← After Party with Emily Jashinsky
After Party with Emily Jashinsky
Inside the Anti-Trump Dragnet, Bill Gates’ Global Strategy, and Jan 6 Pipe Bomb Secrets, with Mike Benz
01:19:48
Emily Jashinsky is joined by Mike Benz, Executive Director of the Foundation For Freedom Online. They open the show with a discussion about the “Arctic Frost” whistleblower revelations and outline allegations that the Biden-era DOJ and FBI conducted sweeping secret surveillance of hundreds of figures in the GOP and conservative movement. Benz explains how this mirrors U.S.-style foreign influence campaigns of the past. They also touch on President Trump’s pardon of alternate electors, take a deep dive into how NGOs operate, and the Cold War tactics that are now at play domestically. Then Emily and Mike discuss how Bill Gates’ pledge of $200 billion to his foundation positions it as a private substitute for U.S. foreign-aid infrastructure, enabling continued influence over global governance programs even as USAID budgets tighten. The two also outline new reporting on a possible suspect in the 2021 D.C. pipe bomb case, and Mike makes an impassioned please to release the files. Emily ...
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- [00:00]
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- [01:08]
Emily
Welcome to After Party, everyone. Happy Monday. We have a big show for you on this evening. We've got big pardons to talk about, big subpoenas to talk about, big evidence in a, in an important, often forgotten January 6th case. And that's why we are going to be joined in just one moment by Mike Benz. This is a guest who's very much joining us by popular demand. So we're happy to have Mike on the show to help us make sense of some of the evidence that is getting absolutely buried or completely poorly contextualized, miscontextualized, suppressed in different ways by the corporate press. So we're going to get to that in just one moment. And I'm excited for that. Want to thank everyone for getting us over the 100,000 subscriber hurdle last week. We've only been going for a few months, so that's a really, really big deal. And I'm incredibly grateful to everybody for helping us do that. I'm incredibly grateful to the whole team, to Megan, and of course to all of you for subscribing on the YouTube channel. If you aren't subscribed here on the afterparty YouTube channel where we're live every Monday and Wednesday, that's a different thing that we do. We literally do the show live. We do it live. We do it live on Mondays and Wednesdays, 10pm and so if you're joining us on YouTube, you can catch the show just like you would 20 years ago. Tune into your favorite cable show at 10pm you can do that with us now. Make sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcast. That's where you get your episode of Happy Hour every Friday, just on those podcast networks. So subscribe there as well. Okay, now let's go ahead and bring in the one and only Mike Benz. He's executive director of the foundation for Freedom Online. He's of course, a former State Department official with responsibilities in formulating and negotiating US Foreign policy on international communications and information technology matters. Mike is one of the most knowledgeable people when it comes to breaking down the various operations of the shadow government in past and in present. So, Mike, thank you very much for being here.
- [03:10]
Mike Benz
Thanks for having me.
- [03:12]
Emily
The impetus for this, first of all, was everyone saying, you've got to have Mike Benzon. You got to have Mike Benzon. So there's that. But also when Arctic Frost revelations broke wide open from Senator Grassley's whistleblower documents, I think people had a hard time wrapping their head around exactly what the government appears to have had done in that case. And we keep getting more information. It seems like every single week now there's a New York Times report suggesting subpoenas are landing in the laps of people who were. This is f0, folks, that people who were potentially implicated in the original Russian collusion hoax. Collusion hoax, some of which continue to be involved in shadow operations down the line. So, Mike, we're a couple of weeks now post Grassley whistleblower revelation as we are approaching maybe the 30,000 foot view. How are you making sense of what we've learned just in the last couple of weeks? As somebody who's been very much in the weeds of this for a long time?
- [04:14]
Mike Benz
Well, there's nothing surprising in it. It's simply validation of what I think folks felt but didn't have the documents to prove, which was that there was a full scale effort by the Biden Justice Department to completely destroy any aspect of the Republican Party that had some perceived allegiance or support network access around President Trump and his movement. This Arctic Frost investigation, you know, the Arctic Frost is a essentially an orange tree that can grow in Florida. And it's, you know, it's kind of like an orange man bad. It's just like they named Operation Crossfire Hurricane after the Jumping Jack Flash lyrics from the Rolling Stone song. But then also the spy movie, the Whoopi Goldberg British spy movie. And of course, it was created by a British spy Christopher Steele and his British spy network with Richard Dear Love. They did the same thing with Arctic Frost to root out all the different roots and branches of the Trump tree. And so what they did is they spied on, they got subpoenas and basically got the phone communications, text, texts, basically everything you can dig up emails on 430 major GOP figures, not just in the media and in civil society, but also and in the Trump inner circle, but also in Congress. I think ted Cruz said 20% of Senate Republicans and ended up having their phones secretly subpoenaed by the Biden FBI and Justice Department. And then Judge Boasberg, who is this very infamous Chief justice basically in the D.C. court system, he then compelled AT&T and Verizon to not tell the senators that the FBI was spying on their phones. And I mean, I pointed this out, but this is a criminal violation. There's the Senate Oversight Committee has to be able to conduct oversight of the FBI when they're being spied on by the FBI. They can't conduct oversight of what the FBI is doing. And it looks like this was basically a conspiracy with Jack Smith and Judge Boasberg. I think that frankly, she's not. Judge Boseberg should not just be impeached, she should be indicted on those grounds. And what's important to understand is that this Arctic Frost investigation was launched a full year after the alleged event of trying to overturn the election results with alternate electors, a plot whose very idea was started by Democrats when they used the alternate electors attempt in 2016 to try to get to try to negate Trump's victory, citing Russian interference. And then in 2020, with the transition Integrity Project kerfuffle, they literally war gamed how to get alternate electors to, to vote on January 6, 2021, for Joe Biden, even in the event of a clear Trump win. This is in their own manual, which was war gamed by no less than John Podesta himself, the campaign manager for Hillary Clinton, and who would go on to be the White House climate czar in charge of a $375 billion slush fund for his cronies. And that was organized by not just the Democrats, but the never Trump wing of the Republican Party, participating in that war game for alternate electors in case Trump had a clear victory on election night in 2020 was Michael Steele, the former head of the DNC. Donna Brazile, the former head of the the DNC.
- [08:03]
Emily
So Michael Steele was out of the RNC.
- [08:05]
Mike Benz
RNC.
- [08:06]
Emily
That's why, I mean, even better, even.
- [08:07]
Mike Benz
Better, you had both former heads of the party, Michael Steele, whose group was knocked out by Trump when Trump defeated not just the Clinton dynasty, but the bushes in 2016. So even if this thing, Arctic Frost was a crime, the FBI should have been going after their, should have been going after the highest level Democrats. They should have been going after the highest level of the White House at the time, as John Podesta was the head of the climate basically slush fund of the White House. But, but what this was is they, they didn't target any of the Republicans who were perceived to be never Trump. What they wanted to do this was they waited a full year to launch this investigation because it wasn't clear whether Trump was going to run again. But once it became clear that he was going to run again, they needed a broad sweeping apparatus to spy on the campaign and in order to put pressure on every node in the, in the MAGA affinity network in order to politically neutralize them.
- [09:07]
Emily
Right. So what struck me going through the whistleblower documents is actually how similar this looks to one of the operations the CIA via groups like USAID runs in other countries to interfere in civil society. And that sounds extreme and crazy to people, but when you're looking at the nonprofit organizations on the right that get swept up into this surveillance balance network, which is vast and clearly very strategic, if you know the conservative movement and you're rifling through these whistleblower documents, you know they.
