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There are some significant developments coming out of the Middle East, as it appears, maybe potentially that a Gaza ceasefire may well be very close to having been negotiated. Joe Biden spoke about this yesterday. Let's take a listen to what he had to say.
Finally, coming into fruition, I've learned many years of public service to never, never, never, ever give up. So I spoke to Prime Minister Visual yesterday, I spoke to the Mirror Cutter today. I look forward to speaking with President CC soon. We're pressing hard to close this. The deal we have a structure would free the hostages, halt of fighting, provide security Israel, and allow us to significantly surge humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians who've suffered terribly in this war
that I'm aus started. They've been through hell. So many innocent people have been killed, so many communities have been destroyed. The Palestinian people deserve peace and the right to determine their own futures. Are deserves peace and real security, and the hostage and their families deserve to be reunited. And so we're working urgently to close this, dear, and as we deal with media challenges, in my view, we have to look to the future.
So Biden, they're trying to take credit for this potential deal. All indications are that he deserves no credit for this deal whatsoever. I want to come back to that because I want to talk a little bit about the outlines of what is at least being reported and what's being shared. The contours of this potential ceasefire deal is put see four up on the screen drop site. Our friends over there are doing incredible work as usual reporting this out.
They say.
A source close to negotiations tool Drop site that Hamas had accepted a final draft of the agreement with no new demands or proposed amendments, was waiting for Israel to accept the deal to local sources citing Egyptian sources are also reporting Hamas has agreed to the final draft.
In addition, Sager, there.
Was a draft of the agreement that has been reported at this point, and it looks pretty much exactly like the deal that was crafted back in you know, May June July. You'll recall Biden came out and gave a big speech, Oh, Israel has accepted this deal. We're waiting for Hamas to accept. That was always total, incomplete bullshit. In reality, it was always Israel and bb NET Yaho in particular that were throwing up new objections and trying
to change the deal. Hamas has long been willing to accept this deal, and now here we are, months later, many more people killed, devastated, having suffered more rubble, more destruction during all those months, coming back around to the very same deal. And you know, as I said, Biden here trying to take credit for a ceasefire deal that maybe is coming together in the final days of his administration.
But if we put put C three up on the screen, the reporting is that actually, really it was not Joe Biden that got this done. It was Trump's Mid East envoy who put the screws to net Yahoo and said, you're going to accept this Gaza plan and this is going to happen before Trump ultimately takes office. And there's
so much to say about this, Agura. I mean, first of all, just the utter pathetic nature of all of the lies and gaslighting and moral depravity of the Biden administration lying times, Oh, we're really being tough on nat Yaho, We're really trying, We're working day and.
Night to secure a ceasefire deal.
Bullshit, bullshit, Because when the US finally said no, this is going to happen.
Guess what.
Even though this is actually going to be politically difficult for Bibi and Nania and we'll talk about that more in a moment, guess what it's happening. Biden had plenty of leverage to use. Israel could not have pursued this genocide without the full support and backing of the United States of America. Biden was never willing to pull any aspect of that support, and so yeah, lo and behold, ceasefire didn't happen. Now, I will say, I think, you know,
BB wanted Trump to win. I think that there's long been a plan in place, basically to give Trump a ceasefire deal before he takes office. It is very reminiscent of like the Iranian hostage deal and Reagan coming in and having bat Chandel with him whatever. But that does not absolve Biden of culpability for having never been willing to put the screws to secure this outcome before this now very late day, after so much devastation and destruction
has occurred. So listen, there's a lot of questions still, it hasn't come to fruition yet.
There's a lot of question marks.
There's also a lot of question marks about what Trump is offering in return for securing the ceasefire deal. You know, the theories are probably He's going to allow them to annex settlements in the West Bank, or there could be a strike on Iranian nuclear facilities or some other significant goodie that he is trading in exchange for you know, getting this ceasefire before he takes office.
But again, the failures.
Of Joe Biden here are so incredibly manifest and so incredibly does.
That's what I would look at this as, is that actually Trump, ironically Biden's bear hug strategy was what by keeping him close, you can tell them what to do. I actually think Trump has successfully now pulled off the quote unquote bear hug by being more pro Israel than Biden, but then behind the scenes being like, hey, listen, man, you gotta wrap this shit up.
He's like, I don't want to deal with this while I'm in office.
And actually, this anecdote from the Israeli press is really interesting. It says Steve Whitkoff called from Qatar to tell Netanyahu he was coming to Israel the next afternoon. The aides have been trying to delay this whole thing because they don't want.
To do it.
We're like, oh, he's on the Sabbath, you can come later. Witkoff's quote blunt reaction took them by surprise. He explained to them in salty English, Shabat was of no interest to him. His message was loud and clear. Thus, in an unusual departure from official practice, the Prime Minister showed up at his office for an official meeting with Witkoff,
who then returned to Katar to seal the deal. That is very reminiscent of the Clinton quote like who's the effing superpower whenever he got off the phone with Israel. I mean, it just goes to show that when you do even put modest pressure here, was Trump ever really going to cut net and Yahua from arms. I don't think so. I don't think it would have been politically tenable for him. But I mean allegedly that's what he was threatening behind the scenes, or maybe they could screw
with him a little bit. I was reading that they have a lot of problems with jade m manufacturer and smart bombs, and that they have all these things they need to import from the US, and he's like, well, maybe you know the export license takes three to six months instead of what you know, the immediate fast track authority. The point is, even the modest amount of pressure here from the Trump team does seem to have put them, you know, much more closer to the finish line.
I mean two with Hamas.
The crazy thing about this deal is that, you know, in a lot of ways, Trump is reaping these benefits because this deal has not changed. It's the same deal. It's been on the table for months and months and months. It's always been there. Trump just had to come in and use a little bit of coercion and force. And one of the ways that we know that to be true is that the Israeli right wing is freaking out about this and is pissed off at Trump for forcing that and Yahoo to appear to take the deal.
Yeah, it seems to be the best.
Right And I think the other piece of this is, like, I mean, there isn't much more to destroy in Gaza. The idea that you were going to quote unquote, you
know fully annihilate Hamas was always fanciful. So you know, I think it's kind of run its course, and u BB has other goals in mind, like, for example, you know, it was reported that Miriam Maddison gave Trumpe hundred million dollars for his campaign in order for him to exchange back annexation in the West Bank, So you know, that may be the next the next move for the Israelis. So again, there's a lot to you know, let's not paint this like this is some moral victory or like
the pain for the Palestinians is ending. Here, there's still like a lot of question marks moving forward. But but you know, I think it's all obviously very clear that if Biden has taken a hard enough line and really been willing to put the screws to NETANYAHUO, this could have ended long ago and that will be his legacy. Like he oversaw a gem side in the Middle East, he ate and abted it, he shipped the weapons, he knew what was going on. They you know all this,
all these lies coming from the state to Para. We don't really know, and we're investigating, but you know better than we know how much devastation there's been, how many war crimes there have been, how just absolutely barbaric, these atrocities have been, and you have not only stood by and let it happen, you armed it, You pushed it forward, and you lied to American people effectively when you said you were working hard.
