Chapters
Shownotes Transcript
A few years ago, we learned conclusively that, in fact, the FBI and the federal intel agencies, the dozen or more federal intel agencies we have for some reason, had been working secretly against Donald Trump's presidential campaign. Trump had whispered about this, then shouted about it, was roundly denounced as a conspiracy nut, a lunatic.
But in the end, he was vindicated. It was true. These agencies spied on Trump and they leaked some of what they'd learned to the media, which used it against Trump. Then these agencies concocted false stories about Trump. They tried to crush Trump completely in 2016 and then for the entire course of his presidency. Then they did the same thing in 2020 during the presidential election. And they're doing it still. They're trying to put him in prison for the rest of his life. So if you take three steps back, what you have here is what we're seeing now.
For the third time in three consecutive cycles, secretive federal agencies are trying to rig our presidential election. This is what the Democrats refer to as democracy, and they're trying to defend it. But of course, it's the opposite of democracy. It's in fact the end of democracy in any semblance of a constitutional republic we ever had. If you have a secret police force threatening people, spying on them, and working secretly the levers of political power,
then you don't have a democracy. You have no control over really anything as a voter. So if there's one thing the Republican Party, the opposition party, should be doing in response to this, right now, it's fighting back against this dissent into totalitarianism. They should be working to return freedom and democracy to the country. They should defend the Constitution. They should rein in these agencies, Washington's secret police. But you will not be surprised to learn they've been busy doing just the opposite.
So if you're wondering why no one has gone to prison for any of this now that we know what actually happened, well, the reason is in part a law called FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It's been around a long time. Teddy Kennedy first proposed it, by the way, back in the mid 1970s. And that law allows the federal government to spy without a warrant on foreigners outside the borders of the country. And the idea is bad people are doing bad things against us. We need to know what they are. And we can't bother to go to a court to get a warrant every time we want to know.
but it will never be used against American citizens. Well, of course, now that we know it has been at scale, but that law, FISA, has made it possible. So that law is now up for reauthorization in the House of Representatives. And amazingly, the new Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson of Louisiana, has spent the last couple of weeks doing all he can to get that law reauthorized. In other words, to
allow the federal agencies to continue to spy upon and punish people who disagree with them. In other words, Mike Johnson's own party, Republicans, Trump voters. Mike Johnson has been working to do that. And that effort failed today because members of Congress heard from their constituents or came to their senses, saw the truth in a dream. Whatever happened, they stopped Mike Johnson from doing that for the moment.
So that's a good thing, and you ought to be celebrating it, even if you didn't know it was happening. And a lot of people didn't because it got very little media coverage. But of course, this is a temporary victory. Like all bad things, like that chlamydia you got in a hot tub in Cabo in college, it will come back. This attempt to spy on you, an American citizen, without a warrant because you've been politically disobedient. Why will it come back? Because it's what they really care about.
And so before it does come back, it's worth just a very quick autopsy on what just happened. What did we just see? So we can learn a couple of important lessons. And the first lesson we're going to learn is that a lot of powerful people in the Congress are liars. They lie without shame, in fact, with pride, and they do so at the behest of or because of blackmail instituted by the intel agencies. And at the head of that list,
would be the chairman of the House Intel Committee, Mike Turner of Ohio. We're going to play a clip from Mike Turner of Ohio, saying exactly the opposite of what is true. Here is Mike Turner reassuring you that FISA would never, under the FISA law, the U.S. government would never be allowed to spy on you without a warrant because that's unconstitutional. It's never happened. It never will happen. And if you think otherwise, you're probably one of those UFO-believing nutjobs who want to stop doing ayahuasca.
Here's House Intel Committee pawn of the Intel agencies, Mike Turner of Ohio. They are. We're not surveilling foreigners in the United States. We're not surveilling Americans in the United States. Those individuals who say this is a warrantless search of Americans data are just not telling the truth. These are foreigners abroad. They're a select group of individuals who are a national security threat.
If you're an American and you're corresponding with ISIS, yes, if we're spying on ISIS, your communications are going to be captured. You would want us to do that. All Americans would want us to try to make certain that we keep ourselves safe from these outside terrorist groups and organizations.
We are not spying on Americans. This is not a warrantless surveillance program. This is foreigners who are abroad only. Every word of that, a lie. And we don't need to guess. And I hate to use that pronoun, but I specifically don't need to guess because that actually happened to me. The NSA broke into my text messages, read them, passed them to news organizations in order to discredit me.
