in U.S. history, the U.S. president. Everyone knows what this is about, how the bread is buttered, how the rank partisan hackery of it. But you know, the whole system has to be restructured. And I don't think that there is a concerted effort to think about this holistically. I think people are kind of running around putting out fires one at a time. And you will wait to see what the status of these subpoenas are. I should say that I definitely commend the Justice Department for taking action on the crimes of James Comey and Letitia James. Not no small amount of irony that James Comey, who set up Mike Flynn on these perjury charges. The napkin with Comey's, you know, crony's handwriting was, what are we doing here? Is the goal to get Flynn to lie or to get him fired? Is our goal to entrap him for some BS perjury charge or is it to run a covert political black ops operation to get the national security adviser fired? I mean, it was that naked. And James Comey even then bragged and laughed in an interview that he would never have even attempted that if Hillary Clinton had won the election, because she would not be so green as to allow James Comey's FBI cronies to even attempt such an entrapment operation. But the fact that they have moved forward on that and they've moved forward in the Letitia James one does give me some hope that justice and accountability will finally arrive at the feet of John Brennan.
- [69:51]
A
It's incredible because even just thinking of that Comey quote, which is, I mean, I have even forgotten about it until just now. That's a real deep cut, Mike. And deep cuts are your specialties. But from Comey to say that about Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta, his brother Tony Podesta, was running this absurd Yanukovych op with Paul Manafort for the European center for a Modern Ukraine, which was a bullshit NGO they set up to mask that they didn't want to register for Farah when they were operating on behalf of the party of Party of Regions in Ukraine. So this idea that Michael Flynn needed to be surveilled because he was on a call with Sergey Lavrov and you would leave Hillary Clinton alone. It's all so rich because you can play Success degrees of Kevin Bacon with every single one of these MFers. Recently I learned about Colostrum. It is the very first milk known as liquid gold. You guys are going to make me do that indefinitely. Every time we read this ad that babies receive from their mothers after birth. It is packed with proteins, natural growth factors, antimicrobial peptides that work to enhance your immune response, reduce inflammation, repair and balance gut lining, reduce bloating and make your hair and skin look amazing. So many benefits. Today's sponsor Cowboy Colostrum offer offers the highest quality cow colostrum available in the U.S. 100 made in America from 100American grass fed cows. They don't over process or strip their colostrum leaving it whole, full fat and high protein for ultimate nutrient density. It is the highest quality bovine colostrum that you can buy. Cowboy is easy to drink. It's made with delicious natural ingredients and no artificial flavors. You just have to add a 3 gram spoon scoop of either their chocolate, Madagascar vanilla or strawberry into your coffee or smoothie. I like to put the strawberry into a cup of milk. Very good for a limited time. Our listeners get up to 25 off their entire order. Just head to cowboycolostrum.com afterparty and use code AFTERPARTY at checkout. That's 25 off when you use code AFTERPARTY@cowboycolostrum.com afterparty after you purchase they will ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them our show sent you. Let's go ahead. Roll this clip of Ellen DeGeneres from last week S7 talking about what she perceives as a grave injustice occurring under our noses here in the United States. All people in America and Republicans who.
- [72:15]
F
Are would quite like to undo the.
- [72:18]
B
Right for gay people to get married. I mean, that's back on the table.
- [72:21]
E
As a debate, I think.
- [72:22]
A
Absolutely. The back Baptist church in America is trying to reverse gay marriage. They're trying to at the very least stop it from happening in the future and possibly reverse it. And Portia and I are already looking into it. And if they do that, we're going to get married here. Honest to God.
- [72:40]
D
Didn't know their clause lines. They love it.
- [72:43]
A
How is she? I thought they were married years ago. She says she's Also this is F3. She says she moved to the UK because of Trump. Which reminds me of exactly what you were just saying, Adam, that something about Trump himself seems to have triggered the unraveling of very talented people. Do you consider Ellen to be one such case?
- [73:05]
D
Well, Ellen has always been a mean person. And it's not, you know, she had her dust up with the press and these stories probably three years, two or three years ago. But I did her show. And I mean, look, I'll tell you truthfully, sort of how it works when you do every show, every show has its own kind of personality. The show itself, not the on air show, but the behind the scenes, they all take on sort of the personality of their leader. And it's sort of like when you go into a business and people are always friendly or they go into business and everyone's sort of douchey, you know, and you're going like what's going why is everyone so mean and crappy in this business? You know, it's the owners that way, you know. And so when you would go do Letterman, I'll, I'll start here. When you do Leno, Leno was fun and breezy and easy and people were nice and they were kind of laid back and, and they weren't looking over their shoulder at all. And it was very kind of laid back. And Kimmel's show is laid back and nice and people are nice. And Letterman show people are scared or they were scared when I did it two times I did. They're scared because Dave would scare them. And Ellen's show, people were scared, real scared. And I knew they were scared because it's like I was just sitting in the. My dressing room and they're like, segment producer came in and he went, all right, so we went over all the stuff. We're going to talk about Christmas vacation or whatever it was. And I go, yeah, yeah. And he goes, you're not going to talk about meat or beef or anything like that, right? And I go, no, I'm not. I'm just going to talk about the stuff we talked about going on vacation at Christmas or the kids or, you know, their anecdotes, you know. Okay, all right. Okay, all right. And he, like, came back like 20 minutes later before, right before I went out, and he's like, okay, but don't talk about beef or meat or any.
