← After Party with Emily Jashinsky
After Party with Emily Jashinsky
Cringe CBS News Reboot, Awful Crockett on "The View," with Glenn Greenwald, and MN Shooting Video Breakdown
01:28:11
Emily Jashinsky begins the show with an in-depth look at Wednesday’s shooting of a woman in Minneapolis. She shows various angles and explains the policies that helped lead to the woman’s death. Then Emily is joined by Glenn Greenwald, Host, “System Update,” to discuss the latest developments involving Venezuela, including the U.S. seizure of two Venezuela-linked oil tankers. They also discuss TX Senate Hopeful Jasmine Crockett and former GA Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene’s appearances on “The View” and why Glenn believes Crockett showcases what’s wrong with the Democratic party, while MTG resonates with so many average Americans. The pair also has a funny discussion on what would happen if they were forced to watch “The View” every day. Then the conversation turns to CBS News’ awkward rebrand and the Tony Dokoupil clip that left Glenn stunned. Emily rounds out the show with a look at the meltdown over a benign segment on CBS about January 6 and Spencer Pratt’s announcement he’s runni...
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- [00:00]
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Glenn Greenwald
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Glenn Greenwald
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Emily (Host of Afterparty)
Welcome to another edition of afterparty. Thank you so much for joining us tonight. Our guest is the one and only Glenn Greenwald, the host of System Update on Rumble. I pre taped with Glenn earlier in the day. We have a very long conversation to bring you in just a few moments where Glenn reacts to the news, huge news that we seized a Russian oil tanker off the coast of South America today. We have a, a deeper conversation as well with Glenn about the constructive or not so constructive geopolitics of continuing policies of regime change in the hemisphere in Latin America, going back into some of the history. And it's a, it's a really interesting conversation to have with Glenn. So I hope that you'll enjoy it. We'll get to that in just a moment. I also discussed with Glenn Jasmine Crockett's campaign. He loves Jasmine Crockett so much. You're going to want to hear that. We talk about Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tony decouple's first couple, couple of days at the helm of CBS's Nightly News program. He's also being pushed as the main new face of CBS in this moment of transition and change over there. So we talk about all of that. Obviously this has been a busy breaking news day to say the very, very least. It is the anniversary of the Palisades fire, an incredible tragedy that we don't talk about enough frankly. And guess who announced he's running for mayor of Los Angeles today? Spencer Pratt. If you're my age, that name means a lot because you watched Spencer Pratt on the Hills. Then you saw him in his hummingbird Snapchat phase. And now he is running seriously, apparently as a Republican for the mayor. The mayorality in Los Angeles against Karen Bass. So I'm going to bring you updates in that case. And we're also going to talk a little bit about, about Tony decouple and Larry Sabato. There was a very interesting, I mean, people were furious about a snippet and we're talking like 15 seconds of the CBS Nightly News yesterday on January 6th. And I think there's something super interesting to be gleaned from this. It's a little bit separate from the conversation, actually, it's a lot separate from the conversation that I have with Glenn. And of course, as I mentioned, very, very busy breaking news day. I'm going to start in just one moment here with the news out of Minneapolis, which I've been watching very closely all night, as I know many, many of you have as well. It's a, it's, it's a very fluid situation. Hopefully Minneapolis doesn't see riots on the scale of 2020. There are crowds gathered across the city right now at this moment. So far, again, it's early in the night, but so far nothing so bad. Let's start with the big news out of Minneapolis where we now know Renee Nicole Good, who is a 37 year old mother of a 6 year old, was killed in a confrontation with ICE earlier today. You may have already seen the video or I should say the videos because the national media right now is deep in analyzing this from every possible angle. There was a protest happening on the ground in Minneapolis this morning over the ICE surge that was sent by the Trump administration. So there were a whole lot of people out there with their camera phones pointed at this interaction. I mean, you'll see I'm going to show just two angles right here. But people are slowing this video down on a Zapruder level already to try to analyze exactly what the ICE officer who shot at Renee Nicole Good again, as I mentioned now, now deceased. What that what might have been going through that agent's mind? What might have been going through Good's mind. So let's go ahead. I also have, by the way, breaking reaction from the vice president that I'll get to in just one moment. So let's go ahead here and take a look at the first video this around 9:30am local time, apparently ICE vehicles were stuck in the snow. That's when all of this happened. We can roll the cl. Get out of the car. No, no. Shame, shame. Oh my God. What the. What the. You just. What the did you do? Now if you were listening very closely, you may have heard what sounded like one of the officers say, get out of the car. I actually think this is part of what's getting or part of the video, the confrontation that's getting under discussed right now. So as we roll the second clip here from an angle that's higher up, this angle made people believe. Actually some people say they're more comfortable taking the officer side after seeing the clip. Let's go ahead and take a look here. Hey, Okay, so we can probably cut it here. I think, you know, the rest of that clip is you see the officers trying to catch up to the vehicle, which went several feet. Obviously the driver was shot and had her foot on the gas pedal and was no longer steering the car. So the car, if you were just listening to this and you haven't seen the video yet, plowed straight ahead and hit what looked like another car and a telephone pole in a bank of snow off to the side. So all of that is to say this is already an inkblot test. That's where we are right now. Jacob Fry, Tim Walls, so Jacob Fry, obviously, Minneapolis Mayor Tim Walls, obviously governor of Minnesota, have already come out, as have many other national political figures and slammed, slammed ice. That's not surprising at all. They were already slamming ICE going into this for being in their sanctuary city. On the other hand, here's reaction from J.D. vance. I can put this up on the scroll here. That's already up on the screen. He posted actually just less than an hour ago, moments ago. I want every ICE offer to officer to know that their president, vice president, and the entire administration stands behind them to the radicals, assaulting them, doxing them and threatening them. Congratulations. We're going to work even harder to inflict, enforce the law. Okay. As I mentioned already we can see this being an ink block test where people are slowing down the video. And I've done this myself frame by frame to see exactly what the officer was thinking and when, what the driver was thinking and when. So if you believe that ICE is out of control, you see excess force here and you see an agency that shouldn't have even been there in the first place. If you believe that ICE is good, what you see is an officer trying to do his job making the country a safer More just place. But, you know, even as somebody on the right, I have been critical of ICE from a civil liberties perspective. Like in cases where American citizens have been detained, that has happened on what I feel are thin predicates. And I don't like security theater. I don't like armed officers of the state wearing masks, though I sure would want to be a mask if I was an ICE officer in this climate. I would want to be wearing a mask if I were in their shoes. I get that. And that's really the big picture here. We have a country where at least 8 million. 8 million people came in in the course of about three years. That's the New York Times number. A lot of people would say that's a low number, but that's at the lower range of the estimates here. 8 million people. We're talking about multiple states. Multiple states combined together added to the country worth of people added to the country in about three years with little vetting. Thousands of which. Thousands of those people, of the 8 million were people convicted of violent offenses who are now roaming our streets, thanks to sanctuary cities like Minneapolis, which acted as magnets. Of course they acted as magnets. There were places where the local officials were not cooperating and continue to not cooperate with federal law enforcement officials. So you can go to a sanctuary city if you are here without documentation or if you are, you know, trying to evade an asylum hearing, and you can have a reasonable assumption that it's. It's going to be pretty easy to again, evade deportation. So in this case, my reaction to Jacob Fry looking like he was auditioning for higher office, telling ICE to get the F out of his city is like, how dare you? How dare that be your reaction when you are defending your own policy? Defending your own policy that makes it easier for criminals who should not be in this country. I mean, I'm not even talking about immigration from a labor perspective right now or a law and order perspective. I'm talking about it purely from the question of public safety. I mean, I heard David Axelrod on cnn, which I was watching all night, say the terror being visited on these communities is coming from ice. I'm paraphrasing him. It's not an exact quote. That's basically what he said. I think Jacob Fry said on Anderson Cooper, quote, they're causing so many problems in our city, referring to ICE tearing families apart. Well, I think Lake and Riley's family and Jocelyn and Garay's family would hear Jacob Fry saying that ICE is the only agency here tearing families apart. And Be furious. Furious with that point. Because Democrats who defended a lenient border policy and defend sanctuary cities are also tearing families apart. That goes both ways. That goes both ways. And that's why ICE is there in the first place. I mean, I'm going to read some of these numbers from the Biden ICE. This is the Biden ICE department. 