To because that's what the Trump thing really reveals. Yes, dude, I think I got elected two months ago. Yeah, even in office, it just does go to show with a pressure behind the scenes. I will say this is at least somewhat hopeful for makes me for Ukraine, that you will put some pressure here and actually.
Has now that one's going in the opposite dra You had Mike Waltz come out and say, actually, we want the Ukrainians to draft.
You know, I think that's a good idea because it makes the Ukrainian population be like, hold on a second, do we actually want.
To do that? Because now they have to decide.
It's like, oh, you can keep the war going, but you're gonna have to sacrifice all your war dead or all of your entire young generation who's not dead, or we can all make a deal and make.
This go away. These people can be alive. That's how I viewed it. I may be wrong, but see on that way.
Listen, you got to give him credit for this. You have to give the Trump I am. It's incredible. Yeah, because this just shows you it wasn't that hard the whole time. If any you know, we're just people on YouTube, okay, But at the very beginning, it's about a balance of power. There's a balance sheet about the amount of aid that's flowing in, how dependent the military is. Anybody can read
this spreadsheet. It's published by the State Department. We've been talking about it now for almost eighteen months, and the whole time we're like all you got to do is put a little bit.
Of pressure on them, as you've seen in the past. Yeah, it wasn't hard.
No, that's absolutely right, and it's less even like I don't think this was And I do think bb wanted to play ball more with Trump, wanted to give him this victory, There's no doubt about that. But the failure of the Biden administration here is absolutely undeniable and absolutely unforgivable as well in terms of the way that they've
comported themselves. And you know, like I said, we'll see how it comes together, and we'll also see what was given in exchange, because that's the other part that is going to be very important. But to your point, Soger, you know, domestically, there's a lot of questions about what this is going to look like for BB Net Yahoo. There was already kind of a freak out happening on Israeli television. Can put C two up on the screen.
I'll just read you a little bit of the translation of what is being said in this Hebrew language clip. If we can go ahead and play C two, they say this Net Yahoo proxy laments were the first to pay a price for Trump's election. The deal is being forced upon us. We thought we'd take control of northern Gaza, that they let us impede humanitarian aid as part of what is being said here. So a lot of upset among you know, right wing Israelis, of which there are
many about this, about this potential deal. Go to C five now and we can talk Schiel ben Efram, who we've had on this show, who's like a liberal Zionist. He lays out why he thinks that Bbe thinks he can survive this ceasefire with Trump's help. There are two parts to his strategy, says First, he's patted his coalition and make it Ben Gavier proof. Ben Gavier being one of the you know, basically terrorists that are in this coalition. Of course I think they're all terrorists, but anyway, put
that aside. Nayah, who successfully played divide and conquer between Ben Gavi and Smodridge, who are the two like most extreme parts of his coalition they hate each other, and is willing to stay if Ben gavere leaves. Netna, who also brought in Gideon Sar tore off a don roll from Yesha Tid and Al nog Co, and I don't know who these people are from ben Gavier. But anyway, he's saying divide and conquer between those two and now
he's got the numbers. Second, he's hoping to get help from Trump that will come in the form of one or more of the following normalization with Saudi Arabia, which Saudi is still holding to. It would require some at least track towards a two state solution. So I don't know if that one is coming, but we'll see an attack on the Iranian nuclear facilities or annexation of the settlements in the West Bank with American approval.
So that's what I was referring to before.
I think that is quite likely to occur, given what we know about Miriam Addelson's priorities. Then he will say to the Israeli people that he got the hostages back, defeated, Hesbela killed, Sinwar and Nosurala, that Lebanon and Syria now have new regimes, and will add the extra assets Trump adds. He will say the war was worth it for all
that that the Middle East is transformed. Many will agree his chances of survival are good, and Saguri you have to say, I mean you remember after October seventh, BB nine. Yaho's political goose was cooked. I mean, his approval rate was as low as it could be. People blamed him because he was mister Security. He was supposed to be the leader who would always keep the Israeli people.
Safe, and he failed in that.
October seventh occurs horrors, you know, traumatic horrors for the Israeli people, and his whole view of propping up Pamas in order to you know, again divide and conger between the West Bank and Gaza and make it make sure that since it was Hamas in control in Gaza, that he could always oh, there's no partner for peace. We'd love peace, but there's no partner for peace, so we can't possibly have peace negotiations. That strategy dramatically failed on
October seventh, and yet here he is. Here he is an absolute political survivor, having held on, having delayed any sort of investigation into the failures of October seven, because remember also they knew in advance, they had the insight into the plans.
In advance.
They had spotters who were there close to Gaza who were saying they're planning something big that they ignored.
They had moved some of the Ida forces up.
To protect their extremist thug settlers in the West Bank, leaving the people near Gaza very vulnerable.
The response on that.
Day chaotic, absolute catastrophe, disaster, and he forestalled all the questions on that pushed him out into the future again and again and again and now here he is still surviving and still likely to maintain his power in the state of Israel.
Absolutely unbelievable.
Yeah, no, it's pretty crazy.
I mean, he's survived, and you can always give him credit, I guess for that in being a survivor, but he does still have some interesting pushback inside of his own country. I genuinely wonder what's going to happen, because the release of all of the hostages basically allows the Israeli left to or whatever is reminiscent of whatever it is, to at least ask some big picture questions about the war and what it could return, maybe even too debates around
the settlers. I mean, remember there as a portion of Israeli society it's not pro settler. It's hard to believe, but it's actually true. There's a lot of debate, you know, inside of the country. Previously, some of that has been squashed now because of the ongoing war, but not only the war.
Is effectively over.
Now these big picture questions like do we want Gaza, do we want remember Syria, you know, which is currently happening, is actually reading behind the scenes too. The Trump people called Bibe and they're like.
Cool off. In Syria, They're like, go on, you can stop there.
But beyond that, like we don't need to go any further, because they also they were like, we don't need some war breaking out between the new Syrian government if you want to call that and the Israelis. They're like, maybe we just keep things where they are. So it's clear that at the very least are trying a containment strategy. Biden tried it too, But I think the key, the real lesson is America is still a superpower. Our power and our ability to course is immense when we want it.
It's actually stunning to see it be used again.
I've been waiting for this for a long time.
As you said, look, if you're some you know, pro Palestine person, you ain't gonna get what you.
Want out of this administration.
This is probably as good as it's ever going to be for you. Just just giving you a warning but the lessons that you guys tried during the Biden administration was correct.
American power is supreme.
It has the ability to compel any state, even Israel, to be brought to heal and to do what we want. Now, let's use this lesson for all other nations across the world, for Ukraine and for others, and to actually for our own benefit for once in a goddamn.
