← The Tara Palmeri Show
The Tara Palmeri Show
Trump’s New Watchlist Targets “Anti-American” and “Anti-Christian” Citizens
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Assassination to have been their own 9 11, and they've responded to it in the same way where we're gonna unleash this huge system to prevent the next attack.
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A
Welcome to the Tara Palmieri Show. You probably haven't heard this story, but President Trump has expanded America's counterterrorism powers, the same ones created after 911 and. And he's turning them inward. Through a new directive called national security Presidential Memorandum 7, or NSPM 7. Trump has ordered federal agencies to track and investigate anyone who displays, quote, anti Americanism, anti capitalism, or anti Christianity, or even, quote, hostility toward traditional American views on family, religion and morality. It can apply to anyone. And it's all plainly written on whitehouse.gov it is not a secret. You can Google it and find it yourself. It is a national security order that gives the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Defense Department the authority to treat political dissent as a potential threat. It's incredible, and you would think that it would be all over the media, but no, there's barely any coverage. In fact, it was an independent investigative journalist, Ken Klippenstein, who first reported on the memo when he found it on the White House website. It says, effectively that they are building a domestic watch list built from the architecture of the war on terror, designed for Al Qaeda, but now aimed at Americans. He told me that officials see the assassination of Charlie Kirk as their own 911 and they're using it to justify an unprecedented expansion of surveillance powers. Some are comparing it to the Patriot act or even worse. My guest today, Ken Klippenstein, explains Trump's new watch list and how 9 11, Eric. Counterterrorism tools are being turned against Americans. Okay, everybody's back. Sorry about all the delays. Thank you to everyone for joining. This is the Red Letter with Ken Klippenstein, and we are talking about something very important, a story that has was really just like hiding in plain sight. And Ken's a great investigative journalist and I don't know, tell me how you came across this shadowy memorandum. National Security Memorandum NSPM 7. And to be clear, these NSPMs are usually classified, but this one on the WhiteHouse.gov website. And please tell our, tell our listeners who came back on thank you to all of you after these technical difficulties, what it was that you found, how you found it and what you think about it right now.
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B
I'm glad you prefaced it with how secretive they usually are because as you pointed out, they are usually like withheld from the public. This one was posted for whatever reason in the case of NSPM6. We don't even know what that is. That was entirely. So that's anyone's guess, but basically I saw it on the White House website and this had been posted a couple of days after his designation of antifa as a quote, unquote domestic terrorist organization, which isn't really a thing. But that doesn't mean the FBI can't investigate things as terrorism, even if the Justice Department can't charge them as such. And so when I saw this, I've done national security for something like 10 years now. And I knew that a presidential memorandum is very different than an executive order. And I think that that nuance is what got lost in a lot of the coverage. Because Trump has over 200 executive orders, right? Yeah. And all kinds of crazy things, you know, removing certain language around transgenderism from government documents, things like that that in many cases are unpracticeable or just, you know, symbolic. But I knew that a memorandum that's basically a high level strategy document for the entirety of the federal government to say, hey guys, focus on this for the remainder of the administration. And when I read that document, I think the other part of why this hasn't been picked up isn't just the nuance and complexity of national security, but just how Alex Jones A lot of it sounded because it was like we were going to use as indicators of terror attacks, things like anti Christianity, anti government sentiment, just these things that are like, it sounds like I'm sensationalizing and exaggerating, but I'm quoting directly from it. And I encourage people to go and look at the memorandum and see for yourself that that is literally what it says. They can see.
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A
It is on WhiteHouse.gov it is. There is no secret. Just Google NS PM-7 and the first thing that comes up is WhiteHouse.gov not media coverage of it, though, just WhiteHouse.gov which is really interesting.