2024, over 81,312 of the 113, 431 arrests were of non citizens with criminal convictions or pending charges. They had a combined total of 516,000 charges and or convictions. And that included 57,000, 57,000 assaults, 18,000 sexual assaults, and actually more like 19,000 sexual assaults and sex offenses, 13,000 weapons offenses, 3,000 homicides. I'm rounding up here, 2894 homicides, 2,766 kidnappings, 5,462 robberies, 11,822 burglaries. That's Biden. Those were arrests of non citizens with criminal histories under Biden. That means tens of thousands of people. Tens of thousands of people are in this country. And that's dangerous. That is dangerous. I do not care what party you support or ideology you support. That is dangerous. And so if we are only talking about ISIS reaction as being dangerous, we are not zooming out properly to get the full picture. And I say that as somebody who is concerned that ICE's response to all of this could potentially be dangerous and has been dangerous in a couple of cases. Trump is obviously now hyperbolizing, and Democrats and pundits are having a field day with that. They're basically declaring the case closed. Andy McCarthy has already written though a national review saying it is settled Fourth Amendment law that a police officer may use deadly force against a fleeing suspect if he has a good faith belief, good faith belief that the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others. Here. I believe the driver was in the act of committing a dangerous assault when the agent opened fire. And the driver's reckless operation of the vehicle, coupled with the fact that she was heedless of harming armed law enforcement agents as they were carrying out their official duties, underscores that it was reasonable to believe she posed a serious threat to the agents and others. Now, on the other hand, people on the left, some people in the center, are saying that law enforcement is trained to avoid shooting at moving vehicles or that the officer could easily have sidestepped, gotten out of the way of the car. My two big questions right now are whether good was getting conflicting demands from officers. And I mentioned that at the top, while we were showing the video, you can hear someone say, get the F out of the car. Seemingly an officer say, get the F out of the car. And you can see the officer actually try to open the car door, which was locked. Now, Minnesota Public Radio is reporting that an eyewitness told them ICE agents, quote, gave conflicting orders to a driver in South Minneapolis on Wednesday, with one agent ordering her to drive away from the scene while in where an ICE vehicle was stuck in a snowbank, while another yelled for her to get out of the car as he reached for the door handle. Okay, so all that is to say, think about this. I mean, if you. If she was being told to stop and being told to go, you can see how from Good's perspective, you'd be trying to leave, to comply, and maybe confused and potentially unaware that there's an officer in front of you. This is a possibility. I'm not saying it's what happened, but it's obviously a possibility if you're getting two different directions and you're paying attention to the guy who's trying to open your door and is trying to tell you to get out, or maybe you only hear someone saying, leave. I honestly have no idea if either of those were the case. But when you have an eyewitness saying that, I think it's something that we can take seriously. But I'm also curious if she was using threatening language, if she was exhibiting any threatening behavior or not leading up to that final moment of her life. What I see in that vehicle is somebody who backs up, is not complying with an officer that does say to open the door, but then backs up and accelerates in the direction of an officer. Now, the use of a gun obviously feels disproportionate when you see the car going the speed that it was going. I mean, they're. I mean, my estimate is like 10 miles per hour, something like that. But when you are an officer, just because it looks disproportionate to us, you're not officer. You have this massive SUV coming at you. You have no idea in that moment how fast that car is going to accelerate. Maybe she slams the gas and throws you up into the air and you die. So all of these are possible scenarios. And honestly, the very fact that we're analyzing multiple angles and freeze frames speaks to the problem with just declaring what happened in Minneapolis today. A black and white, black and white, or one direction or the other, declaring it to be black or white or one direction or the Other, did the officer really feel like his life was endangered? Was there a better way or better instinct? Did the driver here command to leave? These are a lot of the questions that I'm be thinking about and looking at as more and more evidence emerges. I imagine we'll get body camera videos. Right now, I think the single biggest problem, though, on a macro level is thousands of convicted criminal migrants are taking sanctuary in cities, literally sanctuary in cities like Minneapolis. And one political party almost entirely opposed is almost entirely opposed to efforts to deport them or other illegal migrants. And yeah, I worry that in the face of that opposition, ICE is going to be more and more inclined to impede on our civil liberties. Yes, you can do both at the exact same time. This is a very, very 2026 disaster, unfortunately. So it's. It's okay to be slow in these news cycles. I've learned that a million times, it feels like over the last 10 years, where we get cell phone videos of a confrontation with police and law enforcement. And as more and more. Jacob Blake is such a good example. The Kenosha 2020 case is such a good example of you not knowing what you don't know because you weren't there. You don't know what's quite literally cropped. You don't know what happened before or after. And so it's okay. I think it's genuinely okay and sometimes important to be slow in news cycles like this one. That's. That's my reaction as of right now. But it's this. This is not going anywhere. This will be in the news with us, and this will loom large over our, our politics, certainly into the future. On that note, I'm about to bring you my nice long conversation with the great Glenn Greenwald, which I'm really excited for everybody to watch because we had a. A very, very. I got to pick Glenn's brain as somebody who lives in South America, has covered the South American left, about how in the long term, could backfire or not. Or not. You'll see what you think. But before we bring Glenn in, first, you know we gotta talk about masa chips. It's 2026, it's a new year. A lot of people are focusing on practical changes, nothing too extreme. So one easy win for you might be replacing processed snacks with masa chips. It's clean eating and it doesn't feel restrictive, which is amazing. Masa keeps it real. No seed oils or additives. They taste so good, they leave you feeling light and energetic. Never have heavy or crashed out. That is something you actually do experience with Masa chips. It's really fantastic. My favorite is I would say lime. Probably I'm leaning more towards lime these days, but I have different purposes for the different Masa chip flavors. They're all good. And because you'll love Masa, you may also want to check out Vanity Crisps from the sister company. They're amazing three ingredient potato chips. I love the barbecue. So good and I consider myself a chip connoisseur. So if you're ready to give Masa a try, go to masachips.com afterparty and use code AFTERPARTY for 25 off your first order. Or simply click click the link in the video description or scan the QR code to claim this delicious offer. And if you don't feel like ordering online, good news. Masa is now available nationwide at your local sprouts supermarket, so stop by and pick up a couple of bags before they're gone.
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Emily (Host of Afterparty)
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Emily (Host of Afterparty)
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 now. I'm going to hop into the chat so if you're watching this live, you'll be able to chat with me live for this lengthy conversation that I got to have with Glenn earlier in the day. Please make sure to subscribe. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, subscribe on YouTube. It's so helpful for us. And without further ado, here's the one and only Glenn Greenwald. So happy to be joined once again by what Top three Favorite After Party Guests? I don't know. Top one Favorite After Party guest Glenn Greenwald Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, also the host of the great show, one of my favorite system update. Glenn, thanks for being here.
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Glenn Greenwald
Thank you, Emily. You have no idea how close I was to hanging up and disconnecting. When you said top three, I was like, who were the other two? And then you corrected yourself immediately and made it clear it was top one. I was like, all right, I'm gonna stay.
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Emily (Host of Afterparty)
Okay. But you have to think of it like Megan probably has to be one.
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Glenn Greenwald
Okay. A lot of people don't know this because Megan has this successful show, blah, blah, blah. I'm the godfather of that show. I don't know if you know that or not. I was the very first guest. I launched that show. You know how it is when you launch a show. The first guest often determines whether your show will be a success or not. She chose perfectly. I've been on more times, I think, than any other. So she would be happy to take the number two spot as a result. So that's fair.
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Emily (Host of Afterparty)
I hadn't. I hadn't considered that. I forget how instrumental you are in the success of the Megyn Kelly show.
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Glenn Greenwald
Instrumental. Central.
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Emily (Host of Afterparty)
Critical. Critical. Oh, my gosh. All right, let's. I guess we can talk about the news. I guess there's not much going on. Actually, to the contrary. We have seized a Russian oil that was evading the blockade outside of Venezuela. So why don't we start there, Glenn? Because Lindsey Graham and Rand Paul are going back and forth once again on Rand Paul's birthday of all days. Lindsey Graham posted on X today. To senator at Rand Paul, happy birthday. I hope today is full of family, friends and good cheer. Oh, by the way, as a birthday president, we have seized yet another oil tanker trying to transport the weren't sanctioned Venezuelan oil. I hear Russia isn't too happy next year to celebrate. Maybe we can go do a golf outing to Venezuela and Cuba. Should be good to go by then. Meanwhile, Glenn, even people are on the right are on the right are uncomfortable with how happy Lindsey Graham is about all of this because it always makes them feel nervous that something's going deeply wrong when Lindsey Graham is happy. Now, most of the right still pretty much in support of what's happened in Venezuela, but now that you have the seizure of a Russian oil taker, let me just. It's not surprising, but let me just get your reaction to the geopolitics, the potential ramifications of that seizure.
