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- [00:00]
Dave Smith
Foreign. What's up? What's up, everybody? Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem. I am Dave Smith. I am rolling solo for this episode. And Rob and me, we. Tomorrow morning I'm jumping on a plane to Boston, so come on out. There are still limited tickets available. They're selling very quick if you want to come out. We got a show tomorrow night, then two shows Friday, two shows Saturday at Laugh Boston comic Dave Smith dot com. That is the website where you can grab all the ticket links and, and plus everything. I, I think we got dates on there, like going through the rest of the year. So me and Rob are. Are traveling quite a bit doing standup shows this year. I will be. I'm about to enter a tornado of travel over the next few weeks. A few big podcasts and some standup shows. Stand up. Stand up. I'll be doing stand up in Boston and Nashville. And then in between that, I got some other traveling too. So again, comicdavidsmith.com hope to see some of you guys out there on the road. Really looking forward to Boston because I always love performing there. All right. By the way, before we get into the show today, I do. I did notice I was just looking at Twitter as I was preparing for the show, and I seem to have struck a nerve with some people based on some comments I made on the last podcast about emojis. And people are upset. People who love their emojis really, really love them. But I'm sorry, they're for women and children. And I stand by it. I have. I'm pretty old school, or maybe I'm just old, but things that were not done in my time make me uncomfortable and I don't care to adjust. And I don't think that's the role. I don't think that's what men are supposed to do. We're not supposed to adjust to the new time. We're supposed to stay locked in our time. And I try my best to do that. I also, by the way, I have a lot of strict views on this stuff. I've upset people with this before. In fact, it was David Cross who. I mean, he was mad because I humiliated him in that debate we did years ago. But he got very offended when I said that I don't think men should have holidays. That I think, like, I, I was ripping on Father's Day. Father's Day is pointless. It shouldn't exist. Holidays are not for men. I don't think men should even celebrate their birthdays past a certain age. Like What? I. I think you like, I did a thing. I had a thing for my 40th birthday, and my wife kind of insisted. She twisted my arm into doing it. But I had a party for my 40th birthday. I think that maybe is appropriate for men. You know, you're like, every decade, your 40th, your 50th, your 60th. Okay, fine, you could have a little party, but like, Father's Day. First off, Father's Day is never a thing. It's never. No dad has ever enjoyed Father's Day. We don't care. You're just buying us crap with our money, which is not. That doesn't make sense. It also doesn't. It doesn't make sense to give a gift if you're spending it in the other person's money. Just let them get what they want for themselves. Also, dads, like, when you're a grown man, you don't every. I. I appreciate every day that I get to spend with my family, but I don't need it to be a day of celebration about me, because just think about that. A day of celebration. That's not for men. A day of celebration is for women and children. So, anyway, I'm not backing off of my. My emoji position. And I will double down on this. I will go. I will die on this hill. I'll go all the way this. Someone told me on Twitter I shouldn't die on this hill. You don't get to pick what hills I die on. I do. And it's this anti emoji. It's not good for society when men are communicating with emojis. Someone else said to me, they go, well, how else are you supposed to convey emotion in a tweet? Does that just prove my point right there? Yeah, you're not supposed to convey emotion. That's the whole point. Okay, anyway, enough silliness. So for today's episode. I got it. We're just going to talk more about the signal stuff because more has come out about it, and it's. It's fascinating and it's. I just find it interesting to cover the fallout of all of this. Now. I'm not. I'm as. As I said yesterday on the show, I'm not presenting this with, like, any type of, like, unified theory of. Okay, here's what happened. This isn't something like. Like Russiagate, where, you know, after. Know, covering it for a long period of time. And then a lot of information came out, and there's just been. There's been declassified information. There was the Mueller report, there was the Durham report that, that investigated the investigation. So there's a lot there where you could be like, okay, here's the cohesive narrative. Okay, Hillary Clinton went to this British spy who went to this Russian spy who compiled this dossier of pure lies and garbage. They knew it was pure lies and garbage. Then, you know what I mean, after Donald Trump wins the election for the FBI and the CIA use it to launch this big investigation into Donald Trump. Okay, we don't have anything like that here yet. What we do have is, okay, you have a scandal. As I said yesterday on the show, the major scandal here is not what's being covered. You know, it's, I, I was thinking about this last night that there were two, there are two examples that just pop into my head that kind of remind me of this signal thing. And the two examples were, number one was Benghazi and number two was the F. The EU Victoria Nuland phone call that leaked. So real quickly, for anybody who doesn't know the story, Benghazi, if you were paying attention to the news back then, this was in, in Barack Obama's first term, this was like one of his scandals. Fox News talked about it all the time. The Mitt Romney brought it up a lot when he was running against Obama in 2012. And essentially what was amazing about it for anybody who followed it was that they made the whole scandal that this US Embassy in Benghazi was overrun. And I mean, Hillary Clinton testified for hours. I think she did like a six hour congressional testimony on this. And it was just constant. You know, the, the parameters of the conversation were like so narrowed. It was, you know, this is really back when, you know, CNN and MSNBC and Fox News really controlled a lot more of the, the narrative. In fact, this is, again, I might be dating myself here, but fact, Fox News was so big at one point and so like involved in this conversation that if you, I'm somebody who certainly experienced this and people around my age with, around my politics probably did too. But if you, back in the Obama days were like critical of liberals at all, the first things people would say back to you was like, oh, what are you watching too much Fox News? That was always just like the assumption. It was like, oh, if you're, if you're not a liberal, well then obviously you watch Fox News. And then I would, you know, tell people like, no, I hate Fox News too. And that would, they would not understand that. And it was in this, in a similar sense to like, if you you know, if you were saying 911 was an inside job or something like that, people would have been like, oh, what are you watching? Alex Jones? It was just like, thought of as the way Alex Jones owned the conspiracy world. Fox News owned the I'm not a liberal world. And today that's totally different. That's just today, if. If you were critical of liberals, people are probably assuming that you're listening to podcasts or that you're. There's an influencer. You know, like, maybe they'd. They'd assume you're like, I don't know. I don't even know who the person would be. But because it could be so many people, it could be anyone from Ben Shapiro to Andrew Tate to whoever, you know, a different world, much more decentralized. Back then, they really controlled