Sorry, I'm late.
I had to stop by the Whites Museum again and get the fingered at FDR.
We know Al-Qaeda, Zawahiri is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al-Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America, and by God, we've kicked Vietnam syndrome once and for all.
Thank you very, very much.
I say it, I say it again, you've been hacked.
You've been took.
You've been hoodwinked.
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as fact.
He came, he saw us, he died.
We ain't killing their army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN like Say Our Name been saying, saying three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
All right, you guys, introducing Joe Lauria.
He's the editor of ConsortiumNews.com.
Welcome to the show.
How you doing, Joe?
I'm fine, Scott.
How are you today?
I'm good, man.
Hey, listen, so there was this terrible article in the New York Times, the plot to subvert an election.
And I thought it was kind of weird the way it was done very poorly.
I thought, you know, even though obviously I disagree with that thing anyway.
But even if I agreed with them, I think they could have done a better job.
But anyway, so it's Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti.
And they're saying, hey, what are you losing interest in our ridiculous Russian narrative here?
Come back to it.
And so they're trying to convince themselves, convince the rest of us.
While they convince themselves that all this is a very, very big deal.
And then but as you show in your piece, it's the New York Times as judge and jury.
They really fell short here, huh?
It was embarrassing for me to read this.
Those are established journalists.
They claim in this 10,000 word piece that they modeled it on an article.
I didn't remember, but learned about it now that the Time magazine did around the Watergate scandal.
That they'd done a 10,000 word piece pulling the whole thing together.
There were actual real crimes in Watergate.
And a president stepped down.
We're not anywhere near Watergate here.
But as I write in my piece, they have stepped out on a limb.
And the Times is not alone.
It's almost all of corporate media that has done that.
And rather than backing up a little bit and maybe correcting some of this.
And pulling it back to a reasonable balanced report about all the different possibilities.
They just double down on it.
And I make the comparison to what happened with the lead up to the Iraq war.
Because I've seen it myself being in corporate journalism for almost 30 years.
That reporters when they get something really horribly wrong.
They don't admit that and they don't correct it.
They will just continue on that path.
And who suffers is the public.
And in the Iraq situation, as other establishment media did.
The Times got the Iraq story of weapons of mass destruction completely wrong.
And rather than pull them back on that before the invasion.
They continue to run stories like that.
And of course they contributed.
And I think many people do.
To this disastrous invasion that killed hundreds of thousands of people.
Created instability in Iraq.
Well it's not just Iraq.
I mean Iraq sure sets the precedent.
It's the measure for all other things.
But they've been lying like this the whole time.
I mean hell the New York Times, David Sanger and William J. Broad.
I mean they wrote for years and years about Iran's illicit nuclear weapons program.
Which of course never existed at all.
And even to this day their narrative about Syria.
Is about how the plucky little Al-Qaeda fighters.
Trying to defend the civilians from the tyrannical government there.
Well there's no question that the Times and the others getting Iraq wrong.
Have paved the way for the bad reporting on all those other conflicts.
It does.
Libya, Syria.
So I actually had a point though.
Which is that maybe they lie so much.
And hey about Russia for example.
Their entire narrative surrounding the creation of the new Cold War here.
And maybe you and I actually are falling into the same problem that we're accusing them of.
Where it's a matter of confirmation bias and stubbornness and doubling down.
I mean did they not convince you of anything in this piece?
Well no.
But I want to take issue with the idea that they're lying.
I don't know these reporters.
But I do know how other reporters for the Times and other big media.
Because I was one of them.
I worked for the Wall Street Journal.
So I know what the method is like.
And in my view in general I would say that in most cases it's their sources who are dissembling.
Spinning.
Maybe lying even at times.
The problem is that our reporters today don't challenge their sources.
They don't challenge them if they're in authority.
To me it's the relationship between the reporter and the people in power who they are covering.
They want to belong and I've seen it to that exclusive club of the powerful.
The reporter does.
Instead of scrutinizing these people.
Standing outside of that.
Realizing that the media has a different kind of power than political power.
Than politicians have.
We have the power to criticize politicians.
To cut them down if they're wrong.
And that's an enormous power that I've always enjoyed.
That I want.
I don't want political power.
I'm not interested having their kind of power.
I see them as the adversary.
And of course you have to be fair.
And if they're correct.
And they're selling the truth.
You report what they say.
But when they say things like there's weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
When we knew that Al-Baradei who was the head of the IAEA at the time.
And Hans Blix who was head of the UN inspectors.
Was saying we don't have evidence of that yet.
I knew that working at the UN.
But they knew that in Washington too.
And they just ignored that.
And went with the story they were being peddled.
That's the real problem for corporate media to me.
It's not that they're lying.
It's that they are transmitting lies and deception.
And dissembling from their sources.
Because they're enamored with power.
They need to seem to be verified by power.
To be accepted into this exclusive club.
That is the real issue now.
The CIA of course.
We all know about the Mockingbird program.
But there was someone that wrote a book a couple of years ago.
You might remember it.
Just one or two years ago.
Saying that reporters today aren't even paid anymore.
Like the CIA paid them.
They're not on the CIA payroll.
They're doing it without being paid.
Because they suck up to them.
So I don't think that reporters are lying when they know the truth.
And they're purposely writing a lie in the newspaper.
They believe these people.
And they shouldn't.
They don't challenge them.
That is the crux of the issue.
They didn't challenge them on Iraq.
And they didn't challenge them on this Russiagate story.
Which has been cooked up by, most of it, by intelligence figures.
People in Democratic Party, etc.
We know who's behind a lot of this.
And they've just accepted it.
And it's because they're part of that cabal.
That group they want to be part of.
And they shouldn't want to be part of.
I just wanted to make that distinction.
But, no, they didn't convince me.
And, in fact, the article.
One of the main problems in the article.
I'm trying to turn it upside down on you a little bit.
That maybe you're part of the club of left-wing reporters.
Who don't believe things that they say.
And that's your problem.
Sometimes you need to, Joe.
That's fine.
That's absolutely legitimate what you're asking me.
But in the article itself.
It's full of many contradictions.
In which they say one thing.
And in another paragraph they say the exact opposite.
And then there's this one line in here.
That means that this article cannot be taken seriously.
It says that there's a plausible case.
That Mr. Putin succeeded in delivering the presidency to his admirer.