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Glenn Greenwald
Well, first of all, on the Lindsey Graham issue, I mean, it is, you know, something you can kind of talk about as a personality component to the story. But I think there's a huge ideological revelation in there, which is that, you know, if you had gone even a year ago and asked MAGA about Rand Paul and Lindsey Graham, most people would have said, said Rand Paul is a very close representative of what the America first foreign policy is opposed to, foreign interventions. Someone who doesn't want to go and fight wars unless the United States is being attacked first. In a lot of ways, his father, Rand Paul was the predecessor, laid a lot of the found the groundwork for Donald Trump's ability within the Republican Party to rail against neoconservatism and Bush and Cheney adventurism. This is what Ron Paul did very successfully in 2008, 2012, and then it led to Rand Paul. And Melgo loved Rand Paul. And by contrast, Lindsey Graham was the everything anathema. You know, he was the person who was running around with John McCain and Joe Lieberman like a representative of neoconservative ideology, which if anything, if nothing else, the MAGA movement said that it wanted to vanquish and bury. And so it's not just that Lindsey Graham is happy. He's happy because his vision of the world is being completely fulfilled. We bombed Iran. We're closer to ever than ever to Israel. We're threatening Cuba, we're threatening Colombia. He want Trump said that unless protesters are treated better in Iran, we're now going to attack Iran as though we're the guarantor now of civil liberties in Iran. And then of course, Venezuela is a long term project of neoconservatives like Marco Rubio, like Lindsey Graham. And then when you add on to that. So, you know, I think the issue up until the moment has been, Emily, that in terms of geopolitics, it's been a very confusing situation because when Maduro was first taken from Venezuela and brought back to the United States, a lot of people, I think most people for and against, assumed that the government was going to collapse and we were going to then empower the opposition. Edmundo Gonzalez, who was declared the winner of the 2023, 2025 election, 2024 election, or Maria Machado, who just won the Nobel Peace Prize. And that was where you heard all these, you know, kind of effusive narratives about Venezuelans have been liberated. We freed the country of Venezuela. That's all now fallen by the wayside because we don't have any intention at all of doing anything to the government of Venezuela, for the moment at least, except taking out Maduro. The whole regime is in place and if anything, there's greater crackdowns. So then the question becomes, well, what is this about? Now we're focused more on oil, and this tanker was one that the Russians decided that they were going to protect because they get a lot of their oil from Venezuela. And I think this is such an important point, Emily. They don't get their oil from Venezuela because they steal it. That's not how China gets oil from Venezuela. They buy it on the open market. Venezuela has always been and remains more than happy to sell its oil to the United States. The problem is that the United States has tried to choke off the Venezuelan economy like it's done with the Cuban economy, their own economy with sanctions. But if we wanted access to their oil, all we had to do is buy it in the open market the way that everybody else does. So even this makes very little sense to me in terms of, oh, we're going to go and take their oil, right?
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Emily (Host of Afterparty)
We want it on our own terms, I guess. But that's, let's push, like, let's, let's pull it this out a little bit more, too. And in terms of what this is actually about, because, listen, I mean, it's. I forget who said this, but someone made a joke about how this may be the first time in history that a presidential administration used the pretext of oil, like actually just use the excuse of oil as a pretext. They were just like, yeah, this is a war about oil when it's actually about, like, Iran, Russia and China. Now, few people who comment on this in America are as familiar with South American politics as, as you are, Glenn. Chinese influence in South America is, is obviously a real thing. In Venezuela is obviously a real thing. It may be overstated by certain people who are affiliated with the, the intelligence community and the Pentagon in one way or another, but that is real. So is that ultimately, I mean, is that. That's my best guess. I mean, I think that's, that's what the root of all this is. When you hear Marco Rubio really talk about it, and he's the one making these decisions, for the most part, it sounds like that's what this is really about. Do you think that's what it's really about? Am I, am I wrong?
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Glenn Greenwald
I, I think it's very hard to ident to say this was the cause. We can, you know, 20 years ago or more, when we invaded Iraq, people were debating, why did we really invade Iraq? Was it because George W. Bush wanted to avenge his father, who we said Saddam Hussein tried to kill? Was it for oil. Iraq is a very wealthy, oil rich nation. Was it because of Israel? Was it because we really did believe the intelligence they were developing weapons of mass destruction would hand them into Al Qaeda? I don't think people to this day can say this is why we invaded Iraq. Probably different factions had different motives. I think the same is true here. Marco Rubio and I think this is such an important point and it's like an uncomfortable one to make, but we make it all the time in the context of Israel. So I don't think it should be uncomfortable. Marco Rubio has wanted to overthrow the governments of Venezuela and Cuba and other left wing governments in Latin America for many, many years. Well before the Chinese really had a foothold in Latin America. And the reason is, is that he grew up in a Cuban community, an immigrant community. I grew up in South Florida, very close to them. I understand this community very well. And now there's a big Venezuelan component to it as well. These people have always looked at Latin America as kind of the region that they have the greatest interest in. Like a lot of American Jews look at the Middle east and Israel as the interest area they have a lot of interest in. And they've always wanted the US Government to go up and kind of fix that region for them. Overthrow Castro, overthrow Chavez. I think a lot of that from Marco Rubio and other, you know, Latin American members of Congress from Miami, that's a big part of it. As for China, let me just say this Chinese, Chinese influence in Latin America is basically composed of the Chinese trading with, with these countries. For example, the United States and Brazil have always had a very close relationship. Brazil is the largest country in the hemisphere after the United States. By far the most influential in, in Latin America. And yet right now, China has surpassed Brazil as their most important and largest commercial trading partner. And one of the main reasons for this is, and you see this in Africa as well, with countries where traditionally the United States had a big influence, is because a lot of these countries are starting to turn anti American. And they're turning anti American because they perceive that we go around and just bully everybody and we throw our weight around and we give them orders. There's that kind of famous quote from a leader of a West African country that says, when the Americans come, we get a lecture, when the Chinese come, we get a hospital. All of this is soft power. And so to watch all these MAGA people suddenly saying like, yeah, we're going to dominate the world. We do what we want, we take what we want. Yes, you can do that to some extent. I mean, the United States does have the most powerful military in the world. Chinese have a pretty powerful one too. Probably can't do it in their region, but there's a huge cost to it, which is this is what makes these countries want to go elsewhere and trade with other countries and depend on other countries is people don't like being bullied, they don't like being bombed, they don't like being invaded, they don't like being dictated to, they don't like this arrogant imperialist attitude. And the Chinese, although they're very aggressive about their region, go out of their way not to do that. There is a different relationship and posture that the Chinese have and that's the reason why so many, many traditional American partners are moving toward China. So we're worried about Chinese influence. We probably should stop engaging in the behavior that drives countries into their arms.
- [30:51]
Emily (Host of Afterparty)
I was just going to go in that direction, Glenn, because you posted on X. Some can't seem to fathom that most people don't want foreign countries bombing their own country and dictating who their leaders are. Earlier this year, when Trump imposed sanctions and tariffs on Brazil to prevent Bolsonaro's imprisonment and their censorship regime, many Brazilians who dislike Lula became enraged at the US on sovereignty and self governance grounds. You go on to say even if they don't like their leaders, they also often don't like the US and thus won't always welcome us as liberators, especially when we invade with bombs and guns and orders. It's just basic human nature. And so I think that's a really like big point, like a very profound point actually, because I sound like a broken record. There is literally a Sandinista in charge of Nicaragua right now. If you want some evidence of how well the Cold War allowed us to maintain hemispheric control, we act as though that battle is, is won. Like it was definitively one Panama big celebr. Everything is great. Even though we literally just had to convince China to like sell a port in Panama in like the year of our 2025. And Glenn, again just please speak to this because you've covered the Latin American left. There is favorability towards us and towards the US in some of these countries, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, certainly right now, but not among everyone. And the reason that these pink tide leftist movements are still successful in Latin America and are favorable to places like China, it's actually because they care about their own sovereignty. So there's a pretty decent argument that even from the Maga hemispheric control perspective. This is counterproductive.
- [32:26]
Glenn Greenwald
Yeah. So let me, let me use Brazil as a, as like a kind of laboratory, a test case just to illustrate your point and to answer your question. Because even though a lot of people now in the United States who don't know much about Brazil think Brazil is some sort of like left wing, repressive, like communist regime or whatever, Brazil has never been a communist regime. Brazil has an extremely powerful banking sector, very powerful oligarchs, many, many Brazilian billionaires. It's a capitalist country. The president Lua de Silva was like kind of, he grew out of the Brazilian left, he was a labor leader, he was a factory worker, came from a very, very poor background. But he tried to run for president three times as a leftist, couldn't win. And then he only was elected in 2002 because he selected as his vice president this kind of like very wealthy, pro business type. He wrote a letter to the Brazilian people saying I'm going to be a president for everybody, including the witch, including banks. And so Brazil grew rapidly economically. It passed the UK and became the sixth largest economy in the world. Brazil is not a left wing country. And even now as vice president is this guy who is kind of like a Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan type, like known for austerity, kind of like a never Trumper, but a never Bolsonaro. So Brazil is a very like, it's not like Venezuela or Cuba or even Colombia. It's a much more pragmatic country and it has very deep ties to the United States. It always has. The Brazilian U. S Relationship has always been very good. That said, in 1964 the United States worked with generals in Brazil to overthrow their democratically elected government because he got a little bit too left wing in the eyes of the Kennedy and the Johnson administration and then imposed a 21 year military dictatorship on Brazil. And there's a lot of people who are alive then who are steeped in that history, who are very wary of any attempts to, by the United States to kind of control Brazil or the region. And even though that ended in 1985, Brazil redemocratized in 1989. So you're talking now about, you know, 25, 30 years, it's still very much part of the national identity. So when you have what Trump did earlier in that treat I referenced where he came in and said, I don't like you putting Bolsonaro in prison even though it went through a whole due process trial. And I'm, I have questions about that, but that's Brazilian justice. And even though I don't like how you're censoring, because I don't like how you're censoring, I'm going to impose sanctions on your leaders. I'm going to put tariffs on you until you change ruler. Who had been a pretty unpopular leader. You know, he's almost 80 years old. He's, you know, been around since 2002. He's in his third term. There's an election this year. It's going to be his fourth term. He's going to be 85 people. You know, he was very unpopular. He picked up this banner of nationalism and said, nobody tells Brazilians how to live except Brazilians. Brazil is for Brazilians to decide. And I watch huge numbers of people who are sick of Lula, who hate his workers party, unite behind him and say fu the United States. And his polling increased dramatically. And he looks, looks pretty decent, by no means a lot, but pretty decent for reelection because he rode that wave. This is just how we all respond.