- [75:20]
B
And I was like, you got two warnings.
- [75:22]
D
Yeah, yeah. And I was like, oh, this guy's scared to death. This guy's scared. And then. And then later on, I talked to someone who signed an NDA. So I won't say his name, but he wrote for Ellen. And I just went, how's Ellen? And he said, worst person. Worst person. And then we went, not worst person I've worked for worst person I've ever met. And by the way, I knew the guy did Rosie when Rosie was too. Duty Chub Club. The worst and the meanest. So I don't know, some kind of. Some sort of mean off between Rosie in her prime and Ellen in her prime. You know, the two clash of the titans mix.
- [76:05]
A
Mud wrestling.
- [76:07]
D
She's. I like that. But. So she's not a nice person at all, which now everyone knows what I knew 15 years ago or whenever I learned it, but now it seems to be common knowledge, which I would. I was trying to explain to everyone how mean she was. Not because she was mean to me, because everyone was scared of her, which means she's mean. She's not going to be mean to me. I'm a guest on. On the show. Right. So I wouldn't know it from my exchanges. I would know it with how her staff was cowering. So also, they make so much out of this. Like they're going to try to do. It's like they're not going to do anything. Obviously, it's a form of narcissism where I'm going to have to come here and do that. And she crosses her legs like Barack Obama, which is bad.
- [77:00]
A
So specific.
- [77:03]
D
Well, the more progressive you are, the deeper your cross.
- [77:07]
A
Okay.
- [77:07]
D
And if you watch Barack Obama, his is like a full deep, deep cross because he has to. Him and Justin Trudeau and Gavin Newsom have to do like super deep crosses to signal to their constituency where they're at.
- [77:26]
A
You learn the further left you go, that's a sort of, that's passed down politician politics.
- [77:31]
D
Trump puts his soles of his feet together, spreads his knees as wide as he can, and then makes a diamond around his nut sack so everyone can like an offering, you know, accentuate. Like, hey, over here. Right down here. Here we are. Can't get my knees closer than 26 inches together.
- [77:51]
A
Nobody will ever do it like him. Nobody will ever do it like him. It's just been an incredible six months. I can't believe it. More than 50 shows. All of these guests making news. You know, we've had a lot of these interviews that we do get picked up by other news outlets, which is always really gratifying as an interviewer because it means that you asked questions that people care about and you were able to get answers that people cared about. With Adam Corolla, I was not trying, even trying. I, my memory is that he just went and, and started dishing on Ellen. So I can't take credit for that. But you know, it's if, if you're watching After Party, you're watching a newsmaking show. Even though we're live at 10pm we're like cross listed with comedy podcasts. We have like, we're, we're irreverent. We do things differently than a lot of other new shows and it's been really gratifying, heartening to see the response that we've gotten in the first six months. We're over 100,000 subscribers. We want that to be over a million subscribers and we don't want to wait that long to do it. So tell all of your friends. I have to say just the reaction in public has been, you know, I mentioned this sometimes, but like I used to do a fair bit of Fox News probably a few times a week at my peak. And you know what? New media, the, the influence that new media is gaining so quickly. I mean, just going on Megan's show, you know, once a week, it's like people will stop you at airports. And now what's really cool is people stop and say they watch after party. That blows my mind. Blows my mind. So thank you, thank you for your support. Thanks to our great team here at afterparty and MK Media for all of their heart, hard work. There is a team behind the show that busts its ass. So we are very, very grateful for all of them, for each other and all of you who've tuned in and made this part of your regular rotation. We all appreciate it more than you know. I appreciate it more than you know. It's, it's just been very cool. And I'm always around at Emily, at Devil May Care Media, I, I truly try to respond to everyone. I read everyone emails and if you ever have suggestions, whatever, feel free to send them in there. If they're for a happy hour episode, just put that in the subject line. It's no problem if you forget. But stay in touch with me and thank you for being along for the ride and being a part of our afterparty community, our afterparty audience. It's been incredible. And here's to another year of after party's success of entertaining and informing all of you. And more importantly, to a wonderful New Year's Eve and New Year's Day celebrating with friends and family. Thanks everyone. God bless. Come to DSW for the shoes, Stay for the fun. Because let's be honest, if shoe shopping isn't fun, are you even doing it right? So go ahead, try something new. Try something different, good different. Try something that feels like you, you know, the real you. And then definitely brag about it later. Because at dsw, you've got unlimited freedom to play. Find the shoes that get you at prices that get your budget. At DSW stores or@dsw.com Let us surprise you.