- [09:41]
Mike Benz
So who's who.
- [09:42]
Emily
Exactly, exactly. And so I think that's kind of interesting, Mike, and I know that you've looked at this in many other cases in many other countries. You've particularly been deep in Eastern Europe lately, I've seen. So is that, is that the sense that you got as well, that basically it's almost a plug and play domestically?
- [10:01]
Mike Benz
Oh, it's exactly a plug and play. Jack Smith himself is a plug and play. Jack Smith was a prosecutor at the Hague and was involved in these USAID rule of law programs in Kosovo. See, we, we have this. It is not illegal for the FBI, I'm sorry, for the CIA and USAID and the U.S. state Department to put pressure on foreign judiciaries to rule a certain way to deem something constitutional or unconstitutional in that country to prosecute or not prosecute someone. That is standard, fair standard. Course we have whole programs that the American Bar association gets tens of millions of dollars to administer abroad. And the American Bar association has a spin out group called the World Justice Project. They're both funded tens of millions of dollars by USAID to go out and influence prosecutors, influence judges, influence ministries of justice in foreign countries to go after the political opponents of the State Department in those countries. This is what you have. And I can go through a million examples of this. But you know, one of the, perhaps the most famous is the Victor Shokin case in Ukraine. This was the prosecutor in Ukraine who was investigating Burisma, Joe Biden's son, Vice President Joe Biden's son at the time. And Joe Biden as Vice President flew to Ukraine, met with the Ukrainian government and threatened a billion dollar USAID loan guarantee which was, which was conditioned on implementing certain governance and rule of law reforms. That they would not get that billion dollars in USAID bribe money unless they fired Victor Shokin, the prosecutor. So and then you know, Joe Biden famously told the Council on Foreign Relations, son of a bee. And that's exactly what they did. He was, they got rid of him.
- [11:50]
Emily
The next day at CFR he's saying that by the way, which is delightful.
- [11:54]
Mike Benz
Right, right, yes. Couldn't have picked a better venue. But it's the same thing everywhere. I mean the National Endowment for Democracy, which is a straight up CIA cutout, it was conceived by the CIA Director William Casey in 1982. The legislation was written by the CIA Director William Casey's right hand man Walter Raymond, who had spent 30 years in the CIA operations and propaganda and disinformation. DIV within the CIA helped draft the the 1983 legislation that signed the Ned into law. The head, the two founding co heads of the National Dial for Democracy told the New York Times and the Washington Post in the early 1980s that they exist to subsidize the groups that the CIA wants to, but doesn't want to get in trouble for funding.
- [12:39]
Emily
Right. They bragged about it to David Ignatius. Who else?
- [12:42]
Mike Benz
Exactly. Right away. And the CIA gets a copy of every single national down for a democracy grant to this day. And this is a straight up CIA cutout. And one of the things that I published last year was the National Endowment for Democracy's in house journal called the Journal of Democracy which we fund as taxpayers because this is funded by the US government, by the State Department. It's an arm of the State Department that masquerades as an ngo. And it's basically the State Department giving a grant to the NGO so that the NGO can do what the CIA wants. Because the CIA, CIA is just the COVID action side of the overt diplomacy State Department. So this is just funny how this all works. But what they wrote to the Prime Minister of Poland Donald Tusk was a command the month after he took office, this is December 2023, for him to arrest everybody in the PIs party in Poland, the Law and Justice Party, which was the right wing pro Trump party that had been in power for eight years. A comprehensive plan of everybody from the party to arrest senior party leadership, the judges who ruled in his favor, the heads of the civil society institutions in Poland, in order to achieve a state of democratic stability and ensure that populism does not return in the next election. It was that explicit. And I mean, this is a CIA manual to the Ministry of Justice of a foreign country about who they need to arrest. And they even went through this list of names and talked about how easy it would be to actually secure a conviction in the various cases and basically propose that in the cases where it'd be difficult to get a conviction, they should still bring the case anyway and try to be creative about getting people to squeal. I mean, this is. And this is the network that Jack Smith slithers out of, you know, like, you know, a sort of frozen snake that just gets unfrozen out of the box to do this same thing to the. Who is the President of the United States and then running for president and now president again? I mean, frankly, this is a criminal conspiracy.
- [14:54]
Emily
Yeah. And so right now, it's looking like, according to that New York Times report I just referenced, these are subpoenas for James Clapper, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page. So some very familiar characters. But also today, big news. Pardons were issued in the case of the alternate electors that Mike just mentioned. And if you're looking through the Arctic Frost whistleblower documents, you can match a whole lot of them up to what was going on, what was being investigated and surveilled. So, Mike, is the Trump administration. I mean, you were talking about this before Trump was reelected, but is the Trump administration now? People are very anxious. They don't know exactly what to think of what's happened from Trump 2.0's FBI and CIA and State Department. Do you think that this is a pretty sincere, robust effort right now that is humming the way it needs to be to solve some of these really foundational problems? Problems. And the roots, you know, really start digging up the roots of these problems?
- [15:51]
Mike Benz
I don't know that it's humming the way that it needs to be. I think that, you know, there's. There's been a good effort to try to expunge the Justice Department of the worst apples at the same time. I don't know that there has been an equivalent hiring spree in order to onboard the necessary manpower because these are, these cases are very fact intensive. There's a lot of due diligence that needs to be done. There's a lot of strategizing about all, you know, all the different, you know, because you need to be ready for basically pro bono infinity mega lawyers on the other side to find every technicality, you know, every jurisdictional or venue loophole to move things, you know, in their favor. Every, every way they can rig it is kind of what the Trump administration is up against. Because the legal profession as a whole leans enormously pro blob, pro foreign policy establishment. And you know, as I was discussing, these USAID rule of law programs which are prolific basically in every country on earth, are a way to get promoted up the judiciary. As I've covered even Norm Eisen, the chief hatchet man for all anti Trump lawfare and has been since day one when Trump got into office and January 2017, you know, was, was flying over to Europe or flew out Chief Justice John Roberts on two occasions to have week long joint study, you know, study sessions on US EU law. I mean just at the, at the highest levels of this thing, you see this, this relationship. I mean right now on the board of the World Justice Project, the USAID funded programs to influence foreign judiciaries, four former Supreme Court justices are on the board of directors for that. I mean this is a network. How do you end up on the short list to become a Supreme Court justice or to become a high level appellate judge in the United States? You move up through these networks, you get credentialed through them, you get the whisper networks and the donor networks and the political networks say okay, this is a good solid guy. And so that is what you're up against in the United States judiciary. I mean, the fact is the American Bar association led the crusade to indict Trump and they have a legal monopoly on the ability to credential law schools. I went to law school. That law school had to be credentialed by the American Bar. Every single one in the country does. And this is the group partisanly crusading to indict for the first time in U.S. history, the U.S. president. Everyone knows what this is about, how the bread is buttered, how the rank partisan, hackery of it. But you know, the whole system has to be restructured. And I don't think that there is a concerted effort to think about this holistically. I think people are Kind of running around putting out fires one at a time. And, you know, we'll wait to see what the status of these subpoenas are. I should say that I definitely commend the Justice Department for taking action on the crimes of James Comey and Letitia James. Not no small amount of irony that James Comey, who set up Mike Flynn on these perjury charges, the napkin with Comey's, you know, crony's handwriting was, what are we doing here? Is the goal to get Flynn to lie or to get him fired? Is our goal to entrap him for some BS perjury charge? Or is it to run a covert political black ops operation to get the national security adviser fired? I mean, it was that naked. And James Comey even then bragged and laughed in an interview that he would never have even attempted that if Hillary Clinton had won the election because she would not be so green as to allow James Comey's FBI cronies to even attempt such an entrapment operation. But the fact that they have moved forward on that and they've moved forward in the Letitia James one does give me some hope that justice and accountability will finally arrive at the feet of John Brennan.