- [35:30]
Emily (Host of Afterparty)
I've done the same. Yep.
- [35:33]
Glenn Greenwald
Look, in Canada, when Trump started threatening Canada and it was almost a certainty that the Conservatives were going to win in Canada and then suddenly the Conservative Party was deemed too close to Trump and they united behind the Liberal Party and then Mark Carney picks up this huge hole up by Justin Trudeau and easily wins the election. This is how human nature, we evolved to survive in tribes. We have tribal identity and we especially have it when we perceive that there's some other tribe attacking us or trying to dictate to us or take things of ours. So if you think about what's being said about Venezuela, we're going to take their oil. We're now governing it. What do you think the people in Venezuela, even the ones who aren't pro Maduro, are going to be thinking and doing and how they're going to be reacting?
- [36:15]
Emily (Host of Afterparty)
Well, yeah. Okay. So Marco Rubio just in the last several hours came out and said, we have a threefold process in Venezuela. Step one is the stabilization of the country. We are going to take between 30 and 50 million barrels of oil. The second phase will be recovery, ensuring that American, Western and other countries have access to Venezuelan markets. The third phase will be one of transition. Now, obviously, Delsey Rodriguez remains sort of in charge of the country, even though Trump says he's in charge of the country and the oil and all of that. So this hasn't quite been like a Pinache Allende situation or Allende to Pinace situation where a right wing person is installed by the United States immediately. There's something, it feels, Glenn, like there's a new playbook being written right now. So as we're in the middle of that, trying to understand what's happening and what could happen in the future, what do you make of this moment that we're in after Rubio now says this is the three steps to look ahead to?
- [37:09]
Glenn Greenwald
Yeah, I think it's a good point. And, you know, a lot of the discourse has been very binary, like, oh, either Trump is anti war or he's kind of like Bush, Cheney figure. But if you look at the critiques that a lot of people are making of what Trump is doing in Venezuela, both in the sort of neocon wing and in the kind of liberal establishment media wing, they are kind of criticizing him like, well, what do you mean? You took out Maduro, but you left the entire regime. Why didn't you go and get everybody? And it's like the Iraq War never happened. It's like the Vietnam War never happened. It's like the bombing and regime change we did in Libya never happened. Where we left these countries in complete shambles. We were required for years to keep our military there or to just walk away and leave them wrecked. And I think one of the things they're trying to do, and it's exactly what you just alluded to, and I think it's an important nuanced observation that's being missed. I don't know what's going to work, but this is what they're trying to do, is they're trying to have their cake and eat it, too. In other words, they don't want to get involved in a civil war in a quandary in Venezuela, which is exactly for sure what would happen if they tried to remove the entire government. The military age. So you have to remember the Communists, you know, through Hugo Chavez and and now Nicolas Maduro, have been in power for almost three decades. These people are indoctrinated to hate the United States, to believe their system of government is right. They would go to war. They're very armed. They would go to war for a long time. If we tried to do what we did in Iraq, which is deconstruct the military, de bathify, put in our own leaders. And so what they're trying to do is say, we're going to keep the regime in, but we're going to have a gun to their head. And we're going to say, you're going to do what we want. Want. You can be repressive. You can, you know, they don't care about that. They're not trying to free the Venezuelan people. They want, as you said, like more favorable access to oil. And they're basically saying to Del C. Rodriguez and the rest of the Venezuelan regime, either you allow Exxon and Chevron and Konosco and the rest to go in and, and rejuvenate your infrastructure and we take it on our terms, or you're going to suffer the same fate as Maduro. I think it's a lot of questions and doubts about why that would work. But I also just, this is the key thing I think is you see this triumphalism, like, yeah, we're taking their oil. Tell me who's going to benefit if like we get Exxon and Chevron and the rest to go in. And first of all, it's extremely expensive and a long term project to rejuvenate the oil infrastructure of Venezuela, which has been very neglected. It's not the easiest, greatest, most easily extracted oil either. But let's say you go do that. You think the people of Ohio and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and the Rust Belt and Appalachia are going to benefit from oil company profits, which is what the core promise of the Trump movement was.
- [39:54]
Emily (Host of Afterparty)
The argument to steel man that they're depriving Russia and China of the oil.
- [39:59]
Glenn Greenwald
But the thing is, like I said before, Russia and China are buying the oil. We could buy the oil also. And the problem was in the white, Trump in the White House like three months ago was talking about as well, because this is not just like a sudden thing that happened. We've been building up our military there for months. We've been bombing off the coast. As you know, Trump authorized the CIA covert destabilization and regime change program by the CIA. This is many, many months in the making. And Trump said in the White House several months ago that Maduro called him and said, look, let's do a deal, whatever you want, we'll give you the oil, anything you want. So if this is really what we were after, if we really just wanted access to the oil, if we wanted them to sell to the oil to us, we wanted them to do deals with our oil companies, we would have done that. The reason there's a problem between the US And Venezuela is because we are sanctioning and trying to choke their economy. This is the issue is when we don't like a government like in Venezuela and Cuba, we try and immiserate the population. But we've been doing this for decades and it doesn't change the government, all it does is immiserate the population. So all you have to do is restore normal relations. And they'll allow the oil companies in. Why wouldn't they? They. Everybody would benefit that way. But that isn't really the goal here.
- [41:12]
Emily (Host of Afterparty)
Yeah. If you doubt that's an intentional U. S. Tactic, look no further than the memo of what Kissinger said to it was to Nixon about Chile. Make their economy scream. Make their economy scream. And the rhyme there is with the Cold war Soviet influence potentially, potentially creeping into our hemisphere. And if your argument is that Iran, whatever is creeping into the hemisphere, then you should also consider this perhaps again, counterproductive. Glenn, let me get your take on this Dave Smith clip about the MAGA base because I'm very curious what we talked about a little bit earlier, but I'm very curious what you make of how this has played out so far. Let's go ahead and roll this.
- [41:54]
Dave Smith
Like a year ago, Donald Trump had his highest approval ratings that he's ever had had. He was the greatest political comeback story in American history. And now, you know, he's, he's totally like, divided his base. There's an infight in the Republic, all this stuff. But anyway, so a year ago, when people were so excited about Donald Trump coming in, you never met one Trump supporter in your life who went, now we're going to get regime change in Venezuela. Yeah, that's why I'm excited that Donald Trump's here. Maybe in my people wanted no new wars. They wanted the border secure, they wanted the economy turned around, they wanted inflation dealt with with nothing. There was never. There was no demand from Trump's base. And so this is like one more example of Donald Trump just siding with the war hawks over his own people.
- [42:42]
Emily (Host of Afterparty)
So, Glenn, I think you and I probably agree, what, with what Dave Smith is saying there, but I don't know that I've seen it in public opinion or in the commentariat so far.
- [42:58]
Glenn Greenwald
I have a hard time believing that people are going to be excited about this. If you. I think one of the things we've seen is that if you're not sending American troops into a conflict, if they're not returning in body bags, people don't like it. People are like, why are we spending all this money there? But, you know, like when Trump spent all of 2024 criticizing President Biden for bombing the Houthis in Yemen, saying it was totally unnecessary, it was pointless, and then he got into power and started bombing the Houthi. It was talked about among the political elite but most people didn't even know. They didn't even care because there's no, their sons and daughters aren't being drafted. They're not coming back dead. I'm not saying this is going to be some, if this is all it is, I'm not saying it's going to be some big albatross around Trump politically. But I also don't believe that there's some, as Dave Smith was saying, there was some eagerness. And this is the part that really bothers me most. Emily. We just had this like major 18 month election, right? And the idea of an election is the presidents, the party say what they believe, what they want to do, and then you get to vote, vote. And there's a very third grade, sixth grade kind of model of how American democracy works. But this is the idea in theory. And you listen to both sides and you're like, oh, I prefer this one. Never once during the campaign did Trump even allude to the fact that we were going to do a regime change war or regime change operation in Venezuela or abduct Maduro. To the extent we talked about what is really a problem, which is the flow of fentanyl and fentanyl into the United States. And I actually think the bigger problem is why Americans are so eager to consume it. But that's the demand problem that people are bored by. So even if you look at this supply problem like, oh, all this fentanyl is coming to the United States. So I really don't understand how, if this was such an important policy, removing Maduro for our national security or economic prosperity, why was this something that was never mentioned or discussed, let alone advocated during the campaign? I do think that's what Dave Smith is saying. This wasn't anything anybody was craving or asking for other than maybe this immigrant community that Marco Rubio represents in South Florida.
