Sorry I'm late.
I had to stop by the Wax Museum again and give the finger to 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, he died.
We ain't killing they army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN like Say Our Name been saying, say it three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
As an investigative columnist, a very unique legacy and a very accomplished writer in the libertarian movement.
And a ton of books going back to the Reagan years and throughout the Bill Clinton and George Bush years too.
And welcome back to the show, Jim.
How are you?
Doing good, Scott.
Thanks for having me on.
I'm glad you got your server problems worked out.
Hey, listen, you are on the board of contributors at USA Today.
That's pretty good.
Representing the libertarian movement well.
We like that.
And you have your own website, jimbovard.com, of course, where you have all your stuff.
And you write for the Future of Freedom, Jacob Hornberger and the crew at fff.org.
And here's one that you wrote for the Future of Freedom.
That's the monthly journal there.
John McCain's disastrous militaristic legacy.
And, hey, I guess it just so happens that John McCain is in the news.
Because Trump is complaining that John McCain did not thank him for providing him with a very nice funeral.
Which I thought was kind of hilarious.
But anyway, John McCain, you know, well, I won't start out your interview that way.
I was going to say something really terrible.
Instead, I'll ask you a question.
Hey, Jim, do you think that John McCain deserves all the praise and credit and stature that he receives from the American mainstream media and political class?
Yeah, I wouldn't expect you to start out with a trick question.
You know, it's been amazing to see all the hubbub the last week or so.
Trump's comments and the backlash by that.
And, you know, I was doing a hike with a group passing by the National Cathedral late last year.
And there was some foreign guy who was asked me about, well, what's the point of the Cathedral?
I said, this is where Washington poobahs gather to tell lies about dead politicians.
And that's basically what the story was for John McCain and George H.W. Bush a few months later.
It's amazing how John McCain became a saint.
And how he became a hero to so many people.
And it says more about the media and the people that shape American political opinion than it does about John McCain.
Because basically, going back decades, John McCain was just basically another dishonest, corrupt politician.
He was almost indicted for his role in the Keating Five Savings and Loan scandal.
He should have been indicted for that.
It would have put the American people out of their McCain misery.
Wait, wait, wait, slow down, because there's so much there.
And I want to go kind of through that a little slower.
But starting off with how about just what a great war hero he is for getting shot down and held prisoner in Vietnam.
So what's your take on all that?
Well, I mean, I've known folks who were POWs.
I've known folks that, you know, fought in wars for years.
And it's like there were some that showed a great deal of courage.
Others perhaps did not show as much.
But simply the fact that he got shot down was held prisoner doesn't entitle him to sainthood.
And it certainly does not entitle him to rule the U.S.
You know, I was in the media last week.
They were saying, oh, yeah, show me your bone spurs, Donald Trump.
And what's your excuse for not going to Vietnam?
And I'm just thinking of all the big questions in there.
And these are questions coming at him from the left, where isn't it probably a much more accurate reality, certainly from a much more leftist position, maybe not a liberal centrist kind of position, but from a further left position that Trump's refusal to go to Vietnam was probably the best thing that he ever did in his life.
And that, you know, whatever his motives were, he didn't kill anybody over there.
And that's good.
But it was a war that I thought the consensus was should have never been fought.
So how is it that John McCain's the greatest hero in the world for participating in this thing and Donald Trump's scum for not participating in it when it comes to, you know, personality clashes between these two?
Things get so twisted around.
Well, you know, the honor and glory and valor and stature that McCain, I guess, earned and got to keep no matter what for the fact that he was in Vietnam.
And then that becomes something to beat Donald Trump over the head with.
Yeah, it's a paradox.
It's a paradox.
You would think that the U.S. was doing a mission of mercy there and that the U.S. government had been honest and the U.S. had, you know, been a, that the U.S. troops had been acted in a way that was something that, that all the American troops all the time had acted in a way that should make Americans proud.
But there were a boatload of atrocities there.
Nick Turse did a fine book on that.
The guy, David, who was a colonel.
There was a colonel who was, did an article for Playboy.
He was the most decorated colonel in the military.
Hackworth?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, he was, he had a lot of great comments on how there were so many atrocities in Vietnam.
And so, and the war started out with a bunch of lies.