Mr. Trump.
Which is also a leap of faith that he's really an admirer.
But though it cannot be proved or disproved.
It cannot be proved or disproved.
That Putin succeeded in delivering the presidency to Trump.
I mean that's an astounding statement.
If it can't be proved or disproved.
I ask what is the purpose of the Mueller probe.
Of the House and Senate investigations.
And of this very New York Times article.
What's the point of all this exercise?
If it can't be proved or disproved.
So I'm waiting for them to prove it.
I have an open mind.
I'm always reading these pieces.
I'm waiting for that piece of information that's been missing.
And I never seem to get it.
And the cardinal sin they commit in this.
Robert Mueller of the 12 GRU agents.
As a conviction.
Rather than an indictment.
And that's inexcusable for a reporter to do that.
They know.
That they have to say alleged.
That this has not been proven.
That these are claims by the government.
And they should all really do that throughout the article.
Right.
They say we know now.
Because it says here.
So therefore it's a fact that.
Yeah.
We are certain.
We are certain.
Who.
Who.
There's no doubt who hacked the DNC in the Clinton campaign.
That is a quote direct from the article.
It said.
And then it quotes the GRU doing all of these things.
And I point out what.
What do we need courts for?
If suspects can be tried and convicted in the press.
And that's what they're doing here.
They're trying and convicting all these people.
When it would really be just as easy.
I guess this was what I was saying at the beginning about how clumsy it is.
Right.
Is that it would be just as easy to.
For them to sort of knowingly rub their chin and say.
Well, what Mueller seems to have uncovered so far.
Is that they allegedly did this or that.
And allegedly wouldn't really deprive them of the weight of their speculation that badly anyway.
The whole thing is innuendo anyway.
Right.
It's not deciding facts.
So.
Right.
It should be presented as speculation.
And where are where are we right now in this in this saga?
That's legitimate subject to write about.
But to say that these things are certain when we don't have the evidence to back it is an absolute failure on their part.
And to present Mueller's indictment as a conviction, as proof.
And they should know and they do know that an indictment is not a conviction.
That getting an indictment from a grand jury.
The evidence presented to a grand jury is not nowhere near the same as in a trial.
There is no cross-examination.
For example, there's no.
There's a reason why people have said you can indict a hand.
This is a 12 Russian ham sandwiches that were indicted.
You can get whatever you want.
Plus in this case is special because these guys will never be arrested by Russia.
The 12 GRU agents.
They'll never be extradited because there's no extradition treaty between Russia and the US.
And even if miraculously, this indictment showed up inside of a courthouse.
Mueller can say, look, I got the evidence, but I can't show the jury, Your Honor, because it's classified.
But you have clearance.
So I'll go into your chambers.
I'll show it to you.
And the judge said, and he'll come out and say guilty.
And no one will.
And the jury will never have seen that evidence.
That's what could happen and would happen, but won't happen because the indictment will never reach a courtroom.
So knowing that, Mueller could put whatever he wants into that indictment.
I'm not saying he made stuff up, but he could in this case.
And prosecutors have been known to make stuff up, as Tom Drake, as people like that.
So it is a case where there is a precedent for government prosecutors to make stuff up.
I'm not saying that they're making stuff up, but we're never going to know.
That's a problem for me.
And if you're a reporter and you don't know, you've got to point that out.
That this is only an indictment and it will probably never be tested in court.
So that has to be mentioned.
And of course, they commit the errors of omission.
That is the big way that corporate media, again, they take at face value what their government sources tell them without challenging.
And then they omit stuff.
And that is a big crime, again, of journalism and corporate media that is committed repeatedly in this 10,000 word piece.
They don't even mention that the FBI did not look at the server of the DNC.
They just say it's a certainty.
There's no doubt they say who hacked the DNC.
It was the Russians.
It was these GRU guys.
Why?
Because they don't even mention CrowdStrike and its anti-Russian co-founder from the Atlantic Council.
They don't mention Lisa Page or Peter Strzok.
And their emails that have raised, sorry, their text messages that have raised questions about whether they were politically motivated or not.
The fear of new McCarthyism that many of us who have questioned this article have been subjected to being smeared by people.
Even someone who has your exact name, by the way, smeared our website, writing on Facebook that we are funded by the Russian propaganda ministry.
The other one with your name.
That's a lie.
The other one said that about Consortium News?
He did.
And I'm saying it on the radio because it's public.
That's funny.
He's a good guy.
I mean, I've always disagreed with him about Russia stuff, but I've never known him to make ridiculous, false accusations like that.
He's been on the warpaths doing it to other people now, too.
There are other examples out there.
But this New York Times article says, puts it down to hyped news stories about this legitimate fear of new McCarthyism against anybody who questions this official story that the Times is peddling here.
There is without question a pushback and an attack on people who don't buy this narrative, who ask questions, who are doing journalism, basically.
That is legitimate.
But to the Times, it was just they're just hyped.
It's all hyped.
You know, and then they try to get into people's heads.
And this is very dangerous in journalism.
You know, there was a period where this new journalism came out in the 70s and the 80s where you started using fictional techniques to tell a factual story.
And one of the things you would do is to take a real live actor in a real news story and put things into his head and say this is what he was thinking or this is what motive when you don't really know.
And they do that in this article.
They portray Putin as some kind of petulant child who's only seeking personal revenge against Hillary Clinton because she because he attacked her once for being behind these the 2010, I think, election in Russia.
And you're right.
They just absolutely state, as Perry would say, as flat fact that this is what's going on in his head as he's making these decisions that they in no way can even prove he made at all.
That is Bob's phrase.
I don't use it because it was his.
But yes, exactly right.
Flat fact that they know what Putin is thinking.
It's not that Putin is maybe exercising a defensive strategy.
Actually, he explains what he's doing in speeches to the Sochi.
You this this yearly foreign policy event in Sochi that he speaks out and other addresses he gives in long press conferences.
He explains what he's doing.
You may not believe him, but you have to report that.
And he's pursuing a defensive policy against United States, which is being aggressive towards Russia and the expansion of NATO and overturning the government in Ukraine, or at least helping to overturn the government in Ukraine for backing Georgia that attacked Russian peacekeepers.
So in Georgia, in South Ossetia, that started that 2008 brief war.
So there's a lot of reasons why one could see why Russia is acting defensively.