- [44:55]
Emily (Host of Afterparty)
Florida, right. Yeah. And as the, you know, 2026 campaign cycle goes on and the question of affordability is on the table, Democrats, if this roiling chaos in Venezuela is continuing into this year and into the fall, you can certainly see how there would be a damaging juxtaposition with that. And take a quick break, but we'll be right back with the great Glenn Greenwald in one moment. First, you don't need to overhaul your life to start investing. Investing. Just automate it. With Stash, your new year money goals can quietly run in the background while you focus on everything else. Stash isn't just another investing app. It's a registered investment advisor that combines automated investing with expert personalized guidance so you don't have to worry about gambling or figuring it out on your own. Now Stash is simple, smart and stress free. Choose from personalized investments. Let Stash's award winning smart portfolio do the work for you. You or pick a combo of both. Stash is there to guide you every step of the way so just $3 per month gets you access to world class financial advice and personalized guidance so you can start investing in your future today. Don't let your money sit around. Put it to work with stash. Go to get.stash.com Emily to see how you can receive $25 towards your first stock purchase. Interview important disclosures that's get.stash.com Emily get.slash.com only paid non client endorsement, not representative of all clients and not a guarantee. Investment Advisory services offered by Stash Investments llc, an SEC registered investment Advisor. Investing involves risk offer is subject to terms and conditions.
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- [47:52]
Emily (Host of Afterparty)
We're back now with Glenn Greenwald who is of course the host of System Update over on Rumble. Great show. Make sure to watch it. I know everybody watches it already. Glenn, thanks for joining us. I'm gonna make you talk about Jasmine Crockett because why wouldn't I make you talk about Jasmine Crockett? She stopped by the View on the sacred anniversary of January 6th. Of course I'm gonna make you respond to this clip. Let's take a look. Everyone wants to talk about how Maduro was illegitimate. As we sit here on January 6, I do want to be clear. Somebody else was trying to be a Maduro of the United States.
- [48:26]
OnDeck Advertiser
Somebody else wanted to do the exact same thing. The difference is Maduro was successful because it's my understanding that when he went.
- [48:34]
Emily (Host of Afterparty)
Into that press conference, he said at least 20 times, oil, oil, oil, oil, oil. He sure did.
- [48:39]
OnDeck Advertiser
Listen to him when he speaks, he's telegraphing.
- [48:42]
Emily (Host of Afterparty)
And so Jack Smith, I hate that he did not get his day in court. I hate that for the American people. People, Glenn, like you. Jasmine Crockett is a lawyer. I'm not sure who I would hire. If I may.
- [48:57]
Glenn Greenwald
Like, just like me, Emily. Just exactly like me is one of.
- [49:00]
Emily (Host of Afterparty)
The many qualities you two share. It's such a. It's almost. I thought I was watching you on the View. Actually, in that moment, she's. She's running in the Democratic Senate primary, of course, and so there's no real surprise that she's going pedal to the middle of this. But the politics are going to be interesting because even just invoking January six, I guess she's in the primary, so it makes sense. But I don't know if you saw the video of Democrats with their, like, silent memorial on the steps of the Capitol singing America the Beautiful yesterday, and there's so much media coverage of it. I was reporting live there. It was like, one of the worst things I've ever seen. It was horrible. We don't even need to get back into what happened on January six just to say that she's running in the state of Texas. Does she really still think it's a good idea to be talking about January 6th?
- [49:56]
Glenn Greenwald
Here's the thing. And I mean, this is. I know it was a joke, and I, like, did all it took all my energy to treat his joke when he said I was just like Jasmine Crockett, because I really abhor Jasmine Crockett. I mean, personally, I don't know her. I'm just saying, like, if you were to ask me what is everything rotted and broken and just repellent about Democratic Party politics, I would have many people I could point to. But one of them immediately would be Jasmine Crockett. And I'll tell you exactly why. Yes. Well, first of all, she's black. I Am anti black racist. She's also a woman. I hate women. So as you're that obviously. But then on top of that, like, she has no ideology. She has, like, nope. Like, did you hear talking about Venezuela? She had nothing to say about Venezuela. The only thing she has is she hates Republicans and she hates funnel twins Trump, like, and all these liberals go wild for hers. Like, this is who we want as the Democratic Party. What does she think about bombing Iran? What does she think about Israel? What does she think about Wall Street? What does she think about banks? She's like, very, you know, I'll tell you quickly. One of the things that when before Marjorie Taylor Greene had her transformation. I've always liked Marjorie Taylor Greene. I've had her on my show. I've talked to her a lot. And one of the things that she once said, oh, this is a while ago, that was like, this shows how smart Marjorie Taylor Greene is. And even though people, every liberal will be like, oh, she's very stupid. Whenever conservatives talk about aoc, they're always like, oh, she's a radical. She's a communist, she's an extremist. Marjorie Taylor Greene understands exactly what AOC is. Marjorie Taylor Greene doesn't attack AOC that way. Marjorie Taylor Greene says AOC is a fraud. She's a partisan hack. She's an establishment tool. This is what Jasmine Crockett is. This is all she is. She, like, you know, has this, like, demeanor and comportment that draws attention to herself. She seems like she's feisty and radical to like a dumb liberal liberal. But she's completely empty and vacant. And so, you know, I don't know if you saw, but George Conway, who is the husband of Kellyanne Conway, is now running for Congress. And there's like, very liberal New York 12th congressional district that represents Manhattan that used to. That was occupied for many years by Jerry Nadler, who's now vacating it. You know, George Conway was like a hardcore far right Rush Limbaugh Republican operative his entire life. Life. Him and Kellyanne were the people behind Whitewater. They used to, like, work with Matt Drudge to do all that dirt on Bill Clinton. He was a hardcore pro war on terror conservative. Love George Bush and Dick Cheney. I worked at the same law firm as George Conway. I know exactly what his politics were. He never changed. All that he has, though, is that he hates Trump. And all these liberals love George Conway. Like, they love the Bulwark and Bill Crystal. This is Jasmine Crockett. This is all she is, is, of course she's going to talk about January 6th. If you ask her about Venezuela, she's going to be like, I don't see the difference between Maduro and Donald Trump. This is a completely vacant Democratic Party that's elevating these people who they think capture, like, what made Trump popular. This kind of, like, very aggressive, you know, kind of like restoring rhetorically unrestrained style. Trump had an ideology to him. He had, like, political beliefs that he hammered over and over about immigration, about. About, you know, trade, about the United States and our foreign policy. These people have nothing. They don't believe in anything and. Exactly. You're going to run for. For the senate in Texas six years after January 6th, don't give a crap about January six anymore. And that's what you're going to be babbling about on the View. If you're asked about Venezuela.
- [53:20]
Emily (Host of Afterparty)
Of course it is. Yeah, but I mean, that's the thing. Like, it's the packaging that they're trying to fool people with. We saw it in the 20. I mean, Democrats did really well with it in 2018 in those midterms. I expect they'll be probably fine in 2026. The question is, what happens in the primary, the presidential primary, and in downvote races, down ballot races. Are there Jasmine Crocketts on the ticket or are there people with more populous substance? Big question. And for Republicans, they got an answer to this question somewhat from Marjorie Taylor Greene announcing obviously she was leaving Congress. That happened finally this week. Now, Marjorie Taylor Greene also went on the View. All of our favorite people are going on the View. I don't know, Glenn. We should just.
- [54:01]
Glenn Greenwald
We should watch the best show day.
- [54:03]
Emily (Host of Afterparty)
Yeah, we should.
- [54:04]
Glenn Greenwald
We should live stream the View and we should do a podcast where we just watch the View and comment on the View.
- [54:09]
Emily (Host of Afterparty)
The View.
- [54:09]
Glenn Greenwald
I kill myself after about four episodes, but we would have four really good episodes that we would be able to do.
- [54:16]
Emily (Host of Afterparty)
I would be so drunk by, like, noon or whenever that show ends every day, I would just.
- [54:21]
Glenn Greenwald
Could you imagine having to listen to, like, Joy Behar and Sunny, whatever her name is like, every day? I mean, I don't know. I don't think, like. No, but it was a good idea. But we love the View, so. Okay. Marjorie Taylor Greene went on the View. Sorry.
- [54:34]
Emily (Host of Afterparty)
No, no, no, Glenn. That was, I think, a very appropriate tangent. Here's Marjorie Taylor Greene talking about kind of what ended everything for her. Let's roll the clip. The straw that broke the camel's back for me was the president calling me a traitor for Standing with women who were raped when they were teenagers. One of maga's big campaign pledges was to release the Epstein files and then having to say, am I going to have to be the next Charlie Kirk? Is my son going to get murdered because I'm trying to continue to do this job? I think that's a bar that's too high for anyone. And it's real. Political violence is real, and it's so sad, and the politics is so, so extreme and divisive, and I just don't want to be a part of that anymore. So there's something interesting in that, Glenn, where she's not just saying. I mean, obviously there she had substantive policy breakdowns with the president, and those were a critical part of what ended their relationship as well. But she's also making a different point there, and it's not dissimilar, I guess, from what we were talking about with Jasmine Crockett in a very odd way, which is that. But there are packages, like political packages for messaging that even Trump can be guilty of. And I say even Trump because he's just such a different character in our politics. Like, he could literally shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it. But even Marjorie Taylor Greene was uncomfortable with the level of, like, rancor that the populist messaging from Donald Trump is packaged. And I thought that was kind of a new point. Point to hear. I mean, she's been making that point since it happened, but it's. It's actually kind of a new point in the bigger conversation.