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B
You were probably one of the, you're probably the highest profile person to talk to me about this, in fact. And for those reasons that I just described the story's gotten short shrift. And, you know, Trump himself is so good at just the theater of grabbing attention with all these different things that are happening. I think that whole maelstrom of controversy and stuff that's going on, from the National Guard deployments to, you know, whatever outrageous thing he said is pretty effective at moving the news cycle along. I'm not even saying he's doing it intentionally. I have no insight into, you know, what's going on in his mind, but that's just what happens. And because of that, they missed this thing. And I also saw a lot of legal analysis that I thought wasn't really fair in the sense that they would look at the memorandum and say, oh, you know, what jury is going to actually charge someone for something like this? And I actually agree with that analysis. It's unlikely someone would be charged. As, you know, you provided an indicator of terrorism by engaging in anti Christian thought or sentiment. I agree with that. But we've already seen arrests that didn't result in charges related to exactly his memorandum. I wrote about one of these cases several days ago, and just like they said, the person wasn't charged, there was no jury to convict them. That's all true, but you don't want to be in a prison for a day and we shouldn't have protesters and.
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A
You have to hire a lawyer and you have to go through the fear, the process, telling your employers, I won't be able to make it to work.
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B
Right.
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A
Prison, you're the, the draw, the trauma, the fear around this. And, and, and they're only, and, and they're, and they're only. They can say you're, you're connected to Antifa just based on anything that suggests from your free speech that you might have some sort of affinity with the group or just have some empathy with the group. You don't even, you don't even have to have a direct line to Antifa.
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B
Right, right. And when I wrote the story, I almost, I had to edit myself because at first I was like, this targets, you know, anti Trump or whatever. And then I realized it's like. Or Democrats. And it's like, that's not even true. If you look at some of these phrases like anti traditional family value, that's like millions of people. And that's not even just people that are like, that's bachelors are like not traditional. You know what I mean?
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A
Like, that's me. Right, right.
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B
So it's like, wow, this is really an expansive. And I'm trying to Write this thing in a way that it's like, how do I not have people think I'm crazy and I'm just running around with, you know, freaking out about something that's not real? And I just. I mean, the best I could do was just embed screenshots and be like, here it is, not me. This is their own words. And then after they signed it, you had Stephen Miller come out and there was an event in. What was it? The. It was in the Oval Office where they signed it. Stephen Miller kind of comes out, gives a short speech after it, kind of explaining what it is. And. And he says explicitly, this is about going after Democratic radicals. And so it's not just.
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He has. Left wing, right, Left wing.
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B
Yeah, yeah, exactly. This idea that it's just antifa. That's really not true. This is much broader than that. The idea that it's just kind of violent protesters or, you know, people dressed in black. That's not what the language reflects. And when you see the people that it's been applied to. I found several cases of anti ice protesters that got visits from the FBI afterwards. Again, no charges. You know, I'm, I'm. Whatever they allege, I would include that in the story. They haven't alleged anything. And so one of the big parts of this story, I think, is talking about the subtle effects of something like this. Short of having someone thrown in prison and sentenced, it can have a chilling effect on people. I interviewed one person who got a visit from the FBI and he said he wanted to go to the no Kings protest a couple weeks ago, and he didn't because he was just freaked out by the visit. And that's.
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They were monitoring him somehow.
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Exactly.
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Yeah. It's a big. It's a. It's. It is really terrifying. And they don't seem to have any interest in the radicalism on the right either, because, I mean, after 9 11, they made an argument that the Bush administration that they could really, some would say, spy on Americans. Right. In the name of trying to eradicate terrorism and prevent future, you know, counter intel, you know, counterterrorism attacks. But this feels different. This feels. Or do you. Or would you. Or would you hearken back to that moment in time? How are they similar?
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B
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A
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B
Well, so this activates a lot of things created in response to 9 11. So one of the biggest things, there's so much in it, I've barely covered any of it. I'm just trying to keep it as simple as that's another challenge of this is like not overlooking people and not.
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A
Sensationalizing what is very sensational.
