Transcript
Michael Popak (0:00)
As each day goes by, there's no doubt that the Trump administration has no clue where the enriched uranium stockpile is for Iran. It can't possibly be at Fordo, the place where they just dropped a dozen bunker buster bombs on to destroy the nuclear capacity of Iran. How do you destroy the nuclear capacity of Iran and believe that they're still storing the uranium there? And Donald Trump wants to distract from all the fact that the intelligence community, his own intelligence community, can't make a proper assessment of whether there has been a setback or not. So instead he's going after the New York Times and CNN because they reported about an intelligence report from his own administration answering to Tulsi Gabbard who said that at best, at best, at least preliminarily, the nuclear program for Iran was set back just a few months. Pete Hegseth takes to the podium at a presser where he goes after the New York Times and cnn. But even he doesn't properly provide any details, nor does General Kaine about the assessment of the damage at the sites. Is that what this is all about? Sure. It's interesting to hear the TikTok of exactly what happened in the 37 hour mission of the two B2 bombers. I get it. But we want to know about what happened and where it is the uranium and why finally didn't they hit the fourth site at Pickaxe Mountain. Yeah, Pickaxe Mountain. That's likely where the nuclear or the uranium enriched is right now because there were trucks that were cited by satellites leaving the 4Doe location before the bombing. But Donald Trump doesn't care about that. He just hires a guy in Coral Gables, Florida named Alejandro Brito who brings another nasty letter against CNN and new this is the lawyer they've used before to go after ABC and Stephanopoulos to go after Michael Cohen. You know, he's just another tool in the tool bag of Donald Trump. And now he's sent nasty letters to New York Times and David McCaw, the general counsel for the New York Times, who I've had interaction with in the past, a positive interaction with and as a first rate first amendment lawyer, he fired back at the top on behalf of the New York Times and said we stand by our story, we got a copy of the of the assessment and we reported on it and we'll continue to report the truth. So will we. Here on the Midas Dutch network and on Legal af, I'm Michael Popak. Let's get to it. We're now just about a week after the bombing, you know Saturday night will be a week. And we still don't know the assessment because the intelligence community doesn't know the assessment. The intelligence community that Donald Trump undermines on an hourly and daily basis in America. He doesn't trust his own intelligence director, Tulsi Gappard, who has 14 different intelligence agencies reporting to her, including the one that generated this report, doesn't barely trust the CIA, but not really with John Ratcliffe. So there's no, and this is not a pun, there's no intelligence in the planning, operation or in the execution or in the postscript for Donald Trump's military plans. None. None. And so what is he busy doing? Busy up there saying that the media, who has a job to do, whether Donald Trump likes it or not, as, as, as allowed by our founding fathers and framers, has a job to do to bring tyrants to bear, to bring them to their knees, to properly report, to give the American people and voter true information and investigative reporting. They have a job to do. Trump has a job to do. Let's stop attacking, attacking the media over their job. And they sent that nasty letter. You're on. I love these comments from the letter. You're unpatriotic, you're false, you're defamatory. They're none of those things. Here's what David McCaw, top flight First Amendment lawyer, general counsel within the office of the General Counsel for the New York Times. Here's what he wrote back. First, Brito Alejandro Brito, who I don't know, but I practice in the same neighborhood. He described the attack on Iran as historic and a resounding military success that unequivocally eliminated Iran's nuclear capabilities and brought peace to the region. Who believes that they unequivocally eliminated. Even General Kaine doesn't say that. Nobody says that. In fact, at the press conference, and I'll show you a clip from it in a minute. The best that even Hegseth can do, and he's political hack of the first order for Donald Trump and a bootlicker of the first order. The best he can come up with is I'll leave that to the intelligence community to assess. Right. So why is this lawyer in a small office in Coral Gables, Florida, making reference to our resounding success of the military opera who wrote this for him? He said the New York Times article about the preliminary intelligence assessment, which was a top secret report that the Times got their hands on, undermined the credibility and integrity of the president in the eyes of the public and the professional community. I don't even know what that means. He's been defamed. I don't think you can defame the President by accurately reporting the leak of a top secret classified document. Here's what McCaw wrote. The Times Lawyer The US intelligence services issued a preliminary assessment concluding that the attacks delayed Iran's nuclear program only by a few months. This is what we reported. While the Trump administration protests that the assessments were only preliminary, which, by the way, was the second word of our article. I love McCall and that letter, assessments. And that later assessments may come to different conclusions, no one in the administration disputes that the first assessments said exactly what the article said they did. The destruction caused by the raid was not as significant as the president's remarks suggested.