- [56:22]
Glenn Greenwald
The re. You know, I said earlier that I always liked Barter Keller Green, like, way before this, like.
- [56:26]
Emily (Host of Afterparty)
Yeah, you're an early, like, apologist for mtg.
- [56:30]
Glenn Greenwald
Yeah. I mean, to be perfectly honest, I do think Marjorie Taylor Greene has this kind of, like, iconic, kind of, like, campy appeal that a lot of gay men love. I was very surprised that she ended up, like, best friends with George Santos and being his primary a advocate for a pardon. That all makes total sense to me. But in any event, that's a whole separate issue.
- [56:48]
Emily (Host of Afterparty)
The Brazilian gays, they are just clamoring for more mtg.
- [56:52]
Glenn Greenwald
Totally, totally. But, like, the reason why I always liked her is because I generally hate, like, gay icons. But the reason why I really love Marjorie Taylor Green is because she's always been so authentic. Like, what she is is a person who wasn't that political. She wasn't, like, trained to run for, you know, like, state representative and work her way up to the state Senate and then get groomed by the gop. She really is somebody who, who genuinely got inspired by Trump and the America first movement. Like, it drew her into politics in a very passionate way. She ran for Congress, she won. She was very unpolished when she got there. She didn't, there's a lot of things she didn't know about. And I watched her kind of learn the ways of Washington, like, learn more and more. And one of the things she really tried to do, and I think she succeeded, was always make sure she kept a big foot back in her constituency. Like, a lot of these members of Congress who are there for a long time, they don't even live in their constituents, in their districts anymore. They live in Washington and they go back there when they have to. You know, in between trips to like Jerusalem for like some two day town hall meeting or something. Marjorie Taylor Greene is a, she's from northern Georgia, like this suburb in northern Georgia. She, she really. I'll just give you. I don't, Sorry to talk so much about, but you asked me about Jazzlyn Crockett and Marjorie Taylor Greene. I have a lot to say about both. But I remember when Trump started bombing the, the, the Houthis in Yemen, and Marjorie Taylor Greene said, and there was all this debate about doing it, and this was by far the most insightful comment. To me, she's like, when I go back home, nobody in my district talks about the Houthis. Nobody even knows what a Houthi is. Why are we bombing them? Like, what are they? They have to do with the American people. And it sounds like the kind of thing that if you're a political elite, if you're paid to talk about foreign policy, you dismiss as being simple minded. But in reality, it's much more insightful than 99% of what we hear in our discourse. And she's speaking for most people, like, why do I care about the Houthis? Why are we spending billions on, on the Houthis? And I think as Donald Trump's second term unfolded, she had an expectation about the things, things that America first was supposed to promise. And instead, she watched Trump spending all his time and all American resources arming and funding Israel, meeting with Netanyahu, constantly bombing Iran, threatening a whole bunch of other countries, now doing regime change in Venezuela, covering up the Epstein files. And she was one of the very few people in the Republican Party in Washington who had both the integrity and the courage to say, you know, this isn't what we were supposed to be doing. This isn't what we were told this movement was about out. And that's the reason why Trump has to try and destroy the people who, the few people who do like Thomas Massie and, and Rand Paul and now Marjorie Taylor Greene. And of course, when Donald Trump calls you a traitor, I'm not saying, you know, that if you run for Congress, that's something that should drive you out of Congress, very personal choice. But I do think that is a concern that is very real. Like she's not, it's not neurotic, it's not hysterical. It's like it's very reasonable to me that that would be something, something that you would just, I can imagine what the pushback to her was on that.
- [59:55]
Emily (Host of Afterparty)
Republicans and Democrats should both bear in mind that Marjorie Taylor Greene was the single highest small dollar donor in recipient of small dollar donor cash in Congress. And that is for a reason. Let's move on to cbs because Glenn, I, I think probably like you have mixed feelings about the entire takeover, given that Bari Weiss has some directional instincts that are absolutely accurate about the media. Tony decouple came out before he started hosting the Nightly News show and made, you know what on paper, if I saw it written down and you know, was in the, the mouth of a Glenn Greenwald, I would be like, oh, yeah, this is a good point. Like, journalists listen way too much to corporate interests and their advertisers and elites. So it comes up and makes that statement. People on the left freak out and even on the center freak out and they're like, this is going to be more like both sides ism, blah, blah, blah. And I don't think that statement in and of itself on paper reflected that and that on paper it reflected, you know, pretty, I think, trenchant criticism of what the media has become. And yet, on the other hand, we know that the entire merger of the free press and the installation of Barry at the top of the news division over at CBS came for pretty obvious political reasons from the, the purch of Skydance and the merger and all of that. So we don't have to go too far down that rabbit hole again because I think everybody's familiar with the story. Now to take a look at this clip of one of Tony decouple, the new Nightly News anchor who they've been pushing hard as a kind of branding figure for the new cbs. He signed off with a literal salute to the Secretary of State in a recent broadcast. Let's roll the clip.
- [61:45]
CBS News Anchor (Tony DeCoppole)
He's now the face of US Foreign policy and President Trump's point man on Venezuela, all in addition to his Roles as Secretary of State, interim National Security Adviser, and acting national archivist and USAID chief. Whatever you think of his politics, you got to admit it's an impressive resume. And now AI memes have added to that portfolio. Casting Secretary Ruby Rubio as the new governor of Minnesota, the new Shah of Iran, the Prime Minister of Greenland, the new manager of Manchester United, the head of Hilton Hotels, and highest of high honors of all, the new Michelin Man. Now back in real life. Of course, these memes may not add up to much, but for Rubio's hometown fans, which are many around here in Miami, it is a sign of how Florida, once an American punchline, has become a leader. Leader on the world stage. Marco Rubio, we salute you. You're the ultimate Florida man.
- [62:40]
Emily (Host of Afterparty)
Okay, the meme is now dead. And obviously that was a joke when he said, marco Rubio, we salute you. You're the new Florida man. But Glenn, the guy had a teleprompter meltdown on night one that was brutal to watch. I'm sure you saw it, enjoyed every minute of it. He, we have another clip of him. Why don't we just roll this right now? Now falling into tears over Miami, which is also your hometown. Let's roll. S6. You said this is your favorite place in the world. Why?
- [63:10]
OnDeck Advertiser
Why South Florida and Miami?
- [63:16]
Emily (Host of Afterparty)
What?
- [63:16]
CBS News Anchor (Tony DeCoppole)
It makes me emotional. It's so funny. I didn't mean anything, you know.
- [63:23]
Glenn Greenwald
Oh, my God. I just see this.
- [63:25]
Emily (Host of Afterparty)
You haven't seen this.
- [63:26]
CBS News Anchor (Tony DeCoppole)
You only have one childhood, right? So it's where I would have spent all of my childhood, but we left because my father got in trouble with business. Like, we laugh about it now. He was a drug dealer, went to jail. It's kind of a haha thing that we say now. But the reason it's so emotional for me is because I feel like I was robbed at the full Miami experience. So when I come back, I'm always like.
- [64:01]
Glenn Greenwald
I'm sorry. That's really pathetic. I, I, I'm not somebody who mocks or, like, demeans men who display emotion in public. I think that's acceptable to do. Not, like, over that. Like, you know, I mean, he wasn't talking about, like, a family member who passed away or, like, someone who's sick or, or some, like, person who meant a lot to me. He was talking, he was talking about South Florida. Like, and also it went on for so long. Like, he just, it wasn't like he just had a momentary loss of emotional control, and then he just, like, composed himself. It, like, was sustained it was like, enduring. He was, like, weeping practically over Miami.
- [64:40]
Emily (Host of Afterparty)
Have you not.
- [64:41]
Glenn Greenwald
Anyway, I weep in private every night in my. About Miami, in my closet. It. Which is why I don't do it on camera.
- [64:50]
Emily (Host of Afterparty)
Yeah, I mean, we have to do Miami, just not in public.
- [64:54]
Glenn Greenwald
Well, who doesn't cry over Miami? I mean, we all do. We get very emotional. It's such a moving, inspiring, spiritual. It's such a spiritual place. It's. Oh, it's nothing but, like, everyone knows, like, you go to Miami and it's just pure spirituality. You get to really escape, like, the material world, like all these, you know, rich influencers that dominate our culture. Nothing in Miami like that is just all, like, meditation, dating, you know, thousands of years of, like, really rich culture. I get moved emotionally, too. I'm just saying I compose myself as hard as it is when I talk about it on camera. And it's just kind of odd that he couldn't.
- [65:27]
Emily (Host of Afterparty)
Yeah, no, I mean, I could not agree more. He also went to Grand Central Station, and I don't know if you saw this video, but held like, a little influencer microphone out and stopped passersby to ask if they could, like, pronounce the name decouple. And the big joke here was that, listen, I'm an important person. Like, this is the punchline line. I'm an important person, but nobody knows me. Nobody knows how to pronounce my name. Which I found fascinating because it's this idea that what Barry and the new leadership over at CBS are trying to do is restore credibility in the brand to something that existed in the era of mass media. And at a time, though, when even by their own admission, because they're out there with influencer mics and had them in street clothes, mass media, it's like they're trying to do the. The sentiments of mass media in a new media packaging. And that absolutely does not work because it doesn't feel real to people. And that's what people want. They. They are like, we're smart enough to make up our own minds about what's happening in the world. Just tell us what your bias is, where you're coming from, and we'll make up our own minds. But don't pretend that you're just the voice of God every night.