the narrative. And so the whole conversation was over how Obama was so weak that he couldn't protect this ambassador. Obama was so weak that he couldn't protect this embassy. And the Republicans were tough and strong and they were going to get to the bottom of what happened. And through this whole thing, almost nobody raises the question, why was our CIA embedded in Libya? What was going on here? You know, and like, and the actual story was that Obama had decided, along with NATO, to overthrow the Gaddafi regime in Libya, which that in itself would. You would have thought, even by this time. I mean, what are we talking, like 2011 here? Even by this time? This is, you know, eight years after we overthrew Saddam Hussein in Iraq and eight years after, or nine, I'm sorry, 10 years after we began the regime change war in Afghanistan. And these wars were already disaster. So the idea of doing, like, another regime change would have been probably a bit of a scandal, but they were really somewhat remarkably able to get you to, like, not focus on that story and just focus on this very narrow area of, like, who could have protected the embassy better. The other example is the Victoria Nuland f. The EU phone call. So for people who don't know about this, this was, I believe, maybe just, you know, we don't know exactly when the phone call took place, but it was. The phone call was leaked, like, I believe a couple weeks before the Yanukovych government was overthrown in Ukraine. And the. It was presumably leaked by the Russians. I don't know that that's ever actually been proven for sure, but there is a conversation between Jeffrey Pyatt and Victoria Nuland, and it was essentially as this. As this coup that the US Is backing was overthrowing the Yanukovych Government, or I should say, as the. As the street protest that the US Government was backing was gaining more and more traction. They were. There's this phone call of the ambassador and Victoria Nuland at the State Department talking about who is to be in the new government and who's not to be in the new government. By the way, very coincidentally, they got all of their picks. It's exactly how the new government ended up being made up. And so here you have, you know, Victoria Nuland, who is the wife of Robert Kagan. These are like, real deal, like, true neocons, okay? Orchestrating a regime change, deciding who's going to go in the new government and who's not going to go in the new government. And also pretty clearly alluding to the whole operation that's going on. I mean, they. They open it up. The terminology that they use is very spy like stuff. You know, they're like, we gotta glue this thing. We gotta stick it. We. We gotta. She goes, we need a midwife, this thing. At one point, they. They say, anyway, so through this whole thing, she even at one point says, because this is under the Obama administration. At one point she even says that we're. She goes, I talked to Joe Biden, to the vice president. He's going to get on the phone to give him an attaboy. Like, the vice president will get on the phone to tell him, we got your back. Good job. And then at one point, she's bitching about the EU and how the EU is just moving too slowly to, you know, whatever, force Yakovic out. And so at one point, in her frustration, she goes. She was basically like, you know what? We'll do it without them. We'll do this thing without the eu. And you know what? F the eu, we'll do it ourselves. And then somehow this. This gets leaked. And then in the entire media, through the entire. The entire coverage of this was that we had a diplomat on the phone with a representative in the State Department, and they said, f the eu. And that's really undiplomatic when you think about it. It's like that became the whole conversation, but bury the context of any of it. Like the actual really interesting scandal there is that. There's some clear evidence here that the US Is involved in this overthrow of a democratically elected government in Ukraine, you know, which, okay, at the time, like, the war hadn't broken out yet, but you could still see where that would be kind of scandalous, you know, but that does not. And it's just. I. I just couldn't help but see these parallels as I'm reading the news coverage of this signal leak and what is it that they're jumping on? Like it's so funny because I never would have even thought of this as being the thing. We read it yesterday on the show and it didn't even jump out to me as like even a scam. But the thing is that this is what they're running with at CNN and stuff like that is that I guess Pete Hag, seth and, and J.D. vance were trash in Europe and that Pete Heth called Europe pathetic. That really is some way to speak about our allies. So now you see what they're doing here, right? Like they always try to focus on one salacious detail so that you can drive all the outrage about that you can signal to all the Trump haters, hey, if you want, if you want to find a scandal here, we'll hear it at. This is your thing to focus on on. The thing to focus on is that the Defense Secretary called our European allies pathetic rather than the obvious scandal that's right in front of you, which is that America can never not be fighting a fucking war, no matter what. Even when you vote for the Nobel Peace Prize winning Barack Obama, he's in wars immediately. When you vote for the America first we want to get out of all these wars. Donald Trump immediately we're bombing the poorest country in the Middle east. Just like that is so obviously the scandal here, but everyone's finding everything else that they can to, to focus on. Now I will say, and again, as I, as I alluded to earlier, I'm not claiming to have like a flushed out, worked out version of what the bigger picture is here. I'm not claiming that. I will say that having that flushed out, bigger picture of what happened in the first four years of Donald Trump's administration, I do think it's reasonable to, to kind of speculate. I mean, I, I think it's reasonable when, you know, like if, if Donald Trump's, if we didn't know everything we knew about Donald Trump's first administration, it would probably be a little bit more of a leap to think this way. But knowing what we knew then, I think it's very reasonable to ask ourselves whether Donald Trump is being sabotaged here or not. Now I'm just throwing that out there and I'm, I'm, this is one of the possibilities that I'm considering because what we have here is an official story that makes absolutely no sense. And we'll get into this in a Little bit. But I just want to be clear, I am not. If I'm, if the claim is that Donald Trump has people around him who are sabotaging the Trump administration, I just want to be very clear that that is in no way letting Donald Trump off the hook. Like he's still responsible. Like, this is, this is his job. Listen, I mean, he was, he was the President of the United States for four years. I mean, he decided to run for president in 2016. I think the reason expectation is that by the time you decide to run for president, you know a thing or two about a thing or two. Otherwise, why the hell would you even be running for president? You must have some ideas and some knowledge and some reason to believe that you can execute these ideas. But then he had four years in there, real trial by fire, and then had another four year period with nothing else that he had to do except fight legal cases, but getting ready for his, for running again. And I don't think it's too much to expect that by the time you get there, this is eight years later from when you already were running for president, that you know who to pick as your national security advisor. And I, it's just, I, I can't tell you how many good people there are. I'm certainly not like the one, there's a lot who would have known that