It's the U.S. that has the military bases around the world circling Russia, not Russia circling United States.
But that's not the New York Times is just buying the establishment narrative of the geo strategy against Russia and that you see this in this article.
Now, he ignores, of course, the Times ignores the veteran intelligence professionals for sanity that say that in the study they made that this was a leak and not a hack.
Now, you don't have to, again, buy that, but it should be mentioned as an alternative theory to what happened.
There's no alternative theories.
This is all solid fact.
And they also link erroneously the timing of the Podesta emails by WikiLeaks.
It happened to come on the same day as the Access Hollywood tape that we all know about with Trump.
Now, Stefania Morizzi, who was a serious journalist who writes for La Repubblica in Italy, who worked with WikiLeaks as a partner on those emails, had stated in an article in Conservative News a couple of months ago that that wasn't true, that they had set up this.
They decided when they were going to publish that three days before.
They didn't know about the Hollywood tape.
So but this is the kind of thing that they don't look into.
They just it's a lazy piece of 10,000 word journalism.
And it had to be taken down and dissected.
And that's what I try to do here.
I am not so much saying this is what happened because I don't know what happened.
People saying to me and critics who've written comments about my piece saying, well, just wait till Mueller finds out, finishes his investigation and we'll see what he has.
And I say exactly why doesn't The New York Times do that?
Wait to see what we got.
Yeah.
Sorry, I'm late.
I had to stop by the Whites Museum again and get the finger at FDR.
We know Al Qaeda, Zawahiri is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America.
And by God, we've kicked Vietnam syndrome once and for all.
Thank you very, very much.
I say it, I say it again.
You've been had.
You've been took.
You've been hoodwinked.
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as fact.
He came, he saw us, he died.
We ain't killing they army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN like Say Our Name been saying, saying three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
Well, you know what I mean?
It's just fact.
This is all like classic conspiracy kookery.
And I know because I used to be a lot more of a conspiracy kook.
And once you start with your conclusion, then you can make all this stuff fit.
And I could see why to say, I don't know, the run of the mill Hillary supporting liberal Democrat.
That when you had like these secret phone calls with Mike Flynn, the national security advisor, talking on the phone of the ambassador who met secretly twice, but Sessions denied it with Senator Sessions.
And then it says in slate that Trump had a secret computer that sent secret messages back and forth with the Russians.
And so you get like almost all these fall apart.
I mean, on the face of it, the fact that they're down to the Trump Tower meeting, I want to ask you a little bit more about that.
But the fact that they're down to the Trump Tower meeting at this point goes to show that it's just like in the case of Iraq.
It's zero times 10.
You know, oh, my God, look at how Saddam is going to give weapons to al-Qaeda to use against us.
Except he doesn't have the weapons.
He's not associated with al-Qaeda.
He's got no motive to attack the United States in a million years.
And the whole thing is completely bunk.
But other than that, it's right.
But it's the same thing here, you know, where it all if you put it all together.
And those are some of those examples I cited aren't ones in this New York Times article because they're ones that have already been abandoned.
But I guess what I'm saying is if you already know that this is what Putin did and you hear all of these basically rumors and accusations and innuendos about the Russian role here, sure sounds like it adds up to Saddam's about to attack us, you know?
Absolutely right.
It's a very good way to put it.
They're working backwards on the story.
They have the conclusion.
Now they're trying to fit the facts to their narrative.
And that leads to worse things than just misunderstanding a private, not a secret meeting between the incoming national security adviser and Russian ambassador.
He met with other ambassadors.
This is normal.
Stephen Cohen, a prince in NYU, has pointed this out repeatedly that this always happens in every new incoming American administration.
But it became something different.
Of course, he lied about things.
And I think he was lying about the Turkish stuff that he was an unregistered agent.
But it gets worse than that.
And even the lovebirds, so-called FBI agents, said that he didn't lie to them about the phone call, that maybe he had made some kind of error and that they try to turn it into something.
Well, exactly.
But it gets worse than that because in the feverish attempt to prove this story, you start seeing enormous errors being made where they are suspending their normal journalistic judgment by, for example, Brian Ross, when he reported that that very meeting took place during the campaign, not after the election, which is very different.
He had to resign ultimately, Brian Ross, because after years as a reporter, some say linked to the CIA at ABC.
Jason Leopold writing in The Daily Beast that money was sent from Russia for the 2016 election.
And then we find out it was the Duma election of 2016 in Russia and that the consulates around the United – and the embassy in Washington around the United States, the consulates needed some money so that Russian citizens living in the US could vote in that election.
That's what that money was for.
And then we have the Vermont election.
Which is funny, too.
I have to add because he personally was responsible for about half the Hillary emails that were released.
He got them through the Freedom of Information Act and he was playing the exact same role that's supposedly so nefarious here.
Only what's his job?
Journalist.
Well, exactly.
And then the last one I was going to point out was Vermont.
I have a personal history with Jason Leopold, so I don't want to get too deep into it, where he misrepresented me, it seems.
And I wrote about it in the Washington Post in an Outlook section piece.
But he did that.
And then there's the Vermont electric grid.
Remember there was a report that Russia had hacked into the Vermont electric company grid.
And then the next day, the Post had to print a correction.
It was absolutely all false.
Seriously, any story that starts with Homeland Security says immediately raises the question, if that's true, how come the FBI aren't the ones who said it then?
Yeah, Garrett Porter did a great piece for us on consulting.
Not that I believe the FBI, but I'm just saying when it's a big time claim like that, if it was true at all, it seems like it wouldn't be their jurisdiction.
Garrett Porter wrote this piece for us a couple of weeks ago in which he did some really great reporting and he found out that the DHS claims that Russia had hacked the data, voted databases, were not backed up by secretaries of state that he spoke to, particularly in Illinois, that they never gave the evidence to these local data.
A lot of times the hacking was done of Department of Motor Vehicles departments and that it was mostly linked to crime, not to Russia.
But they did this, he says, Garrett, I think convincingly, that DHS, as you just pointed out, wants to get the bureaucratic power over this cybersecurity issue when it's not the Justice Department or the FBI who are going to be doing this.
It's a power struggle, turf battle, and that the DHS is trumping up what they found out that was not true about Russia.
But it fit in because people believe it or the media believes it anyway.