- [20:16]
Emily
It's incredible because even just thinking of that Comey quote, which is. I mean, I have even forgotten about it until just now. That's a real deep cut, Mike, and deep cuts are your specialties. But from Comey to say that about Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta, his brother Tony Podesta, was running this absurd Yanukovych op with Paul Manafort for the European center for a Modern Ukraine, which was a bullshit NGO they set up to mask that they didn't want to reg for Farah when they were operating on behalf of the party, Party of Regions in Ukraine. So this idea that Michael Flynn needed to be surveilled because he was on a call, a call with Sergey Lavrov, and you would leave Hillary Clinton alone. It's all so rich because you can play Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon with every single one of these MFers.
- [21:05]
Mike Benz
Yes, well. And again, just getting back to John Podesta, I actually pulled up the document in the background. This was in June 2020. John Podesta led the war game, which whose explicit purpose was to, in the event of a clear Trump win on election Day five months later, to find a way to ensure Joe Biden was still inaugurated. And they basically war gamed how to use street muscle from Black Lives Matter racial justice activists. They called Them in order to take to the streets, shut down the government, induce a breakdown on January 6th. That was their exact language. And then as the game developed, governors in two of the three blue states, Wisconsin and Michigan, sent separate slates of electors. I mean this is like, this would induce four, four things. Political chaos. A hostile, dangerous, highly partisan and unconstrained information and media environment. I mean this is like, I mean literally, it's called scenario three, Clear Trump win. In the third scenario posited a comfortable electoral college victory for President Trump, 286 to 252, but also a significant popular vote win, 52% to 47% for former President Vice. Former Vice President Biden. And then so basically what, how the game played out with John Podesta taking the lead was inducing a constitutional crisis, invoking threats of secession where, where the western states would break away, California, Washington, Oregon would break away. So you got insurrection right there, conspiracy for insurrection and then shut. Basically inducing a complete shutdown of the country using color revolution style street riots to ensure that the popular will prevails, resulting in abolition of the electoral college and making D.C. and Puerto Rico states. So this is not just an agreement. This is not just an agreement. This is like an affirmative act in furtherance. I mean this is exactly what they indicted 19 or so of the Trump associates on the alternate electors scheme. Except it was literally war planned and consensus agreed by the highest levels of the DNC and the never Trump wing.
- [23:39]
Emily
Of the rnc, who all have access to the fanciest lawyers in the world. Unlike many of the people who were roped into alternate electorate stuff in Wisconsin, Arizona, etc. Who were just pardoned. So, Mike, we have a lot more to talk about. We take a quick break and we'll be back with Mike Benz in just one moment. First, of course we've got to sell Masa chips. Because you know that my passion in life is Masa chips. You know, if you read the label on a typical bag of chips, it's often a science experiment of seed oils, msg, artificial dyes and mystery ingredients. But Masa is part of the growing movement to bring back real food. Masa's chips contain just three ingredients. It's amazing to look on the back of the bag and have this experience. Organic corn, sea salt and 100% grass fed beef tallow. Not only do these chips avoid the bad stuff, they also taste incredible too. The tallow is really fantastic. Snacking on Masa chips is nothing like eating regular trips. With Masa, you feel satisfied, light and energetic. With no crash bloat or gross sluggish feeling afterwards and you won't find yourself binging and feeling hungry. My favorite flavor? I can't really pick one. I like the lime, I like the Carbonaro and I really like the churro. Churro is great for dessert, but if you love Masa then you'll love Vandy Crisps. Vandy, Masa's sister company makes the most delicious three ingredient potato chips that I've ever tasted. And that is actually true. They are genuinely the best trips I've ever had. My favorite is the Smokehouse Barbecue. So if you're ready to give Masa or Vandy a try, use code after party for 25% off your first order at masachips.com or vanitycrisps.com or simply 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, Masa and Vandy are now available nationwide at your local Sprouts supermarket. Stop by and pick up a couple bags before they're gone.
- [25:21]
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- [25:52]
Emily
Are back now with Mike Benz. He's executive director of the foundation for Freedom Online. He is of course a former State Department official with responsibilities in formulating and negotiating US Foreign policy on international communications and information technology matters. Mike, I want to talk about the important big picture point you make often, which is this is essentially part and parcel of a global effort to undermine particularly right wing populism via the infiltration and handicapping of civil society organizations in America and around the world. So nonprofit civil society groups, those types of groups that get caught up in Arctic frost according to the Grassley whistleblower documents. And we've seen this pattern played out in many other countries over the course of the Cold War and after history ended into the post Cold War period. And I'm curious just to get your perspective on what many Republican senators have said, it's stunning to hear somebody no offense to Chuck Grassley, but as Old as Chuck Grassley even speak about Watergate, which is this mythical moment in American history, in the same breath as Arctic Frost, which is getting virtually no corporate media coverage. But do you see them actually? I mean we don't have to go deep into the annals of Watergate history and relitigate how guilty or not guilty, Richard Nixon and Wise and what the CIA was up to. Dirty tricks, Wise and Watergate. But do you think this, the scandal actually outranks Watergate in terms of deep state operations?
- [27:19]
Mike Benz
Completely dwarfs it. I mean in Watergate, look, as nasty as it was, it was just to collect intelligence, not, not to try to arrest the entire dnc, you know, to.
- [27:35]
Emily
I mean they might have been collaborating with the Soviets in the middle of the middle of the Cold War, a couple of decades into nuclear technology, they genuinely suspected the Dems might be collaborating with the Soviets. They never found evidence of that. But that was a suspicion, right?
- [27:48]
Mike Benz
I mean imagine if Richard Nixon had arrested the Democrat political opposition, arrested his accountants, arrested his lawyers, arrested his ballet, arrested his media allies, arrested thousands of his. I mean this was a complete police state that we lived under. It was a speech police state, it was a physical police state and they want that back on steroids. I mean we, we affix gate to everything at this point when it becomes a scandal. But if you actually look back at the facts of Watergate, it's completely tame compared to what was done under the Biden administration. All gloves were off and they were very explicit it coming in, coming into the Biden administration about the need to reset norms around rule of law to get rid of this over 2 century old kind of, you know, silent pact that we would not indict our political opponents because that would effectively end democracy as every election now becomes a tit for tat swing. And now instead of having policy debates over tax policy and you know what we're going to do about a, you know, international treaty, every election becomes life and death because you know, if the other party wins, you're getting arrested on BS charges for having done nothing simply because the most important agency now is the Justice Department, which determines whether or not your political, the political enemies of the government get targeted.
- [29:19]
Emily
And so during the Cold War the intelligence community was obsessed mostly with left wing populism, not entirely with left wing populism. The goal Cold Water campaign for example, was tapped as well. There were all kinds of surveilled as well. There's all kinds of fun stuff going on. But that, that was the kind of primary or the focus of A lot of this surveillance worldwide, not just in the United States. So I'm curious what your take is on why right wing populism, whether it's in America or Romania, wherever. I mean there's still, I guess you could argue some left wing populism that's under attack in a place like Venezuela. I'm sure you have thoughts on that, Mike. But all this is to say it' it seems right now like it's especially right wing populism that's under attack. Why is that from your perspective?