Mike Walsh is a terrible pick for national security advisor. Now, of course, we did say that on this show as he was picking him, but that's, you know, we're far from the only ones who knew this. The guy's just a terrible guy to pick. And look, if, you know, by the way, Donald Trump did just order all of the, the FBI to declassify all of the documents dealing with the investigation into Trump, the Russiagate investigation in the first four years. We'll see what comes out over that. But if you know that Donald Trump not only was, I mean, look, I'm not overstating it. Not only was he framed for treason by his own intelligence agencies in his first administration, but there were undeniably countless people within Donald Trump's administration who were working against him. Now this was, this is objective fact at this point. And, and not just like, not just, I'm not just talking about the, like how every single week in the New York Times, there would be, you know, unnamed sources from the executive branch who were saying something to damage Donald Trump. But I mean, like at the top levels of his cabinet, he had his own people working against him, not just his own intelligence agencies, but the people he put around him. So, number one, I don't think it's unreasonable to speculate that maybe that's the case again. And number two, it's Donald Trump's fault if that's the case again. Just want to be very clear on that. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is my Patriot Supply. We've seen it before. 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Check them out at preparewithsmith.com all right, let's get back into the show. The other thing to mention here is that Mike Waltz, first of all, and I know a little bit of this stuff because I've heard stories behind the scenes. I mean, I just know enough about the guy to know he was terrible from the begin, but he is like totally just the worst on foreign policy. Doesn't know what he's talking about. He's, he's the type of guy who would say something like, if Vladimir Putin succeeds in Ukraine, he's going to move on Poland next. Like that's who you're dealing with here. Also, he worked for George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. I mean, I'm just saying, I don't, I don't think it's unreasonable at this point to be suspicious of people like that. These are the guys who have been consistently undermining Donald Trump the whole time. In fact, what was his. Hold on, I'll pull it up right here. I have. He was, yeah, so he was a, he was a special forces guy. Again, not saying that alone. You know, this credits you, but it raises an Eyebrow. He served the Bush administration as a defense policy director in the Pentagon and as the counterterrorism adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney. Okay. Now, so anyway, I just think, essentially my point is here. To suspect that the counterterrorism adviser to Dick Cheney is going to be loyal to Donald Trump is perhaps an unreasonable expectation. It's perhaps reasonable to speculate that maybe that guy wouldn't be loyal to Donald Trump. And then my more important point, that's on Donald Trump. That's not. I have never been one. Although I did support Donald Trump in this last election, I have never been one to make the excuses for him that I see so many of the Trump supporters making. Like, oh, he was tricked by his guy. Like, okay, Donald Trump got to choose who his national security advisor were, and there's plenty of great people he could have picked from, and he chose Dick Cheney's counterterrorism guy. I'm sorry, but that. First of all, that already. Even if none of this is true, even if Waltz just fucked up and he's not trying to sabotage the whole thing, and there's no conspiracy here whatsoever, it still really says something about Donald Trump's profound lack of judgment to have picked this guy. And it says something about all the people around Donald Trump. Every. I mean, you would just think after everything, after everything the country's been through, everything Donald Trump's been through, all the time he's had to learn this, you would just think that, like, if somebody ever suggested, hey, you know, we're. We're thinking about, you know, your next national Security advisor, and we have all these great options. I'm thinking Dick Cheney's counterterrorism adviser, you would think, number one, Donald Trump would probably fire you for suggesting that. And number two, that it would never even get to Donald Trump because every single person around him would be like, what? No, we're not doing that anymore. That's. That's not what we're doing. We're not doing that. We're doing an America first thing here. And so it tells you something that none of that happened. It tells you not only did none of that happen, the guy ends up getting the job. Not just getting considered for it, he gets the job. Okay, so in the wake of everything that we talked about on the last episode and the stuff I've been alluding to here last night, Mike Waltz, the National Security advisor, who is responsible for this humiliating debacle, he went on the Laura Ingram show to defend himself. Now, it should be mentioned before we, we play this, that Donald Trump has also gone out of his way to defend him too, and say that their team's doing a great job. And, you know, I think I, my, my feel of the situation is that essentially Donald Trump's in a position where he's riding pretty high politically right now. If you go again, if you look at the, the, his approval rating, it's, it's been about the highest he's ever had. Pretty consistently in that range, it's been about from 47 to 53%, kind of depending on what poll you look at. That in itself wouldn't seem so great. I mean, it's pretty good for America today with how divided politically we are. That's about as popular as a president can get. And obviously he's more popular than he ever was in his first term. So in that sense, it's a win. But really it's when you kind of look at more numbers and you, you know, you dive into the context a little bit more that like the, the right track, wrong track number is like, I think it's like right around 50% of, of Americans right now say we're on the right track. And it was in the 20s when Joe Biden was president. So again, just this 47 to 53% may not sound so good, but when you're comparing it to that, so the right track number may not be so great, but compared to where it was under Biden, it's great. Donald Trump's approval rating may not be so great till you find out that the Democrats have a 24 approval rating. You know, the, the thing that seems to be uniting the American people right now is recognizing that the government's doing a pretty shitty job. That's whether you're left or right. That's pretty universally recognized. But so Donald Trump's in a situation where I think he feels pretty politically strong. Obviously, he won every swing state, won the popular vote. The things like Doge are popular with the American people. And so I think he doesn't want to admit to a scandal. You know, if he were to fire the National Security advisor, that's kind of an admission that, like, oh, there was a big fuck up. And I think he'd rather pretend that no, there wasn't. And I think they think because this reporter Goldberg has been so discredited and is such a liar, they can get away from this by just being like, screw that guy. You can't trust anything he says. Again, the problem is just like the signal chat was real and this story appears to be real. I don't trust this Goldberg guy at all. But I'm also just looking at this story and it's like, no, you guys were, you were conspiring about bombing Yemen. You ended up bombing Yemen. And everyone here is admitting it. So what can you say here? Anyway, let's jump into this. Here is Mike Waltz on Laura Ingram show on Fox News.