While, I wanted to also just a few details about this deal and what again, it hasn't been signed, sealed and delivered, so I want to, you know, reserve complete judgment. But based on what is being reported, it doesn't require Hamas to beyond of government, I mean effectively, like they did not destroy Himas and Hamas is very likely to take control on the Gaza strip.
Again.
So again Shiel, who is the liberal Zionists we've had on the show previously. He says the reason this happened that he says, the victory for Hamas is remarkable.
Those are his words. It is remarkable that all.
Of these previous red lines for Israel are being waived. The reason this happened is clear, he writes. Despite incredible victories on the battlefield, Israel has not offered a political program to replace himas or move to remove them from Gaza as a governing force. Is failed to translate IDF gains into political ones. That has in essence nullified all of its military achievements. So you know, after all of this horror, bloodshed, women, children being murdered, schools, hospitals, mosques,
churches destroyed. After all of that, Hamas is still going to be in charge. So which again, you and I could have told them on day one and tried to, but nobody listens to to us. So in any case, that's that's where things are ending up. There was one more PCR that I wanted to get to because now
that it's now that it doesn't matter anymore. Suddenly a few media organizations have gotten around to reporting on the horse that our government and our tax dollars went to fund in the Gaza strip put C eight up on the screen, so this is from sixty minutes. They interviewed a number of the people from the State Department who had resigned over our support of these hors. They interviewed this former US diplomat who said she documented images coming
out of Gaza for the State Department. Quote fragments of US bombs next to massacres of mostly children. Again, these people knew everything that was going on. They know more than we know about the horrors that were perpetrated here. And rather than doing anything to put pressure on Israel, and Jack lou admits in his it was the ambassador at Israel admits in his exit interview that we never really put any real pressure on Israel whatsoever. Instead, they
continue to green light these horrors. And this last one again, this is like a media commentary. This is again sixty minutes is part of this broader package that they do.
They have across the noun.
Decimated Gaza strip in America's mark is everywhere. In footage shot by CBS News in May, the ground is littered with US made ammunition casings, some used to prop up tens, others turned into playthings by children.
You had this footage in May.
Why are you only releasing it now that it doesn't matter now after the fact, when probably a ceasefire deal is you know, in the offing in the next possibly even today. You've had this since May and you said nothing, So I mean, I guess, like, good job for finally getting around to about these horrors, but could have been a lot more useful and a lot more important and a lot more courageous, by the way, back in May, when you actually obtained this footage, and you know you're
seeing a significant amount of this zager. I mean, there was a big New York Times report relatively recently that confirmed so reporting we covered a year ago coming out about the way Israel was operating in the Gaza Strip and how many civilian casualties they were perfectly comfortable with tolerating, and the way that they were using these power targets apartment buildings, hospital schools in order to try to inflict pain on explicitly on the civilian population in hopes they
would turn against some US. Finally confirming this reporting again at a time when it doesn't really matter all that much anymore, except for the announce of history, which I guess is theoretically better than nothing.
Yeah, theoretically better than nothing. I think that's a good way of putting in.
But nonetheless it's a crazy development and absolutely lots of lessons. We say, so the next time this whole thing breaks out, because we all know that's gonna happen.
Yeah, you know, I don't know I give it what three years. That's usually the cool off period.
I don't know that happened because I think I think they may go after the West Bank here pretty quickly. There's already indications of that.
But we'll see what they could.
But if they do, I mean, I hate to say it, but a lot of those people haven't been thrown out of there, right, you know, these settlers have already got moved in and made their territorially.
Yeah, so you know, is there even an ability to resist?
I think I think Ryan just did a story about the West Bank or drops I just did some story about the West Bank and resistance. Anyway, we'll cover it obviously, But the best thing is what the Trump people need to door and want to do. And this was always the case made to me by all these folks is they're like, look, you're not going to like a lot of us Rhetorically, they're like, but.
Trump has an anathema to conflict.
Uh.
And while yeah, you say a lot of things, but in general chaos, he especially understood during the Biden era how much that can sink from Afghanistan to Gaza to Ukraine, the ongoing chaos and the inability to wind these things up is actually very politically detrimental in a way I frankly would not have predicted in terms of how much people, when they want to, will pay attention to foreign affairs and at least absorb this feeling of everything has gone awry.
So Trump is probably going to try his best to keep that contained. Now, look, a lot of the enemy gets a vote, and not just the enemy, a lot of people get the vote. Hamas and all these other people can decide how they're going to absorb this.
You've got Ukraine and Russia.
Obviously they need to come to terms by themselves, even with significant amounts of pressure. There's so many different global problems that star are still out there. Who these There's a whole entire campaign that's happening. So anyway it will be I don't predict that things will be all rosy for the next four years, but I am at least heartened to see this.
One last thing to note is I reference this interview from Ambassador Jack lu who was the US ambassador to Israel, and not only did he say that now we didn't really try to stop them on anything, but he also says he thinks that this may have well sunk the both Biden and Kamala Harris in terms of ability to get reelected. He thinks that this could have been the political death Noel for them.
So I don't think that's true. I mean, you can make a case a small ye, conondering.
How close, considering how close it was. I think there's a relatively persuasive case. And you know, when we interviewed those like working class, like the people who voted for Trump and AOC, a surprising number of them talked about you know, war and peace and talked specifically about Gaza. So it's hard to say, but it's obviously noteworthy that this, you know, prominent US official. He at least thinks that this was responsible for sinking Biden and by extension, Kamala Harris.
That's certainly possible.
Should we get to the latest with take.
Now, I love this story for reasons. Let's go and put this up there on the screen.
China discusses sale of TikTok Us to Elon Musk as one possible option. This is from Bloomberg News and has now been actually confirmed by the Wall Street Journal. And what is amazing about this story, Crystal, is I think that there is something for everybody is one. Of course Elon is involved too. Why is Elon involved because he is a very very close relationship to the Chinese government because of his Tesla Giga Shanghai Tesla is one of
his heavily reliant on China for batteries for minerals. Elon himself has said a lot of very questionable things about the CCP in the past, So they're assuming that they can play ball. But here is my personal favorite line in these stories, Crystal. The Chinese government has not communicated with Byteedance about the contingency plans. It has considered as in byte Edance, you have no say who you're getting
sold to. If you do get sold, you will be sold Toever China decide that you will be sold too, kind of validates the reason why I think it should be banned, doesn't It is that they have literally zero control over their own corporate affairs. And in fact, byte Edance replied and commented on the story and was like, we have no comment on this supposed fiction, and it's like, guys, it has nothing to.
Do with you. That's what you don't seem to get.
The reason why the Chinese are considering selling to Elon is two birds with one stone.
They've already got Elon.
They have him, you know, in terms of their ability to put pressure and control on him. The Chinese not no, but I mean the thing is, the vast majority of his wealth is in Tasla.
Tesla is a huge player in China, even.
Though they have filed a huge factory there.