You had Lyndon Johnson, you know, doing one scam after another.
You had McNamara, you know, just so brazenly lying.
But, you know, it's, it's a gauge of the Washington establishment and the Washington media.
McNamara told so many lies and got so many Americans and Vietnamese killed.
And after he left office, he was put on the board of directors of the Washington Post.
So how's that for a paradox?
Yeah.
But, so, but, and the whole idea that McCain would be a hero because he, you know, flew what, 30 missions, 30 bombing missions or something like that.
I mean, there were lots of guys that did that and lots of guys who did that and got shot down.
Lots of others who were killed and lots of others who didn't get shot down.
But the whole idea that there was a sainthood, I mean, there was backlash.
I've heard from folks about my criticism of McCain, from folks who are former military types.
And it's like, okay, so it doesn't make sense to assume that simply because someone put on a uniform that that person is above criticism.
Because if you assume that, then that's a Pandora's box.
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So, you know, one of the stories from McCain in Vietnam was after the fire on the Forestall, which doesn't seem, there's been some writing about this, doesn't seem like McCain was the one who caused that.
But the fire on his aircraft carrier, he was the Admiral's son.
And so he was able to get on a helicopter and fly right out of there and go straight to Saigon for some R&R.
And there he met a New York Times reporter and told the New York Times reporter, geez, now that I've seen what napalm does to people up close, I just don't know if I can continue to participate in this thing and drop this stuff on people the way I've been doing.
It's my job, but I'm in the North here.
And then he went right back to work doing the same thing.
And then he got shot down and taken prisoner.
So that makes him, you know, a bit more guilty.
It's not like he was conscripted.
He was the Admiral's son.
He could have got transferred off to Germany somewhere or something doing nothing.
He could have been in the Air National Guard with George Bush.
And then there he was being as self-aware as he could about the war crimes he was committing against individual human beings down there near his targets in North Vietnam.
In fact, I think at the time he was shot down, he was bombing a light bulb factory, a civilian target.
And so, yeah, screw him, man.
I don't know.
That to me, it's not just that, oh, wowee, look at all those medals.
You have to worship him and you can never say anything against this demigod ever again.
It's more like, I don't know, he's just a government employee committing crimes against innocent people.
Seems like I respect him less than the average guy rather than put him on some pedestal.
But of course, you know, I guess I'm kind of an ideological extremist on the killing innocent civilians thing.
Well, and, you know, keep in mind, there were a lot of troops who were in Vietnam who did speak out.
And I think some of them were, you know, made a public decision not to stop, you know, supporting the war, even though they suffered consequences.
John McCain did not do that.
That's right.
And there are a lot of people who were just poor conscripts who had no choice, really.
I mean, I guess they could have chosen prison, all of them, but not realistically.
That's not the way it's going to work.
But yes, certainly the Admiral's son bears a little bit more responsibility for his actions than some poor uneducated kid in the lowest rank in the Marine Corps out there.
Yep.
And by the way, as long as we're on that, you mentioned McNamara.
I mean, it was just recently published.
I don't know if this was known all along, but I just read this thing a few weeks ago about where it was admitted, where McNamara admitted, but it was in secret and now it came out or whatever, that they had an absolute deliberate policy that the lower the IQ, the further out on the front line you go.
Wow.
So in other words, taking the most poor and uneducated American conscripts and just outright deliberately using them as the cat and fodder, which was something that they'd been accused of at the time and adamantly had denied.
But of course, you know, the people who are really the dimmest are probably a lot less likely to survive out there in the toughest spot too.
You know what I mean?
Really?
Anyway, that's the cynicism with which the Vietnam War was prosecuted.
You know, I'm glad you mentioned Terse's book there too, Kill Anything That Moves.
Anybody wants to read about Vietnam, read Nick Terse and that thing.
Anyway, so John McCain, war hero, comes home, becomes a politician.
And then you say something, something Keating scandal.
What's that?
Keating 5 scandal.
The savings and loan business industry collapsed in the 1980s.
And it was, they had all these federal guarantees.
What costs American taxpayers over $100 billion, if memory serves.
And there was a huge one run by a guy named Keating who had bought five senators, one of them being John McCain.
And there was evidence that John McCain was pulling strings to make sure that the federal regulators, overseers, would not drop the hammer on this savings and loan that this guy was running.