- [30:04]
Mike Benz
Well, you teed that up perfectly. And you know, Goldwater was a, you know, considered a kind of right wing populist type figure. And you ha. You have this. The easiest way to understand this is that the liberal rules based international order, you know, set up after World War II, posits itself as being kind of the centrist middle in between communism on its left and fascism on its right. And the thing that communism and fascism both have in common is nationalism. The left wing nationalism through communism involves basically state control over commerce and state control over the means of production, yada yada.
- [30:49]
Emily
Allende, yeah, Chile under Allende for example.
- [30:52]
Mike Benz
But, but that same quality can be achieved in a right wing government through right wing nationalist structures. You have, you know, this is, fascism was said to be the merger of the, you know, the, the government and the state and, and done for a different reason than, than communism, but in having, you know, a little bit of a different cultural and ethical and sort of norms and some slight differences in structure. But both of those are nationalist nodes that rebut internationalist meddling. And so you have, for example, in Venezuela right now you have a left wing nationalist government. You have a left wing communist government which is, you know, has control over arguably the world's largest reserve of oil. And that government in Venezuela, being a communist government, is loathe to sign it away in favorable partnerships or favorable joint or revenue sharing agreements with western energy companies. So too it is with right wing nationalist governments that may not want to share the revenue or may not want to give favorable terms to outside investors to be able to, you know, take advantage of the resources that they, they sit on or may not want to be pushed around in international treaties or in international war mobilizations like what's happening right now around Russia and Ukraine. When Trump rose to power in 2016, a whole slew of right wing populist nationalist movements rose to power or were on the verge of rising to power at the same time and for the same reason season. Those include Bolsonaro in Brazil, who they called the Trump of the tropics, Marine Le Pen in France, Nigel Farage and his Brexit party in the uk, Matteo Salvini at the time, the five Star movement in Italy, the VOX party in Spain, the AfD party in Germany, the PIs party in Poland. And all of these were nationalist movements that were like many of these right wing populist movements are driven by the masses of voters rather than elite donor money, top down, kind of doing what's best for the NGO class. And at the time there were two main concerns that the voters had which were rising energy prices because of the sanctions policy that the Obama State Department imposed on Europe. I'll stick with the Europe side of this. In 2016, it was a year and a half after the disastrous coup in Ukraine in 2014 with the Maidan Square and the counter coup from Russia that ended up with the annexation of Crimea and the breakaway of Eastern Ukraine in some part backstopped by the Russians. And so in order to try to stop the counter coup in Ukraine, the Obama State Department through Ambassador Dan Fried, the sanctions coordinator, embarked on a sanctions roadshow across Europe to try to get all the European countries to cut off their own leg, to starve the Russian bear, to do these energy sanctions, to go through these energy diversification and energy security policies to cut themselves off from Russian oil and Russian gas and buy much more expensive western gas rather than, which had to be, you know, LNG liquefied natural gas. You know, you have it, these huge reservoirs in the Permian basin in Houston. In order to get that into Europe you need to freeze it, you know, you need to ship it to a port, you need to have the port take a shipping vessel and sail it 4,000 miles across the Atlantic. You need to end up at a connective port in Portugal or Spain or Poland. Then you need to ship it to the destination, then you need to unfreeze it as opposed to a natural gas pipeline which is an order of magnitude cheaper. So you have these high margin markets that were effectively created for western companies by the sanctions roadshow. And it was done in the name of U S national security interests that we led this, we faked it, we said NATO, you know, all the, your, your countries are under attack, Germany, Poland, Spain. You need to, it's going to get to you Spain, you know, if Crimea broke away, now Catalonia is going to break away with a Russian backed, you know, annexation effort. And the people didn't want this. And at the same time you had this migration crisis. This is Coming out of the 2013-2015, you know, we had just assassinated Muammar Gaddafi. The floodgates were open into Europe. You had, you know, these, these NATO military programs effectively trying to get all these conflict zone families into, into Europe and giving them free housing, free health care, free food, free education, free cash debit cards and sending back, you know, in, you know, their spare cash and remittances to CIA and NATO backed rebel armies in Africa and Pakistan and Syria. This is the middle of our, you know, Operation Timber Sycamore CIA operation in Syria. And so you had this, these CIA refugee programs just flooding, flooding in. And the people, the populist right wing folks wanted cheap energy. They wanted to preserve their national heritage, their national identity. And they, so they didn't want the refugees, they didn't want to help, you know, they didn't want any of that. And so they were getting in the way of, of a large number of priority items for the US national security state, the US foreign policy establishment, the hedge funds that make billions of dollars off of investments in all these regions.
- [36:52]
Emily
Orban is a good example just in Washington, just continuously called authoritarian.
- [36:57]
Mike Benz
Perfect example. Right. And so, but what you have here is the same problem that communist countries presented to The Blob. The U.S. the Foreign Policy establishment and its international allies are the same problems that were presented from the right wing populist side in the post 2016 election climate. And so they simply used the same tools, the same tactics, the same legal predicates, the same Networks, the same NGOs, the same government agencies, the same government programs within those government agencies, and called right wing populism a threat to democracy, the same way they called left wing communism a threat to democracy. The difference is I don't think the American people had any clue this was happening. Unlike the Cold War where it was very clear to those who were in it and alive at the time that there was a great war with the Soviet Union. And so, so this was all cloaked under secrecy and thank God, now much of this is breaking open. But there's much more to go.
- [38:04]
Emily
Yeah, I was going to say how much of this, I mean this is the focus of your work, so it's not an easy or quick answer, but how much of this is still happening? I mean, I saw you posting about Stanford recently, the source of so much of this nonprofit activity, nonprofit blob activity. I mean, it feels almost overwhelming.
- [38:26]
Mike Benz
This is the tip of my pinky finger. This is where we are right now. We are at. If you could zoom in with A microscope to the like subatomic level like that is how tiny a fraction of what has been published, of what has versus what has been done. People don't understand the, the, the every structure of American society, of American commerce, of American governance, of American civil society is wrapped up in this apparatus. And in order to understand why those institutional players made the moves they did, we need transparency at every level. And I can go through a million examples of this. But something as simple as the teachers unions, when you see Randy Weingarten out there, there, the head of the American Federation of Teachers, 1.7 million teachers, 1 of the most influential nodes. They're a part of the National Education association, the main super umbrella for every US public school teachers union. Randi Weingarten comes out of this apparatus. She was on the board of the national down for Democracy, the CIA cutout that we were talking about earlier. The teachers unions were given millions of dollars by the Central Intelligence Agency during the Cold War. Just straight cash million dollars given to the National Education association which is not only still around, it's the biggest teachers union in the country. The CIA was giving them millions of dollars in the 1960s and 70s. What today is called Education International. At the time it was called the World Confederation of Organizations of the Teaching Profession session was given billions of dollars by the CIA. Everyone listening to me right now, you can go to google, just google.com, type in neacia million dollar cash payments and you'll see exactly what I'm talking about here. Education International is still around today and it is campaigning in every country on planet earth to eradicate and politically mobilize, to stop whatever right wing populist party party is in power there. And some of these are left wing populist governments as I mentioned in Venezuela they'll campaign against a Maduro. If Jeremy Corbyn had won the, the election in, in the UK for the prime ministership, if he wasn't ousted by Keir Starmer, they would have run this against the left wing populist Jeremy Corbyn in the uk. And I, and I know this because I've seen all these talks by all these NATO four star general types in their State Department compatriots about what they were lining up against Corbyn. But the fact is is any populist movement, the teachers unions are, that's not just an international thing.