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B
Right. That's the thing is like I'm not the kind of guy, there's plenty of kind of Trump derangement syndrome reporting that kind of like takes things too seriously or, or overstates what it is he's saying. You know, like there's third term stuff. I mean that strikes me as like Trump trolling. And he just came out and said today he's like, yeah, it's not really doable. It's like, you know, it's worth reporting but it's like I don't know that we need to have wall to wall coverage on it. So I'm pretty sure restrained in a lot of ways. But then I see this and it's not just language. It activates what are called Joint Terrorism Task forces which were mostly established after and in response to 9 11. They exist in every state in the US and covers I think like 4000 federal agents that can deputize local law enforcement into these task forces and they can carry out this counterterrorism mission that NSPM 7 articulates directly. And what's, what's I think really troubling about that is that, you know, in my own reporting I've been kind of critical. Obviously there's plenty to criticize about the National Guard deployments, but when you see these outrageous videos of them just wandering around picking up trash and just doing a lot of it is theater because because of Posse Comitatus they can't engage in direct law enforcement. But when you talk about these joint counterterrorism task forces they can. There's no Posse Comitatus for counterterrorism task force. So they can directly arrest people, carry them out. And that's what they've been doing since 9 11. But what's changed now is it's no longer looking at Islamist extremist groups like ISIS or Al Qaeda, what's called the global War on Terror, the GWAT as people in the national security system call it. That has officially been ended. And so that apparatus still exists. It hasn't been closed. And they're basically in search of a mission. And along comes Trump and the administration and they say to them, here's your new mission. It's these left wing radicals, it's these non traditional people that don't believe in the traditional family structure, so on and so forth. So this is really directed at Americans in a way that is without precedent.
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A
Can Americans be called terrorists?
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B
So this is another point that I think has been misreported. They can't legally, there's no statute to charge someone for domestic terrorism. But that doesn't mean that the FBI can't investigate terrorism. They investigate domestic terrorism all the time. And so basically what a memorandum like this does is it gives legal predicate to the FBI to open those investigations and then over the course of that investigation they might find other crimes that they can charge that aren't. So it doesn't matter that there's no such law as domestic terrorism. That only matters for the charging question. Once you've taken the gloves off and taken up a counterterrorism approach, what that means is you can create what's called a predicate for investigations that isn't a crime. So the whole point of counterterrorism is we want to Prevent the next 9 11, we want to prevent dirty bomb. But when it's applied to smaller stuff, like in the case of Anifa, there was a shooting in Texas, that's pretty much the worst case I could find. Someone was shot in the neck, an ICE officer, he survived, thankfully. But a lot of this is like property destruction and things like that. And so the question is, is that a level of danger to the public that justifies this extraordinary kind of response, which counterterrorism, just to put it plainly, is pre crime. You are predicting crimes. The document itself says that they say prevent violent attacks before they happen. That's why they have these quote unquote indicators. Because you need to think, okay, well, if there's no crime to charge yet, how do we predict what one will be? Well, you need indicators. You've got to look at speech. And so really it's an attack on the First Amendment. And a lot of counterterrorism is. But in some cases the threat is so scary that I can see an argument for it. But in this case, I don't think the threat justifies that kind of response. But in any case, that is the response they're undertaking.
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A
I could see this being applied to independent journalists. I know, I'm going there, but like, could you. I mean, they argue, could argue. I mean, as you said, this is about free speech and they could argue they're not really journalists or they could just use it as an excuse to. Yeah, I, I just, I, I see it going there and, and maybe I'm.
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B
Maybe I'm wrong, but no, I completely agree because again, those indicators, I mean, I meet like half of them, you know, like, and probably a lot of the people we know. I mean, it's hard for me to think of someone who doesn't meet at least one of them. I know maga, people that don't believe in the traditional family, you know what I mean? So it's like so broad. And this administration. I just saw a candidate for Congress. I was just reading a story, a candidate for Congress in Illinois running in the high Mari, who seems to be one of the top couple or top several just got arrested protest. So clearly they're not, if they're not afraid to go after officials or people running for government. I mean, it doesn't seem like reporters are very high on their list of people they have a lot of respect for. So. Yeah, I think that's a reasonable concern.
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Yeah. Yeah. No, it's crazy.
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Yes.
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She was just arrested. Conspiracy to impede or injure an ICE officer and insulting and assaulting or impeding an officer. I mean, assaulting or impeding an officer seems pretty severe. I don't know if I would put that in this category, but.
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No, definitely. But they have these cases where juries, they can't even get an indictment. And as everyone knows, you can indict a ham sandwich. It's really easy to get an indictment. And if you can't get one, that means your evidence was really shoddy.