So there was a lot of question whether all those senators should have been indicted.
John McCain was not.
And after that, he suddenly became a, it was like he found his mission in Washington.
And that was fighting against corruption.
Yeah, which is perfect, of course, right?
When you get the attack.
Yeah, I mean, and so he was pushing this campaign finance reform bill, which Congress finally passed after George W. became president.
But he was also outspoken that if it was up to him, he would ban all negative ads that political candidates ran.
And so, OK, so, OK, so you're totally against freedom of speech.
The whole idea that we shouldn't have negative ads is that that might be OK if politicians stop lying.
But I don't think it's going to happen.
I mean, and you know what?
Other than just the title campaign reform, which blandly sounds like they're trying to improve something, the actual structure of that McCain-Feingold thing from the beginning was so obvious.
I mean, even I think even like on PBS News, they sort of explain that in essence, this is going to reserve the power to advertise to the party candidates themselves.
And it's going to make it illegal for any private group of whether wealthy people or regular schmucks or anyone else to form groups and run campaign ads.
As you put it, you know, accusing their congressman of doing anything wrong within 60 days of the election.
The only time that mattered is nothing but an incumbency protection act for both parties.
That was why it was McCain-Feingold after all, right?
The bipartisan campaign reform act.
Everybody who already won now is going to have a better advantage and be protected from anyone slandering them, which is amazing and fantastic the way that they were able to even get that passed at all.
And have people believe that it was to help protect us from corruption in politics rather than to solidify it, you know?
And part of the another wrinkle here is that it was an obviously pro-incumbent bill, but it was sufficient to guarantee John McCain's sainthood with the Washington media.
Something else he did which, you know, made him a hero to a lot of the people in the media was he turned into a champion for gun control and was basically flip-flopped on the second amendment.
Was, you know, throwing out all kinds of ideas and do a lot of dishonest stuff as far as the kind of ideas and proposals he was floating.
So he supported the assault weapons ban in the 90s?
Was that it?
I don't think he did in 1994.
I don't recall exactly.
But as the 1990s went on, he certainly changed a lot of his positions, a lot of things.
And by 2001 or 2002, he was cozying up with a group called Americans for Gun Safety, which was basically sort of like the Brady Group, but a little bit lighter, a little bit less abrasive perhaps, a little less direct.
So I actually did a story for the National Rifle Association magazine on John McCain's advocacy for gun control back in 2001 or 2002.
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You know, I'd read somewhere, Jim, where McCain had learned the lesson from the Keating scandal, I guess, to just make himself open to journalists and just befriend them all.
And anybody who came knocking, anyone who wanted to talk to him, that he would just be known among the media guys as that senator who was so friendly to them and that this is really as easy as that.
They took care of all his PR for free after that.
Yeah, that was a big factor in his popularity with the press corps.
There are a couple of journalists I know who were charmed by him, and I'm just thinking, you know, okay, so he was nice to you and he praised you, but he's still full of crap, isn't he?
Well, you know, from one perspective, I'm thinking, oh, don't give me that.
So, yeah, I mean, it's not too easy.
It's pretty easy for a politician to seduce a journalist.
Yeah, way too easy.
And then, okay, so now if I remember right, did somebody say like he opposed the attack on Panama or something?
At some point, he had kind of a reputation of being a little bit skeptic, had a case of the Vietnam syndrome, but then that all went away, I think before Bill Kristol started telling him he was Teddy Roosevelt.
He was already kind of making the change.
But do you remember his record on all that?
Iraq War One, he must have been a hawk during that, right?
Probably.
I don't recall exactly.
I mean, I assume he was at least somewhat for the war.
So I followed him a lot more after his 2000 presidential campaign.
That sought to get the GOP nomination.
Well, I know he was a huge hawk on Kosovo in 1999.
I remember seeing him on Meet the Press and all that.
Yeah, and his campaign slogan, I guess, from Bill Kristol in 2000 was rogue state rollback.
But he didn't plan to roll back any of the U.S. government power.
Yeah, no, we're the enforcer of the law.
We have to be immune from it.
That's how it works around here.
As we all know.
Yeah, so I mean, but he certainly got worse.