And this is a perfect example of this New York Times article where you see it all in one spot.
Yep.
It all seems like one big mountain until closer examination.
As you say, you wouldn't be able to see it on the open plain.
There's nothing there.
On the Great Plains.
Yeah, we have a mountain of evidence, but there is no mountain of evidence.
All right.
So now, well, so let's talk about the Trump Tower.
I'd love to talk about that.
Tall like a mountain.
How's that for a segue?
Way up there in the top of the tower, they were committing high treason.
I can't believe how this continuously be is for them like the linchpin of the whole operation.
This is the moment where the collusion took place.
And you just take 10 minutes, two minutes, I can destroy that.
First of all, that I am not a Trump supporter.
To make it clear to your listeners, I disagree with them on 99 percent, just basically better relations with Russia and the North Korea.
Other than that, disagree with everything about immigration, about about health care, about billionaire tax cuts, et cetera.
But I don't go around obsessed with hatred of Donald Trump.
And when I tell people I disagree, that doesn't seem to be enough for them.
I got to go around hating him.
And I tell them, you know, I don't think about Trump every hour, maybe not even every day.
And it's quite relaxing.
And you should try that.
Don't think about don't be so obsessed with the guy.
But they're obsessed with him and this Trump Tower meeting.
And what's clear, what happened is there was just on the hate issue for a second.
Yeah, sure.
You know, it's funny because I hate all presidents all the time and including Trump.
But I must say that the liberals have completely taken the fun out of hating the guy.
You know, the right wingers used to say, well, you just hate Bush.
You just hate Bush.
And that was actually even a dishonest accusation, really, against the left then, because they would say, yeah, we do.
But for the following 15 really good reasons or something like that, you know.
And so Trump does 15 horrible things every day or more.
But those aren't ever the things that the liberals hate him for.
They completely ignore seven wars going on because they know he got them from Obama.
So they don't want to say anything about that and show what a hypocrite they are.
So they attack him for wanting to get along with Russia.
They attack him for being a fool and getting bent over by the North Koreans who are taking advantage of him and all of these things.
And and it really is Trump derangement syndrome.
It's not like with Bush.
They really do hate him for no good reason.
And if you ask them to list the good reasons to hate him, they apparently don't have any.
Totally agree with you.
And I began hating George Bush in a strong way after the invasion of Iraq when hundreds of thousands were killed.
Now, if Trump does something like that, I probably start hating him in the same way.
But he might.
Who trusts who could trust him?
But back to the Trump Tower for a minute.
It has never been proven, as far as I know, that in a courtroom or in any legal case, there's no law about this that says that receiving opposition research from foreigners is a crime, a violation of elect of campaign law.
The campaign law says you cannot take from foreigners money or anything of value.
That's the key phrase.
Is an opposition research a thing of value?
What is meant by a thing of value?
This has never been adjudicated as far as I understand.
So it has never happened before.
I would say a thing of value, in my opinion, would be that it's something you could sell for money.
Can you sell an opposition research to someone for money?
I don't know.
I don't think so.
It's not that kind of thing.
It would be like a painting, you know, expensive painting or a car or something that you could.
That's a thing of value.
But that hasn't been decided yet.
So maybe it is.
But as of right now, this is not a crime to take opposition research.
The fact was Don Trump Jr. did not ask or seek dirt on Hillary Clinton from Russians.
He was offered it by a British music promoter, not by the Russian government.
He's not a spokesman for the Russian government.
The lawyer who was present doesn't work for the Russian government, although she has ties to the Russian government.
She was there to lobby to get the Magnitsky Act to be repealed.
She had a new administration coming in, and that was a logical thing for a Russian government to do to try to see if this new administration would be open to why the Magnitsky Act should be lifted.
And we can't get into that whole story, but we know that Bill Browder, the guy behind this, was lying about his accountant being a lawyer and being killed in prison and the whole thing.
He was actually a tax dodger in Russia.
So he got this Magnitsky Act, which has put enormous sanctions on lots of Russians, and it's now being used in other countries.
So that was what that meeting was about, and that's what Don Jr. said, and I don't think we have any reason to doubt him because where is the opposition research that he was supposed to get?
He never got it.
He got bored and left the meeting.
So there was never a transfer of the opposition research, and he never sought it, and it's not necessarily against the law anyway.
But there is one campaign in 2016 that did get opposition research from foreigners.
They've sought it.
They paid for it.
The Clinton campaign from Britain, former MI6 agent Christopher Steele, whose sources were Russian.
So I'm not saying she committed a crime doing that.
I don't think it is a crime.
But the idea that they're using this Trump Tower meeting as the proof of collusion shows how desperate they are.
And this article was written by desperate reporters.
They don't see themselves that way.
I do because I'm trying to analyze their story from a journalistic point of view based on my 30 years experience as a corporate reporter for large media like The Wall Street Journal and The Boston Globe.
And that's why I wrote this piece, not to prop up the fact that, no, Russia didn't do anything.
I don't know.
I'm still waiting for the evidence.
Maybe there is some evidence there.
Maybe the GRU did hack that, and Julian Assange doesn't know who gave it to him, that there was an intermediary who gave it to him.
I don't think it was the Russians they'd want him to know.
It was the Russians necessarily.
But again, they get into Julian Assange's head, too, as they did to Putin's, saying that he knew he was pushing this conspiracy theory, right-wing conspiracy theory.
They don't mention, but they put the link to the Dutch TV interview that Assange gave about when he mentioned Seth Rich.
It doesn't by name, but he talks about the young man who was killed from the DNC on the streets of Washington.
He never said Seth Rich was the source because he doesn't say that, but he implied it strongly.
Why did he do that?
Because he wanted to deflect attention from the real source, possible.
Or he was the real source and tried to get it out there without actually saying it directly.
That's also possible, but we don't know.
That's the point I make here.
I'm not defending the Seth Rich story.
I'm not defending Assange.
I'm just saying you don't go into a guy's head and tell us, the reader, what he was thinking, why he did something when you don't know.
You can't use that technique in reporting.
You know what, though?
You have to admit, though, that half of everyone in the world hates Hillary Clinton.
So it's a pretty fair assumption.
No, I'm just kidding.
OK, no, but you know what?
So back to the tower here.
I mean, the point is, seems like to me that, OK, take it at face value.
What we already know didn't happen anyway.