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Right. And that's what the case that you mentioned, and that was from that man that was at a no Kings rally. Right. And they just, they arrested him. And what was, what was the basis for the arrest?
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Well, so there were a couple of cases that I looked at, but if you're talking about the one in Chicago, he had concealed carry firearm, which he didn't brandish, he didn't point at anybody. And he had a legal, like, what do you call it? Like the permit to do that. Yeah. And so, and they blasted out the statement saying armed antifa terrorists or whatever. And you know, I saw and I thought, okay, he has a gun. Like maybe there's something here. And I click through the indictment, read it. He didn't do it. Like there's nothing alleged. I mean, I suppose it's possible they'll release something later, but it's been like, I think a month since the incident and they still haven't filed any charges. So this guy, according to what he said on social media, was arrested, interrogated for a day in an ICE facility by federal agents and the federal government. Now the Trump administration and I've talked to people in both Homeland Security and FBI, they really believe that there's some kind of organized network akin to Al Qaeda or isis that they can map out, find the financing. That's another part that NSPM7 mentions. It directs the Treasury Department to file what are called suspicious activity reports and to look at money moving on in the nonprofit space, which they believe. And I haven't really seen any evidence for this, but the administration believes that they're bankrolling what they call antifa.
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And so they're Soros as Soros family and other exactly connected nonprofits, essentially.
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Yeah, they're Main street mainstream, incidentally. Like when you look at Soros, that's like, you know, he's a liberal, no question. But like this is Democrat aligned, like not some out there cult or anything like, you know, backs mainstream candidates. And so I don't know, I was kind of shocked. Like people have, this affects, this can affect so many people. If he's going after someone like Soros, you would have expected more of a response. I mean, I've had interviews like we're having now with prominent people, but like some, the, the media as an institution that kind of said he signed this thing and that was that. And that's really the only coverage there's been of it. And a little bit of commentary about, oh, there's no such thing as a domestic terrorism statute. We don't need to worry about it. But I just gave you an example of someone who was arrested and interrogated because counterterrorism as an approach allows you to do that. There was another case of a protester in Arizona that I wrote about who went to an anti ICE protest. There was violence at the protest. I think windows were broken, I think they said objects were thrown at guards or something. And then he gets a visit from the FBI afterwards. They don't charge him with anything. They don't allege any violence. He told me he didn't commit any violence. It's been weeks since the protest. So that's what something like this authorizes is agents to go without the ordinary predicate you would have of saying, this guy broke X law. We are going to now go enforce that law. They can go in and investigate. Short of that. And that should be a concern to anybody who cares about freedom of speech and association, because just like that young man that I interviewed in Arizona told me he was just freaked out by. And he thought, well, I guess I shouldn't go to these things anymore. And that is not, that's everything. That is not what this country is supposed to be about. You know, you're supposed to feel free to go and express yourself totally.
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A
I do want to talk about how the media and politicians basically have ignored it. This happened in response to the murder of Turley Kirk. Right. That is what is stated in this memorandum on the website. It also came at the same time that James Comey was arrested. There was a lot going on in the media at the time, but, but for some reason, it just hasn't. There really hasn't been much coverage of this. And can you explain to me why you think that is? And have you spoken to any, you know, members of Congress and, and, and suggested like, you know, why haven't you held any inquiries or tried to figure out what, what's behind this? What do they say?
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B
Yeah, it's really a shame because the lack of coverage also means, you know, I lived in Washington for a number of years, and as I got to know staffers, you realize that a lot of the members on the, on the Hill of Congress people, they are so pressed for time that their information flow is really like the New York Times and then, you know, obviously local papers from wherever they live. But if something's not in cable news or the New York Times, there's a high likelihood they're not going to see it. I mean, they don't have the same information diet that a lot of the rest of us do, where we just kind of scroll around and look at things, use social media. They might not have time for that. So they're really dependent on these things. And, you know, credit to one reporter at Courthouse News, he just ran up to these relevant Congress people on the committees that are supposed to oversee national security issues, and he asked them directly. And the answer he got again and again was, oh, NSPM7. These indicators we were talking about anti Christian, sounds bad. Don't really know anything about it. And that was what he got. He got that answer from Dick Durbin, the ranking member on the Judiciary Committee, which is supposed to oversee the FBI. He got it from several people. One person, Jamie Raskin, he did know about it. And he put out a statement. Some congressional progressives, Pramila Jayapal, Congressman Rona, put out a very strong statement on it. He said he, he called it. This is a congressman from California. He said it was the biggest after they.