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Laura Ingraham
One of the principals who was on that signal chat, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz. Advisor Waltz, thank you for joining us tonight. The President expressed complete confidence in you today and his entire cabinet. But how did a Trump hating editor of the Atlantic end up on your signal check chat?
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Mike Waltz
You know, Laura, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but of all the people out there, somehow this guy who has lied about the President, who has lied to Gold Star families, lied to their attorneys and gone to Russia hoax, gone to just all kinds of links to lie and smear the President of the United States, and he's the one that somehow gets on somebody's contact and then gets sucked into this group.
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Dave Smith
All right, so just pause it. Pause it right now.
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Laura Ingraham
Intel team.
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Dave Smith
Okay, so I, first of all, I thought this was really bizarre, that walls opened up by being like, hey, look, man, I'm sorry, but when you see something like this, you gotta jump to conspiracies like, okay, yeah, I don't completely disagree with you. How the hell did this guy of all guys end up on that chat? The problem here is that the answer is you. It's you. Like, what, what conspiracy are you alleging? And then you can go off on like all this, you know, this is the guy who was pushing this Russiagate stuff. Yeah, the entire establishment was pushing the Russiagate stuff. Literally the entire establishment who's like Devin Nunes and Stephen Miller, like a couple guys within the establishment resisted it. The rest of it was like, you know, Donald Trump himself, his family and a bunch of podcasters and real journalists out there on the Internet. But you know who else was pushing it was like your former bosses, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. So, like, yeah, you're their guy. And now you're here and you're just evoking that like, yeah, I mean, this seems like a conspiracy. Okay, let's, let's put these pieces of the puzzle together here. National Security adviser, you tell me about this. Because now, of course, Laura Ingram, when he goes, oh, it's a conspiracy, she starts going like, okay, so is someone on your team compromised? Is. How did this end up happening? Let's hear his answer.
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Laura Ingraham
Trying to cause trouble here, because that's the scuttlebutt out there.
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Mike Waltz
We have people. We have people. No, look, this was. This is a great group. The President has a great team. This is not personal.
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Laura Ingraham
I'm not talking about the other principals.
- [29:38]
Mike Waltz
No, no, no. These were principals and a couple of staff that were coordinating, as you saw, having a policy discussion as. As we went forward. And then just in the days before what was an incredible strike, not only did we take out people that the Biden team never could, that we took out headquarters, missile caches, and actually one of the leaders of the Houthi organization, we've since taken out several since. And, you know, that's what they don't want to talk about. They don't want to talk about the success here. They don't want to talk about the hostages getting released. They don't want to talk about the Black Sea ceasefire that we just put in place today as the President ends the largest land war in Europe or the border, or the fact that Panama just kicked China out of the canal. And success after success after success.
- [30:26]
Dave Smith
All right, let's. Let's pause it again.
- [30:27]
Mike Waltz
It's embarrassing.
- [30:29]
Dave Smith
I mean, I don't know why. This is just. It's so pathetic. And he's not even good at delivering this. I mean, he seems visibly nervous, like, the whole time that he's saying this. But this just, like, pathetic attempt to pivot back to the successes of the administration, which, you know, some of those being legit, some of them not so much. But, you know, you're sit. He's sitting there and he starts with, like, oh, like, this is a. There's some type of conspiracy here. I mean, of all the people out there, this guy gets added to this group chat. And then Laura Ingram, reasonably, is like, yeah, so like, someone on your team, right? That's the only way this would be a conspiracy. Someone here is working against the President. And then he goes, no, no, my team's perfect. My team's perfect. I mean, look at all the success. And what they don't want to talk about is how successful this strike, which, again, just save me the bullshit on how successful the strike was. Like, what do they even mean by that? There's. Are the Houthis not a problem anymore? Are no more ships going to be fired upon now? Or. What do you mean? You mean when we dropped the bombs, it blew shit up? Like, yeah, okay, that was. But everyone's distracting from what a success this was. Well, first of all, this story was out in. This was out for weeks before this signal scandal dropped. And, yeah, like, no, One's really talking about what an amazing success it was because there's just, it's just not apparent that anything was achieved other than, you know, killing some kids that seems to have been achieved. But you know, like, okay, what else was it? But so now you're sitting here saying, well, what exactly is the conspiracy that you're alleging here like? And somehow this journalist hacked his way into your signal chat. Clearly he was added to the chat. I don't think any like. Right. He's not claiming anything else. All right guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Stash. Brand new sponsor. We're thrilled to have them on board. Saving and investing can feel impossible, but with Stash, it's not just a reality, it's easy. Stash isn't just an investing app. It's a registered investment advisor that combines automated investing with dependable financial strategies to help you reach your goals faster. They'll provide you with personalized advice on what to invest in based on your goals. And if you want to just sit back and watch your money go to work, you can opt into their award winning expert managed portfolio that picks stocks for you. Stash has helped millions of Americans reach their financial goals and starts at just $3 a month. Don't let your savings sit around. Make it work harder for you. Go to get.stash.com problem to see how you can receive $25 toward your first stock purchase and to view important disclosures. That's get.stash.com problem paid non client endorsement, not representative of all clients and not a guarantee. Investment advisory services offered by Stash Investment LLC and SEC Registered investment advisor. Investing involves risk offer is subject to terms and conditions. All right guys, let's get back into the show. So, okay, anyway, let's keep playing.