It's one of their biggest producers. And in fact, while those Tesla's are banned from the United States, they are already being sold as far as Canada, right here in North America, all across the European Union, which don't have as strict export controls. Giga Shanghai is a tremendously important to the company. That's just manufacturer batteries, the stuff that goes into the Tesla, almost one percent reliant of all of the technology actually so the actual battery, the lithium,
of the minerals, all of the refining. I forget the name of the company starts with a C. The major battery manufacturer that is Chinese is heavily is a big supplier.
To the point is is that is very.
Very reliant on the Chinese government, and he has met with them many times He even has I think a wee bo account or whatever it's called in Chinese social media, being like happy Birthday to the CCP, which he is posted.
In the past. I've done a monologue. You can go watch it. So they have a good relationship with Elon. Two.
Elon is a close ally of Trump. Trump wants to save TikTok. So who do you sell it to? You sell it to Elon? You know, kind of a vassal of the king somebody if you think back to aristocracy, No Geniusly, listen, you can say a lot about these people. They're smart, they know they understand our country much better than we understand our country. There's I've played that famous speech before, the Chinese professor being like, you think we don't know how to control Hunter.
Biden, you know, talking about that.
Yeah, but when you play the long game and you don't have to get elected, it's easy. What you can see from this is that they have decided a specific way to get out of this is to curry favor with Trump, curry favor with their oligarch, the richest man in the United States, who they already have significant control over, and use those two to do what we can see on TikTok, which at the end of day, TikTok is worthless to China, and in exchange we get what.
A nice little deal on tariffs.
Maybe we say that this is a big gesture to Donald Trump to Elon, we curry all this political favor, and maybe we get Elon to stop posting certain types of things about wigers or whatever.
Oh, who knows.
Maybe we do a little bit of China Taiwan trading and all of that. And I honestly think that you have to give them credit. It's smart, you know, for they what they do. They saw this, They're just going to tell by dance what to do. By Dance has zero say over its own affairs. But by facilitating said sale,
they already know Elon has Twitter. They also know that if anybody has the amount of wealth and the ability to tap hundreds of billions of dollars in credit lines if needed, as long as a network of wealthy friends to buy TikTok, they may even sell it to him at a loss. They don't care about the money, because let's say they sold it to him for a hundred billion and it he saves, and then Trump gives them a favorable tariff rate, they save what six hundred billion
a year? There's nothing to you know, TikTok is just a pawn in all of this, So honestly is a genius solution.
We really do have to hand it to him.
I mean, and we'll see if it haven't.
Obviously, like you said, TikTok says, it's pure fiction, blah blah blah.
Right, but they have no, No, they don't know because they don't even control their own company. This guy, the Singaporean or whatever he works for, the guy in the byte dance like, he doesn't even he's a subsidiary of his own company.
And then that company is a.
Subsidiary in foreign policy arm of the Chinese government. So the labyrinthian way that this all works is just always so hard to explain to a Western audience because it's so foreign.
In Asia, this is very common.
Like Samsung is an extension of the Korean government, Toyota is an extension of the Japanese government. Yeah, they're free your society's but it's still like this here.
I mean, look, you.
Can say what you want about Apple, Facebook or whatever, the level of the gap between the two is just way bigger even if it's closer than Yeah.
Yeah, for sure, for sure. But I'm just saying, like it's not a done deal. So we'll see if it comes to fruition. But I mean the other piece of this is like it just makes Elin.
Even more powerful.
Already he is a rich man on the planet, which means that you inherently have tremendous power. He has obviously the most influenced in the Trump administration of any other actor, and including has kind of like come up against has already gone to war with the Magabase, and one has already you know, gotten his priorities realized through Spike in that spending deal that had restraints on in high tech investment.
In China that was important to him. He got that stripped down.
So he has won every battle in terms of the Trump administration thus far. We'll see where it goes from here. So he has that going form. He owns Twitter, which has continues to be extremely influential both obviously now it's like the beating heart of the like Maga Republican movement, but it also continues, I think, to be incredibly influential in terms of elite opinion and understanding of political trends.
I think it's probably an undersold factor, to be honest with you, in some of the sort of like you know, more maga receptivity shift.
Among a lot of elites.
I mean, number one, they're looking out for Okay, we don't want to be thrown in prison, we don't want our contracts canceled, et cetera, et cetera. But also if you're taking in the conversation on Twitter, you're assessing if if you're extrapolating that to how the country feels at large, Well, Twitter is a very right wing space now, so that's going to impact how you view the opinions of the
country at large. So he owns Twitter, and now if you own TikTok as well, like the app among young people, and you're able to influence like twitterify what's going on there as well and boost your own brand and your
own self interests, et cetera. Like that is a colossal amount of power to be vested in one unelected individual, and you know, so his like the previous hawkish orientation towards China, I would be skeptical that that continues under the Trump administration this time around, because it does not serve Elon's interest obviously was very important to him to get to win in this H one B fight. Appears that he has one in that H one B fight. It's certainly any sort of like you know, contracts that
he wants for his companies whatever. He's already a massive government contractor these regulatory fights that he's engaged in with various federal crubent agencies. I'm sure those are all going to go away. Concerns from the SEC about market manipulation, from the Labor Department about discrimination, all of those about from the NLRB about union bus, all of those things are going to be gone.
Like he really is going.
To have both tremendous political, financial, and cultural power. He already does, but TikTok would just further expand the amount of power that this one individual would have. There's one person in the MAGA movement who is not taking this line down. Yes, sucker, Steve Bannon put this up on the screen from USA today. They had all the juicy quotes from Steve Bannon, who didn't interview.
This was in like an.
Italian newspaper, I think, which is why we don't have like a video of him saying it.
This was all.
In the context of that interview, he calls Elon Musk an evil guy and vows to stop his influence over Trump. Good luck with that in any case. Let me read you some of these juicy quotes. He says before, because he put money in, I was prepared to tolerate it, referring to the two hundred and fifty million dollars must contributed in the twenty twenty four campaign to help Trump's election,
I'm not prepared to tolerate it anymore. Which let me just pause there and say, I don't know what you thought you were getting, buddy, but no one puts in two hundred and fifty million dollars and thinks they're getting nothing out of it. And Elon's ideology was very easily ascertainable before this moment. So I don't know what you thought you were getting in this deal, but anyway, this
was entirely predictable. He goes on to say, not only is he a truly evil guy, I will take this guy down, He says, I will have Elon Musk run out of hereby inaugeration day. I doubt it before, and then he goes on to say the thing about the money. Then he says he should go back to South Africa. Why do we have South Africans the most racist people on earth, White South Africans making any comments at all on what goes on in the United States.
We've seen peak el on.
His intrusive nature, is lack of understanding of the true issues, and quite frankly, is support of just himself. The sole objective is to become a trillionaire. That's his objective is aggregation of wealth and then through wealth power, That's what he's focused on. The American working people in this country are not going to tolerate it.
