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Visit betterhelp.comrandompodcast for 10% off your first month of online therapy. And let life feel better. Hi, I'm Darina, co founder of OpenPhone. My dad is a business owner and growing up, I'll never forget his old ringtone. He made it as loud as it could go because he could not afford to miss a single customer call. That stuck with me. When we started OpenPhone. Our mission was to help businesses not just stay in touch, but make every customer feel valued, no matter when they might call. OpenPhone gives your team business phone numbers to call and text customers, all through an app on your phone or computer. Your calls, messages and contacts live in one workspace so your team can stay fully aligned and reply faster. And with our AI agent answering 24.7you, you'll really never miss a customer. Over 60,000 businesses use OpenPhone. Try it now. And get 20% off your first six months@openphone.com business and we can port your existing numbers over for free. OpenPhone. No missed calls, no missed customers. Welcome back to the to the Contrary podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. If you're thinking this is a particularly tough week, you are not alone. And I was just talking about that with today's guest, former Congressman Adam Kinzinger. Adam, welcome back to the podcast.
- [02:09]
A
Hey, it's good to be with you. Thanks.
- [02:11]
B
No, and it is one of those weeks where it just feels like we're. Everything is uphill, everything is against the wind. And part of it, I think, has to do with this whole debate about free speech and whether or not we have Cancel Cult. You know, right before we came on, I was reading this. You know this. This piece, I think it's from NBC News. And the headline is. Let me just read it. Trump's threat to Target Radical Left After Kirk Killing raises Fears that he's trying to silence foes. I'm Thinking, what do you mean raises fears? Is there any subtlety about this whatsoever? Is there any subtlety behind what Donald Trump, J.D. vance, Pam Bondi are saying that they are going to go after and Stephen Miller, they're going to go after the radical left, they're going to go after political opponents, they're going to go after the media, they're going to go after nonprofits, they're going to go after any government employees, any private sector individuals who engage in speech. I mean, I'm trying to remember the last time in this century that we've had this kind of a full fledged, full frontal attack on the very notion of the government should not tell you to shut up.
- [03:26]
A
I'm not sure if we've ever had it in the history of the country. I mean, I don't. I mean, I guess you could say in the Civil War, you know, Lincoln shut down papers and stuff that had a reason. Yeah.
- [03:36]
B
Wilson had a bad track record.
- [03:38]
A
Yeah, that's true. You know what stands with me. Yeah, I get. Okay, you're with. Yeah, that's true. Okay, so in the last whatever since McCarthyism. But like the thing that stood out to me particularly chilling yesterday was, I think it was yesterday when the President was asked by Jonathan Karl and he said, you know, of abc, and he said, well, maybe since you write basically, to paraphrase, you write mean stories, so maybe I'll hit you with hate speech. By the way, I already got $15 million from your company. Now, there's two things that really struck me there. First off, you're talking to a journalist who ask a tough question, but not an unfair one. And you said you're hate speech. We all know how bad that is. But then for him to bring up the ABC lawsuit goes to show that ABC did exactly what you and I were saying they would do, which is to acquiesce, to give the President ammunition, to create other people to acquiesce. And this is the thing on the speech issue very clearly, there is no way, I believe that the government can come in and shut down your right to speech. I still believe that. I believe the Supreme Court, even the Supreme Court, will uphold your right to free speech. That's not the point. The point is intimidation. And you and I know there have already been probably every news station that has not run certain stories because they're concerned they might get sued. And what you do is you begin to change that behavior pattern. Not that they're going to not run unfair stories, but that they're going to any story critical of Trump. And that's what's happening here, is this is an attempt to intimidate. And the thing people need to remember is the only power that Trump has at this moment is the power that you give him over yourself. Not real power, because he has no real power on the speech issue.