You know, he was a typical Washington politician in the sense that he's someone who got a lot worse as time went on, partly because of all the flattery that he received.
Yeah, no doubt.
I mean, that's what they say, right?
That power corrupts, but it also makes you completely stupid.
And that's the biggest reason why is that bubble that they get in where they just you can't tell.
And I've met very few actual powerful people in real life, but even sort of pseudo type semi powerful ones can't really tell them anything.
They already know everything.
In fact, I'll go ahead and pick on him because I don't care.
Gary Johnson, you know, he doesn't seem like that powerful of a guy.
But in his world, you know, he is a self-made man, built himself into a millionaire with a construction company.
And all this was a two term governor.
And man, he couldn't tell that guy a thing no matter what.
And he's a nice guy.
But to him, come on.
He already knows everything.
What could he learn from you?
And with that attitude, he's just stuck.
And you think a guy like McCain makes Gary Johnson look like nothing in terms of self-perceived status and all of that, you know?
Ego size.
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, and even if he didn't have that ego, even if you just parachuted him in there, look at the position he's in.
This kingmaker in the Senate and all this, you know?
Just, anyway.
So now Iraq.
Right after 9-11, he went on David Letterman and said, man, I think it looks like Iraq is on the list for regime change right now.
And picked up and ran with that Saddam must have been behind the anthrax attack.
And this is before, you know, they even got to Tora Bora to let Osama go.
He was already pushing for that one.
So remind us all some more about 2002 and 3, Jim.
Well, he was, John McCain was in the forefront of calling for the U.S. to attack Iraq.
The evidence really didn't matter.
And it was interesting, once the U.S. did invade, and it turned out that those WMDs were basically nowhere to be found, the Bush, George W., decided to cover his butt by having an official commission to look into it.
And, of course, he put John McCain on that commission.
And basically on the same day that John McCain was appointed, before the commission had done any kind of work, John McCain came out and said that George Bush was innocent.
So I'm thinking, oh, this guy's a great juror.
No wonder people in Washington love him.
Yeah, man.
That's so funny.
And you know what, too?
Well, I don't know.
I don't want to get too far into it.
I guess about Iraq War II, he also was a hawk the whole time.
That's something that, you know, and he ain't the only one.
But when people talk about who got us into that war, who supported that war, a major part of that is essentially everyone who supported that war also said we had to stay until everything's perfect.
We can't leave now or the violence will get worse.
And don't you worry.
It doesn't matter if there's weapons or not.
Now that you broke it, you bought it.
It's the Pottery Barn rule.
And so, you know, and he was, you know, always at the forefront of that, even though remember that video where he's with Joe Lieberman and he doesn't even know who's on whose side at all.
And he accuses Iran of training the al-Qaeda in Iraq guys.
And Joe Lieberman's like, no, dude, you got your talking points all mixed up.
Just say militants, OK?
Well, a favorite episode of mine was when he was ramping up his 2008 presidential campaign.
He went to that Baghdad market and he's out there walking around saying, oh, everything is going good here.
It's looking nice.
We're in a flak jacket, load of U.S. helicopters flying overhead.
You know, practically a whole regiment, maybe a brigade surrounding him.
Oh, everything looks fine here.
You know, we're making great progress.
Right.
And it was the same already, I think, was hit hard after he left.
But it was just typical of the, you know, absolute willingness to lie as far as to justify his warmongering.
Yeah.
And you know what?
Thanks for reminding me because I had forgotten that it was Mike Pence that was with him at the time.
Oh, Pence.
Pence was great.
I think I had a there was the Pence had had some of the best quotes on that guy.
Like, oh, it looks the same way.
It does a market in Indiana.
It does in the summertime.
I'm never going to Indiana.
It sounds like a dangerous place.
I mean, like what?
Gary, Indiana, maybe.
You know, that's Mike Pence who accompanied pulling us up here.
Yada, yada.
And by the way, in the whole surge, too, when they doubled the war and made it just that much worse, they didn't solve any problems.
They just solidified all the problems they'd already created with that massive surge, which he was a major ringleader for as well.
Yeah, they just postpone the fan.
That's all they did.
John McCain was nicknamed the the new Baghdad Bob after his visit there in 2007 to that market.
And Baghdad Bob was a spokesman for Saddam Hussein.
