This is Gary and Shannon and you're listening to KFI A M six forty, the Gary and Shannon Show on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
I'll just everywhere on the iHeartRadio that as.
You get older, you learn to appreciate the very things that she is pooh poohing at this stage.
Differences.
Differences, Differences are great and also nice and smart goes much further than a spark right away.
Than a hat.
I mean, you need a spark, but not like you don't need you know, he doesn't need to be you know, well, I won't paint that picture.
Speaking of sparks.
The Senate right now is one of the committees is going after some of our intelligence leaders. Director of National Intelligence is up there, Telsea Gabbard, the head of the CIA, Cash Betel, the director of the The.
Lighting, the lighting is not going away.
It's the apprentice lighting from the reality show of twenty Years.
This is Michael Bennett, Senator from Colorado.
Sloppiness, this incompetence, this disrespect for our intelligence agencies and the personnel who work for him is entirely on amable. It's an embarrassment. Seive, Senator, you need to do better.
You're talking about the intelligence meeting. I was talking about the Oh that's still the Capitol.
Why does the lighting look dimmer there too? A different channel.
But anyway, I wonder if the lighting from yesterday at the White House is going to continue.
That's what I thought I was looking at.
But yes, the fact that this is so political, right like had it been the Democrats that had been talking on Signal the app or whatever their own private emails, same damn thing. It's just maddening the how hypocritical everything is in Washington.
So you broke this at least on our show yesterday, we talked about this where it turns out that a reporter, actually the editor in chief now for the Atlantic magazine, Jeffrey Goldberg, was included in a text chain of the highest level cabinet members that exist, basically Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, Vice President of the United States, the director of the CIA, the Director of National Intelligence, and all of them discussing our upcoming actions against Hohothi's in Yemen.
And when Jeffrey Goldberg I read through this whole piece that he put in the Atlantic yesterday explaining it. When Jeffrey Goldberg got a notification that he had been involved in the houthy PC small group. He immediately thought, this has got to be fake. Not only is it fake, it's probably a trap. He thought it was going to be one of those finger quotes journalist groups that goes out and tries to catch reporters and prove that they're left leaning tools or something like that. So he did
nothing as part of this group. He didn't respond, he didn't add any input. He didn't go, hey, guys, it's Jeffrey Goldberg from The Atlantic. You probably don't want me in here. He didn't do anything because he thought it was fake.
Eric Leonard was the first reporter that I remember before even apps were a thing, at least not a thing like they are now.
Who used this.
I believe it was Signal and the very infancy as a way to communicate with sources in LA and.
Elsewhere, because it's end to end ENCRYPTID, right, so it would be harder for someone to tap into and find your secrets.
Exactly, So it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility that a trusted reporter would be on your signal contact lists or whatever the hell it is.
I don't know I've never used it.
I have no sources, but you know what I mean, Like, it wouldn't be out of the realm that he would be added to the group chat if he was in contact with these people off the record, on the record. Wink wink, it's not It's not like it's not like Joe Blow in Peoria is getting the war plans. It's people that are probably trusted with high level information anyway
in this group, like Jeffrey Goldberg. And yes, he should not have been included, and should war plans be talked about on an app These are all discussions to have. But it's not like some massive breach of information got into the wrong hands. It's not like China was made privy to this.
So and I told you that that when when he first was realized that he'd been included in this chat, he thought it was fake. And then he thought, oh, maybe I was included on this by one of either one of these high level cabinet members or one of their you know, direct underlings who would have set up the meeting because they wanted to leak the information to the guy he who would write it up in the
in the Atlantic magazine. Now he still hadn't come to any conclusion about exactly what it was, and the information back and forth was pretty interesting, just in terms of the difference of opinion between say, the Vice President and the Secretary of Defense when it came to the actual attack that was supposed to take place on the hoo Thi's in Yemen because of their attacks on maritime and military.
Assets, and that to me is a fascinating part of the story. And we'll get into that coming up next because that is interesting how they communicate with each other when it comes down to things like this. The President, by the way, did tell NBC News today that National Security Advisor Mike Waltz has learned a lesson.
Yeah, he's supposedly the guy that set the whole thing up, invited the members to the group, and it would have been Michael Waltz who had Jeffrey Goldberg's number or contact information and somehow in included him in the text chain to begin with. So, like I said, Tulsi Gabbard, Michael Ratcliffe, Director CIA Cash Bettel from FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency, they were all talking before a Senate committee this morning,
and this was one of the main topics. So we'll play some of that and what Pete Hegseeth says about what happened. He made some comments today about Jeffrey Goldberg basically calling him a flat out liar about what was in Well.