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A
They were notified of it from the court?
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B
No, he was the one case where it was before the report. He put out an early one, and he said. He said it was the biggest. Something like the biggest assault on civil liberty since the Patriot act, or a bigger one even. I mean, it was very strong language. And then after this kind of embarrassing report by Courthouse News where they just didn't know anything about it, then some of these statements start coming out, but it's kind of boilerplate. I don't think they fully understand the implications. One senator who does seem to understand it is Senator Lissa Slotkin, who's on the Armed Services Committee and has asked a couple of Trump administration nominees about it and has expressed her own concerns about the fact that we know that the Trump administration has a secret list of designated terrorist cartels, like when we strike these speedboats that the administration says are carrying drugs. Their legal justification for that is a classified memo to the Office of Legal Counsel and the Justice Department arguing that we've secretly designated these as terrorists. But you can't see it. Now, Slotkin's concern that she's raised on the floor of Congress is how do we know there isn't a secret list of Americans for domestic terrorism? Because, as I said, even though there's no law to charge it, they still investigate domestic terrorism all the time, and they have for years. That didn't start with Trump. And as I understand it based on my own conversations with people in the FBI who work in and around the. What's called the Threat Screening center, which maintains the watch list. They are working right now to create that domestic watch list, and they anticipate that the number of domestic terrorists so designated is going to be increased by. I can't remember exactly what the. I think they said by 50% or so over the next year. So they are doing this. Yeah, they are doing.
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A
There's a secretive watch listing center, is that right?
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B
Yep. Yeah. So here's what's interesting. It was originally established after and in response to 911 was called the Terrorist Screening Center. The Trump administration comes in and changes that name. They rename it to the Threat Screening center, and they put out a very interesting statement explaining why. Another story that should have gotten more coverage in this statement, they and Cash FBI Director Kash Patel say, we are broadening. And like I was saying before, the global war on terror is coming to a close. So we're updating our definition of what constitutes threats. It's no longer just terrorists. It's. It's Quote, national security threats. And so we are changing our remit, we're changing our focus, and because of that, we're changing the name. So you can see these hints. I mean, I have my own sources that are telling me how it's being done, but there are also public clues about what's happening and that.
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A
What are your sources telling you about how it's being done?
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B
That they're implementing exactly what you would expect. They're taking NSPM 7 and not treating. I mean, I think there's a lot of speculation that it's like, oh, it's this crazy thing. The rank and file won't implement it. But when you have something like that, you have to. Because what that does is so take, say, the FBI, they have something called a consolidated strategy guide that lists priorities that they're going to focus on for, you know, counterintelligence, counterterrorism, crime. And in that list, that determines how much resources are set aside to different things. So it incent. It creates strong incentives for them to do that. And maybe there are investigators that are like, this is ridiculous. I'm not going to make any cases around that. I'm sure there are people that are going to say, say that. But there are also going to be people that are like, well, I've got this case. It's kind of on the border. I do have that priority. I have to make it. And there's going to be a lot of pressure on them to go ahead and do these things. So I think it's naive to say that nobody, I mean, you know, there's going to be some number of people. And, you know, there, a lot of these cases, you can probably find people that describe themselves as anarchists and engage in, you know, some forms of violence. There's some evidence for it. Like I mentioned that shooting in Texas of an ICE Guard. And so these cases that might have just been charged as ordinary, you know, criminality are going to be passed through this prism that we've been describing. People and their associates can be placed on this watch list. So all of this is happening behind closed doors in a system that it's not just Trump. This system has always been secretive. We have never known who's on the watch list or even the criteria for the watch list. But that was deemed necessary after 9, 11 because the threat at the time was seen to be so great that we need to do this. But those authorities were never given up and now they're being applied to a new set of suspects. And they're Americans, they're political enemies.