The Iraqi army is doing great.
The army's winning.
You know, we're going to turn things around.
Yeah, and that was John McCain's nickname after that Baghdad market visit.
So, yep.
And by the way, too, you didn't mention this, Jim, in your article, but on his deathbed, he said, oh, you know what?
I guess that Iraq war was a mistake after all.
He didn't say he was sorry.
Oh, I didn't know that.
I didn't really follow the statements that he Oh, yeah.
It's the greatest laugh of the last week of his life.
Like, oh, all that stuff I said.
Yeah, forget about that.
OK, well, that's yeah.
Famous last words.
Yeah, for some reason, the Washington media did not play that up.
I don't know why.
Oh, OK.
I'm not mad at you.
But I mean, here's someone who was gung ho for the U.S. intervention in Syria, for the U.S. bombing of Libya.
I mean, he sowed so much chaos around the entire Middle East and elsewhere.
Serbia, as you said.
And yet it doesn't matter as far as how he's judged.
I mean, you had people like Max Boot out there were just gushing that it's an outrage that Trump is bashing where the frig is that line?
That Trump is bashing John McCain because he's basically the greatest American in history.
Not quite Max Boot's words, but it's like, what does a politician have to do in order to justify mocking him?
Because you had a guy who was totally corrupt.
You had a guy who tried to censor, to destroy the First Amendment with his campaign reform.
You had a guy who dragged the U.S. into one war and was a cheerleader for a lot of other wars.
If memory serves, I saw somebody did a list of all the nations that McCain had advocated bombing.
And I think it was like 12 or 14.
That's a lot.
Yeah, some that we never even got around to getting a chance to bomb yet.
Well, and thinking back to his idiot, idiotic 2008 presidential campaign, when he was a GOP nominee, there was the clash between Russia and the country of Georgia.
And John McCain responded, we're all Georgians now, like Kennedy in Berlin in the early 60s.
It's like, dude, this isn't our fight.
Both sides are rascals.
Why are we getting involved in it?
Right.
Hey, I got an anecdote about that too.
It was in one of the presidential debates.
McCain says, yeah, Russia invaded Georgia and started this war and we've got to do something.
And then Tom Brokaw looks at Barack Obama and Barack Obama looks at Tom Brokaw and then they look at McCain and they all kind of make eye contact with each other.
And I'm just kind of reading into it, but they're basically saying with body language, remember guys, this is the part where we rehearsed it and we decided we're just going to go ahead and not contradict the facts there.
We're going to let McCain pretend that it was Russia that hit first in that one.
And Obama just kind of shrugs and they go along.
When he could have just said, that's not what happened at all.
But you could tell that they were, they were looking at each other referring back to a previous conversation.
Kind of, you know what I mean?
It was that obvious.
Well, it was, you know, in that kind of debate where you're up against someone who's making so many false statements, you sit there and you think, which ones do I counterpunch?
Which ones do I expose?
And there was just so much garbage that McCain shoveled.
As did many other politicians, many more politicians, but he was, you know, he's someone who set the gold standard for foreign policy drivel, which is part of the reason he was a hero for the Washington establishment.
Right.
And, you know, yeah.
So what does it take?
And you mentioned all these things that he did.
And of course, that's the whole deal, right?
Is it what it takes is for him to say crude things.
In fact, the worst trouble he ever got in was for singing bomb, bomb, bomb Iran, not all of the things that he did to try to get America into a war with Iran.
All the lies he told about the threat from their nuclear program and all of these things.
It was when he sang that song.
It was when he, you know, because that's easy.
That's obviously crossing a line and being flip about something serious.
And so you can make hay out of that without actually having to learn anything.
And so that's the deal.
As long as he wasn't grabbing anybody by their anything, then he's an officer and a gentleman.
And how dare you, Bovard?
Well, it's just sad to see that that's the standard that was used for someone who advocated deadly force so many times.
It would be different if he was simply a mayor or if he was a city councilman.
But here's someone who was constantly coming out and, you know, saying that U.S. should drop bombs on foreign countries and flatten their capital or flatten their, you know, military leaders or whatever.
And it's like, on what basis?
And he didn't need to have a basis because most of the press corps would cheer him on.