- [41:14]
Emily
They are on your screen by the way right now if you're watching this, this is an article from the Akron Beacon. In 1967, CIA piped $1 million to two teachers groups.
- [41:24]
Mike Benz
So when you see the teachers unions, they were going. Now the purpose of that money, and that was just a little bit of it, the purpose of that money was to help the capacity build the teachers unions, to make them stronger and more powerful and could hire more people and could have a bigger propaganda engine in order to influence curricula, in order to influence the ministries of education in foreign countries and influence the mythology to rid the culture, you know, the culture understood by the kids from any Soviet Union affinity. It was done in the Cold War, ostensibly to help win the Cold War war. And today you are going, you see this same USA State Department funding to these very groups. One of the groups mentioned there is today's Education International. I think we've given a billion dollars to Education International over the past decade through the State Department and USAID and Education International successfully campaigned to get the AfD. If you're a member of the AfD party in Germany, Education International mobilized to make sure that nobody affiliated with AFD could be a part of these teachers unions in Germany can have representation in the schools. They did the same thing to Bolsonaro in Brazil, the Education International, they're doing the same thing in Spain, they're doing the same thing in Italy. It's literally the same playbook, the same players for the same reason, except they didn't tell us this time. And part of the issue, the issue is nobody in the MAGA movement who. There was no, we did not inherit a movement that had any real care at all about foreign policy in these international networks. The MAGA movement in terms of the voting base came from people who were sick of high crime, were sick of failing public schools, who were sick of government corruption from what they saw and had no professional expertise in the global view of the American empire. And so there was in Trump 1, there was no attention to this at all from the White House. There was no attention to this at all from the State Department. USAID was completely rogue under Trump 1. And what we need now is a full declassification of all this, this and that will send an incredibly powerful message to whoever inherits these agencies next that we see you. You try to do this again, you're going to be on a Times Square jumbotron with your emails, your communications, your internal analysis memos, your decision memos. And like I believe you mentioned Hungary. Imagine if the US eight Hungary files get get produced. Samantha Power went full regime change against Orban funding Hungarian media, Hungarian political organizations, Hungarian rule of law programs to influence the courts, Hungary I mean, all the way Hungarian student groups and, you know, activist groups and university centers. I want every single file to be declassified to the extent classified, to be published to the extent it's SBU sensitive but unclassified. And because no one consented to that, no one voted for that. And if you, if you're going to do something like that, overturn a democratically elected government in a foreign country, you need a damn good reason. Not just because it helps a bunch of your political insider cronies make money off of markets in the region. And, and that's the way we've conducted statecraft with this. Because these networks, they're an easy button. They're all preset, good to go. It's the same networks every time. You're going to have the national for Democracy, you're going to have the Ford foundation, you're going to have the Carnegie foundation, you're going to have the Wilson Center. I mean, it's the same thing in every country. You're going to have the open society groups, you're going to have their friends in the university centers, you're going to have the international branch of the AFL CIO in that local country. I mean, it's so predictable every time. And a lot of this just relies on secrecy because they say anything that has to do with national, with foreign policy impacts America on the world stage. And so therefore it's classified, so therefore you can't FOIA it, therefore you get no transparency about what we do in international relations. And then these networks come home. Every single one of these groups is active at home. The Ford foundation is active at home. The Open Society foundation is active at home. Home. And so while they're getting hundreds of millions of dollars in government subsidies for international affairs work, they've now, they've now hired tens of thousands of people to be able to play around and engage in all sorts of domestic operations to destabilize this one, the same way they're paid to do by our government, to do abroad.
- [46:27]
Emily
Really fascinating how Bill Gates and George Soros have both. I mean, Soros passed the baton to his son. Bill Gates is now trying to be, what, a little bit more, more persuasive to the, the Trump administration. I don't even know how to describe it, but it's quite interesting that they, they seem to be seeing the writing on the wall, Mike?
- [46:44]
Mike Benz
Well, I don't know about that.
- [46:45]
Emily
I know they're trying to adapt, right? Like they're trying to survive. Tell me if I'm wrong. I'm very open to the idea that I'm wrong as well.
- [46:54]
Mike Benz
No, I, I know it's, it's. There should perhaps you know, be a certain nod given to Bill Gates's statement that, you know, the climate change hysteria is not, not existential. It's still a really big problem, but it's not existential. And other problems like poverty and the like are. I mean, so we need a lot more than that from Bill Gates before we start moving him down the power rankings on this. Bill Gates pledged $200 billion to the Gates foundation after the US aid cuts were announced. Bill Gates basically stepped in and said, okay, over the next 20 years I will be giving $200 billion to the Gates foundation to help offset the, what appears to be a potentially long term down, you know, long term downturn on, on U.S. international aid given out through USAID and State Department grants and the like. So the Gates foundation is stepping up to be the kind of Gates private empire version of USAID. I mean, I mean 2200, 200 billion divided by 20 years is 10 billion a year. USAID's budget is 45 billion a year. So you know, that's 20% of USAID almost right there. And it's important to understand that Gates is Microsoft. Microsoft is the rotates between the number one and number two, biggest country, biggest company on planet Earth. You know, it recently lost its top seat to Nvidia, which you know Nvidia because they're just kind of a chip company. They don't have the kind of far fangled operation that Microsoft has set up over decades. But Microsoft is a huge player in this entire field of CIA, State Department, USAID work. I mean, I'll give you an example. I mean Microsoft is co partnered with USAID and the State Department and the National Endowment for Democracy in almost all of these initiatives to stamp out right wing populism. And a big part of this is because they get fat government contracts from these countries or from these EU resilience funds. This is playing out in Poland right now. The EU withheld funds to Poland when the PIs party was in power, the right wing populist party that was giving NATO a bit of a headache. And they said until they make these civil society and governance reforms, we are going to withhold. I think it was like $143 billion in EU disbursement funds to Poland. And a huge chunk of that $143 billion was earmarked for Microsoft contracts in, in like that. Basically Mike, if those funds could be unlocked, Microsoft makes billions of dollars. And those, those funds are still making its way through the disbursement funnel. And they're trying to. Because you know, part of this is Poland just elected this right wing populist president, Carol Nawrocki. And lo and behold, the Obama foundation is just leaping into action to work with Polish civil society institutions to stamp out threats to democracy in Poland. Well, who are the biggest sponsors of the Obama Foundation? The Gates Foundation, $100 million. The Ballmer Foundation, I think another $100 million or $50 million. Ballmer, Steve Ballmer. Also Microsoft. Microsoft makes another, I think $25 million foundation. This is just an ROI. They are, they're basically spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a play that could net them billions of dollars. And you see this same phenomenon play out everywhere where you have corporate sponsorship of regime change and this has basically balkanized US politics along which corporations support which president. That president then goes out and used taxpayer money to do regime change to pay off off their donor class buddies who then draft off of the policies that the President implements. And so this is, I mean this is the George Soros playbook. This is how he became a billionaire in the first place. Was this donor drafter class type operation where he will fund a US political movement or party and then they will institute various initiatives. And this happened in Mongolia in the early 2000s when you know, George Soros was sponsoring all these State Department activities. And the State