I don't know. They seem likely tolerated certainly.
Yeah, I was like, by the way, Lelon is enormously popular with the Republican Party. Sorry.
He also expanded on some of this in video. Let's take a listen.
He's got a glass draw he can't take because of the I don't know, the autism worries on the spectrum. He's clearly not He's got the maturity of a loven year old, you can tell that, but he's it's obvious he can't take criticism. One of his weaknesses is that he needs to be loved. He needs the masses to love him. You can tell he's on the stage. He needs that glory. This is to have a digital ghetto
and to only have raised up what praises him. That that's the that's the that is like the little boy's mentality. If I want to be the superhero, I want to put the cape on and kind of skip around. You see this a lot in Danbury. These what they call Chomo's, what they call the these sex offenders. They've got this meant they've had a maturity level that has stopped and they want to you know, they want to be They all watch the movies that have the Cape Crusaders on there.
Wow, very powerful.
Here Steve Bannon expand on his experience in federal prison. But the danference to Danbury's in Connecticut, it's a I think it's a low security facility where they also house sex offenders.
So for context, that's where that comes from.
Also, Yeah, Vivek Ramaswami has not been heard from in quite a long time. Let's put this up there on the screen. This was his last tweet January third, twenty twenty five. It is currently January fourteenth, the day that we are filming this he's been completely disappeared from doze, tweets, from mention.
In the press.
This is a guy who probably I mean, what should we say. He's been tweeting NonStop for I want to say four years.
I would say, yeah, that's probably right.
It's crazy. I've not even baked for a long time.
Way before he was every cultural conversation. I mean, he's a he's a pro at like getting attention, getting to sell for some Fox News and selling his book and some Fox News.
Brand wrote his book in twenty twenty one. I still have the dms like it could have come on your show to talking about book and uh, the anti woke book. Yeah, exactly vague. It's been a while and heard, uh. And he's a poster. He's look, you gotta give it to him. He's smart, and he posted his way to name recognition and a significant, you know, presence in the Republican Party. You have to respect that to a certain extent. But a huge part of that was Twitter and elite conversation.
Is wealth, the stunts, cultivating his relationships, et cetera.
And he has been unheard. Come nobody has heard from him.
I genuinely it might be one of the longest stretches in the last four years that he has not tried to insert himself in the conversation, especially for somebody who loves and craze attention so much, so it's pretty extraordinary that nobody has. And look, there could be problems between him, and there could be problems between him and Elon, right, but from from the previous posts that he's made, there could be problems that are happening in terms of him
causing the shutdown. Previously people got really really upset with him and Elon over that Elon is too powerful, So maybe they take out the vig. Maybe Trump just called him and was like, hey, you're done. You're not posting anymore.
But nobody knows what it is, so we'll see matt lestweated.
Imagine being a month from power and you blow your career up with a rant about the phrenology of Save by the Bell.
You know. Okay, so I don't watch Save by the Bell. I've never seen the show.
But apparently the character who he said he didn't like actually got a higher says back, I didn't know that.
That is like, okay, you got to not like dad?
Is like, no, I've watched it's like the you know, start of a nerdy, dorky like kind of goofy character, and so he was saying like, oh, we should be lionizing screech.
But yeah, if you know you're saved by the bell lore. You know that Zach actually got like a.
Fifteen hundred on his destib I did not or whatever anyway, whatever, it was stupid that he called white people lazy and now they disappeared.
The party effectively.
My read is that he's effectively taking the.
Fall for Elon.
Yes, you know that Trump was probably irritated by this whole fracas in his coalition. He didn't like it, and so he's really I mean, this is all I'm just speculating, but I suspect he looked at this post for me from the VACAN was like, what the hell are you thinking about with this, because it really did, you know, putting all of the like policy debate aside. Like Trump's whole thing is he realigned the Republican Party towards a non college educated base centered around the white working class.
And now that screed from the VAC is.
Like a direct indictment of white working class culture. I mean, if Hillary Clinton tweeted something like forget about it, like they would be meltdown, everyone would be so enrayed blah blah blah, and so big does that And now, yeah, he hasn't really been heard fro him, So it is kind of funny just to go back quickly with a Bannon Musk war. Like, as I said before, that war for Bannon has already lost.
It was lost when that deal was made.
For all the money to go into the Trump campaign, like Elon was going to get what he wants out of this administration. And I think there's a Bannon is an ideological person, right. He has a very structured, thought out worldview that he is relatively consistent in applying. The only way he's really not consistent in applying it is when Trump fails him. There's never any smoke for Trump. It's only for you know, the people around Trump who always mislead him.
It's never Trump's fault, blah blah blah blah blah.
But he has a well thought out ideological worldview. And I think he assumed that the maga Bass really you know, I'm not talking about like the online influence. I'm talking about the random rank and file people throughout the country voted for Donald Trump right that they were similarly ideologically driven, And I just don't think that's true.
I mean not to say that there aren't some.
Like desires of policy impetuses, but at the end of the day, what we've seen with Trump is it doesn't matter where he is on an issue.
What matters is.
People will support him wherever he is on the issue. I mean, the thing he said, he understood it far better than Steve bannoned it when he said I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and they would still support me.
The only area where I've.
Ever seen the base pushback on Donald Trump is around vaccines.
Yeah, that's true.
That's really the only area.
And the one person that gots really spiked outside of Matt Gates, which was like that's kind of a separate story, but the one person who got spiked by the MAGA base in terms of this confirmation process with some sheriff who had done like COVID lockdown.
Oh yeah, yeah, Fordea, that was the one that there was a real like grassroots we aren't going to have this guy shut down churches during COVID, Like that's the one area where I've seen Trump be pushing on the base on everything else.
Like his main accomplishment in this first term was a tax cut for the rich. It wasn't looking out for the working class. There's been so many on TikTok, he totally changes his colors. It doesn't matter. On you know, on crypto, he totally changes his colors. It doesn't matter. There's no backlash at any of that. It wasn't even on H one b Right, this is as core to the Trumpest view of the world as it could possibly be about foreign workers coming in taking American jobs, blah
blah blah. He sides with Elon. Has there been a mass Backlashicut No, No.
Not at all.
Few online influencers and they buy and large by the time he weighed in, shut their mouths and got with the program too. So if you're expecting some sort of grassroots maga revolt against Elon and you know, in favor of some ideological version of Trump, like, don't hold your breath, it's not coming. It's never happened in the past, it's not gonna happen now. Outside of this one narrow thing of the way they feel about Zachon.
I don't disagree with any of that.
I do think that Bannon, to the extent that he could be successful, is only in whispering. And Trump's he or Trump does seem to trust him. You know, he likes him, they talk on the phone, etc. But you know, Ben is just going to be doing a show. He's not going to be in the White House or even in the way that he was in the first term. He can cry his best, but he's only one of a variety of side characters.
So there we go.
All right, We've got Matt Stoller standing by to talk about Mark Zuckerberg.