It didn't matter who he advocated bombing as long as it wasn't, you know, England or Ireland or maybe Holland.
Yeah.
And, you know, too, we should also pick on him, I think, for not using his position as the famous supposed war hero to oppose war.
You know, back in whatever.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, it's like the difference between Tulsi Gabbard and Tammy Duckworth.
Duckworth gets up there and is just like, yeah, I'm a representative of the military here because I used to be part of it.
And whereas Gabbard is saying, look, man, I've been there, I saw what it's about, and I'm going to use that knowledge to do things that are contrary to the status quo because I know better than the status quo.
That's what we need.
And in fact, I forget the specifics.
He was in Lebanon in the 1980s.
But there was a point there where McCain saw that his advantage was in saying, hey, listen, I'm a war hero, former POW, this, that, and the other thing, and I don't think we should be doing this reckless thing.
And that is the responsible thing to do.
And that goes to show that he kind of knew that and he used that politically, but then he abandoned it decades ago and became the world's worst hawk instead and used his stature in that way in the exact opposite fashion from the way he had started out there.
So that makes it that much more shameful, right?
Just like admitting in such gritty detail to the New York Times how he felt about napalm and then doing it anyway.
It makes it that much worse.
He was saying that about napalm.
I don't know that he was actually dropping napalm.
Was he dropping napalm on the North?
I thought he was dropping other types of weapons.
I'm not sure what kind of explosives his plane was dropping.
But that was what he said was that he was dropping napalm.
He was saying, I don't know how I can continue to do this.
So the implication is, I don't know the exact quote, but the implication is that he's been napalming people.
Yeah.
Well, it's just going back to what you said about Tulsi Gabbard.
I mean, she's very impressive in her comments on foreign policy.
She's smart.
She's persuasive.
She's the most savage in the media so far.
But that could change.
That could change.
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You know, I mean, never mind all the disclaimers about all the big government stuff and everything.
However, yeah, I'm really excited about her presence in the race because I think they're just already hellbound and determined to attack her.
But all they have is narratives and talking points.
And she has real knowledge.
And she has that whole thing.
We're like, dude, are you really calling me a pro-Assadian, pro-Russian traitor or whatever when I fought in Iraq War II, that kind of thing?
They can only go after her so hard because they can't fool her into hating Iran more than Al-Qaeda.
Which everybody else is like, oh, I don't know.
I'm told I'm supposed to hate Iran more.
And they just go along with that.
But she's like, yeah, no, I don't.
I hate Al-Qaeda more.
Sorry.
Fought in the Anbar province.
That's kind of my thing.
And so how are they going to get around that?
And how are they going to, you know, drum up a narrative that's going to be able to overcome right off the bat in these debates and, you know, to see her do that Ron Paul-y and truth-teller thing on the wars.
And she's not perfect on the wars, but she knows enough about them to be better than everybody else on that stage by far, that's for sure.
So I just hope that it helps to really provoke a fight.
I'm confident it will, that there's going to be a great fight, the kind that we deserve to at least be able to see, you know?
Yeah, well, she's tough and she's smart.
She has to have that fight in a very visible venue.
Yeah, man.
And, you know, Mike Gravel's back in it.
Yeah, he's a hoot.
And I saw where he was, you know, really talking smack against the other candidates on Twitter.
And he said, I guess a reporter asked him, he said, well, I got these college kids running my Twitter account for me, but they're going after these guys hard, going after Biden for supporting Iraq War II, especially.
And then, but going after Hillary Clinton.
And so, so I like that.
And he says the only reason he wants to be in there is to talk about imperialism.
And so that should be great, too.
He's pretty good.
And then, oh, and that was the thing is he was mocking what Cory Booker was pretending to be brave over some garbage, what Brett Kavanaugh scandal or something.
And then he's like, oh, yeah, well, here's me reading the Pentagon A little bit of a little bit of, you know, feistiness and combativeness going into this thing from Gravel.
So I'm happy to see that.
I don't know how old he is now, though, like 88 or something.
Well, but he's someone who was, you know, Daniel Ellsberg wrote about him very favorably in his Ellsberg's memoir, Secrets, because there were so many senators who were afraid to basically directly help out Ellsberg getting the Pentagon without the guy from Alaska.
He was willing to take the stand.