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Laura Ingraham
Harrison.
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Mike Waltz
Yes, we're going to get to the bottom of it. We've have. I just talked to Elon on the way here. We've got the best technical minds looking at how this happened. But I can tell you, I can tell you for 100% I don't know this guy. I know him by his horrible reputation and he really is the bottom scum of journalists. And I know him in the sense that he hates the president, but I don't text him. He wasn't on my phone. And we're going to figure out how this.
- [34:15]
Laura Ingraham
So you don't know what staffer is responsible for this right now?
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Mike Waltz
Well, look, a staffer wasn't responsible and look, I take full responsibility I built the. I built the group to. My job is to make sure everything's coordinated. But how does that.
- [34:28]
Laura Ingraham
I mean, I don't mean to be pedantic here, but.
- [34:30]
Dave Smith
All right, let's pause it here.
- [34:31]
Mike Waltz
Have you ever had somebody's contact.
- [34:33]
Dave Smith
Pause it here. And then just bring it back a little bit because the next part is pretty wild. But I just. Look, you can't say I'm taking full responsibility for this. I created the chat. But also, there's some type of conspiracy afoot here. Which one is it? If you're taking responsibility for it, like, how did he get added. Now, by the way, it is worth pointing out here that Goldberg, in his piece, says that they had. They. They had communicated in the past. He said he wasn't entirely surprised to be. To have Mike waltz reaching out to him. So, like, somebody's lying here. Now we know Goldberg's a liar. Okay? So I'm not, you know, denying that that's a possibility, but it does seem like in this case, his story seems to be much more likely than it's a conspiracy. Like, he doesn't want to throw a staffer under the bus and say, maybe somebody else set this up. He's saying he created the group chat. How did this guy get added to the group chat? It seems like you had to at least have his number, have his contacts of something, I don't know, explain it to me in a way that makes sense. But that's not you taking full responsibility. And, you know, like, you could sit here and say, like, oh, everybody wants. You know, everybody wants to be distracted with this. Instead of talking about how great the strike was, it's like you announced the strike before you did it. To a journalist who hates your boss's guts, that seems like a pretty big scandal, man. Like, I don't know how. How would that not be the topic of conversation? Don't get me, wr. I think the topic of conversation should be about why the hell we're going to war with Yemen. But forget that. All right? Let's keep playing.
- [36:38]
Mike Waltz
And I know him in the sense that he hates the president, but I don't text him. He wasn't on my phone. And we're going to figure out how this happens.
- [36:45]
Laura Ingraham
So you don't know what staffer is responsible for this right now?
- [36:49]
Mike Waltz
Well, look, a staffer wasn't responsible. And look, I take full responsibility. I built the. I built the group to. My job is to make sure everything's coordinated. But how does that.
- [36:58]
Laura Ingraham
I mean, I don't mean to Be pedantic here, but how did the number.
- [37:00]
Mike Waltz
Have you ever had a. Have you ever had somebody's contact that shows their name? And then you have an. And then you have somebody else make those mistakes, right? You got somebody else's number on someone else's contact. So of course I didn't see this loser in the group. It looked like someone else. Now, whether he did it deliberately or it happened some other.
- [37:19]
Dave Smith
Okay, this part was just wild to me. So first of all, where he go, Laura Ingram, like, trying to be cute or funny there, and she almost like stepped over. Like the part where she should be, like, she correctly asks the follow up question and then she's like almost giving him cover in a way here. It's like, shut up, Laura, and let him say this. You're. He's going, have you ever had a contact name with somebody else's number in it? Okay, well, first of all, the answer was, is no. No, I have never had that. And I'm an idiot. I've texted the wrong person the wrong thing, but I never had the wrong number under a contact name. I mean, perhaps I entered a number wrong. But again, like, what are you suggesting here? Are you suggesting that there was somebody else in that you were trying to add to this message and you got their number wrong and that number just happened to be the number of the senior editor of the Atlantic? Are you arguing that, like, he got someone's old number? Like, I'm sorry, this is just so weird to me. No, I don't. That doesn't make any sense. And then he, at the end, like, by the way, and I, I'll tell you, this is the truth. I know in my, in my younger days, I knew. And this was never me, by the way. I swear to God. I'm not just saying that, but I knew guys who, like, had like a, like a girl they were cheating on their girlfriend with and they had it like saved as somebody else's name. I knew a couple guys who did that move. Not saying they should have done that wasn't great. We were young at the time, though. But that's like the only thing I could think of in my mind. And then he seems to implicate, like, I don't know that he did that. Like, how would he do that? Did he hack into your phone? Did a journalist for the Atlantic was able to hack into the National Security Advisor's phone and put his number in somebody else's contact in his signal on the hopes that they would organize a signal group text about a bombing plan in Yemen that they would add that guy to, would not realize it was really him. I mean this is like, this makes no sense then by the way, if you were alleging that that is a serious crime. I mean could you imagine you're hacking into the national Security Advisor's signal account and adding yourself as somebody else in there. This is just like, like doesn't pass the smell test is not enough of a statement for this. This is just, there's just no way. This is like, like the worst excuse somebody could come up with when they're on the spot. I can't believe. Look, I don't know what are we talking about? Okay, so 48 hours ago this story broke. This is last night. I believe Laura Ingram is on at 9pm I could be wrong about that. Maybe she's 10pm over at Fox News. So at the very least he probably had a few hours notice that he was going on Laura Ingram show. I mean my, my guess is probably right now, knowing a little bit that I know about the news business and cable news and stuff like that, someone like in Michael Waltz's position, first of all, just in general, you're the national Security advisor. Pretty much anyone will have you on their show. You could pick whatever show you want to do. But you're the National Security Advisor embroiled in this scandal. That is the, the juicy thing that people are talking about the news of the day. You could pick any show you want to go. You can decide who. I'm going to have interview me over this topic today. And he decided Laura Ingram. Now I don't know exactly when they made this decision. My guess would be the day before yesterday. Probably had 24 hours before he was going into the show. It is possible they made it later. It's possible he only had five hours or so. But you still had hours to prepare. This is what you ended up coming up with. Like, this is like if you got, if you got caught red handed on the spot and had no time to prepare, you'd think you could come up with something better than this. But the idea of being like, oh, you know, have you ever had a contact name that didn't match the number? Like, no, that's not a common problem really. And that seems like something you would just make sure wasn't the case before you started a group chat a about a military campaign between the highest levels of the US federal government. I'm sorry man, I can't be the only one who's looking at this and saying this just makes no sense. This makes absolutely no sense. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show. If you are looking for a great mother's or Father's day gift idea, my thoughts on father's day aside, people still give gifts. 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- [44:00]
Mike Waltz
Other technical mean is something we're trying to figure out.