- [05:26]
B
Okay, these are all good points. So let's just unpack this. I think that that exchange with Jonathan Karl was so revealing because. And again, for people who haven't seen this, you know, he says, well, maybe they'll come after you. And then he conflates hate speech with the ABC lawsuit, just to remind people, abc, and this was one of the first of the bending of the knee incidents, and ABC settled a completely bogus lawsuit. Trump had sued them because of what they had written about the E. Jean Carroll verdict, and George Stephanopoulos had made a factual error. But under libel law, there was no way that Donald Trump was going to win. But ABC figured if we appease Donald Trump, if we pay him off, we will be safer, maybe he will go away. One of the lessons has to be, and I was gonna say the lessons of the last nine months, but it's actually the lesson of history, is that if you try to appease the tyrant, if you try to, you are not going to make yourself safer. It's going to make it more dangerous, not just for you, but for everybody else as well. So the other thing is that Donald Trump has made it very, very clear that, in fact, the entire right has made it clear that all of that rhetoric about cancel culture and free speech was complete hypocritical bullshit, because they are all in. They are compiling lists of targets of people who engaged in speech and to cancel them. The other thing that I think is really dangerous is this conflation of things I don't like with hate speech. And Charlie Kirk, for all of his faults, was very adamant that there is no such thing as hate speech. Remember, he justified all of his speech as free speech. Pam Bondi now is saying, you know, there's free speech and then there's hate speech, and we're going to go after hate speech. Well, the problem with that, and you saw that with Donald Trump, if you start labeling everything you don't like as hate speech, that creates an excuse for you to try to censor the speech. And it's a dangerous path to go down.
- [07:25]
A
It is. This bears repeating. And by the way, real quick, on the ABC lawsuit, the interesting thing about that is they were only sued for 15 million, you and I, that's a Lot of money to a corporation. It's not. And I think that was intentional because ABC says that's just $15 million. That's a couple commercials we'll sell. Let's settle. But that's what set the precedent. So now Trump sues everybody for 15 billion. By the way, when I was in public service, I always thought that I was always under the impression that as a public. A person out in the public, that I actually didn't have protection against a bad news story. I could have sued a thousand people. I always thought that Donald Trump changed that. But, yeah, on the broader issue of. Of speech with the hate speech. Look, this just bears repeating. The freedom of speech was not put in the Constitution to protect speech we agree with, because you don't need a protection against speech we agree with. It was put in the Constitution for the speech we don't agree with. Why is it that the Ku Klux Klan can march downtown anywhere? Because they have a right to do it. The Neo Nazis, the American Front movement, all these Nazi groups, we allow them to march because they have a right to in this country, even though we don't like their speech. For them to now pivot, to pivot into saying. If you say. And this is where they're kind of going with this, Charlie, if you say on your, on your ex, that you didn't like Charlie Kirk and what he stood for, that is hate speech. It's one thing to celebrate the death of Charlie Kirk, which is immoral and wrong. I. I don't know. Does that cross? I don't think that crosses the First Amendment. But it's one thing to do that. It's another thing to just say you simply disagree. And by the way, I'm not hearing them talking about going after the countless people, including Elon Musk, Charlie, that have said we are going to have a civil war or call for a civil war. There is no more provoking to violence than that of anybody I've seen.
- [09:21]
B
No, I mean, when you say that, it's either kill or be killed, that does seem to be talking about violence. But, I mean, let's just go into this, and we're not gonna spend the entire program on this. But you had a great piece. Free speech was meant for the speech we hate, not for the words we all agree on. This is a really important principle, and it's one that has to be renewed again and again and again. And there are so many ironies here. You know, I mentioned the incredible festering hypocrisy of the right that was claiming that, you know, there was all of this cancel culture. We are the free speech folks. Remember the whole Twitter files and everything. J.D. vance goes over to Europe and lectures them about free speech. And now you're seeing this massive crackdown using the full power of the federal government in Donald Trump's lawsuit. But we ought to also remember, and again, for our more progressive listeners, that the whole issue of hate speech as an excuse to ban certain kinds of speech was really very popular on the left. And this was one of the great dividing points in politics, you know, in the before times, where there were principled conservatives and principled liberals who pushed back against that ideological conformity, you know, on university campuses and elsewhere, where they would say, okay, we can't allow hate speech because this is unfair to women and minorities and is dangerous. And they began saying things like, speech is violence. That came from. Originally from the left. And unfortunately, now and again, you had people on, you know, conservatives who really denounced this. This was just terrible. But they've now adopted it.
- [11:02]
A
Yeah.