Let's get to it.
So we are very pleased to be joined this morning by our great friend Matt Stiller, who writes the big substack or yeah, big newsletter over there on Substack, That's what I'm trying to say, and also as a researcher at the American Economic Liberties Project.
Great to see you, my friends.
Good to see you man, Hey, thanks thanks for having me.
So we saw Mark Zuckerberg on the Joe podcast saying some very interesting things and immediately thought the person that we want to hear from on this is Matt Stoller.
Specifically, he he made.
Kind of a similar move to Mark andresen of let me talk about some like cultural things that I think will resonate with the Republican like conservative base, and let me go ahead. And then you turn into trashing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and any other agencies that are trying to come after and regulate my businesses.
Let's take a listen to a little bit of how that went.
They want us to take down this meme of Leonardo DiCaprio looking at a TV talking about how ten years from now or something, you know, you're going to see an ad that says, okay, if you took a COVID vaccine, your eligible you know, like for this kind of payment. Like so this sort of like class action lawsuit type meme. And they're like, no, you have to take that down. We said, no, we're not. We're not actually take down humor and satire. We're not going to take down things
that are that are true. And then at some point, I guess, uh, do it flipped a bit? I mean Biden when he was he gave some statement at some point, I don't know if his press conference or to some journalists where basically was like, these guys are killing people and and and I don't know then like all these different agencies and branches of government basically just like started investigating coming after our company.
It was it was brutal.
It was brutal, and we had organizations that were looking into us that were like not really involved with social media, Like I like the CFPB, like this financial I don't even know what it stands for. It's the it's the financial organization that Elizabeth Warren had set up. Oh great, and it's basically it's like we're not a bank that yeah, so we're not a bank, right, It's like like what
what does meta have to do with this? But they kind of found some theory that they wanted to investigate, and it's like okay, clearly they were trying really hard, right to like find find some theory. But it like, I don't know, it just it kind of like throughout the the the party and the government, there's just sort of I don't know if it's I don't know how this stuff works. I mean, I've never been in government.
I don't know if it's like a directive or it's just like a quiet consensus that like we don't like these guys, they're not doing what we want.
We're going to punish them.
Probably the most.
The part of that that irritates me the most is him playing dumb like he doesn't know what the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is. But in any case, Matt, if you could break down what he had to say there and what you think he's really up to.
Yeah, so.
It the whole thing is, it's one of these things where there's it's so there's so much dishonesty packed it as such a short amount of time, it's hard to
convey it. But like, let's just start with the timing. Okay, So Mark Zuckerberg is pretending that he doesn't know anything about banking regulation and that the only time that he encountered it is when you know, they were scuffling with the Biden administration over COVID speech and then all of a sudden, this random bureau that he's now ever heard of when after him. Okay, So one of his first early major hires was Cheryl Sandberg and she worked at Treasury.
Right she was Larry Summers's chief of staff at Treasury, and he hired her.
Explicitly because of that.
He said, he said, Facebook is more like a government than a business. We're really setting policies.
That's why we're.
Hiring Cheryl Sandberg. I don't know why people forget about this, but Facebook tried to launch a currency.
Can you remember that?
Oh yeah, yeah, he all covered it together.
Yeah yeah, yeah, I mean like I mean we yeah, it not hidden. Right.
Mark Zuckerberg testified before the banking committees in Congress, right, I mean he's testified before the committee saying, here are all the things we want to do with our payments with our new currency system. And he defended him himself and said that these are all of the things we're doing with regulators. And this is during the Trump administration, and the Trump administration killed Libra, which was the currency system, right, So it's not like this stuff's started under Biden. It
started way before Biden, way before COVID. And they have a money transfer licenses in states, I think forty nine out of fifty states, and they've had them for years. They have a system called Meta pay, they have a payment system. They want to become a payments network, and they are a payments network and they've been regulated.
That way for a long time.
So Mark Zuckerberg knows about that, and he's just pretending otherwise.
So that he can frame himself.
As a as somebody who's currying favor with Trump, just like in twenty twenty, twenty twenty one he was trying to curry favor with Biden by pretending to be progressive. He doesn't care about any of this stuff. He doesn't care about censorship, he doesn't care about He cares about policy concessions that he wants from the government.
And I can go into a list of those policy concessions.
But like, what this guy is standing for is himself and making more money, and that is that's really all he That's really all he wants. And to do that at this point, with so much money and power that he has, he needs favors from the US government.
That's what he's trying to get from Trump.
What I was really interested is to see is you know, he really is a weather vein in some respects. So he follows the Twitter decision to take down Donald Trump after January sixth. Previously in the twenty twenty election, he donates all this money to kind of pro democratic causes. He has now reversed DEI in his com Actually, I think we have that tweet. Can we put it up
there on the screen. All of the things that Meta and Mark Zuckerberg have done now in the last week or so, brought back political content and to d hired a MAGA com staffer, elevated Joel Kaplan, got rid of fact checking, donated to the Trump inauguration, added Dana White to his board of directors, goes tomorro a Lago, goes to Rogan, and we have all of these things.
He moves to Texas with him my views in some ways the.
While yeah, moving the content moderation and takes, which is equally hilarious. All of that tells us what is that this is a person who is trying to curry favor with the incoming administration. You just talked about the actual political concessions, but let's get into that because we have these slawsuits that are going on against Mark Zuckerberg, against Meta, We have many Republican ags and others which have now longstanding legal theories and cases against this company.
What do they have.
To lose if things don't go their way under a second Trump administration?
You know, So as you were talking, I just remembered something else which I think will really take it.
Out of the partisan to the partisan context. You remember a while back when.
Mark Zuckerg was trying to get into China and he asked Jijingping, the president of the leader of China, to name his firstbornshaw.
I do remember that?
Yeah, right?
I mean, so this is not like a guy that has strong principles, right, this is a guy like or at least he does. But they're about, you know, promoting Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook's interest or Meta's interest, whatever they want to call it. So what does Mark Zuckerberg, what does Facebook actually want? Facebook has a number of legal problems.
The first is the there's an anti trust suit that the Trump administration brought in twenty twenty and Mark Zuckerberg has called the anti trust an existential threat to his company, right, and that will go to trial in twenty twenty five. Google lost a kind of similar case and is likely to lose another one. So Mark Zuberger knows that he could be in a lot of trouble and he wants that to go away. He wants the Trump administration to
settle that. There's also a you know, remember the Cambridge Analytica scandal where they got fined by five billion dollars by the Trump administries. The Trump FTC, so they continue to violate their promises to the government. And finally the Federal Trade Commission said, you can no longer track children, right,
you can't advertise to children, use it targeting advertising. And when you release new products, you have to get prior approval because you have consists distantly violated your promises to the government like three or two or three or four times, and they are in a big legal fight over that.
That would be a huge problem for them. And because they want to advertise to children, because it's good business to addict children, and uh so they want that to go to go away, right, That's that's another thing that they want.