- [44:03]
Laura Ingraham
So your, your staffer did not put his contact information.
- [44:08]
Mike Waltz
No.
- [44:08]
Laura Ingraham
But how did it end up?
- [44:09]
Mike Waltz
Well, that's what we're trying to. That's what we're trying to figure out.
- [44:11]
Laura Ingraham
Okay. But that's a pretty big problem.
- [44:13]
Dave Smith
That is.
- [44:13]
Laura Ingraham
What if there are numbers?
- [44:14]
Mike Waltz
You've got the best technical minds. Right? And that's where, I mean, I'm sure everybody out there has had a Contact where you. It was said one person and then a different phone number, but you've never.
- [44:26]
Laura Ingraham
Talked to him before. So how's the number expert in any of this?
- [44:29]
Dave Smith
But it's. Just pause it for a second here. But what, Like, I'm sorry, am I crazy here? Like, Natalie, some. Anyone in the chat here, anyone. Is that. I'm sure everyone out there has had, like a contact in a phone. It's not. First of all, I. No, I've never thought of this as like a problem. Yeah. Natalie says no, that's insane. Yeah, this. This is like bananas. Like, and. And even if you had that, you'd be thinking like, oh, I messed up putting his number in. I put the wrong number in. Right. And I'm just saying. Just running through this. And again, I was never like, that strong of a math student or anything like that. But like, if you, like, had a contact and incorrectly put the number in, the odds that that would hit the senior editor of the Atlantic. Like, like, it was like your contact was one number away from this gu. Something like that. The odds are like, insane. It's like one in millions. That. That would be the example. So what we're talking about here is that you. What you're saying is that somebody put his information under this contact. Now, you could be alleging a conspiracy here, but is Laura Ingram kind of. Laura Ingram is like a Trump sycophant. So she's kind of going soft on him here. But even she starts going like, so a staffer. No, we're not saying a step. Like, it almost seems like she's trying to assist him in this cover up, but, like, can't figure out how that would even work unless you're implicating a staffer. How else would this happen? Just makes no sense whatsoever. All right, let's keep playing.
- [46:11]
Laura Ingraham
How's the number on your phone?
- [46:12]
Mike Waltz
Well, if you have somebody else's contact and then it. And then somehow.
- [46:16]
Laura Ingraham
Oh, someone.
- [46:17]
Dave Smith
You.
- [46:17]
Mike Waltz
That it gets sucked in.
- [46:19]
Laura Ingraham
Was there someone else supposed to be on the chat that wasn't on the chat that you thought?
- [46:22]
Mike Waltz
So the person that I thought was on there was never on there. It was.
- [46:26]
Laura Ingraham
Who was that person?
- [46:27]
Mike Waltz
Well, I'm not. Look, Laura, I take. I take responsibility. I built the. I built the group.
- [46:33]
Laura Ingraham
Okay, so that's that.
- [46:35]
Mike Waltz
But look, that's the part that we have to figure out, and that's the part that we. Embarrassing. Yes, but Pete and I are veterans. We know these operations. He has been an excellent secretary of defense, and this was an operation that. I mean, it Amazes me. I guess the Democrats were fine to leave all the sea lanes shut down, were fine to have destroyers fired on dozens of times by this terrorist group, and fine to have Iran keep supplying them missiles. That was okay. The President takes decisive action, and now we're seeing some real success in taking down their air defenses, opening the sea lanes, taking out their leadership. We don't want to talk about that. We don't want to talk about this now.
- [47:14]
Laura Ingraham
The Atlantic told us in.