- [11:02]
B
It's very important to make the point that speech is not violence. Violence is violence. And hopefully, when we come through to the other side, we can have a consensus about that. I'm not optimistic about it. But your point about the libel suits is also very, very important because, you know, you're talking about the Times vs. Sullivan Supreme Court doctrine, which says that if you're a public figure, it should be very, very hard for you to sue for libel or defamation. It's not. Just writing a story that's wrong is not enough. It has to be done with actual malice, with knowing that what you were writing is. Is false. You have to have knowing, you know, sense of. Of. Of the falsehood of it. Now, Donald Trump is not going to win any of these lawsuits, but the point is the fear. The point is. And he's scattering these lawsuits like Skittles. He sued the New York Times yesterday. And the thing about reading that lawsuit is it is so, so thin. It is so bogus. It is. It is laughable. It is Baghdad Bob stuff. And most of these lawsuits would be laughed out of any court. But what Donald Trump knows is that the more of these he throws out, the more intimidation he throws out. So the New York Times can handle this. You know, other big corporations might be able to handle this, but little guys can't. And that's the whole point, right? If you have a newsletter, if you are a small newspaper, you're a small outlet. If you're just a critic, you know, the moment he sues you, that legal bill starts running. And I think that's the whole point. The point is not to use the law to get justice, but to use the law as a cudgel to make people nervous and ultimately to get them to back off or shut up. And we need to be very clear about that.
- [12:49]
A
Yes. And it's the other thing is like, so if you decide to defend yourself, right, you know you're going to win. There is a cost. So the typical thought is, well, then I can countersue for the cost of this frivolous suit. Well, you can. Except in this process, Donald Trump does what we saw him do during all the DOJ stuff, which is he will delay, delay, delay, and basically either drive you out of business, drive you to a point where you just capitulate. I mean, Charlie, I knew at least two contractors that worked on the Trump Hotel in Chicago. Both would tell me, we know this story everywhere. He would undercut them in terms of what he would pay them, and then he would take them to court and draft, drag it out so long that basically these contractors would have to settle because otherwise they would go out of business. This is what he is, just the evil man. And that's what's happening right now with this First Amendment stuff. And the problem is, you know, the people that have a harder time defending against this. So, like, if he came after you or I as an example, you know, we would have a harder time defending the people that should have an easy time. I don't know law firms, right, that have free lawyers universe, that even though this wasn't over speech, that bowed to him, universities where it is over speech have bowed to him. It's like the very powerful that can defend are acquiescing and it sends a message to everybody else. And so this is where in the importance of calling out the left on this too, kind of the origination of this is important. What I get kind of tired of, Charlie, is this idea. It's very prevalent on the right, but it does exist on the left of like, we've never done anything wrong like you guys. In fact, when you were conservatives in 2009, you should have seen this coming. Well, first off, no, because this was not the conservative movement. But you have to recognize the origins of this if you want to be able to have any effectiveness at pushing back. If the left would say, I say left generically. If, you know, Democratic leaders would say yes, look, we went way too far on cancel culture. We did. And we have to commit to ourselves. We're never going to Go back to that. And part of that is to stop what's happening now. You would actually gain credibility with the American people because there's not a single person alive in America today that doesn't remember left wing cancel culture. So you're not going to be able to hoodwink them. This is where it's so important to look in. You know, you and I every day look into our soul and talk about what we got wrong in the GOP and what the GOP has gotten wrong. And I think there needs to be a little more of that in some of these cases. Some people do it, some don't.
- [15:23]
B
No, I agree with you. In fact, there is a certain amount of gaslighting going on to sort of that. No, there was never any illiberalism on university campuses. There were no people on the left who were trying to shut down free speech. No, hate speech was never an issue. You know, again, you need to look in the mirror and you need to be honest. Otherwise people are gonna say you're not, you are not credible. Look, I also think there's this weird, and again, it is these alternative realities about violence. There's no question that there is, that there has been an explosion of right wing violence, that the threat of right win, political violence is very real. January 6th, the murder of legislators up in Minnesota, the attack on Josh Shapiro, Nancy Pelosi, all of those things, let's not pretend those didn't exist. Let's not also pretend that there are not folks out there who actually have developed this philosophy that it's okay to murder CEOs of companies that they don't like do that. And if you don't confront that, and again, there's not necessarily moral equivalency because literally every Democrat elected official in the country that I have seen comment on this has been decent, has been compassionate. But the reality is that, look, we need to also push back on the people who justify this, which again is not a both sides thing, but it is saying, let's be honest, let's not have blinkers about all of this.