But let's say that he had said, OK, OK, we'll lift those sanctions.
If you give us these emails that you have on Hillary Clinton, which did not take place.
In fact, that was the bait for the meeting that never went anywhere anyway.
But even if that had happened, that and maybe that would be a crime.
I don't know.
But that sure still seems like a pale imitation of the original accusations here, which was this massive Russian intelligence operation that the Trump administration was cooperating with, that made him the Siberian candidate, as they put it, or whatever, all this stuff.
I mean, you had the acting or former acting director of the CIA, Mike Morrell, saying this guy's a compromised asset of the Russians, basically, and this kind of thing.
Seems like pretty thin gruel to hold that up.
And then even that's assuming that any of this even happened, which even in the official story, it didn't.
Right.
As you say, he got bored and left.
That's the official story of the thing.
There were no Hillary emails.
They didn't have the missing 30,000, the missing 30,000.
Not that anybody needs to worry about the fact that there's a missing 30,000.
Right.
But they didn't have them.
They didn't have anything.
And they didn't get a deal on the Magnitsky Act either.
Right.
Right.
Right.
That sounds like horse trading to me.
I don't know if that's a crime either, but that happens in politics all the time.
That's the way it works.
People make deals.
They trade things.
It happens in Congress.
It happened at the U.N. Security Council that I covered.
Is it OK if I still want the Russians to find the missing 30,000 emails and post them on WikiLeaks?
Well, they did a service giving us those emails, even if it was a crime.
But of course, it is a crime to hack and steal someone's email.
There's nobody's doubt.
It's not a crime to publish them.
Yeah, except those.
I mean, those were classified.
She was she was committing a crime in keeping them on her own server.
And obviously because she was trying to protect them from the Freedom of Information Act, where Jason Leopold could get his hands on.
Well, we're mixing two emails.
They once on a private server.
Yes, she did that for that reason, I believe.
And then there's the DNC and Podesta emails which were not classified.
They were just internal documents.
The famous missing 30,000 are the.
Well, that is so ridiculous.
I'm glad you raised that.
Because the idea that Donald Trump would on national television, worldwide TV, even live, initiate a covert intelligence operation by telling Russia, go get him, is the most preposterous thing imaginable.
Why would they, first of all, need Trump's help or anyone in his campaign to do this leak?
If it came from the GRU headquarters in Moscow, did they what they would need them to do that?
They wouldn't want him to know that would be the least you want a few people to know about that operation.
It was obviously just a sarcastic crack.
Of course it was.
Of course it was.
But I think a lot of people I'm from New York City.
I see I'm from the Bronx.
He's from Queens, Trump.
I know this guy 30 years before the rest of the country because I'm come from New York.
All New Yorkers do.
And we heard about his love affairs and his braggadocio.
And this ridiculous guy, who I cannot take seriously, even in this position that he has right now, I'd laugh at him.
And when he made that statement at the U.N. the other day, that I'm better than every administration almost in history.
People laughed.
I thought that was a good natured laugh.
It wasn't nasty.
They just laughed because it was funny.
That's a natural.
But he would never have if anybody laughed at him in a domestic setting, like at a press conference or to Congress or in some think tank or somewhere in the U.S.
He would have been incensed if they'd laughed at him.
They wouldn't laugh at him, but they hate him because they don't laugh at him.
And that's the way to respond to him.
Laugh at him.
And how did he respond to the U.N. crowd that laughed at him?
He smiled and said, I didn't expect that reaction, but it's OK.
And he laughed with it.
He rolled with the punches because that's the proper way to deal with this guy.
Laugh at him, you know, and he's not we know we can go a whole other subject.
We know from and I'm writing a piece now on that right now.
We know from that op ed piece, Anonymous and the Times.
We know from Woodward.
We now know probably from what Rhodes or Rodstein did that there has been an effort to control this guy from behind the scenes.
Everybody thinks every president has people behind the scenes trying to control him.
Obama admitted it when he talked about the blob in that Atlantic magazine article.
We know that this is the case and the idea that this isn't happening is dismissed by The New York Times.
But we've got evidence to show that that probably was going on or should be investigated anyway.
Whether the stroke people and Page, whether this guy Hal Hastert Halpert from the U.K. who had worked on the Carter campaign as an infiltrating from the FBI now was working with the CIA, probably to infiltrate the Trump campaign or possibly possibly could have been setting up Papadopoulos and Page to look like that they were colluders with Russia.
And I don't know, but that's not even mentioned in the Times piece as something worthy of looking into.
And that's what you do in journalism.
You look at both sides, look at all possibilities.
You don't state things that affect when they aren't proven yet.
But that's not what we got here.
So the idea that Trump called on them, as you say, it was a clear joke.
And if you understand Trump's mentality and his personality a little bit, you would see that he was joking and being sarcastic.
Yeah.
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And hey, I still think that's a big deal that she's obviously blatantly lying that those were 30,000 personal emails that she didn't need to turn over to anyone and then cited as examples.
Well, you know, like when I email back and forth with Bill all day, it's already on the record saying he's only sent two emails in his life, you know, on somebody else's account and he didn't use it.
And she's just a liar.
She's she's tweeting.
Oh, this is about yoga.
No, this is about corruption in the Clinton Foundation and buying foreign policy for the right amount of oil dollars.
If you're, you know, the right kind of Arab chic and whatever.
We all know that.
That's why she deleted them because they prove what a criminal she is.
So destruction of justice.
We don't know that for sure.
I mean, probably never will.
But that's a good guess that there wasn't about yoga.
30,000 emails.
Very likely.
Seriously.
Chelsea's wedding and that kind of thing.
And maybe some of them were.
No, I mean, it's hard to believe, but we don't have the proof.
And, you know, and he was joking about that.
So but the idea that they're still using that and they're using the Trump Tower as their evidence for this story is just amazing to me that they don't have anything more than that.
And they have the GRU indictments, which are only an indictment and not evidence.
And the juries are instructed not to take what's an indictment as evidence.
You present the evidence in the courtroom and it's tested with cross examination.
In front of the jury.
That never happened and will never happen.
So did it to the GRU do?
It's possible.
I don't dismiss that possibility.
But I'm saying you don't write an article saying it's true that it happened when it's not proven.
Yeah.
All right.
Now, let's make it.
Yeah.