Department helps one of his portfolio companies, Rio Tinto, gets the rights to this, the world's largest copper mine in Mongolia. So meanwhile, the Soros hedge fund is betting on the stock of Rio Tinto while the US State, a British mining firm, while the US State Department is bending over ass backwards into a sort of Gumby like, you know, you know, twister game in order to make sure a foreign company's, a foreign country's mining firm gets the rights to a Mongolian copper mine so that the per, so that the hedge fund magnate who sponsored the US politicians is happy with them and will support them in the next election cycle. But you see this everywhere. This is what's happening in Ukraine with the Ukraine reconstruction. This is what's happening with all the creditors to the World bank whenever these countries get in trouble with the World Bank. And so you see this international creditor class as well as the equity class in on this. But this is what we're up against. But it's contorted every institution in American society. Harvard is the same. The university system is exactly as tainted as the union system. As I mentioned with the teachers unions and AFL cio, the universities are the major hub of this. Where do all these blob creatures go when they're put on ice, when their party loses? What is Jake Sullivan doing now? He's now a professor of statecraft at Harvard University and he'll rotate right back into the next administration. Harvard University. The head of the Harvard Endowment, the $56 billion hedge fund that has a small university called Harvard College attached to it, is Penny Pritzker. Penny Pritzker is who sponsored Barack Obama's Senate rise. You know, his whole political career comes from Penny Pritzker. Penny Pritzker, who was then the Secretary of Commerce under Obama and was made special envoy for Ukraine reconstruction, herding all the cats to invest in Ukraine, invest in Ukraine. Do you think the Harvard Endowment is a part of that investment flood in Ukraine? Given that they sit on $56 billion of hedge fund assets and that the head of the Harvard Endowment is spearheading all the other other co investors into Ukrainian gas, Ukrainian agriculture, Ukrainian rare earth minerals? So what do you think Harvard University is teaching its kids in its poli sci department? What do you think it's teaching kids in its history department about Orange Man? Bad. What do you think it's. It's teaching its kids and its intelligence studies about what happened during Russiagate? What do you think it's teaching kids in its international affairs? You know, you think they're going to mention that USA, they spent $5 billion funding the Maidan Square revolution? Or do you think they're going to say, oh, that was a, you know, mostly peaceful arson protest? What I'm saying is every aspect of our domestic civil societies grew to the scale they did and are what they are because they had a competitive advantage over other domestic institutions in the 1940s, 50s, 60s, 70s who worked, who did not have the bet the best back backing of Cold War Uncle Sam to out compete those other institutions? So now Harvard is what it is. So now the AFL CIO is what it is. So now the American Federation of Teachers is what it is because it had help from the US Government in these soft power relationships, in these funding relationships built up over decades. And so they are now the reigning number one domestic institutions and there's no space for these alternate institutions because I can't. If I want to compete with Harvard University, I need to compete with the fact they get $9 billion a year in free money from the federal government. $9 billion in government grants Harvard University gets. That's not a free market. In education. If I want to start a competing union, I need to contend with the fact that the AFL CIO gets more in government grants than they do in dues fees from unions. They get $72 million in government grants and about $68 million in union fees. If I want to start a union, can I get $72 million a year from the government to help me hire, you know, hire people, do propaganda for me to build capacity? So and it's, it's the same way all the way down. If I want to start some sort of alternate, you know, legal trade association, self regulatory organization to police the legal profession. If I want to start an alternate American Bar Association, I need to contend with the fact that the American Bar association gets tens of millions of dollars a year from USAID and the U.S. state Department and you know, as well as indirect ones through sub grants from USAID contractors. What I'm saying is this whole relationship has to be renegotiated. You're going to run into the same problem every time. Time.
- [56:32]
Emily
Incredible. Well, we have more just after this quick break because speaking of Bill Gates, let's go sell some more cow products because recently I learned about Colostrum. It's the very first milk, it's known as liquid gold that babies receive from their mothers after birth. I always have to do it in that voice because I did it once and I'll never live it down. Packed with proteins, natural growth factors, antimicrobial peptides that work to enhance your immune response, reduce inflation, repair and balance gut lining lining, reduce bloating and make your hair and skin look amazing. So today's sponsor, Cowboy Colostrum offers the highest quality cow colostrum available in the U.S. 100 made in America from 100American grass fed cows. They don't over process or strip their colostrum leaving it whole with full fat and high protein for ultimate nutrient density. Is the highest quality bovine colostrum you can buy. And Cowboy is easy to drink. I like the strawberry flavor. Particularly I like putting in milk. It's made with delicious natural ingredients and no artificial flavor flavors. So Simply add a 3 gram scoop of either their chocolate, Madagascar vanilla or strawberry into your coffee or smoothie or milk. And for a limited time our listeners get up to 25 off their entire order. Just head to cowboycolostrum.com afterparty and use code AFTERPARTY at checkout. That's 25 off when you use code AFTERPARTY@cowboycolostrum.com afterparty AND after you purchase they will ask you where you heard about them. Please go ahead and support our show and tell them we sent you need.
- [57:58]
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Emily
Literally.
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- [58:59]
Emily
We are back now once again with Mike Benz. He's executive director of the foundation for Freedom Online and we have to talk about the Blaze's new January 6 report. It is not surprising, I will say we don't know exactly. This report isn't entirely confirmed yet. It's early, it just popped over the weekend. But what it looks like, like is you have somebody at the Secret Service who is, to quote their headline, a forensic match for the January 6th pipe bomber, according to sources. So that is somebody who was in the Capitol Police at the time, now actually reassigned this person to the CIA. This person now works at the CIA. Blaze did a gait analysis which can match just the way that you walk, the way your body moves based on CCTV to this person, my friend and colleague, former colleague Christopher Bedford, been on the show, is almost arrested while he goes to the one of the locations in the story that is clearly being surveilled. And so Mike, right now there is some indication that the Trump administration is thinking about infiltrating left wing groups like Hoover, J. Edgar Hoover style, that type of thing. That's actually what's on the table with this ongoing January 6th investigation, that the pipe bombs were potentially false flags to draw law enforcement officers away, away from a response at the Capitol. And I was at the Capitol covering it live as it was happening. This is, you know, about not even half a mile away for where the action is outside the RNC and the dnc. Tell us how you're reacting to what the Blaze is reporting in this case. Mike.
- [60:42]
Mike Benz
I like you know Steve Baker and the Blaze. I like and respect, you know them both very much on this. This is a, a, this is a huge, a huge claim. And you know, what's the, the quote? You know, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I, I would like to see the actual, you know, forensic, you know, what's the name of the program that was used to do this gate match like walk us through that, you know, show, show us, show the math on it. You know because this is obviously something that, that you know plays to look, I mean it's very obvious that the pipe bomb was an inside job to anyone who's, who studied this for even half a half baked high on you know, whatever drug. Second like I mean it takes about two seconds to realize oh they shut down the investigation right away. They effectively they didn't Update. They collected 39,000 video files. They only uploaded four of them them. They never updated the, you know the website ever again after September 2021. And they, and they, it looks like they doctored the footage. They had a one frame per second black and white camera outside DNC headquarters. We were just talking about Watergate. Watergate was the break in to DNC headquarters. You're telling me they learned so little from Watergate that they used a security camera system from the 1980s 80s. The average 711 is a 30 frame per second camera.