I don't look to Pete hag Seth as the bastion.
But he's the Secretary of Defense. He should be.
He should be, but he's not. Did you expect him to be? Come on, but the pearl clutching on Capitol Hill is rich.
Well, just say that Gary and Shannon will continue.
You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI AM six forty.
As Amy just mentioned getting word out of Washington that there are now separate agreements between Ukraine and the United States and Russia and the United States to ensure safe navigation in the Black Sea, to try to implement a ban against strikes against energy facilities in those two countries.
White House said in a statement today that Washington's going to try to help restore Russia's access to the world market for agriculture and fertilizer exports and will continue facilitating talks on both sides as they try to come somewhere something a little bit closer, perhaps to some sort of ceasefire in that area. We've been following the story top
national security officials, including the Defense Secretary. We're texting war plans for upcoming military strikes in Yemen to a group chat in what is otherwise a secure messaging app that includes editor in chief of the Atlantic. Unfortunately for them, Jeffrey Goldberg wrote a huge piece in what was going On sorry, in the Atlantic magazine about what was going on on this text chain, and the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had said that this, in fact was not
a war plan. He said so on the tarmac after he got off an airplane earlier today and then sorry, it was yesterday that he said that. At the writer for the piece itself, again, Jeffrey Goldberg had said, that's a complete lie. This was one hundred percent a war plan, to the point where I recognized it and knew I shouldn't publish it.
We heard from Secretary heg set They were saying that nobody was texting war plans, given you were privated this group chat, is that how you saw it?
No, that's a lie. He was texting war plans. He was texting attack plans when targets were going to be targeted, how they were going to be targeted, who was at the targets, when the next sequence of attacks for happening. I didn't publish this, and I continue not to publish it because it felt like it was too confidential.
In fact, there were certain things the other things that Jeffrey Goldberg did not put in his Atlantic piece, some names, for example, of what he believed were active CIA intelligence agents, So he had at least the wherewithal the smarts to not include some of that stuff.
Yes, I mean, you can frame it however you want to frame it. You can say these weren't war plans specifically. If they were war plans, they would be official war plans, and they would be done this way, and they would go through Congress. And you can absolutely make that argument and be considered not lying. But you can also make the argument that justin PTE. Hagseth's communicate alone, you're absolutely planning for war action.
Well, and it was whatever it was, war plan, not war plan, kind of war plan. It was specific enough that Jeffrey Goldberg knew when this was going to happen. So if nothing else, even if they didn't get into the details of the actual bombs that they were going to use, or where these assets were going to be coming from, et cetera. He knew the timing of it, which is also an important aspect when it comes to the intelligence to keep classified.
He knew enough to.
Sit in a grocery store parking lot and look at Twitter a few minutes after this thing was scheduled to begin and realize that bombs had started falling throughout Yemen.
I guess I should understand that in twenty twenty five we communicate via text, and why I should expect something more at this level, I don't know. But it's very odd to see this conversation in text form in an app. Yeah, like you and I texting balls jokes. They're talking about green lighting war plans, so it be attacked like it's odd to.
Me the way it was described in that hearing today in the Senate. Specifically, it was Michael Ratcliffe, the director of the CIA, who talked about the use of this specific app and apps like it that are otherwise encrypted. It's not iPhone messaging, it's not you know, back and forth with the green bubbles, but he said that it's very common for people in government, even in intelligence agencies, to use this app, but they use it to kind
of direct people to other aspects of information. For example, he said that they would use the Signal app maybe to set up meetings or use the Signal app to give people a heads up, Hey, I've got a classified document that's headed your way. In the regular classified document email system that we use that this kind of information, even if it's low level or or not granular level warp plans, that's not the kind of stuff that they would normally share on that kind of an app.
Pete hag Seth, by the way, make some good points I mean, hate him, love him whatever. In this communicay he talks about Pete haig Seth says VP obviously Vice president. I understand your concerns, fully support you're raising this with potus important considerations, much of which are tough to know how they play out parentheses, economy, Ukraine, piece, gods, et cetera. I think messaging is going to be tough no matter what.
Nobody knows who the who the these are, which is why we need to stay focused on number one Biden failed and number two Ron funded waiting a few weeks or a month does not fundamentally change the calculus. Two immediate risks on waiting. Number one, this leaks and we look indecisive. Number two, Israel takes action first or Godza cease fire falls apart and we don't get to start this on our own terms. We can manage both were prepared to execute. I mean, I'm more confident in Pete
Haigesath upon reading this than I have been. Well, he's making great point logical points of how they should move forward with this.