- [47:16]
Dave Smith
All right. I mean, Jesus Christ. Okay, sorry. It's just like, this is just. And. And look, I mean, if you were trying, like, I. I must be your target demo if you're sitting here going like, yeah, but the Democrats are so bad, you know, and the corporate media is so bad. It's like, yeah, I know, dude. And, you know, part of the reason why people aren't talking about what an amazing success this strike on Yemen was, because it's all like, there was no success. You can't point to any success. Oh, they're. I guess they're just fine with the shipping la closed and this terrorist organization, you know, Terrorist organization, whatever the hell that even means anymore. How. How exactly? We get to call the Houthis terrorists, but what we're doing to Yemen isn't terrorism, or what Israel's doing to Gaza isn't terrorism, or what the Saudis did to Yemen isn't terrorism. Like, but you. You find me a consistent definition for terrorism that says the Houthis are terrorists, but the US Military, the Israeli military, and the Saudi military aren't. And essentially, as we always say on the show, right? It's the old Noam Chomsky line. But I love that it's one of Noam Chomsky's best ever. But when someone asked him, she goes, well, what differentiates terrorism from these military actions? And he goes, oh, it's very simple. If they do it, it's terrorism. If we do it, it's counter terrorism. That's is pretty much the case. But look, it's just not true. Just. None of this is true. This is such bullshit. You're as. You're as big a liar as the Democrats and the corporate media right now. First of all, Joe Biden bombed the Houthis, and for the exact same reason he did this. You could go watch there's tape of Donald Trump when he was on Tim Pool's show last summer, specifically talking about this and how stupid he thought it was that Joe Biden's bombing Yemen. And he goes, man, these guys just always want to drop bombs. It's like their answer to everything. What about diplomacy? Why can't we talk to people? You could pick up a phone and do more good than you can just dropping bombs on all your problems. That's what Donald Trump was saying last summer when Joe Biden was bombing the Houthis, and for the same reason, because they were shooting at ships going by in protest over what Israel's doing to Gaza. Okay, so this whole thing is just bullshit. It's all bullshit. And to say, like, why, like, it's so ridiculous to sit here and go, well, why is it that people are talking about this Signal thing instead of talking about what an overwhelming success this bombing campaign was? Well, there's two major reasons. Number one, the bombing campaign wasn't a success. Number two, because the National Security Advisor added the fucking senior editor at the Atlantic to the goddamn group chat planning a future military attack. That's why we're talking about it. Sorry, that's a scandal. There's no universe in which that's not a scandal. I mean, it's crazy that there's a universe in which bombing a poor third world country isn't a scandal. Like, there's. It's crazy. What's really crazy is that we actually live in a universe where the scandal isn't the fact that there seems to be consensus within the group that this wasn't time sensitive, that it didn't need to happen when it happened. Meaning, in other words, there was plenty of time to go to Congress and get authorization for this strike. If you remember, in that dusty old book called the Constitution, Congress is the one who's supposed to have the war powers, not. Not a group of people on Signal. That wasn't exactly the founder's intention for the country. That's a scandal. But I'm sorry, even in our crazy universe where those things somehow are not considered scandals, it's a goddamn scandal. When the National Security Advisor, who used to be Dick Cheney's counterterrorism adviser, is adding the most Trump hating, lying corporate journalists to their Signal account. And that his explanation for this just makes zero sense at all. He's sitting there saying, I take full responsibility, except none of the responsibilities on me, right? I mean, isn't that essentially what he's saying? He's sitting here and saying, I take full responsibility. I'm the one who created the group chat. How did this guy get added to the group chat? Well, it's certainly not my fault. What's your plausible alternative explanation? Don't have one. Ah, you know Contact names and numbers. You know how it goes. Everyone's had that, except everyone hasn't had that. None of this makes any sense. You're totally skirting responsibility by while claiming that you're taking responsibility for the whole thing. And really, all you've got to say is our best. We got great people on it, top guys on the job. We'll get to the bottom of this. This is horrible, dude. Like, this is just awful. All right, let's, let's keep playing.
- [52:22]
Laura Ingraham
And discredit us and our reporting. Follow an obvious playbook by elected officials and others power who are hostile to journalists and First Amendment rights of all Americans. They're saying, don't blame the messenger. He responds to them.
- [52:36]
Mike Waltz
Lied about Russia, lied about Gold star families, lied about even as last what year in terms of the President paying for the family of a gold star family that he absolutely did. I mean, lie after lie after lie.
- [52:52]
Laura Ingraham
Have they ever apologized for any of that?
- [52:54]
Mike Waltz
No.
- [52:55]
Dave Smith
I mean, yeah, but you're lying right now.
- [52:57]
Mike Waltz
We care about the main.
- [52:58]
Dave Smith
You can't just sit here and call everybody else a liar while you're clearly lying about this. Like, what do you want me to say here? I mean, look, dude, it's gonna, it takes a lot to get me to trust one of these lying hacks from the Atlantic. But as of right now, when he, his story makes way more sense than Mike Waltz's story, I, I, I think that, I think Waltz does have a relationship with this guy. I think he had his contact info on signal. Now, it is whether or not he accidentally added him to this list or this was some type of intentional thing that kind of remains to be seen. I, I don't know about that, but I think he's lying right now about this. I think he is in contact with that journalist. And this pivoting to he lies about everything just doesn't work when you're so clearly lying through your teeth about the current scandal at hand right now. All right, let's, let's play a little bit more.
- [54:01]
Mike Waltz
What I care about is staying focused on mission accomplishing the President's agenda, getting these things done, cleaning up the Biden messes from Afghanistan to Ukraine to the Houthis to the border to China, all over South America to the Arctic, where we're completely exposed to NATO that's not paying up. And the President has had success after success, and he's got a fantastic national security team.
- [54:27]
Laura Ingraham
I mean, I think it's just stunning how many people on the team have his 100% trust and there have been enormous successes early on in this administration, but you all are rattling the old cages of the establishment, defense and national security embedded people who are still working government, a lot of great people. But the concern is, is that somebody got involved here who didn't want the President to be successful. And a lot of us are very concerned about that. That someone is in this orbit who doesn't want this President of the United States to be a raging success and turn our foreign policy into an America first approach.
- [55:07]
Mike Waltz
Look there, we made a mistake. We're moving forward and we're going to continue to knock it out of the park for this President. Look at what he's gotten done in under two months. And I didn't even get going on, on the economy, on trade or all of those other April 2nd's coming day.
- [55:27]
Laura Ingraham
The DNI was very adamant today and very clear that there was no classified information in this, in this text chat. And the Democrats of course are predictably, they're going to jump on this. But would Goldberg, should Goldberg just release the other information that he has because he's standing on this? Well, I'm not going to release this information because I have my standards and journalistic standards. Okay, but it's not classified information. So does it matter? Would you, would you care if the rest of this information came out?