- [16:56]
A
No, go ahead if you want to. Well, I'll just say, you know, this is why it's so important, is why is it that you and I, I think, have actually pretty good credibility. Maybe not in the far right, they don't like us, but you know, among some, some groups. Because you and I are willing to kind of look inside and say again, as I mentioned, either we got something wrong, our party that we belong, used to belong to got something wrong. It's that ability to kind of come to the table and say, I see it now, or, I should have seen this, Tre. You know, here's. But that goes to the other side, too. And. And I. I still get kind of sick when I see people celebrating this Luigi dude who shot the CEO of a health care. Look, I hate health insurance, too. I do. In fact, I'm dealing with something right now. I've got to call my health insurance company to get something authorized. I hate it. But it's the law, and it's the system that we as Americans created. If you don't like it, you know, there's a way to change it, Right? It is not to kill the CEO of a company and then celebrate it. And. And so for all of us, I think this is a great moment to stand back and say, let's stop celebrating any version of violence. And I think, to be fair, probably 80, 90% of Americans did not celebrate the CEO and did not celebrate Charlie Kirk. The problem is the Internet right now magnifies the bad examples of each side.
- [18:20]
B
Well, let's just go back to the moment that we're in right now where, you know, Trump's threat to target the radical left raises fears he's trying to silence foes. You know, I am always reluctant to make these historical analogies, but the reality is that, you know, people are saying, is the Charlie Kirk shooting, is this the Reichstag fire of the Trump regime? And I think that's a legitimate question. Does this become now the pretext for doing what they had been talking about doing all along, which is this massive crackdown? And as I wrote yesterday, I mean, the other day, this is exactly the moment not to go silent. You know that as this administration adopts many policies that are fascist adjacent or actually fascist, you know, this is the wrong moment to say, but don't say that. Don't use those particular words. Call them out. Because what we're seeing is a more aggressive, aggressive use of government power than we've seen before. There are troops on the streets of American cities. You have Stephen Miller talking about his political opposition as being terrorist organizations. We are in an incredibly dangerous moment. And I think that the whole point here is to get people to stop saying that it is dangerous, stop saying that it is a threat to democracy. I think now more than ever, we have to, like, sound those alarms.
- [19:44]
A
I agree. And I remember back in the attempted Trump assassination, it's interesting. By the way, I had a close friend that accused me of being responsible for Trump's attempted assassination because of the things I said in public. And I also just had a close friend that accused me of Charlie Kirk's assassination because of the things I would say in public. And it's ridiculous, and obviously it's hurtful and angering. But that's the thing is, like, they've taken. Pardon me. They've taken this opportunity and said, you know, this is because you call Trump fascist adjacent. Well, no, that's not why this happened. And by the way, Trump is fascist. I'm gonna say it because it's true. You know, and they did the same thing with the attempted assassination. And they've used it as a chance to say, now you can't be critical at all because, you know, somebody did something violent. Look, and that's exactly. It's funny you mentioned the Reichstag fire. Cause I was thinking about this. I had always been under the impression, because I never really looked too closely at it, that the Reichstag tag fire was done by the Nazis. And that's actually not agreed on in history. In fact, the. The understanding is that the. Not. Yeah, it's a question mark. And so the reality is it probably was not the Nazis that did it, but they took an opportunity that presented itself to say, this is the moment where we can grab power. Who knows what it would have been like without that. That's very much kind of this case. Now, obviously, the right didn't shoot Charlie Kirk, but they're going to look at this and go, this is a real opportunity to intimidate and silence our opponents. And that's exactly what they're going to do. And we need to be aware of it. We need to not be intimidated. We need to be. We need to be careful, particularly you and I, who are on television, in the public. We need to be careful how we talk about it, but we also need to. We can continue to say things about our political opinions without having led to this. No.
- [21:31]
B
Okay. And just one footnote before we move on here. You know, we were talking about whether this was the worst attack on free speech ever. And we're talking about the McCarthy era. The reality is, as bad as the McCarthy era was, remember, Joe McCarthy was not the President of the United states.
- [21:46]
A
Right.
- [21:46]
B
Joe McCarthy was not waging his campaign against political opponents from the White House. So we look back on these other moments, these other attacks on civil liberties, and it is. This is what makes this unique in the last century here. So just very, very briefly, because I want to talk about Cash Patel. The House has now created a January 6th committee to look at the January 6th committee, which you played a prominent role. I know you've commented on it, but I want to ask you about it. So what are your thoughts? Do you think they will ask you to testify in front of it? What's going. What come of this investigation of the investigation of the insurrection?