And like you said, I mean the idea that jd Vance for example, Again, the way that Jeffrey Goldberg wrote this was he was still doubting whether this was even real, so he would say stuff like the account that was labeled jd Vance.
He didn't say. The vice president then text, well.
Jd Vance comes across as a dip ass. Again, I mean I thought he came across as a dipss in that Oval Office meeting. And again I haven't always thought that way about jd Vance. My thinking has evolved. He came across as a child in that Oval office meeting with Zelenski.
Have you even said thank you?
I mean, come on, you sound like a kid on the playground, and he comes across similarly in this text chain.
Well, but what I I don't disagree with that necessarily, but you've got to have somebody in the group that's going to say no, or at least raise their hand and go, wait a minute, we should we.
Need to talk about it.
We need to ask the questions of if we bomb Yemen into last Tuesday, then we need to make sure that we know our European allies are going to are gonna have some reaction to this, the oil markets are going to have some reaction to this, like have that open discussion before you simply pull the trigger on something like that. And I don't I don't mind that kind if somebody in the room is going to do it.
If you put it that way, that's one thing. But jd Vance puts it in here, I just hate bailing out Europe again again sounding like a child.
Well, and then Pete Hexeth, Yeah, he says.
I share your loathing of European free loading. It's pathetic. But and then he goes on to be the adult in the chat.
Frankly, again, it was crazy that Jeffrey Gold they use.
They're using emojis, you guys like it's it's troubling, it's I do not want to see text chains of the major players in intelligence and defense now setting each other emojis like fire American flag, happy face.
No, and a fist. Good lord listen. And the White House has confirmed this is legit. Those are the people that they say they were. They all admitted they.
Did learn their lessons.
Tulci Gabbert today didn't specifically say she was involved with the chat, but the director of the CIA was like, yeah, I'm Michael Ratliffe, A Ratcliffe, the guy who's in this text chain.
So the White House has said it was true.
But like you said, President Trump, if Michael Wallace was the guy who originated this text chain and put the group together, he was the one responsible. And President Trump just basically said he's learned his lesson.
He's a good guy.
What a fun exercise to go through. Though, If you're Jeffrey Goldberg, you're privy to this, You've got this on your phone, you've got this whole thing. Do you use it as leverage in the future, or do you play your hand now? Obviously he played his hand now, and I think that that will I think that was the correct play with this crew. Interesting but a fun exercise to go through if you are privy to that information.
And guys, guys, before you put the text chain together, make sure you know who everybody's number is.
Well, that's the thing.
Sometimes I'm in a group text with a couple of my girlfriends and we've got like three group texts and one of them involves husbands and one of them does not, And sometimes we think we're talking on the one that does not involve the husbands, and we.
Say like awful things like about the husband.
No, no, no, no no, things like no, it took me four hours to shave my legs.
Who I'm so fat today?
Like stuff like that, and then we're like, oops, rum chain, Like I.
Want to be part of that text chain, though, do you really funny?
Oh, I'll add to you. We'll see how long you last. All right, Canadians are now pissed off of the US. They don't want to come here for vacation. Even Gary and Shannon will continue.
You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI AM six forty.
Getting some heat on the whole. The texting of the warplans is odd. I don't like to see it in text. Whatever I said, had somebody call in saying that it's illegal. Oh my god, something that is going on in Washington between the powers that b is illegal.
New stop it. Of course it's illegal.
Of course, using apps that are not encrypted and don't protect government information is illegal. Of Course, it was probably illegal when Hillary Clinton used her BlackBerry.
Okay, do you want to go down this road. I'll go down this road.
Yes.
The rules back then with the State Department were very lax when it came to personal email. The rules didn't keep up with the technology. But the idea that this is the first illegal communicate on an app that government officials have been caught in or engaged in, is freaking Pollyanna crap.
Well, and here's the thing.
Come on, if you and I talk about the content, the.
Content stupid enough to put it in a text conversation is what I'm saying that That's what I'm saying is that, yes, I understand the conversations happened. This conversation happens. It should be happening in person, not over text, and not over tax That's my point.
And you and I again, we can spend an entire twenty minutes talking about how stupid this was, how Michael Walls could easily lose his job for being So, what's the.
Word I'm looking for? Careless? Careless? Thank you, that's you say, that's what careless? Hillary Clinton? Okay to include a.
Journalist as part of this text Chaine, Yes, that's ridiculous and idiocy. Then if you talk about the content of the messages and you go, ah, I like to see that someone raises their hand and says, hey, let's pump the brakes on this, or I like to see PTGX say something smart about the then it becomes somehow we're whitewashing the idiocy that brought us the information in the first place.