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A
I mean, I'm just gonna say that's what they are.
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B
No, you're 100% right. It's so funny because I'm usually like, I try to be really cautious because I don't. It's just so easy. I feel like part of Trump's political strategy is getting people triggered and making them upset, and that's the whole game. But. But at the same time, it is what you just said. This is a warning.
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A
Yeah, yeah, that's what it is. You know, because if they were really serious about it, they wouldn't. It wouldn't be about lifestyle, it wouldn't be about left wing or right wing. It would be about extremism. Not with the word political in front of it. Or, you know, it wouldn't be. It wouldn't have any of the anti Christian language. It just reeks of politician. A political politician. Politics.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And so there's. There's no other way to put it. I do want to ask you, though, about the Trump administration's close connection to Palantir and if, if that has caused domestic terror cases to grow. I mean, what have you found in your reporting?
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B
I don't know as much about that, but there's a massive effort to roll out artificial intelligence of exactly the sort that Palantir is selling. And my understanding is, particularly on the Pentagon side, just to give you one example, the Department of Homeland Security, another great story that should be reported more. They have what's called the AI Corps, just like the Peace Corps or the Corps of Engineers or whatever like. And their job is to go out and apply these things to different parts of the Department of Homeland Security, ice, cbp, Customs and Border Protection, you know, all these sub agencies. So there is a massive roll up, huge amounts of money, resources put towards exactly this question. And the concern to me is not just about Palantir, although that's obviously probably the strongest example in terms of relationships between.
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A
Because they gather intelligence just for everyone. That's what they gather. Personal data. Palantir.
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B
Exactly. So very recently, the intelligence community released its very first open source intelligence strategy. And what that is a reflection of is the massive amounts of information that they are ingesting from social media platforms, which didn't exist when I was a kid, and which gives them a profound, profound amount of insight into what people are saying, what's called sentiment analysis. And so what AI does that they were never able to do before is they don't need a guy to go through all of those reams of information individually they can process all of this more or less instantaneously. And that should be of concern to anyone who cares about civil liberties, because what they no longer need to do, they're no longer constrained by resource limitations. By just having X number of intelligence analysts, they can snap their fingers, have something more or less instantaneously go over, you know, terabytes and terabytes and terabytes of information, come back, answer a query, and you know, we're seeing all of these indictments of people for social media posts with language that I wouldn't use, I don't think anyone should use. I think it's appropriate to, you know, yell at them for it, but which frankly I've seen all the time in the gutters that is the Internet and which was never prosecuted before. And there are arrests for them all the time. And when you look at how quickly they find these things, it's very hard to believe that AI is not playing some role in them. Just querying certain comments about something. And you go and you look at the indictments and again, not language I would use. I understand why people are upset about it, but people that are saying things that you've seen all the time in which there's not real strong evidence that there's any sort of intent or imminent, you know, threat, like it's just someone running their mouth. And there are all. There are mountains of cases being made about this right now and being prosecuted as terrorism. And the question is, how do they see some random guy, Joe Blow with 12 followers has one of these things? I mean, I don't have any inside information, inside information about how these are being prosecuted. But I think it goes to what you're saying, which is they have technology which they've never had before, which allows them to do things they've never done before and process this Huge, huge amounts of information. It's almost, it's like have this eye of Sauron that can just look around and see anything immediately. And so there needs to be strong guardrails in place. I have not seen much of an effort on the part of Congress to put that in place.
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A
So you're really well sourced. Who do you, who have you heard of that's already on the watch list? Like what types of people? Anyone prominent that we would know?
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B
My understanding is that that hasn't happened yet. The process of changing criteria and then what's called nominating to the watch list is copious. It takes time. I don't, as far as I know, that hasn't been put to paper yet. But that's what they're creating, the machinery, because it's not. You don't just pick people out nowhere. You've got to come up with some sort of definitional criteria that people will qualify for, and then you stick them in there. So it's like there's an interagency effort going on now between the FBI, the intelligence community, I'm sure Department of Homeland Security say, how are we. How do we take NSPM 7 and how are we going to implement that to the. To the processes that we have in place for the watch list? So as far as I understand, that's still being done. Trump's counterterrorism czar, Sebastian Gorka, a very flamboyant and outrageous figure, frankly. He's actually in charge of the whole counter terrorism.