- [22:32]
A
Nothing will come of it because they did this last Congress. That's the funny thing. This is their second time. They were unhappy with what they came out with the first time, so Trump put the pressure on them to do this again. They know there's nothing there, but he was the one pressuring them. In fact, Johnson, Speaker Johnson, who's no, you know, ally of ours, was trying to not make this not happen, which is, by the way, why this is now being formed in September. Okay. We're already eight. We're already basically a third through this term. So the idea that they're gonna get anything big done, they won't. So. But I hope they. I hope they call me in. I really do. And the one thing I will demand is that it be on TV and that it be on or C SPAN at least. And I'm sure it would be on all TV if they. If they did it. And because my thing is this, I want to sit in front of these Republican members who I know most of them, and I want to read, and I'm seriously going to do this, various scriptures of the Bible and talking about character and then read some of their statements and just put it out there for the American people, because they use the Bible as. They're like, hey, this is who I am. I deserve this. I'm. I'm fighting for the Lord Jesus here. And I just want to put that comparison out for the American people. I'm going to make as much of a mockery of this hearing and them calling me in as they have of the reality of January 6th and what they've done to the American people. So, will I come in? I'd love to. Am I going to take it seriously? Nope.
- [23:56]
B
I am very much looking forward to that. Okay. Speaking of congressional testimony, I'm interested to know what you made of the extraordinarily feculent performance of Kash Patel, the man that the United States Senate confirmed. I actually wrote about this. I mean, it's like, I do wonder, what do senators, Republican senators who voted to confirm him. What do they. And to confirm Tulsi Gabbard and confirm Robert F. Kennedy and Pete Hegse, what do they think now as they watch someone come in and they rant and they rave and they screech and they insult and they call senators cowards and buffoons. I mean, it was an amazing performance. Look, I mean, the reality. It was, you know, for an audience of one. Right. Cash Patel was performing for Donald Trump, who I'm sure loved it. But if you're a United States senator, you think, what have we done here? This is the guy running the FBI. This was one of the most embarrassing performances I've ever seen in public.
- [24:56]
A
Listen, you and I remember the day about seven or eight minutes ago, when senators used to kind of consider themselves to have equal power to the president. Right? Yeah. I mean, and even though they obviously didn't, but they recognized they're part of a body that did. They did not kowtow to party ideology or to what a president said. They were very independent. That has melted. And. And, you know, I think of. Who's the. Thom Tillis. Okay. Thom Tillis, who's not even running again, was the one that gleefully shepherded Cash Patel through his process. Cash Patel probably would not have gotten confirmed. Thom Tillis gave a speech gleefully supporting him. Okay. And now he's not even running again. By the way, Bill Cassidy, a guy who I used to have respect for because he actually voted to remove Donald Trump after January 6, now is deep into Donald Trump. Why? Because it's an election year. So obviously he didn't have courage in the past. It's just that it wasn't an election year. And he's the whole reason Kennedy's in. And now he's expressing outrage about the vaccines, which everybody knew he was going to do. It's absolutely incredible. But to watch that display yesterday. I mean, Charlie, look, in my time in Congress for 12 years, and, you know, obviously I saw the institution decline a little bit, but I think generally the standards were kept while I was there. Here, if a witness, no matter who it was, if a witness would have spoken to even a member of the House like that, they would have been kicked out of the committee. I think about this Hillary Clinton sitting in front of our committee. I. I remember it was kind of a Benghazi time. And I remember I was respectful to her. I would ask her about, like, you know, things, but half of the members were just, like, in essence, calling her the B word. Right? Just bam, bam, bam. And she did. She may have lost her, you know, gotten a little angry a couple of times, but she kept her voice down. She still called, you know, yes, Congressman. No, Congressman. Yes, ma'. Am. Yes, sir. Because she understood that in that moment, she is there under the supervision of Congress. For Cash Patel, who's not even a cabinet secretary, to go in there with that level of arrogance. I mean, the person I lost the most respect for besides, well, I didn't have any respect for Cash, but the one I lost the most respect for was Chuck Grassley, who. Who absolutely could not control his hearing and who absolutely should have stopped the hearing and told Cash Patel that he can leave, come back in an hour, and when he's ready to be respectful, and if he isn't, then he's not coming back. That's what should have happened. And instead, Chuck Grassley gave him time to respond when he shouldn't have had time to respond, and then went back against Cory Booker. Grassley is. I mean, this guy is just. He's a political animal that only wants to survive, but he's 148 years old. So I don't know what he's waiting for to actually, for once, be, create. I don't understand that in these people.