- [66:33]
Glenn Greenwald
No, I. First of all, I mean, you know, I'm a media professional like you. I mean, we work in. In media and journalism. I honestly had no idea who this person was. Tony Docapol and still married to Katie, obviously. And Barry Weiss's mind married to Katie Tur. Exactly. Who. Okay. And so she's like another cable personality. And I. I didn't be. I wasn't aware of Tony Dacapell until he interviewed Ta. Nehisi Coates and called him basically a terrorist for having written a book that was critical of Israel and. And. And very empathetic to the. The plight of the Palestinian people. And he was like, it sounds like you. Like, it's the kind of thing that would be, you know, found in the scribbles of a radical and a backbone backpack. So that made him a star. And bear. It's like, straight from him and that, you know that. Yeah, I mean, exactly. Because I thought. I mean, it could have said that, but it was even, you know, he wanted to make sure it was more like Muslim. Like, he's not like a Muslim terrorist. And that's why he fell into favor. And I think the. The big issue is, is that CBS News is not coming back. You know, you can turn it into, like, a MAGA channel, which is what they're trying to do, or at least, like, show that it has conservative values. So that people trust have written it off. I just think our viewing consumption or the way we get news, the people we trust, it comes from personalities, it comes from, you know, Internet, it comes from podcast, it comes from people we trust. I think the days that. Where anyone under 60 or 70 goes and sits in front of CBS News for 30 minutes because there's some Walter Cronkite figure like that telling us the news. Those days are long gone. And it is so bizarre to watch them revitalize what seems so obviously to be a dead model, as you said, thinking they're using some sort of, like, Barry Weiss sort of, like, pseudo edgy. There's nothing edgy about Barry Weiss either. But, like, they think they're. They think she's like the new media maven. And I don't know, it just seems like I would watch if. If they promised me that every night they would, like, screw with his teleprompter and leave him, like, stuttering, or if he had to talk about Miami and would weep and cry again. But other than that, I just can't imagine everyone going. Watching CBS News. It just seems like no matter what they do, it's a project destined to fail.
- [68:36]
Emily (Host of Afterparty)
Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Maybe that's what they did on purpose with the crying. They gave him, like, a little onion to put in his pocket, and he cried so that people actually would watch because he's like, hey, screw it.
- [68:46]
Glenn Greenwald
Screw with his teleprompter every night so that we get, like, viral clips where he's humiliated. At least people are talking about CBS News.
- [68:54]
Emily (Host of Afterparty)
Yeah, I mean, listen, that would be clever. I'm going to be paying close attention to see if the teleprompter fails again because it's always entertaining. Glenn Greenwald, speaking of always entertaining, what a pleasure to have you here. Thank you so much.
- [69:09]
Glenn Greenwald
Always good to see you, Emily, off camera, on camera, wherever. Happy to be here.
- [69:12]
Emily (Host of Afterparty)
Love it. So much fun to have Glenn. It was so much fun to be with all of you in the chat. Absolute blast. Now, since I ended talking a little bit about Tony decouple and CBS News, Barry Weiss, all of that with Glenn, I want to actually look a little bit closer, closer at what's been going on over at CBS right now because I have complicated feelings. I mentioned this in our conversation with Glenn. I genuinely have complicated feelings about what's happening at cbs. I'm going to play for you a video clip that CBS News put out a couple of days ago. You may have already seen it. It was about a week ago. They have Tony decouple without a jacket. He's in the newsroom. He's stripped down. I referenced this in my conversation with Glenn, but it actually sent the left and kind of the center insane, going crazy. Take a look at S11 here.
- [70:12]
CBS News Anchor (Tony DeCoppole)
A lot has changed since the first person sat in this chair. But for me, the biggest difference is people do not trust us like they used to. And it's not just us, it's all of legacy media. The point is, on too many stories the press has made missed the story because we've taken into account the perspective of advocates and not the average American. Or we put too much weight in the analysis of academics or elites and not enough on you. And I know this because at certain points, I have been you. I have felt this way, too. So here's my promise to you today. And every time you see me in this chat, you come first. Not advertisers, not politicians, not corporate interests. And yes, that does include the corporate owners of cbs.
- [71:07]
Emily (Host of Afterparty)
Okay, well, that's obviously amusing coming from the man who is now the head. I mean, he's really become the face of CBS News. Like, that's how they are marketing Tony decouple, who's the anchor of CBS Evening News. But the they're putting him forward as the face of this new project. I think that's pretty clear from their advertising campaign that they've done around the launch of CBS Evening News. Given that you know, it's amusing given that, of course, this merger just happened in a way that was Trump was, was cheerleading it. These are people who have been saying nice things about Donald Trump before the merger. That's a great way to get a merger through. Now, by the way, don't need to go down the antitrust rabbit hole refrain myself, but that is like, actually what was happening. So in some way it's amusing to hear Tony De Copple say that. But if you read what he just outlined on paper and you had no idea, like if you showed it to someone on the left and said, this is what Glenn Greenwald just said, or if you showed it to someone on the right and said, this is what Tucker Carlson just said on paper, it's a really trench, an accurate criticism the likes of which you very rarely ever see from corporate media figures. And this is where, again, I have fairly complicated reactions to what's happening over there. I want to roll this clip of Tony decouple reading prompter on January 6th. So yesterday, that sent Larry Sabato and others reeling. I mean, even that clip I just saw, I just showed, like, people like Denver Riggleman, former congressman, were losing their minds over it, basically saying, like, oh, so you're going to both sides, you know, cranks like Maga cranks. And the honest answer to that is media trust, which Gallup has tracked every year, every year going back to the mid-70s. Is that tied right now for a record low? Low? I thought when that happened in 2017, it made perfect sense. I still think it makes perfect sense. But when it happened in 2017, when it hit the first record low, you're like, okay, this is, you know, the host of Celebrity Apprentice just won the presidency over the former Secretary of State. Rock bottom media said it would never happen. You would think that now they're going to do better and you would thought you would have maybe thought at the time they would sound more. More like what Tony Dicopol sounded like in 2026. But 2026, it's too late because the media is splintered into a million pieces. The trust is so completely obliterated and there's so many more options that it just doesn't even make sense for mass media. We talked about this with Glenn. It doesn't make sense for mass media to try to act as it did in a prior technological environment. So on that note, Larry Sabato, somebody who holds himself forward as, I think, a pretty neutral observer of American politics and as many neutral observers do, he, I think, pretty clearly leans left. Here's I want to first roll the the clip of decouple and then I'm going to roll the I'm going to show you what Sab how Sabato and others responded. This is from yesterday's CBS Evening News. It's very short, short, but boy, did it cause a stir on X.
- [74:37]
CBS News Anchor (Tony DeCoppole)
Also tonight, five years after the January 6th attack, a group of pardoned defendants marched through Washington. President Trump today accused Democrats of failing to prevent the attack on the Capitol while House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries accused the president of quote, whitewashing it.
- [74:54]
Emily (Host of Afterparty)
Okay, that's it. That's it. This was enough for Larry Sabineau to say no, never again again. Let's put F13 up on the screen. This is Sab's reaction. He said in a brief both sides are equal report on January 6th at the end of CBS EV news anchor said President Trump accused okay. He goes on quote, you just heard it, Sab all caps.
- [75:13]
Glenn Greenwald
Shameful.