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A
You're selling my pillow soon.
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B
Yeah, well, I'll be working in my pillow dungeons.
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A
Yeah, exactly.
- [31:32]
B
But very extreme figure. He's in charge of all of this. He's working, as I'm told right now, on a new domestic counterterrorism strategy and what's described to me as a Secret Squirrel effort to keep it from leaking. And, you know, that makes me assume that they don't want people, you know, it's not going to look great when it comes out, if it comes out.
- [31:52]
A
So it's a sign that this isn't just a messaging memo. This is something that they are actually exactly making sure is utilized across totally.
- [31:59]
B
And it's been. It's been supercharged by the Kirk assassination, which, as I understand it, you know, I was talking before about the end of the global war on terror. The Trump administration perceives, this is what I'm told by people in, and, you know, in the national security apparatus that works with them. They felt the Kirk assassination to have been their own 9, 11. And they've responded to it in the same way where we're going to unleash this huge system to prevent the next attack. And on some level I have some human empathy for like Trump himself was almost assassinated. I could see why he'd be nervous. I, as was described to me, there's questions about if he has some PTSD around that, and I think that's understandable. But what's happening is that's being translated into these policies that we're seeing now, which are very, you know, extreme, frankly, and are informed by this fear that any one of them could become the next victim of what happened to Jennifer.
- [32:58]
A
And what about what happened to Governor Shapiro being firebombed? You know what I mean? What about Gretchen Whitmer being kidnapped? What about the lawmakers from Minnesota that were slain in the summer? I mean, are those people not worth, you know, not that I think that this type of monitoring or targeting should be happening, but why are they. Why are they not worth protecting either?
- [33:23]
B
Yeah, no, you make it important. You make an important point because as you said earlier, when you really look at these cases, and I've. I've read a lot of the charging documents and interviewed people that knew some of the shooters, not just in the case of Charlie Kirk's alleged assassin, but some of the other shootings. And what I find again and again is how unusual it is for them to fit a neat partisan picture. And I think we all know this if we think in our personal lives of our friends. Like, how many people do you know that fit easily into any of the political categories? Many people are a weird mix of different things. And like, I have friends that have gone knocking door to door and they always have these funny stories about somebody who's like, I'm a, you know, dyed in the wool conservative, and I love Bernie Sanders. And it's like people are a mix of.
- [34:07]
A
That's actually very normal. But that's. But sure, yeah, totally.
- [34:12]
B
And that's what I find when I talk to people who knew these shooters. They described someone who, you know, maybe had a strong feeling about one specific issue, but outside of that, was either apolitical or, you know, had a. Had eclectic set of views. So, like you're saying, if they really want to go against these things, and I understand concerns about another, you don't, you don't want an assassination to happen. This isn't how you would go about doing it, because this is not a. This is just not a rigorous way to define the problem.
- [34:42]
A
Yeah, yeah. No, this is, this is. It's startling. So what should. If you were going to give advice to Americans about what to know, be aware of what they can do about this, what would you say?
- [34:58]
B
I would continue expressing your opinion because, you know, as here's somewhere. I agree with the lawyers, which is part of the chilling effect is that people believe that something really terrible is going to happen and, you know, they might harass you, you might get a visit from the FBI. I hope that doesn't have the chilling effect that unfortunately we know it does have. But more than that, raise this with members of Congress, because what I've seen is when members of Congress learn about this, they do. The pieces do seem to click and they go, oh, this is really bad, because the language just is really bad, you know? And so to the extent that the New York Times and the CNN and the major outlets aren't covering it, I think if people's own constituents raised this. And again, people have been arrested based on this without charges. And so there's good and practical and concrete reasons for people to care about this. You raise this with your member of Congress representative I've seen in the past, that is the thing that gets them to say, okay, I'll put a statement on this. I just mentioned Slotkin doing a pretty good job grilling some Trump nominees on exactly this question. So, I mean, I think the administration benefits so much from the relative lack of coverage and secrecy around this, because if people knew about it, you don't have to be some left liberal person to be like, this is really nuts. You know, and anyone, literally everyone I've. I've just read the language to. They've been like, had their jaw drop. Like, this is wild. Including conservative friends. So I would just encourage people to try to talk about it, and we can break through this strange silence about this issue.