- [62:13]
Emily
The bomb by the way, the pipe bomb itself. I never miss an opportunity to talk about the DNC pipe bomb because if you've seen pictures of this alleged pipe bomb, it literally is like duct tape over a kitchen timer.
- [62:24]
Mike Benz
And the guy in charge of the FBI at the time was the one who sold fake pipe bombs three months earlier in the Whitmer fednapping case. Steven Cuono that's. How do they, how do they bust them? On the Whitmer fednapping case where over half of the co conspirators turned out to be federal assets or informants, it was two FBI agents at the. This is the Detroit FBI field office that Steve Dantuano these guys were under who went to a bunch of 3 percenters that was one of the militia groups. That was the big three militia groups together with the proud voice note Keepers on January 6th went to the exact militia group that was involved in January six infiltrated them them, convinced them to trained them on how to build homemade pipe bombs and then busted them buying pipe Bomb parts and charged them with attempt, attempted possession of weapons of mass destruction. And then of course the FBI and, and Attorney General, the Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, together with the FBI and some like special Forces teams out of Quantico, held an emergency meeting on January 3, three days before January 6, to have these secret commandos stationed around the Capitol because they were concerned about a weapons of mass destruction being present around the Capitol. And lo and behold, that's the technical term in Justice Department parlance for a pipe bomb. That was literally what they charged the Whitmer. So the, so you know, if you read JFK and the Unspeakable, you know, this great, great sort of comprehensive tome around the JFK assassination, they refer to the Detroit FBI office as the Siberia office. So how did the head of the Siberia office of the FBI get this magic promotion to be the Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the Washington D.C. field office in December 2020, right before January 6th. So the, the Whitmer fednapping arrest happened in October. Two months later he's made. And just weeks before January 6th, the same guy who specializes in false flag pipe bombs is made the head of the D.C. fBI office when the pipe bomb is planted. And then you have 90 minutes of this guy walking around on tape making phone calls, sending text messages. Then they said oh well, we got everybody else's at&t and Verizon data, but we couldn't get it from the cell phone companies in this case because the data was corrupted. Corrupted. And then it turned out Thomas Massey talked to them and they said, well it wasn't corrupted when we sent it to them. I mean it's now the identity of the pipe bomber. It could be any number of permutations. It could be someone who is a federal officer or agent. I, I doubt it would be that direct. Interesting. It could be someone who is a contractor, who is not. Because we don't want a. Are deniable links.
- [65:29]
Emily
Right?
- [65:29]
Mike Benz
You're going to want like you. It could be the case, for example, that they let this guy go. Because remember, we're not told 39,000 video files and you can't even tell us the ethnicity. This person touched multiple surfaces all throughout this 90 minute jaunt and you couldn't swipe a single skin cell or hair follicle from any one of those surfaces. There's no way. There's no way in hell. And, but if this person was, for example, you know, a someone who was talked into, you know, setting up a pipe bomb or constructing a pipe bomb, but it was convinced to do it by a federal informant or a federal agent, then putting that person on trial. That would come out in the trial so you wouldn't arrest that person. Person. You know, I mean, basically what I'm saying is this could be any number of permutations, whether or not it's somebody who is working with the government, who is not. Who is not working with the government. Someone who was not with the government but knew that the government wanted them to. The Justice Department wanted them to do this, or FBI wanted this, or someone who did. Didn't know. Was given this pipe bomb that was a dud by someone, didn't know that they were actually a federal. This is what happened. The Whitmer fednapping case.
- [66:52]
Emily
Right.
- [66:52]
Mike Benz
It was the. They did not know that they were. That the people who were coming to their picnics and training grounds to teach them how to make pipe bombs were Feds. They did not know the people that they were accused of buying the parts for for the. To make the pipe bombs were feds.
- [67:08]
Emily
Randy Weaver. Yep.
- [67:10]
Mike Benz
Right. I suspect you have a very similar situation here, which is why they effectively shut down the entire investigation. Right. You know, almost right out the gate. But I need to see more evidence than a gate. I don't Even know what 94% confidence in a gait analysis means. I mean, they. Frankly, you have 39,000 video files. Why not do exactly what Tulsi Gabbard did? And when she had 89,000 or 83,000 JFK files, it was like, listen, we only have a handful of people who can even review these odm. So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to put them all on a big fat odni.gov webpage. Internet. Do your thing. The FBI should do the same thing. We should know every internal file relating to the investigation. Because I would say four years past the point. We're a little past the point where saying, well, it would jeopardize an ongoing investigation because the pipe bomber will be the first person to access these files and he'll know everything we have on them. Yeah. You know what? I think we're. You know what you're going to say that 40 years from now, four years into it, I think just show every single thing I want. Who was the person, what was the name of the federal agent inside the Biden DOJ who was in charge of the pipe bomb investigation? What was their name? What was. I want every analyst memo. I want every single file, email to and from relating to the pipe bomb investigation and Just pay put. Give us the pipe bomb file. There should be no daylight between what the FBI sees as it's conducting this investigation and what we see as the outside, crowdsourced investigatory arm, because you guys offered us $500,000 as a reward for catching them. So it would help to see what you guys have seen. I want every email from the unit inside the FBI and DOJ that was investigating this person starting January 6, 2021, to President. There should be a voluminous. There should be tens of thousands of pages worth of emails, text messages, and analytical memorandum video files. Put it all online and help us help you.
- [69:19]
Emily
I mean, that is just a poetic place to leave it. Mike Benz, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to just break all of this down. I know it's for you. You live this, you breathe this. But it's really, really helpful because the media is covered, covering none of this. And if they even think about covering it, they do it in a way that is shameful and unhelpful, counterproductive, and intentionally so in many cases. So, Mike, thank you for being here.
- [69:43]
Mike Benz
Thanks, Emily.
- [69:45]
Emily
All right, we have more to get to, of course, but this is really good timing, actually. I bet you've noticed those creepy ads that pop up on your phone and seem to know exactly where you've been, what you've bought, what you've been talking about. I know you've seen those. We've all seen those. And you've probably then asked yourself, is your. Is my phone monitoring me? Of course it is. Of course it is. We all know that. The truth is, your smartphone is constantly collecting and leaking data without your knowledge or consent. Every single day, it builds a detailed profile of your life, Your location, your habits, your interests, even the people with whom you communicate. That information is then funneled into an invisible marketplace, is just put up for sale, where it's tracked, analyzed, and sold to the highest bidder, which, by the way, sometimes is the government. Of course, it's not just annoying. It is absolutely invasive, and it's happening all the time. But the upphone by Unplugged is different. It's designed to protect your privacy from the ground up. No hidden trackers, no data mining. Just a secure, streamlined smartphone experience that puts you back in control. I have mine right here. So whether you're texting, browsing, or you using apps, the UPPhone ensures your personal information stays personal. It is the phone for people who are done being watched. So if you're ready to take back your digital privacy, visit unplugged.comemily to get $25 off a phone case with the purchase of a phone, that's unplugged.com Emily because your life should be yours, not theirs. Plus, through Veterans Day, Unplugged is honoring those who serve veterans and active duty military. Get $175 off any up phone and they are donating $50 from each purchase to support veterans charity Valor Mission Project. Learn more and order your upphone today@unplugged.com.