- [75:14]
Emily (Host of Afterparty)
My family watched CBS and Cronkite from 1963 on. No more. Sadly, that's the way it is January 6, 2026. He goes on to say CBS didn't want to report the truth just please their new lord and master in the Trump era, ambition beats integrity more times than not. Well of course in that brief report Sabineau is reacting to he decouple called it an attack. He referred to January 6 as an attack, which is perfectly accurate. He described Hakeem Jeffries reaction. He gave the position of Republicans and he gave the position of Democrats. And if you are a CBS Evening News viewer, you walked away from that what like 15 sec second prompter read with a pretty decent understanding of how both the Republican Party, we have two major parties in this country. So you walked away with a pretty decent understanding of how Republicans spent the day talking about January 6th and how Democrats spent the day talking about January 6th. And to level this, both sides are equal criticism of that report court is to demand CBS News lean left, plainly lean left. And that's why we've seen, you know, it's it gets back to why the Tom Cotton op ed was retracted by the New York Times. Right. They're now more responsive to a smaller cluster of the public. And so when that's the case, if, if you want to win the late night ratings with or the evening news ratings with a few million viewers as opposed to what that number used to be in the Cronkite days, then you need to cultivate a more loyal meaning more ideological following. And that's how, again, that's why the New York Times retracted the Cotton op ed. And so listen, like, I'm as skeptical as any media critic of billionaires clearly snatching up media properties to, I mean, help their pet causes. Causes. I think that much is, is pretty obvious in the case of David Ellison, who, you know, oversaw this merger between Skydance, his company, and Paramount. His father's Larry Ellison, very Trump friend, friendly Republican donor billionaire. And I think there's plenty of, plenty of evidence that that's what's happened. At the same time, at the same time, Barry Weiss has had trenchant media critique. She is the head of CBS News with a group of people and do share genuine structural critiques of what's happened inside of corporate media. So it's going to be a mixed bag. And I think that's kind of interesting. Right? So like on the one hand we're going to see, you know, to say that that J6 report reflected like fealty to the president when it called it an attack on the Capitol is insane. Like, Trump would watch that and be pissed. I think we all know Trump would watch that and be like, what are they talking about? But it's going to be, I think what we're going to see is more and more of this, like, just by doing normal journalism. It's a stress test of the reaction from people who consider themselves fans of normal journalism. And what Larry Sabato should come out and say, frankly, is that he wants center left journalism, that he believes neutrality is actually how the center left sees some of these huge political topics. And that's, that's what engenders trust. And I honestly think that's what CBS is getting wrong now is that people just want you to be, they don't want you just take your jacket off. They want you to take your metaphorical jacket off. Right. Like decopal took his literal jacket off. But take your metaphorical jacket off and tell them where you're coming from and treat them as smart, intelligent people who can make up their own mind based on their understanding of your bias and where you're coming from. So I think that's what the, they're kind of missing here. But it is funny to be in a position where you're kind of skeptical of the takeover, then also be in a position where two things are true. Like the, the takeover is problematic and the critics of the takeover are problematic. Those are the two, those are the two pillars that are holding up my current reaction to the transition over at CBS News News. All right, finally, before we Go. I want to talk about Spencer Pratt who announced that he is running for Los Angeles mayor in he announced it in a speech today on the anniversary of the Palisades fire which took his home in Los Angeles. So stick around for that. First though, we have to talk about Guess what we have to talk about. You probably know what we have to talk about. We have to talk about Cowboys, Cowboy Colostrum and who doesn't like Cowboy Colostrum? That stuff is great. I talk about it all the time. If you finally want to fix your gut, make your hair healthier and stronger, and add some glow to your skin in 2026, you got to add colostrum to your daily routine. Today's sponsor, Cowboy Colostrum offers the highest quality bovine that's cow colostrum available in the U.S. cowboy Colostrum is 100% made in America from 100% American grass fed cow cows. 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- [82:27]
Emily (Host of Afterparty)
All right, let's talk about Spencer Pratt. Let's roll this clip actually of Spencer Pratt. Pratt at a, it was, it was at a rally to remember what happened in the Palisades just a year ago, which frankly, I don't think as a country we talk about enough. What happened was, nobody there needs me to remind them. But what happened there was, was so horrific and so reflexive or reflective of an incompetent, ideologically corrupt, corrupt state and local government. And the story, I mean, let me just read some of these numbers. This is from an ABC11 piece from yesterday that basically added up some of the, the numbers or, or broke down some of the numbers. This fire between the Eaton fire and The Palisades fire, 31 people died. 31, one people died. The federal disaster aid that the governor, Governor Newsom has requested is 33.9 billion. 16,000 structures were destroyed. That's about 9,000 homes in Altadena, Pacific Palisades, Malibu, about 6,800 buildings. And those were mostly home homes. Right now 10 houses have been built so far, rebuilt so far. 10 houses. This is what ABC 11 says, quote, Most are in the Altadena area with one in Pasadena and two in Pacific Palisades. None are finished in Malibu. I mean, that. Billions of dollars in property dam damage. Billions of dollars of property damage. Thousands of homes destroyed, 31 people dead. And boy, did this story fall out of the news cycle quickly. And now Gavin Newsom is very clearly mounting a bid for president. Well, Spencer Pratt, who, if you're my age is a very familiar name because of the Hills, which was the Laguna beach spin off. And Spencer Pratt on the Hills was, was pretty roundly accepted to be a massive villain. He I think even went on shows like House of Villains. He's still married to Hattie Montag. He was going very viral, I think he has a crystal business. He was going very viral for his love of, his very amusing love of, of hummingbirds back in like 2018, around that time period is, you know, not a, by any means means a A traditional orthodox politician. But here's part of his announcement video. In Los Angeles Today, on January 7.
- [85:21]
Glenn Greenwald
2025, Heidi and I lost our home. We lost every material possession we owned. My parents lost their home, too. And with it, decades of memories made inside those walls. I grew up in the palace, Palisades. I moved through these streets thinking my two boys would grow up here, just like I did, with that same hometown feeling. But then, right before my eyes, the future I envisioned for my family burned to the ground. I have to tell you, the most heartbreaking part of the past year wasn't being displaced or losing everything I own. It was the realization that all of this was preventable. State and local leaders. Let us burn.
- [86:11]
Emily (Host of Afterparty)
Let us burn. He's basically right about that. Elsewhere in the speech, he said, quote, this is not just a campaign, this is a mission, and we are going to expose the system. He said, quote, business as usual is a death sentence. Sentence for Los Angeles. I'm done waiting for someone to take real action. He's gotten supportive shout outs from Republicans like Steve Hilton, Rick Renell, Rick Scott in just the the last day or so. Now, the California Republican Party said they haven't had any contact with him about this bid. He's posted pictures of himself filing the paperwork work. Ostensibly, he's running as a Republican. He's been aligned with Republicans, interestingly enough, on a number of issues over recent years. But this is a very, very interesting political story because Spencer Pratt is the perfect Trump era candidate. Meaning he's a, he has been. I mean, he's, he, he goes fairly viral, often with political commentary. And, and obviously both he and Trump are reality stars, reality television stars. Like, that's the obvious point to make. But there's something deeper about the epistemology of social media, as Neil Postman might have said. Like, Neil Postman was upset about Ronald Reagan in the mid-80s being an actor and being president because Ronald Reagan was great on tv. And Postman said that's different than coming across well in print. Print and that you lose something when you move from print, the slower, more thoughtful medium, to television, which is a much more aesthetic medium. And you can understand where that's coming from. I mean, you could, you could write a full book about disagreements to that. On the other hand, the epistemology of the algorithm is a very different place to live in. And it has advantages and disadvantages. But one of those obvious advantages is, is that those of us who, I mean, it's everyone. The social media algorithms, which I personally detest. But what they do for all of us as they influence the big narratives. Because journalists and politicians get their news from social media and those narratives migrate into all of the other coverage and the big picture conversation that. That comes from people at least appearing to be more authentic, right? More authentic than someone, than someone who does well in the epistemology of cable news. As Postman might have said, the epistemology of cable news is somebody who performs, whereas on social media algorithms you don't want to look like you're performing at all. Have you noticed how many commercials recently are filmed like vertical video on I iPhones? Because it makes it more compelling for the viewer who right now is looking for authenticity. And it's not always going to be authentically authentic. But that's where Spencer Pratt can genuinely be dangerous, right? He's different than a Rick Caruso and Rick Caruso is probably running for governor. That's what it seems like. But Pratt is different than a Rick Caruso who obviously lost to Karen Bass, had a lot of money, but lost to Karen Bass because. Because Pratt knows how to connect with people in an environment that is so low trust that people are drawn to what feels like reality, even when it's not reality, by the way, because again, he was on the hills, which is scripted reality that in and of itself is sort of the perfect illustration encapsulation of where our politics are and tells you how dangerous he could potentially be to Democrats in Los Angeles. Now, I don't know how dangerous Spencer Pratt could potentially be to Democrats in Los Angeles is as a, like on the, the substantive questions, but as a media figure, he knows what he's doing and it's so fascinating. You know, I just was listening to Tucker Carlson's episode with Mike Cernovich that dropped this week. And Cernovich goes on this rather hilarious like 25 minute monologue about his many ayahuasca journeys, as he puts it. And I was thinking to myself, listening to, to it, you have the, the formerly bow tied Tucker Carlson, who is of course the first guest on this show, talking to, talking to Cernovich about ayahuasca and the spiritual journey of it. And it's so, you know, I remember being at the, I was at a MAHA rally before the 2024 election and I was watching, you know, my, my evangelical friends with the barefoot hippies that were, you know, like Ralph Nader types. And Spencer Pratt is totally in the middle of that Venn diagram and that on the margins, you know, it's not every American, it's not a majority of Americans. But it's enough people to make a political and cultural difference. And Pratt is a representative of that fascinating new community. And even just in those quotes that I read in the video you saw, he's saying this is not just a campaign, this is a mission. And we are going to to expose the system. Business as usual is a death sentence for Los Angeles. I'm done waiting for someone to take real action. That's a message. If you get it to enough people, that resonates. If you get it to enough people with some sense of credibility, it resonates right. This shows keeps getting longer and longer because I keep rambling on and on and asking clash questions. People like Glenn. But but I appreciate you all being here. As a reminder, you can email emilyevelmakeremedia.com I'm going to check that inbox tomorrow because we will be taping an edition of half the hour. You can only get that on your podcast feed. We dropped a couple on the YouTube during on the on the YouTube feed during the holidays, but we will be putting that on the podcast feed. So if you haven't subscribed on the podcast feed, go ahead, do that. Help us out. Subscribe on YouTube Comment like that is so useful. We appreciate it, appreciate it, appreciate it so much. Thanks for being here. We'll see you next week with more after party. Have a great one.