- [27:44]
B
So it's interesting that you mentioned Chuck Grassley because he actually plays a role in what I think is the actually worst story for Kash Patel. You know, Kash Patel, again, this formative assholery was really not the bottom for him yesterday. I'm sure you saw this deep dive in the New York Times where you had veteran former agents for the FBI speaking out about what's happening. I mean, and this is an amazing story. And Grassley plays a role in this. And what he is 148 years old, but he's become this, this MAGA troll or a tool of the MAGA trolls. And so he's one of those who has been peddling smears of some of these veteran FBI agents. And I'm going to mispronounce the name because I don't have it in front of me right now. But one of the agents who had been fired was named Giardina, who was very highly respected by many, many years of service, and for some reason, the trolls decided to target him. Other more senior aides and agents went to Kash Patel and said, first of all, this guy's a good guy. We don't have any evidence against him, and his wife is dying of cancer. Could you please at least hold off doing anything, because it would be unspeakably inhumane and cruel to do this right now. And Kash Patel paid no attention whatsoever, ends up firing this guy while his wife is dying of cancer, and then fires the agents. The more senior agents who had urged him not to do it. And the story makes it very clear that Kash Patel knew that it was illegal, knew these guys hadn't done anything wrong, actually thought probably was a mistake to fire all of these veterans, but did it because he wanted to protect his own ass because he knew that politically the White House was demanding these heads. So you see the cravenness of the man, you see on the one hand the cringe worthy trollishness of him in the Senate, but just the incredible inhumanity and the weakness of Kash Patel caving in. And frankly, you saw that in Utah where the, you know, his behavior, his handling of the Charlie Kirk case was just embarrassing. Any other FBI agent would have been fired summarily.
- [30:01]
A
Yeah, and listen, you're, you're absolutely right. And he's, I think he feels like he's on the hot seat. He might be somebody maybe mad at him because of his. Yeah, his performance yesterday. But look, look, Cash Patel, I kind of knew him when he was a House staffer. He worked for Devin Nunes. And I don't know if you remember, Charlie, Devin used to be one of the sane House Republicans. In fact, there was always kind of a crew, if there was a crew of like me, Nunes and like two or three others that were always in the media kind of calling out the Tea Party or the far right. And Nunez is the one that would call him like, you know, exotic members of the exotic caucus or whatever. Something happened to him. I don't know if it was money or power, but something happened to him. And then the same thing happened to Cash Patel, because Cash, when he just started to become a public figure, I was still in the House. And I'm talking to people like, who is this guy? I think I've met him before. They're like, oh, yeah, he's actually very serious on intel policy and whatever. And he was until he went and became a troll. And that's what happens with these people. I want to take the reputation the FBI here. I back in, when I got out of college, I actually looked at applying to the FBI. I don't remember if I actually did, but I was basically told because of certain, I don't know, trying certain substances in college that I needed to wait a few years before I could apply and. But you had to have a college degree. You had to be like five or 10 years from trying any marijuana. Right? I mean, it had these real high standards. Now from what I understand, you don't even need a college degree to go into the FBI. Now. It's One thing to say, you don't need a college degree to go be a Milwaukee police officer. Okay, I agree with that. But the FBI is like the highest level on. They're not the street. They come in on the very technical cases and they have destroyed the reputation of the FBI. They were destroying the reputation of ice. Who wants to be an ICE agent. That's not a far right crazy right now.
- [31:57]
B
Yeah, that it's crazy. Those are going to be. Well, you know, and by the way, I would have been completely. I am. I probably was never going to be qualified to be an FBI agent for reasons that you just suggested without giving out too much information. But no, just one of the details of all of this was the cash. Patel had very recently fired the special agent in charge of the, of the, of the Utah office of the FBI, who was incredibly well respected as, as a, as a counter terrorism agent. And, and somebody was very, very respected for, for her ability. And the other thing. And I'm sorry, go on.
- [32:34]
A
Well, let me just say the other. I'm glad you said that. The FBI has gotten out of the counterterrorism business and they've gotten out of the counter intel business. Every time you would see a story about a Russian agent that was arrested and you know, frog march or whatever, and then we trade them with Russia, every one of those, they're not caught by the CIA. The CIA can't operate in the United States. They're all caught by the FBI. They have had their counterintelligence absolutely stripped. So it's a field day for Russia. This administration probably doesn't care about that, but a field day for Iran and China too.