- [36:38]
A
You know, this was a. That's a great place to end. Ken, thank you so much for coming on the show. And I want everyone to follow Ken and his amazing journalism. He does the hard work, which I appreciate, and he's an investigative reporter. He does. He puts in the freedom of information requests, which have always. I don't know, they are really tough. Do you have a background in law? Because I feel like you kind of need to have an. You need to be a lawyer to be able to really get an effective freedom of information request returned. But you see, you know, you're a true investigative journalist, and you're on Substack, which is so great. We need more of you, more independent journalists. And I'm just so grateful that you've done this work and that. I mean, I was just shocked to hear that this was sitting. That you actually saw this memorandum on the WhiteHouse.gov website for days. Didn't cover it. Yeah, because you assume that somebody else would and then nothing. And I think that it's a testament to independent journalism. Sometimes I feel like I'm waving the red flag and no one's paying attention to the kind of work that I'm doing. But it's thanks to everyone who is listening to us right now who support our channels that we can keep doing this, because it takes a lot of effort and time. Investigative journalism is not like cheap political commentary. It takes work. And I'm really impressed with everything that you've done.
- [38:04]
B
Thanks so much. And yeah, that's a really important message. As much as the kind of legacy media has missed the story, I should stress that independent media has been fantastic. I can't tell you how many popular YouTube channels, popular newsletters like yours in the independent space. It seems completely. I mean, this has gotten more coverage than, I think more in terms of interviews that I've gotten with, with independent platforms and I think any story I've ever done. So they've been wonderful. But the, the difference couldn't be more night and day between, between the, the non independent because the way it was.
- [38:38]
A
Covered during the, the Bush years too, I mean, that was a huge story. I, I was, I mean we were young, we're kids, but I remember it being feeling like with the, with the Patriot Act. Were they listening to your phone calls? I remember just feeling that as a child. I mean I was like a teenager. But still, that was a huge invasion of privacy at the time. At least it was seen that way.
- [39:02]
B
Yeah, no, the parallels are really striking. I mean, I mentioned to you how they've just updated the word terrorist screening center to threat screening center. This is it. They're not going to give up the power that was created after 9 11. They're just going to update it. And the person in charge of updating it now is President Donald Trump. And that's something, you know, I mean, I'm very skeptical of the counterterrorism approach in general, but if we're going to have a counterterrorism system like you were saying before, why not have it done in some sort of rational fashion instead of. I mean, this is just not serious. This is not. If, if you want to go to extraordinary lengths to prevent acts of violence, let's at least do it in a rational way.
- [39:41]
A
Yeah, yeah. Not picking and choosing who is a threat and who's not based on their political leanings. Ken, again, thank you so much for your work. Everyone should subscribe. And thank you to everyone who supports my channel as well. And yeah, keep on trucking. So talk again soon. And if you have any updates to the story, I'd love to have you back on.
- [40:01]
B
My pleasure. And apologies to everyone for the technical problems that was on my end. I was trying to figure out.
- [40:05]
A
We're gonna get Ken to be better at lives. That's what, that's, that is the lesson in all of this is that we need to see his face more, talking about his journalism. So thank you all.
- [40:14]
B
All right, have a good one, guys. Bye.
- [40:16]
A
That was another episode of the Tara Palmieri Show. If you want to support that type of investigative independent journalism, please go to tarapaumieri.com and sign up for the Red Letter. It's a way to support independent investigative journalism to find the stories that you won't hear or read elsewhere. It is amazing that there has been such little coverage of this story, and that is why I had to have Ken on my show to tell you all all about it. But if you want to keep this kind of journalism alive, please go to my website and consider becoming a paid subscriber to the Red Letter. If you like this show, please rate it, subscribe, share it with all of your friends. I want to thank my producer, Eric Abenate. I want to thank my researcher, Abby Baker. She also handles my socials. And Adam Stewart, who does my graphics. I'll be back again this week.