Well, so speaking of things that aren't true or certainly are unproven, how about Netanyahu at the United Nations yesterday claiming he's got a new secret nuclear warehouse?
What do you think of that?
I have to confess that I did not see.
I have it on my list of things to do is to watch it or read his speech.
I always do.
I used to report that speech for the Wall Street Journal every year at the U.N., at least the days that I would report what he said during the day.
And then the other the horror, the White House correspondent, State Department guy would come in and rewrite it and give the spin the journal wanted.
But this year, I didn't even I did not see it.
So tell me a little bit about it.
I'll comment.
I don't know about this warehouse.
It sounds to me like that's a whole interview there in the WSJ staff comes and rewrites your article according to what it's supposed to say.
I like that.
Well, that happened on every article that I did.
So pretty much.
Yeah.
Well, not just at the Wall Street Journal, not just at the Wall Street Journal.
Yeah.
Well, I'm pulling up the NCRI website here to see if they're claiming that they're the source for this thing or not.
I guess not so far.
I don't know.
But so, yeah, he claimed that there's this warehouse that has it's a secret atomic warehouse, he said, full of.
Well, he just said equipment and material from their nuclear weapons program.
So Iran, Iran.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then it's in it's in Tehran.
So he didn't say if it was actual nuclear material and he didn't really say that it was anything undeclared to the IAEA necessarily or or, you know, required to be declared to them and not or what.
So anyway, it's the same old kind of thing that we get from him in the M.E.K.
You know.
Yeah.
And the fact that he was talking about Iran having a close to a nuclear weapon like 15 years ago.
So Netanyahu is one is a man who seems to be completely distorted by the power that he has.
And he could say things, whatever, whatever he thinks he wants to say.
And he knows it's going to be believed.
I can tell you another Wall Street Journal in one of those Netanyahu speeches that I covered.
I wrote that he claimed that Iran had a missile that could soon strike New York.
And I wrote the word claimed in the piece.
And the editor said, why are you saying claim?
That makes it sound like that.
It's not believable what he said.
And I said, that's precisely why I wrote claimed, because I don't find that believable.
I never heard this before.
Seems like nonsense.
So I say he claimed that.
So he claimed he has this warehouse.
You have to use that word.
No proof.
He'll never have to put it.
But this is a PR exercise, his U.N. speech.
He knows that he's going to get newspapers in America to report this seriously.
That's the purpose of that.
And back in Israel, but not even Haaretz.
There's a better press about Israel in Israel than there is in the U.S.
They've been more critical.
But in the American press, you could probably get away with that.
I didn't read the coverage, but I will do that.
And I would not be surprised if it's reported straight that he has this warehouse, which is sounds like a bunch of bull.
But he, you know, is simply that he said so.
But they don't claim anything further than that.
Luckily, right.
Right.
Well, what else can you say then?
We don't have any proof.
Did he show photographs?
Did he have any charts this year?
He probably did.
Well, yeah.
He had a photograph of a building.
Right.
And then said, see, it looks like a building.
But if you could see on the inside, then you know what I know.
That's the building.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He's a showman.
He's a class.
He's very good at it, actually.
You know, he knows how to work a crowd.
There's no question about it.
Could have been good up in the Catskills during those days of comedy.
But he went into politics, unfortunately.
Well, all he's really saying is, look over there.
Forget the Palestinians.
It's Iran.
That's what we need to be talking about here.
Right.
Right.
No, no.
And it's scary what's going on with Iran.
Because what Bolton said on Tuesday, the day of Trump's speech, that they have hell to pay.
And then there were stories.
And then we saw what Giuliani had said the week previous, his personal lawyer, that the government will be overthrown.
It's a matter of time.
They had to deny this.
But that looks pretty clear.
That's what they're up to.
And that's extremely dangerous.
And that would make Netanyahu and Mohammed bin Salman and the rest of the crowd in Riyadh very happy if America went and tried to overthrow this government, whether through covert means or even through military action.
And we know how disastrous that could be.
Even worse, maybe, than Iraq.
They are going to fight.
And they have probably a more advanced military than Iraq did.
So maybe not the same size.
But I think that Netanyahu is just doing what he always does.
And it's sad that anybody would take that seriously without real proof, that he can whip this out at the UN and think he can get away.
But it's also the contempt he's showing to the UN, which he claims singles out Israel, opposed to other countries.
Then they're a democracy.
Yes.
A democracy for certain people in Israel, not for everybody, who they control.
And they have their borders.
Only half the population under our rule have the right to participate in power to some degree.
So the other half, that's all right.
Oh, man.
Ah, shit.
Joe, what was I going to ask you next?
I completely spaced out.
Once we started making cracks about that guy.
Well, let me ask you this, then.
All right.
Well, so let me ask you this, then.
Was there any movement on the Palestine situation at the United Nations with this whole series of meetings this week?
You really want a serious answer to that question, Scott?
No.
Not that I've seen.
Did they talk about it at all?
Was it a controversy?
Yeah, well, Abbas made his speech, and Netanyahu made his speech.
And it comes up in almost every speech by an Islamic leader and others that we need a two-state solution.
The Malaysian prime minister, who's 93 years old, I didn't know that, spoke today.
The oldest living leader of any country.
And the guy looks like 73.
He went on very strongly about how the Palestinians at the very beginning, of course, tried, when they were kicked off their land, to use conventional warfare with neighboring states.
And when that failed, they turned to catapults and rocks.
And then they turned to terrorism.
And he claims that Israel then will respond to some missiles coming out of Gaza that hardly hurt anyone, maybe occasional kills one or two people.
They will respond by bombarding populated areas of Gaza and killing over 1,000 people.
They've done this now three times in the last 10 or so years.
And he called that terrorism.
We should see it that way.
I see it as a war crime.
I think terrorism, which has never been defined by anybody or agreed to anyway by the international community, is by non-state actors.
But when a state does terrific acts like that, it's a war crime, because it was totally disproportional to take out a whole building, even if there's one sniper up there.
If it's full of people, you don't take out that building.
Your own soldiers should be at risk rather than killing.
Well, that's what the law is of war crimes, about disproportional power being used in a military situation.
So we get in this in all the speeches.
Again, they talk about it like it's a mantra, a two-state solution, with Israel and Palestine living side by side in peace.