- [33:08]
B
Okay, this is one of those stories that I think we're going to look back on at some time. Remember after 9 11, we look back on what were the failures of the FBI and the CIA and the, and the wall between them. I think there's a lot of stories right now that we may look back on and say, okay, what were we thinking back then? I heard somebody yesterday on one of the cable channels say that the terror alerts right now are as grave as they were before 9 11. I don't know whether that's true or not, but this was a credible person. And yet at this moment, as you point out, Kash Patel has been stripping out so many of these other investigative powers, abilities of the FBI, counterterrorism, going after gangs. You know, many of them, they fired many of the agents, they fired many of the people who were most responsible. But also they have retasked them to do immigration enforcement. They are doing other things when they are not keeping their eye on the ball. So. All right, so I have not had a chance to look at what the, the latest TikTok deal with the administration is. Maybe we should hold off on that. Certainly looks like, once again, you know, Donald Trump is going to taco on TikTok. It's. He is. The thing about Donald Trump is he is unable to have a hard line against either Russia or China. He can't fill in the gaps.
- [34:34]
A
Look, I sat in a. And Bolton wrote about this in his book. And I can kind of confirmed, because I was there, I was in a meeting, probably 15 House and Senate members, and it was the National Defense Authorization act. And we had in that sanctions against this Chinese telecom zte. So, you know, you cannot have Chinese. ZTE is like Huawei. You can't have their, their infrastructure. So Trump came into that group, he called us and he said, look, I had a conversation with Xi. He asked me as a friend if we could remove the sanctions against zte. He goes, look, you know, you guys do what you want to do. I'm just asking you as the president, he asked me as a friend, would you do it? To our credit? Because this was the first term, not the second, we didn't and we left those sanctions in there. But it goes to show, literally an issue of national security. President Xi, who now knows Donald Trump even better than he did, then literally said, hey, Don, as a friend of mine, can you please allow this basically, you know, Chinese CIA company to operate in the United States? And he's like, well, yeah, I'm your friend. This is the kind of shit. This is like. He is the, he is the weakest man to ever sit in the White House ever. And despite the fact that he tweets in all caps, that does not cover the fact that this guy cannot take a stand against anybody that stands up to him. It's why he doesn't have troops in Chicago right now. Not because he thought twice about it, because somebody actually stood up to him and he thought twice.
- [36:02]
B
That was awfully interesting that in fact that he did back off from sending troops to Chicago because, you know, that he was itching to do it. But okay. This is a great segue though, because we're talking about all these other things. Meanwhile, the various two week deadlines for sanctioning Russia over Ukraine seem to have passed. I don't know, they just, they just have blown. Blown past us. Where are we at on Ukraine? It feels like, I mean, Everything is moving so fast. It was. How long ago was it? It was like six years ago, right, that he had the summit in Alaska with Vladimir Putin and rolled out the red carpet and they, you know, kissed each other. And Donald Trump thought he was going to get a deal. And Vladimir, you and I were still.
- [36:41]
A
In college when that happened.
- [36:43]
B
Fluff, fluff, fluffed him. And since then has been giving one giant middle finger after another.
- [36:50]
A
I mean, listen, where are we at?
- [36:51]
B
What's, what's happening?
- [36:53]
A
Here's the crazy thing. So the two weeks deadline. So remember, he initially said 50 days. Everybody's like, 50 days, holy balls, that's a long time. He goes, okay, it's gonna be less. Well, then we pass the less. Then we pass the 50 days. He's asked about it. He says, well, two weeks. By the way, that was four weeks ago. And now he's done. Remember, he added 25% tariffs to India because they bought Russian oil, But we find out it wasn't because of that. It was because India refused to nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize. But now we're supposedly in negotiations with India, so that's going away. So Donald Trump has no excuse now, except he has now said, okay, we will, we'll sanction Russian oil the second Europe quits buying even a drop of it. And now I agree, Europe shouldn't buy a drop of it. Right. But that also shouldn't prevent us from doing what we should be doing. So he's passed the buck again. He intends to do absolutely nothing now.
- [37:43]
B
Leading from way behind.
- [37:45]
A
Way behind. Now let's look at where the war actually is. Ukraine is winning this thing. I mean, Ukraine, the Ukrainian defense industry, now it went from basically making 15 of their weapons. I think now they're making close to 60% of what they need. So that Delta is being made up by Europe a little bit by the United States. They've created a new cruise missile called the Flamingo that can fly 3,000 kilometers, 2 or 3,000 kilometers into Russia. They're striking Russian oil all over the place. These first person view drones, by the way, the United States is gaining more from Ukraine than Ukraine is from us right now because we're getting that intelligence about how to do drone warfare, which we were way behind on. And so all Ukraine needs to do, they're continuing to defend their line. Very small, kind of minor losses. They had a few gains, in fact, two days ago, just very small. But they're inflicting massive damage on the Russians in that process. And it's really a waiting Game. It's a question of when does the Russian economy collapse? When do they run out of men? And that could be much, much faster if Trump actually decided to step up. But instead, he claims he wants to save lives. That's how you save lives. You step up and make it clear that we're going to back Ukraine instead. This is going to grind on.