So that's hugely important to history.
And, you know, he actually gets really kind of left out of the narrative, mostly because it's kind of a complicated story the way it all played out.
But usually just the times.
And then if you let Tom Hanks tell it, the Post get the credit for.
Oh, my God.
Yes, it's it's appalling.
But everybody always forgets good old Gravel in the Senate saying, well, you can't arrest me.
It says in the Constitution, you can't arrest me unless I commit a breach of the peace or something like that.
So here goes some classified information.
Everybody blam and sat there and read the thing for.
Yeah, it was great.
Days, which is heroic.
I mean, you're right.
And it just goes to show because no one else is going to do it.
They wouldn't have touched that with a hundred foot pole.
Even the ones who had promised Ellsberg that they would backed out and stuff.
It was unsavory.
No.
Cool, man.
Well, you know what?
I like talking with you.
Let's think of something else to talk about.
What do you think about other things?
Oh, God.
Well, I just, you know, I think about what?
What was your what do you think about John McCain's daughter?
Oh, Scott, I'm sorry.
So hard to be polite here.
No, I don't want to put you on the spot.
No, no.
You know what?
She's funny.
You can say that.
Maybe it's all unintentional, but it's there.
There was there was a there was a funny Twitter thing that someone made a compilation of her of her comments on various TV shows.
And it's posed as like as a therapy therapy question.
What brought you here?
And then she answers 30 times in a row.
My father, my father, my father.
And it's it's a fun little thing.
Yeah, I it's to see how she got elevated in the media is like this is.
Well, you know, there's a lot of mysteries as far as why certain people get elevated.
And she's she's one of the top 25 mysteries.
Well, I can't wait till the race in 2024 when it's her versus Chelsea Clinton.
Oh, God.
Good old Chelsea.
She's going to be in the Senate here before too long, man.
I just know it.
I don't think so.
I don't think so.
No.
She doesn't have.
No, no.
I think that the that the Clinton political machine is is fatally damaged.
So.
Well, I like that.
You know, Liz Cheney still lives.
She's in the U.S. House of Representatives and sometimes wears her ugly head and reminds us that she's there on the rules committee or some dangerous thing.
Yeah, it's it's kind of like, oh, my.
Well, you know, it's hard to have faith in Wyoming.
Yeah.
I know it.
I really resent them for doing this to us.
And, you know, she's going to be there for life, too, because as soon as that Senate seats open, she's going to take that.
And.
And, yeah, the worst is only portended now just the fact that she's sitting in the house.
That's like the alien is inside the guy's chest, but it hasn't yet burst out.
You know, well, you know, there are a lot of people in the house who just make me shudder.
So, you know, she is there's there's a lot of company.
There are folks who just.
Yeah, I don't mean to just pick on the women.
Right.
Right.
We just started with that.
So that's all.
Yeah.
I mean, there's there's a lot.
Cheney is a Cheney.
That's my problem with her.
I don't care if she was her name was Dave or what.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, she's she has a very different attitude towards government power, which is different than yours and mine.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know what?
You're such a gentleman, Jim.
Jim.
Well, that's because it's pretty happy hour.
So I haven't had any beer yet.
So go get drunk, man.
Well, I will get drunk.
I'll have a beer.
That's a compromise.
Go get the slight buzz.
OK.
Drink it fast.
You know, drink it fast.
It's good beer.
You know, you get to savor it.
So anyhow, anyhow.
I know.
Goodbye, Jim.
It's been great talking with you, my friend.
Hey, Scott, thanks for having me on.
Good luck with everything.
And otherwise, keep raising hell.
Yeah.
Keep sending me all your articles.
Make sure.
Shall do.
Thanks.
All right.
All right, you guys.
That's the great Jim Bovard.
He wrote Public Policy Hooligan and also attention deficit democracy and freedom and chains and feeling your pain.
And all kinds of things like that.
Go look him up on Amazon and check out his great blog at Jim Bovard.
Dot com.
All right, y'all.
Thanks.
Find me at Libertarian Institute dot org at Scott Horton dot org.
Antiwar dot com and Reddit dot com slash Scott Horton show.
Oh, yeah.
And read my book, Fool's Errand.
Timed and the War in Afghanistan at Fool's Errand dot us.