I mean, if I had a dime for every time I heard that in the 25 years of the UN, I would be a wealthy man right now, because just by saying that over and over again is not going to make it happen.
We all know the reality on the ground.
The same ethnic cleansing that began in the 1947-48 period has slowed down but continued little by little by the grabbing of property from the Palestinians to build what I call colonies, not settlements.
I've seen these colonies.
I've been several times in the West Bank, spent a week in Ramallah there a couple years ago.
I've seen houses on hills, usually with sun panels on the roof, and they've built a light rail system in East Jerusalem.
I mean, it looks like a modern European city, and it's all around them.
Palestine is living in relative squalor.
Who cannot move more than a couple of miles or kilometers without being stopped at a checkpoint or try to get into Israel?
I did it to get into East Jerusalem.
I went through one of the famous checkpoints, and I saw how people are treated.
So, no, it's not changing, and this is great for Israel.
They'll keep talking about we're going to have talks.
Iran and others have called for direct, immediate talks.
It's not going to happen because it doesn't serve Israel.
It serves them to keep the status quo because they're little by little gobbling up.
Now we're starting to hear more openly people talking about annexation of the West Bank.
The reason they didn't want to do that and haven't, because then the de facto apartheid, which exists now, would become legal apartheid.
If, in fact, the West Bank became a part of Israel, and you didn't give the vote to the people living there, then that is complete apartheid.
There's no argument anymore.
That's why they don't want to try not to legally annex the thing.
But these little settlements or colonies, I call them, it's funny because they're not legally part of Israel, but yet the people who live in those settlements are allowed to vote in Israeli elections, which I find very interesting.
Whereas other Israelis living abroad are not allowed to vote.
Only military members and diplomats are allowed to vote if you live in New York or wherever in an Israeli election.
Other Israeli citizens are not allowed to vote.
However, if you're living in the settlements, you can.
Think about that.
So they are in Israel.
They consider it Israel, but it's not on paper Israel.
Of course not.
Yeah.
Well, now, but so I guess what I was thinking of, and I didn't say this very well, but we all know that Trump has basically dropped the pretense and is just outright siding with the Israelis to such a degree that the Palestinians are refusing to meet.
And obviously the deal of the century and all that's going nowhere.
But then, so the alternative supposedly has been that the Palestinians would do these different unilateral declarations within UN institutions to try to gain statehood that way.
Yeah.
They've been doing that.
And importantly, you know, Corbyn, and I don't know, what are the chances that labor will take over in the UK?
I don't get it well enough, but supposedly he said that if labor wins, he'll recognize Palestine.
And in fact, I was talking with Asa Winstanley, this great reporter earlier, and he was saying, well, that could be a problem recognizing the PA as a state government.
But I'd think that'd be a good start anyway, especially from a power like Britain to say it that way.
And I don't know what all difference that would make, but it seems like it must mean something.
That would be huge.
That would be huge.
There are 130 countries that have recognized Palestinian statehood.
Do you think it's possible that, you know, Trump has ruined basically the pretense that America is going to negotiate the Israelis into finally withdrawing from the West Bank and letting them have it and Gaza and letting them have it?
And that then so maybe avenues of other alternative ways of achieving that are really finally opening up now?
Because the Americans all the time have kind of monopolized the right to be the broker here.
Well, that's right.
Like I was saying, it's the mantra of the two states.
And now it's becoming less and less believed.
And the idea that U.S. was a neutral broker in this was never believed.
So Trump didn't ruin that, but he is like completely destroyed that idea.
So nobody's going to believe that anymore after Trump, unless you get somebody who could somehow restore that myth.
But I don't think so.
I don't think so.
So, yes, other possibilities.
And the only one that I think is possible, many people do, is one state.
But that would be the end of Jewish control.
But they would be there as a minority protected and they could have their own political parties and they may even win some of them if they have the right policies.
That's what happened in South Africa.
So only the way that could end this thing in Israel is that way.
Or that we're going to see the elimination of the Palestinians from the West Bank being driven into Jordan or just living in poverty and being killed or just gradually being ignored and their houses destroyed and bulldozed and new colonies by Israel set up that are legally slash not legal part of Israel.
So that is the process that's going on now.
And Trump is like exactly what Netanyahu wanted.
He basically got what he wanted from Obama, too.
But Obama was a pain in the ass.
But the PA isn't pushing for any kind of one state solution.
The PA is a disaster.
I agree with whatever said that.
That's true.
They still want a two state thing.
They haven't changed this policy.
No, because it's good for them.
Because look, I was when I was in Ramallah, I talked to cab drivers, all kinds of other people.
They can't stand the guy.
They were telling me things like his first words when he was born and when he was a child were not mama and dada.
It was negotiation.
That was what the first word he ever spoke as a child.
So that he was born to negotiate forever.
And it never happens.
Even if we negotiate, it collapses.
Now, at least now, as you said, they're refusing to negotiate with the U.S. because they moved the capital of Jerusalem.
And they know that there's no any way in any way there's a pretext of U.S. being a neutral arbiter here.
But now that's so that's completely dead.
And yes, new solutions have to be looked for.
But it doesn't look promising.
And it's coming from external pressure from countries like Sweden and Britain would be enormous that would recognize Palestine.
And from the BDS women, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which is why Israel with their allies in U.S. Congress and in local legislatures are trying to pass laws making it illegal to boycott Israel, which is extraordinary.
How would they know if I'm in a supermarket and I look at two cans of two bottles of olive oil, one says made in Israel, one says made in Greece, that I buy the one from Greece because I don't want to buy from Israel.
Is that a crime?
How would they get in my head and know why I chose the Greek oil?
I mean, so that's really they are terrified of external pressure because they know that what they're doing, they should know anyway.
And there are some Israelis who openly say it, that this is completely illegal, what they're doing.
And it's criminal.
And it will not stop from within because Israel's become so right wing, but that the external pressure from governments, from peoples is what they're worried about.
And that's why they're working hard to try to mute that power.
Why they don't want anything coming from the ICC was firms of the Palestinians.
When Bolton made that incredible speech a couple of weeks ago, which he said he'd go after the judges and the ICC, he would sanction them.
They wouldn't be allowed to come into the U.S., maybe even freeze their assets if they went ahead and did their job and prosecuted Israel for war crimes.
So that is where we're at right now.