They also Meta pay right.
They want to become a big you know, payments network, and Mark Zuckerberg talked about that that's part of the VR strategy, the augmented reality strates. It's part of what they you know, making the world more open and connected. They that is what he talked about partly on Joe Rogan.
That involves finance, so he's going to be regulated by the financial regulators, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau implemented a new rule to treat companies like Meta in Google and Amazon and other companies that have big payment networks to treat them like banks because that's what they're operating. Like, if you are handling someone's money, then you should be traded like either a bank orancial utility or a credit rating agency like that's you know that the that's all
financial regulations. So they want that to go to way. Another example of something that Mark Zuckerberg needs is he has been training their AI model on illegally downloaded content. He personally gave the order to train on content that
was downloaded via illegal means. And so they want certain changes to copyright law so that they can continue to expropriate content from people who make copyright and material, including us, right, I mean this is all copyrighted material, and train their AI audit so they can replicate our styles and systems
and make money off of that. Some of the things he wants are not bad, right, Like he's really mad at Apple over the thirty percent app charge and the government has an anti trust case against Apple partly over that, so he would want that to continue.
You. And then the.
Other thing that he's been asking for is for the government to the US government to protect Facebook when they go abroad, so there's a lot of foreign entities that are regulating Facebook and Meta and WhatsApp like communication systems. Right, your domestic communication system, you're going to be regulated by that domestic government. And so he wants Trump to protect Facebook from rules around you know, whatever foreign company countries are trying to get.
And sometimes that's not great. Sometimes it is great, you.
Know whatever, but it's like, look, if you're operating in a foreign country, you have to obey their laws. And Mark Zuckerberg wants the US government to put pressure on foreign countries that are imposing laws that prevent him from making more money.
There's a lot of.
Other things that they want as well. There's an H one V visa thing. You know, they have a lot of visa engineers. They've been violating labor law on that. There's kind of a ton of stuf that they want. But effectively, at this point, Metta is a creature of policy, and so what he has to do to continue to grow or even to not be constrained or not have his company broken up, is to capture the policymakers.
And so that's what he's trying to do.
That's what he's always try to do, whether it's China, whether it's the progressives and Democrats, whether it's people all over the policymakers all over the world, whatever it is, that's just who he is and what he's trying to do.
Last question for you, Matt, what role is Rogan serving in this? Because he just had obviously Zuckerberg, and he had Elon Muskon recently, had Peter teal On recently. We talked to you previously about Marc Andreesen, who also took him specifically at CFPB and some of the way that he portrayed the CFPB clearly had landed with Rogan because he kind of reiterates that view to Zuckerberg and said, oh yeah, Elizabeth Warren's agency that does the banging, which
is just like total incomplete bullshit. But in any case, what role is Rogan serving? Why are they feeling like this is the place to go and try to effectively fleece the magabase and convince them that their cultural goals are in line with happen to line up with these companies financial interests.
Yeah, I I mean it's kind of sad. I have been a like, I like listening to Joe Rogan. He's he's a really good interviewer. I like, you know, I've listened to him for years. Not you know, I'm not a religious devotee or anything, but I listen to him sometimes and I like, I like him. He's a he's a cool interviewer. It's not annoying. He's generally been open minded. But what has been disturbing or you know, it's just kind of like maybe how he's going is that he's
just become essentially like a new Rushlan Ball right. And it isn't that he's a partisan Republican, although he's kind of you know, most a lot of the guests he's invited on or you know, even when they're cultural, he sometimes pushes them on poultics. It's not that he's a partisan Republican, though, It's that he's taken the kind of Wall Street, big business, big tech part of the Republican apparatus as opposed to the kind of right new right Josh Hawlly sort of JD Vance approach.
Right.
He's not suspicious of corporate power.
Although he says, you know, he is, and then he has Mark Zuckerberg on and doesn't really challenge him, and has Mark Indriesen on and has elon musk On and just is like, Oh, the big problem is the regulatory agency that's trying to stop poor people from like being scammed.
By overdraft fees.
Except he says it's you know, they're engaged in censorship,
which isn't true. And it's just like sad to watch that because there is this really interesting populist part of the GOPM and you guys were just talking about it, and yet Rogan has kind of moved away from that, and so to me, it's it feels very much like listening to Pravda, Like just it just kind of it, you know, it just kind of sucks to be like, oh, this guy used to be really good and now you're like you're getting sort of weird lies from him about
you know that are coming from Wall Street billionaires.
Yeah, I would, I look love Joe obviously we've been on the show. I think a lot of it is just the tech people themselves are skilled at this, and if you're not equipped with the backstory, as you and I just discussed. We know about Libra, the xijingping thing, that's longtime low for anybody who's been covering the ins and outs of Facebook or of Mark Zuckerberg and his
various shifts in the winds. It's easy to be convinced, you know, if somebody has come to you and like, oh, well they wanted us of a sensor, a vaccine thing, and then they investigated our company, it's like, well, the investigation started in twenty nineteen, actually under the Donald Trump.
You know, DJ. These are all the key backstory. But we appreciate you coming on as well. Matt. We love you and we'll see you again soon.
Court to see Matt, thank you, thanks for having me.
Joining us now is James Fox.
He is the director documentarian with a new film out called The Program. He previously has done Moment of Contact, The Phenomenon, I know what I saw out of the blue, Moment of Contact, a personal favorite of mind. We've got a trailer and then we're going to be talked to James himself. Let's take a listen.
In twenty seventeen, The New York Times.
Published a story exposing a secret government program investigating UFOs.
That story was kind of a catalyst for a lot of things that have happened since Members of Congress started to ask.
Questions instruments report there is something there.
There are flight characteristics that we can't explain.
UAPs are unexplained. It's true, they need to be investigated. Here we are.
Having a hearing where just a few years ago we didn't even acknowledge that these things were real.
Do you believe that our government is in possession of UAPs?
Absolutely?
Based on interviewing over forty witnesses over four years.
You're telling me people have come forward claiming first hand knowledge.
Of of non human origin.
That's correct.
So, James, you've exposed a lot of new information in this documentary, just as if you have in the past. I was in the room for that hearing. Was a really exciting moment. Just tell us a little bit about why you decided to make this film after previous ones about specific incidents and some of the big things that you learned.
So thanks for the intro.
I did the phenomenon, The natural progression was the program.
Because the phenomenon hinted at crash retrievals. We went into Roswell, but then I took a break and I focused on an alleged UFO crash case that happened in Virginia, Brazil in nineteen ninety six, and ultimately made a film about it called Moment of Contact, and the allegation is half the town has heard about it, that a UFO crashed and that live aliens were captured, and ultimately the United States flew in And that was an aspect that I'd learned,
and on my last trip to Brazil, I investigated the case over twelve years with a partner, Marco Leal who's Brazilian, and a number of other folks. And so my natural progression was, Okay, now that I'm pretty sure the Americans were involved in this crash retrieval, I'm I'm gonna go to Washington, DC, and I'm going to investigate like because the case goes cold. Once the United States Air Force plane took off from a place called Campinas and back
to the United States. And we have the Brazilian control flight control officer who went on the record just recently publicly describing that United States called it USAF United States Air Force plane that flew back to the States.