And then admitted that they did that, admitted that they spied on me. And they did it under FISA because I was daring to text with a foreigner outside our borders. So Mike Turner knows that. He's the chairman of the intel committee. He knows he's lying, but he's doing it anyway because it's that important to preserve that core power. If you have the power to spy on someone,
And then to leak the information that you gather or manipulate it and then leak it in order to control that person, that's a major power. In fact, it's a bigger power than any voter in this country has. And so he's acting on their behalf when he lies to you. And so it shouldn't surprise you that they want to keep that power. And they want to keep it so badly that over the last week, U.S. government officials did something that may not have precedent in Washington. They lobbied
members of Congress directly. They, in the words they used in Washington, they whipped the bill. Officials from the Department of Justice called, among others, Chip Roy of Texas to demand that he vote for FISA reauthorization. Imagine that. DOJ, Department of Justice, the Federal Law Enforcement Agency called Chip Roy and said, you've got to do this. Think about that. Is there any group in this country more powerful than the Department of Justice? They can put you in jail.
and they've shown a willingness to do that, they could put kiddie porn on your computer. They've probably done that too. And everybody who serves in Congress knows that. And everybody's afraid of them, along with the CIA and NSA and a bunch of other three-letter agencies. Members of Congress are afraid of them because they know the consequences of disobedience. And so for them to call directly a member of Congress, they'd be like the FBI coming to your house on election day and demanding that you vote for their designated candidate. And then having access to the record of who you actually voted for.
as they do in the Congress. Can you imagine? You'd be highly motivated to vote for their candidate, wouldn't you? Yes, you would. So they're willing to do anything to get this enshrined in law because it gives them legal cover to subvert democracy, which is their program, of course.
And everybody knows it. Mike Johnson knows it. But he's not telling his conference that, his fellow Republicans. In a meeting today with his Republican conference on Capitol Hill, Mike Johnson said, you must vote for this and you must vote for it because America hangs in the balance. And if you had the intelligence that I've seen in my class side briefings, which you cannot see, you would know that it's your moral responsibility to vote for this. And by the way, if you don't vote for it, Americans will die.
Johnson didn't mention that the FISA law, warrantless spying, did not prevent 9-11 or the coal bombing or any major act of terror in the last 50 years, almost 50 years that we've had it. No, I mean, it's ridiculous on its face. But why is Mike Johnson saying this? Well, there are only two possible explanations. One is that he's just stupid and doesn't know and believes his intel briefers. Every person who has spent any time in D.C. knows the intel briefing, the classified intel briefing in the SCIF.
is merely a leash, it's a collar around your neck connected to a chain and the other hand is your handler from some federal agency with a black budget whose total you can't know. Of course, it's a way to control you, giving you information that you can't repeat to anyone else, that you have no way of verifying and telling you that if you don't go along with the program, Americans will die. Right, so he either doesn't know that that's the way things actually work in DC, oh, of course Saddam has weapons of mass destruction,
You want to get America vaporized in a nuclear attack? Invade, et cetera, et cetera. Many precedents for this. I mean, it's the oldest story there is. Either he doesn't know that or there's another agenda we can't know for certain. But consider this. Mike Johnson has been Speaker of the House for not very long, just several months now. He got the job accidentally. And in the time that he's had it, what have his priorities been? Well, there've been two big ones, two issues on which he's willing to call his fellow Republicans into the room and say, you have to do this.
The first one is Ukraine funding. And he's done that again and again. Either we send another $60 billion to Ukraine or he implies American soldiers will have to fight in Ukraine because we're going to prevent Putin from rolling into San Antonio or whatever. Of course, all untrue. In fact, ridiculous. But that's what he said, in effect. Ukraine funding has been his top priority. And his second...
This week was more warrantless spying on Americans. Well, what's interesting is that those are also Joe Biden's top priorities. Those are not the top priorities of Republican voters. They're not the top priorities of American voters. Look at the public opinion polling. It's available on Google. No, those are Joe Biden's priorities because both expand his power.
So what's interesting is that the Republican Speaker of the House shares those priorities, not closing the border. He didn't call his conference in to say, shut down the border tomorrow because 70% of Americans are demanding that and 100% of our own voters are demanding that. And that will save this country from certain destruction. He didn't say that. He said, the number one thing we need to do is continue to have the legal right to spy on
unconstitutionally on American citizens without bothering to get a warrant. And again, is it an accident that's Joe Biden's top priority too after Ukraine, which he's still pushing? We'll let you decide. But the bottom line is over time,
People who don't live in Washington don't know the complexities of the process, who aren't impressed by Johnson's claim. I've only got a one-seat majority. I have to do this. People are looking at this cold with just the big facts available will start to notice that the priorities of one party mirror the priorities of the other party. And they may ask themselves two questions. First, who's got my priorities top of mind? And second,
Why even bother with the Republican Party if all they're going to do is ratify what Joe Biden wants? And they may ask that question really soon. Let's hope they do.