- [55:54]
Mike Waltz
Look, I mean I would prefer certainly as the President was saying today, if we could all sit in a steel line, let you know, steel line lead room and have all of these conversations. I certainly want our deliberations to stay confidential. This was an encrypted app that the CIA had on sitting there as John Radcliffe was confirmed and walked into the building from the prior administration. It's on other agency apps. And so no, of course I don't want it all out there because these were conversations back and forth that you should be able to have.
- [56:27]
Dave Smith
All right, let's just leave it there. Jesus. So isn't it funny? And what I, what I thought was so remarkable about this interview, right is you got to remember here, this guy could have gone on any show he wanted to. He picked Laura Ingraham show to go on because she's a cheerleader of this administration and she is actively trying to help him in this cover up. Like she's trying her best and there's just, but none of the outs that she's giving him he's willing to take. So she keeps going like oh yeah, probably a staffer, right. So you could kind of say someone else under me up. We're going to Figure out who that is. It's. This is how. This is how scandals in D.C. are typically swept under the rug. You find somebody who's known as the fall guy. That's the term that they use for it, right? And then you end up blaming them. So you find out, oh, it was a staffer who did this, you know, behind closed doors. You tell them, you're gonna have to take the fall for this. The scan, the. The. The staffer is fired. And then you go, we did an investigation. We got to the bottom of it. He won't take that bait because he recognizes that's admitting too much. So then she's trying her best, and then at the end, she's like, you know, hey, let me throw this journalist under the bus a little bit. You know what he's saying? He won't release the whole chat because there's, you know, there's. There's classified material in there. Well, I'd say Tulsi Gabbard was adamant in saying there's no classified material. So release the whole chat then. How come he won't? What does he have to hide, right? National Security Advisor. And then he turns around and goes, no, I don't want the whole thing released. Yeah, no, I don't. I don't want that out there. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Tax Network usa. The IRS is the largest collection agency in the world, and it just stepped up enforcement for 2025. If you owe back taxes or have unfiled returns, do not wait for the IRS to come after you. Simply avoiding your tax troubles is the worst thing you can do. Getting ahead of this is the smart move, but never, never contact the IRS alone. Turn it over to the team at Tax Network usa. Because not all tax resolution companies are the same. Tax Network USA has a preferred direct line to the. This means that they know which agents to deal with and which agents to avoid. Tax Network USA has proven strategies that are designed to settle your tax problems in your favor. Whether you owe $10,000 or $10 million. Their attorneys and negotiators have resolved over 1 billion in tax debt. Talk with one of their strategists. It's free. Stop the threatening letters, stop looking over your shoulders, and put your IRS troubles behind you once and for all. Give them a call at 1-800-958-1000 or visit them at tnusa.comSmith that's T N USA.com Smith all right, let's get back into the show. Look, I don't even know. I'm speaking a little bit above my pay grade here. And I suppose there could be a gap in the two, but wouldn't. Wouldn't future bombing plans, by their very nature, have to be classified? I mean, I don't. Maybe it's not technically, but wouldn't. If you're talking about a military action that's coming up, that detailed battle plans. Battle maybe is not exactly the right word to use in these type of. But plans to bomb an apartment building, which is what they ended up bombing, by the way, in Yemen. How is that not secret? Like, by definition, isn't that secret? You're talking about plans of bombing something. You can't have that out there, or the guy you're trying to get will leave or won't be there or whatever. This just makes absolutely no sense. Absolutely no sense. And of course, not a shot. He doesn't want it out there. He doesn't want. Anyway, the full chat is out. It's on the Internet. I know they published it over@antiwar.com if anyone wants to go check it out. One of the things that's one of the ugliest things about it is that they essentially. In here, I'll read from it. And this is more that came out that wasn't in the. That wasn't in the original piece. But it's clearly the top guy who they're trying to get the signal. Chat reveals that they waited for. They call them the top missile guy, the Houthi's top missile guy. In the chat, they waited for him to walk into a residential building where his girlfriend lived before launching the airstrike that collapsed the building. J.D. vance referred to that as excellent in the group chat. It seems that Tulsi Gabbard also celebrated it afterward. And you know, it's just as. As Dave DeCamp, as the great Dave DeCamp wrote on Twitter. I'll. I'll read this real quickly. We could wrap on that. But he said, imagine a foreign country flattening an apartment building in the US because an American general entered it. Never in a million years would Americans think that was acceptable and not regarded as terrorism. A short tweet. Very well said. And just retweet that now. Yeah, it's kind of like what I was saying before about what distinguishes terrorism from what we do. And it's not much. It's essentially just the fact that we do it anyway. This scandal is. Look, it's not a scandal for the reasons that I would think of it as a scandal, or at least that's not how it's being portrayed in. In the media. But, like, the biggest thing here is just, like, how terrible it is that Donald Trump is bombing the poorest country in Yemen on behalf of Israel. I'm sorry, the poorest country in the Middle east on behalf of Israel. It's. It's appalling that all of these guys in this new administration were just cheering it on, you know, Meet the new boss. All right, we're gonna wrap on that. Oh, I should. Okay, before we leave, a couple quick announcements. Number one, since I am flying out to Boston tomorrow, I'll. I'll be flying. I think we're not in the hotel yet during our normal recording time. So instead of tomorrow, we're gonna members only episode on Friday. It'll be another extra long one because we're still making up the ones that we missed a couple weeks ago. And then this Saturday, for the people in the top tier is our. Our monthly zoom meeting. That'll also be an extra long one. So some fun stuff coming up this weekend and then see. I'm sure I'll see a bunch of you guys out in Boston. Looking forward to it. All right, catch you next time. Peace. It.