The case went cold.
But little did I know five months after I released a Moment of Contact, there would be a high level intelligence officer testifying under oath to a bipartisan group of lawmakers that we have a crash retrievent program and that biologics were So he opened the door for me, and so that made it a lot easier for me to ask those those questions that I never in my thirty year career thought I'd be asking city members of.
Congress do we have aliens? Do we have recovered flight and saucers?
You know, you'd think they would be asking me to up the doses of the medication that I'm not on.
But but that's what that's where we are right now.
And then you look at the legislation that's been written in the NDAA for twenty twenty three and twenty twenty four, it's right there in.
Black and white.
You're exactly right to trouble crash.
Retrieval materials potentially, and uh, you know legacy program. So it's we're living in unprecedented times right now.
James, What about the contours of the program were you able to uncover?
I've been down this rabbit hole now for years.
One of the most frustrating things I get from fans and others is so like, you guys, tell us it exists, but we only know things on the edges, the crumbs and others. You've done the best job in your film of actually bringing everything that we know to light and what can you give away to us, what can you tell the audience.
I would say that one of the the aspects of the film that's jaw dropping a slack job. I think it's the exact terminology that was used. There is a high level government official correspondence with former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Christopher Mellen that he shared He eventually went through the Dopster process of pre publication approval, and it's a correspondence between a high level government official.
Now in the film, it's got some redactions, but it has the actual name of the gatekeeper to the crash retrieval program, and that unredacted version was given to select members of Congress, and I'm told people at Arrow, so John Koskolowski theoretically would have the name of the gatekeeper, certainly in twenty twenty of the crash retrieval program.
And I think that's an aspect it's huge.
I mean that means that there are members of Congress that have the name of who's.
In charge of this crash retrieval program or the gatekeeper.
Right, we have a gatekeeper, We have a name, and it is a frustrating process.
But that's government.
It takes a huge effort to make a to reveal a huge secret. That's something that I always say, James, with respect to your film, you spent a lot of time here in Washington. What was the receptivity the bipartisanship on this issue?
Where you heartened by it?
Are you excited about what may be come from the next administration?
I am unbelievable.
It's so refreshing to see a bipartisan group of lawmakers working together for the American people. It's like, oh, thank you, this is such a breath of fresh air.
Let's continue this. Who knows that it took you.
Know, so called aliens to get us to unite and work together. But I would like to say it's very exciting. Some people feel like things aren't moving fast enough. I'll remind you of someone who's been investigating these field. I've
made six documentaries over the last thirty years. We've had three congressional hearings where we've had people testify under oath about the reality of the phenomenon, two people separately, one twenty twenty three David Grush and another one in twenty twenty four, Luel A. Zondo testify under oath to a group of bipartisan lawmakers that we have a crash retrieval program. I'm reminded what Cindra Rounds just recently said. I was there, I filmed it. He said, I know, things feel like
they're moving slowly. I feel the frustration things aren't happening fast enough. We're not getting enough answers. I'll remind you that we are not running one hundred yard dash. This is a marathon. Stick with us. Can both continue providing support to this bipartisan group of lawmakers and let's get to the bottom of it, because the implications are global and so profound that we owe it to ourselves to continue the support.
James, while I have you, one of the things that has captured the nation's attention was this new Jersey drone quote unquote incident, and I'd be curious for your thoughts, not necessarily about the incident itself, but in the context of what you and I know from studying this issue, which is that we have had longtime incidents of unidentified craft being and interfering with US military installations. Some of the video and other I know you talk about some
of this in your show. I think the nineteen ninety four incident Ellis Air Force Base, and I'm curious if you could just shed some light about the patterns that we've seen now over the last seventy five years in the United States and how this might fit into that well.
I'd say a very good case would be the two consecutive weekends in July of nineteen fifty two where you had incursions by these so called orbs uap UFOs. We had military jets scrambled. It was on the front page of every newspaper across the country two consecutive weekends, and we scrambled military jets intercept these things.
They flew rings around US.
I covered this extensively in the film of the Phenomenon, But that was nineteen fifty two. I mean, they had one of the biggest press conferences with General John Sandford at the time, who basically came forward back in nineteen fifty two. I have to keep saying that it said, yeah, there's something really inexplicable going on.
It's not us. We don't think it's a foreign adversary.
We don't know what's going on. And it's like that seems to be a big repeat today. Now I'll remind your audience that, Yeah, the vast majority of UAP of UFOs cannon have been explained away in down to earth conventional terms, and I'm sure there's a lot of them up there up in the sky that are being misidentified.
Everyone's up in the night sky trying to get a glimpse of these things.
But there's a core fifteen or twenty percent, and I think that these recent drones sidings will ultimately a core fifteen twenty percent that seemed to defy a terrestrial or a conventional explanation. Could I be wrong, I could absolutely be wrong, But that's my take on all the intel folks that I've been talking to you recently. Particularly fifty of these things came off the ocean and baffled the coast Guard and police, right.
And when you hear the testimony from these law enforcement officials, what I often find is important is to go lower down the wrong because the lies are at the top, right. But when you hear from the people, the coast Guard, the actual police officers, the governors, some of the state legislators, they have no idea what's happening, not only do they have no idea they're reporting to us about the ability
to just quote unquote go dark. And then there's generally a temporary amnesia, you know, across the country where we just seem to forget about these things. But within the pattern as you just set out you laid out, that's an excellent part of the phenomenon. Actually, right where I am here in Washington, some of these incidents occurred here, you know, right over our own airspace. With all of this, it does seem as if some progress is being made
in the last decade. I do credit that twenty seventeen New York Times article. So any just last words you want to say for why people should watch the film and put it in the context of this body of work in this moment of time.
We are living in unprecedented times.
There is a current effort happening right now today, a push, unprecedented push for transparency on this issue. It's gotten the attention of lawmaker's household names, intel folk. There's whistleblowers coming forward. I'm told somewhere between eight and twelve first hand witnesses. Everyone's saying they want firsthand Grush was not a firsthand, firsthand witnesses that have met in skifts.
Behind the scenes.
Kirk McConnell, former Senate Armed Service Committee staff member, talks about it in the program. It's happening, Be patient, continue to support. This story is going to be huge.
All right, Well, I'd love to see it. Everybody, go watch the film.
We'll have a link down in the description on where you can and check out James's entire body of work. One of my favorite journalists on the issue. We appreciate you joining us, sir.
Thank you, thanks so much. I appreciate you having me on absolutely.
Thank you guys so much for watching. We appreciate you.
Great counterpoint show for everyone tomorrow and we will see you all on Thursday.