- [38:58]
B
Yeah, I mean that in retrospect, that was a. Just a complete fail wrapped in a humiliation, and Donald Trump just simply swallows it. So what else should we be looking at this week? I mean, you and I are in this, in the same position, trying to figure out with all of these things that are flying out there, what do we focus on? I actually did a. A short piece in my newsletter saying, don't sleep on this story. It's the story of the crypto corruption with the Middle East. It's so bad, it is so outrageous. It is world class. There's a real potential that at some point it will impact the world economy. And yet I understand there's a Mego factor. It's not as sexy as Epstein. Mego is mine. Eyes glaze over. The Epstein story is not going away. It is kind of remarkable, the staying power. And that was the issue that caused Cash Patel to melt down, wasn't it?
- [39:54]
A
Yeah.
- [39:54]
B
Adam Schiff was asking him about the handling of Ghislaine Maxwell and how she got transferred to that sweet deal with the Club Fed. Where do you think that goes? What are we gonna find out? What is Congress going to do?
- [40:09]
A
Yeah, I mean, look, I think on the House side, they may still be one signature shy for the discharge petition, and that is, that will be be filled as soon as a special election happens and someone else is sworn in. It'll be a Democrat. Just so people know, discharge petitions. I actually led the only successful one since the 80s that happened in, like 2013 on the issue of ex IM Bank. And then. And then there have been one or two successful since because the whole, you know, discipline of the House is broken down. But a discharge petition goes around leadership and forces something to the floor. And so, yes, I think that. I think this is going to continue to gain legs. I don't know how it ends. I mean, I think ultimately they try to release everything with redactions and then they just, they just resist the temptation to unredact things and eventually it dies because they can say, well, we've released everything. The other thing is, I think I. I do think we need to watch the idea of crypto. Like, the broader thing is, is Corruption. And I think this is the thing that can be an Achilles heel for this, this, this party. The Qatar jet. I mean, we haven't talked about that in months. That is deep corruption. And now the US government's spending a billion dollars to upgrade this and then giving it to Donald Trump. The next president hopefully needs to pull that back.
- [41:28]
B
But now that's an easy to understand story, isn't it?
- [41:31]
A
Totally.
- [41:32]
B
Okay, you are now the free jet for Donald Trump is costing you taxpayers.
- [41:36]
A
A billion dollars and he gets to keep it and fly in it. And just because it goes to his library, it's not going to hang up like the Ronald Reagan one. He's going to FL it. So here's the problem. So, very quick military thing. There's something called an OODA loop, which is ooda, and it's observe, I don't know what the other one is. And then decision and action, observation, decision, action. And the point is, you always try to get into your enemy's OODA loop, so you try to stop them in that. So they have to start over. And that's how you win. Donald Trump is an expert at doing that. So just as we're developing a case against Trump, he interjects something else. And we have to start over. We need to complete hooda loops. We need to find the things that are going to stick, like corruption and stay on that, like white on rice and not let go. And the problem is we get, oh, here's another one that's good to attack on and we should, but we've got to keep the message on things like, I think corruption is a big one.
- [42:37]
B
Yeah. And of course, that, that is the challenge. It's been a challenge for years now. It's a challenge every single day. And thank you so much, Adam, for joining me. I really, really appreciate it. That very, very sound advice. And thank you all for listening to this episode of to the Contrary podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. You know why we do this? You know why Adam and I do this? Because it is so important. More than ever now, keep reminding ourselves we are not the crazy ones. Thank you. When everything is moving all at once, your workforce, your tech stack, your business, you don't need more tools. You need one solution. That's why Paylocity built a single platform to connect hr, finance and IT with AI driven insights and automated workflows that simplify the complex and power. What's next? Because when everything comes together in one place, growth comes easy experience. One place for all your HCM needs. Start now@paylocity.com 1 Did I talk too much?
- [43:49]
A
Can't I just let it go? Thank you so much.
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B
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A
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