That's a moment of desperation when you've got to make statements like that, although coming from Bolton, that's what he always believed, probably.
Yeah.
And then and now is the ICC, is it just criminal prosecutions of individual Israeli officials would be their jurisdiction or could they rule that you have to stop doing this or that other behavior?
No, they don't rule that they would.
That's a criminal court.
So someone brings a complaint.
They investigate it.
If they have enough evidence, they will issue an indictment pretty much like Mueller.
It's only an indictment.
It's not proven.
Then you've got to arrest the people.
Good luck trying to arrest some members of the Israeli government or military.
And then you've got to bring them to The Hague or in a neighboring country somewhere and have a trial.
So in other words, none of that's really a problem.
The problem is just the public relations of having guys that can't travel.
Exactly.
Yes, exactly.
Yeah.
And the public opinion.
That's exactly what this is all about.
And the Israelis are enormously sensitive.
It's the same with the boycott, right?
The boycott is really putting harsh economic pressure on them.
They got plenty of money from American taxpayers.
They take it right out of our paycheck every Friday.
That's the problem.
The problem is people go, why would you boycott Israel?
And then somebody goes, oh, well, let me explain.
Exactly, Scott.
They don't want that explanation.
They don't want that narrative.
They want total control of it because they're afraid of what it could lead to.
So, you know, they're putting out all stops.
They're way ahead of the game when it comes to things like this.
So they got and they got Bolton now to make a speech like that.
It's like it's never probably the most pro-Israel government ever in the United States administration.
So Netanyahu is loving it.
Yeah.
Well, you know, looks like, you know, it's hard to say, obviously.
Nobody's claiming to know as far as I know, but it's pretty suspicious.
This terrorist attack or I don't know if it was a terrorist attack.
It wasn't a it was a military target, not a civilian target.
But this massacre that took place in Iran and supposedly the Americans and the Israelis have this joint working group on Iran and they've been making all these not very veiled threats about, you know, stirring up dissent and creating crises in Iran.
So we need to keep a real close eye on that one, I think.
Well, again, it's it's a classic maneuver by any government going back to the probably the beginning of civilization that if there is some kind of domestic unrest, whether that's even a violent or even just some people on the streets, you blame a foreign power.
You blame a hostile power.
I think that's what's going on.
Although I would think the Iranians have a more right to be paranoid than just about anybody.
Well, I was going to say, we don't have the proof, but the idea that the U.S.-Israel backed groups were part of this is not to be easily dismissed.
But it's what I think U.S. officials are doing in Russiagate.
They're blaming Russia for our undermining our democracy, sowing social divisions as if we haven't had racial divisions and economic divisions in this country for a long time right now.
And that it's Russia that's responsible for it is a way to deflect attention from the failed economic policies by the plutocratic controlled Republicans and Democrats over the last 30 years with their neoliberal policies that are destroying the middle class of the United States and curbing our democratic rights with more and more money pouring in to the campaigns after Citizens United.
That was the part of the story that we skipped before too, right?
Yeah, blame Russia for it.
Yeah, the Russians bought some Facebook ads and therefore they're the ones who were responsible.
They were behind the Black Lives Matter thing.
That wasn't local people tired of being shot.
That was the Russians trying to divide us from each other.
Before that, blacks were perfectly happy getting shot at and not complaining.
Everyone knows that.
That's a complete lie from the intelligence agencies, which the New York Times readily publishes.
Wasn't that amazing that they would go that far to try to do that?
Yeah.
How could they think they can get away with that, except that they know they have a politically badly educated population because they've been reading newspapers like the New York Times?
Well, they know how much liberals love punching hippies and proving what leftists they're not.
For them, they go, they cluck their tongue and go, oh, no wonder.
Well, you wonder who does believe all of this because polls indicate Americans don't give a damn one way or the other about Russia.
They're concerned about the economic situation they're in.
And that was not created by Russia.
The idea of blaming Russia.
My conspiracy theory is if the Russians were involved in Black Lives Matter, they were the ones who came up with that stupid slogan.
It was the Russians who infiltrated it to undermine the whole thing and make it stupid and useless.
It's like I said, what governments do throughout history, when you have created your own unrest at home because of your failed policies, because of your own repression.
So you cannot turn around and say, wait a minute, I'm going to give up some of my power and privileges in order to right this situation.
I'm going to blame a foreign power over the hill.
They're coming to get us.
And that's what's going on in Russia.
And I'm not saying that's going on in Iran, but it could.
There are people who don't like the mullahs in Iran.
They're genuine.
In every society, there are people who are unhappy with the ruling party.
And it's usually the CIA and external factors who work with those people.
They don't create out of whole cloth.
There were people who hated Yanukovych for nothing to do with the Americans.
But you work with those people and train them and give them money and you help push them along.
That's the way it usually happens.
And then you have a coup.
It's not like the Americans have created the whole thing.
So you work with the opposition that exists in every society.
And there is one inside of Iran, obviously.
And so that the idea that foreigners helped with that is not, would not be surprising.
But I would love to see proof of that.
That would really help.
Yeah.
Well, and you know what?
They killed two and caught two.
So maybe we will find out.
Oh, well, the two who were caught, right?
Let's see.
If they confess under duress, then they'll say that.
Well, that's true.
I can't necessarily trust what's going to come out in court there.
Yeah.
In any court.
In any court.
Yeah.
I was going to say they have a very flawed republic there, but not like we would know anything about that.
No.
Flawed republics?
They only exist in the countries America hates.
Yeah.
You know that.
All right.
Okay.
Joe Lori, everybody.
You and Joe on Twitter.
And that used to be his beat.
Now he's the editor of ConsortiumNews.com.
And this one is called The New York Times as Judge and Jury.
Thanks again.
It was a pleasure talking to you, Scott.
Thank you.
See you.
Oh, and I forgot to mention Joe's great book, How I Lost by Hillary Clinton, which, well, it's really good.
So it's, you know, it's all first person by her as, you know, kind of narrated and edited by him.
And, oh, it's wonderful.
You should read it.
All right, y'all.
Thanks.
Find me at LibertarianInstitute.org, at ScottHorton.org, AntiWar.com, and Reddit.com slash Scott Horton Show.
Oh, yeah.
And read my book, Fool's Errand, Timed and the War in Afghanistan at FoolsErrand.us.