- [71:32]
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- [72:03]
Emily
Never a bad idea to take a moment and remember people who serve this country, especially on the eve of Veterans Day. My grandfather's a former Marine, served during Korea, and I know many, many of you. I mean, we started the Megyn Kelly Wrap up show on Sirius XL today at 2pm we're live every day, weekday, every weekday at 2pm and immediately right off the bat we were talking about healthcare. Two veterans called in and we had the opportunity just to hear from them on their perspective about some of the stuff that's going on in this country today. And I know it's hard for a lot of vets to think about what's going on in the country today. So just know that. And I know you know this, but just know that the country is thinking about you and so, so we are so, so grateful to you. All right, let's end on a lighter note because that was a heavy edition of Afterparty heavy. But of course with some levity because there's nothing you can do but laugh at the idea of infiltrating the civil society organization organizations of Mongolia for mining purposes at the Soros Hedge Fund. I mean, it's, you just gotta laugh at that. But, but speaking of people who have a hard time laughing at anything, let's go ahead and watch this video of Jimmy Kimmel and his wife on a podcast. I promise. Or let just let me just say this. Believe me, you should never listen to this podcast. I promise you I've never listened to it, it's called We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach, and Amanda Doyle. If you don't know who any of those people are, are, don't bother. You don't need to know who those people are. It'll only depress you to learn more about them. That's, that's all. I'll just, I'll just leave it there. You'll probably get a good flavor of their personalities from this interview with Jimmy Kimmel and his wife, Molly McInerney. I probably didn't say that. Right. But my apologies to the Irish community. They are speaking out against their own family members. Here's the clip.
- [74:15]
Molly McInerney
When Donald Trump was first elected, I was so upset. We all were. But I remember thinking, I understand it because I grew up in a very conservative Republican house. I mean, I bought my dad a Rush Limbaugh tie in high school. So there's like a little bit of sympathy I have for people in my family that I feel are kind of being deliberately misinformed every day.
- [74:38]
Emily
Right?
- [74:38]
Molly McInerney
They're, of course, they are deliberately being misinformed every day. To me, them voting for Trump is them not voting for my husband and me and our family. And I unfortunately have kind of lost relationships with people in my family because of it. When I see these terrible stories every day, I'm immediately mad at certain aunts, uncles, cousins who put him in power. And it's really, really hard. And my, it's, I wish I could, like, deprogram myself in some way, but I, I, I get really angry.
- [75:14]
Emily
Now in another part of that clip, she talks about how she kind of got away, right? She, she sort of left and saw the world, which is the prototypical, like midwestern expat or southern expat, rural expat who finds themselves in a coastal enclave after childhood. I say that as somebody who, in Wisconsin and is in a coastal enclave and has been here for quite some time, Many such cases, this is a personality type where they kind of compensate or they justify their disagreement, their political disagreement with their family members by actually just attributing disagreement to ignorance, which is a really ugly thing to do. It's not healthy for you because it makes you, it insulates you, it helps justify your own insulation from different ideas and criticism. It's very hard to be open minded if you start conflating disagreement with ignorance. And maybe you do have some dumbass family members. Plenty of people do. But there are also plenty of completely ignorant coastal enclave, blue voting people who thought that Donald Trump there was A piss tape of Donald Trump for however long because Christopher Steele cooked that up and gave it over to the intelligence community and then laundered that into the media. And everyone was pretty convinced that that is what happened. And so everyone was pretty convinced that's what happened for a matter of years. So I mean, it's just. That is, that is such a good clip. It's such an instructive clip. Heading into Thanksgiving, I made a kind of flippant remark on one of last week's shows about how I think people should be talking about politics and religion at Thanksgiving and with family, family members. Because if you can't talk about those things with family members, that means that you probably shouldn't be talking about them, period. Because you lack the emotional maturity to listen to others and to, you know, I get it, like there's some. It's sometimes where, like you have a family member who lacks that emotional maturity on their own. Like, it's not the problem's not you, it's them. Right? But that's, that's actually not. I mean, maybe that's, maybe that's your family. Everybody kind of thinks it's their family. But, um, if you can't have a conversation with somebody you love, who's one of those personality types, then, then you're probably lacking in, in some compassion. I'm not saying you have to be antagonistic or angry, but honestly, just ask people why. That's really interesting. Why do you think that? Oh, okay. Why do you think that? Where did you read that? Oh, okay, I read this here, I think this, etc. But to allow these disagreements to be so foundational, you are then immediately saying you've chosen Donald Trump over my husband, Jimmy Kimmel. That's incredible. That's incredible. Now we know what her family thinks of Jimmy Kimmel because she said, you have to choose between Donald Trump and Jimmy Kimmel. And they were like, we're going with. Choose Trump, we're going with Trump. So I guess that's sort of revealing in and of itself. But no, I mean really, like if you can't see the people that you love as fundamentally decent. I think so often it comes from people who have their own insecurities they have in they. Their own self esteem is wrapped up on being the sort of smart, urban, enlightened, educated person who got away from Missouri or Wisconsin. And so they see themselves as the kind of teacher coming back, returning to the old world from the new world to explain all about, you know, these new ideas that nobody else has ever Considered. And everybody is too primitive to really understand. And because of that, it prevents people from being able to just humble themselves, sit across a table from somebody who disagrees and treat them as a decent human being who's engaging in these discussions in good faith, but has had completely different life experiences from them. And to talk about it like Kimmel and his wife are doing there so publicly, like it's almost a brag, right? And you have Glennon Doyle or whomever like whispering into the microphone. Yes, yes, it's because their self esteem is completely wrapped up in being the smart. Aren't enlightened people who just take this stuff really seriously and they kind of know better. And you know, there's, there's all kinds of reasons people fall into that and get sucked into that and God bless them. But those are the people I think we need to show the most kindness to, because they're the ones that so often are coming to absolutely insane conclusions about a piss tape or whatever it is. And the best way to do just why. Okay, no, I'm, I'm open to that. I want to hear your point. Where did you read that? Okay, so why do you think that? Just ask people questions. And this is totally unsolicited advice for me, by the way, but I think actually got, maybe it's a, it's slightly solicited because some of you sent some emails in. I actually do get a lot of emails asking from people, you know, how do I deal with this situation or that situation. I think maybe it's because I have a lot of friends on the left that come on this show and other shows and, and you just gotta treat other people like other people, like they're just as good as you are, they're just as decent as you are. Now, not everybody, not everybody is. There's some real bad apples out there. But just ask questions and try to understand people. Try not to let these sort of political judgments become personal judgments because so often they really are just political and ideological judgments judgments. And we're in totally different media environments now, which explains a lot of our differences as well. So I could not let this clip pass without addressing it because again, many such cases, you see this from so many people who feel like they kind of got away and they know better. And then, you know, what she's doing is she's buzzing back into Thanksgiving with a lesson about who Donald Trump really is or what the rights plan via Project 2025 is actually going to do to our institutions. You know, that's what's happening and we're all. We, yeah, we can deal with it. It's fine. It's fine. Yeah, just ask questions. Oh, really? Oh, that's interesting. Okay, did you read Project 2025? Did you know the left is developing their own Project 2028? Project 2029, I guess it's called. Oh, okay, interesting. So. Right. Just, just, just have some fun with it. Just have some fun with it. All right, I'll stop rambling, but appreciate everybody for tuning in. Thanks so much for being us over that 100 subscriber hurdle. Emilycare media.com that is the email address that you can reach me at, especially for happy hour questions. Send them in there. Please make sure to subscribe here on YouTube. Join the fun that we're having. Watch us live, catch all of our videos and subscribe wherever you get your podcast as well. We will see you back here Wednesday live 10pm.
- [82:50]
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- [83:11]
Emily
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