And that's not what we're doing now.
I'm just finding things that are more interesting than they got caught using this so called encrypted app to talk about war plans, asked and answered that was news, like you said, we broke yesterday on this show. Now we're hearing the substance of the text chain, and that stuff's more interesting to me than sitting there.
And crying on to the top of my mountain and saying, oh my god, you're horrible, illgal.
But what can we learn from the communication from the powers that be, from the people that are making intelligence decisions. How about that's interesting. Yes it was wrong, Yes it was illegal.
All of that. This is nothing new for Washington. You know what is new. The weather was warm yesterday. Woodland Hills said it you trying to put lips to gone up? Trying to put beef tallow on my face? Did you put it on this? I did not put it on this morning. I can tell, can't you. I didn't. I look pretty scraggly.
The importance of a skincare routine. Oh dear, it's consistency.
Honey pants.
My wife asked me why I wasn't going to put it on last night? Yeah, did you watch your face? You put on beef tallow And I said, no, I'm it's not like a beef towel all over my pillow, in my NEETs, and.
Your face absorbs it, especially when it's that dehydrated.
Woodland Hills had a record it's ninety five degrees yesterday.
That was being joke. Your skin does not look dehydrated.
Balm Dale hit eighty four degrees that tied the record. Pass Robles hit a record of eighty six degrees.
It wasn't about the milk. Apparently not. I was about the beef tallow.
But you should put it on in the evening and in the morning if you want it to work, if you want, there's a reason you have it. If you only use it intermittently, you're not going to see the results that you want to see. All right, we'll talk about the Canadians.
I want to see. Yeah, I want.
Sometimes you don't know what you want until we tell you. Yes, you want to talk Canadians or mushroom. Okay, we'll boot mushrooms for the next hour. Story you thought you thought that Denver was all about weed and dispensaries on every corner. While what's weed is always the gateway drug. Right when we're in high school, it was weed first and then usually what followed weed, at least in the nineties was
the shrooms was the next level. And so that's what that's the step they're taking, and we'll talk about it in the next hour.
Gary and Channon will continue.
You're listening to Gary and Channon on demand from KFI AM six forty.
Yeah, we teased it. Davids coming up at the bottom of the hour. I mean, we'll see, but that's what we have planned right now, David Dodgers, reporter and clubhouse favorite, we'll be here to talk about what.
He's not coming in. Oh I just saw his phone number on here. Oh if that guy doesn't Keana is to be here or is he on the phone. He's on the phone.
He's on the phone, literally phoning it in big time in it.
Okay, that's fine, that's fine.
I have a.
Serious I have an alternate slate of questions that I would like to ask him.
Then if he can't even he can't even make his way in what I.
What I'm gonna text Petres and money, You're gonna get him in trouble.
Yeah.
The developing story that we just found out this hour is that negotiators for the USA there are now agreements with Ukraine and Russia to ensure safe navigation in the Black Sea and to implement a ban on strikes against energy facilities in those two countries. That is a that is a good step, although not complete step, towards a
ceasefire between the two. So Canada doesn't like us very much right now because they think that our president wants to own them, which he has said multiple times he does well Canadians think the way to pay back that is to not be so nice sorry by not coming to the United States. The New York Times actually looked at the numbers and said about four million Canadians visited
New York State in twenty twenty three. That would be the most recent data available, and Canadians spent, specifically in New York State one point seven billion.
Dollars just in twenty twenty three.
School groups have called off end of semester trips, so have busloads of retirees, newlyweds planning honeymoon's friend celebrating birthdays of family from Quebec that planned to visit twice this year. Apparently Justin Trudeau said something to the effect of don't go to America for vacation. I had missed that completely. I'm also not part of the Justin Trudeau newsletter.
A boycott by the top international visitor. That's Canadians, so the most common visitor to the United States. They said, we'll upend local economies throughout the United States. Canadians make about twenty million visits to the United States every year, and even just a ten percent reduction in that could mean about two billion in lost spending and fourteen thousand job losses around the country.
Okay, so you said ten percent. Let's look at the numbers as they are right now. Last month compared with the same period last year, the number of Canadians flying into three airports in and around New York fell eleven percent. A vehicle traffic over the four international bridges there that spanned the Niagara River near Buffalo fell fourteen percent compared with the previous year. Traffic on one thousand Islands Bridge
dropped night nineteen percent last month. Again, though it's February, but if you're just looking at February between this year and last year, that's a significant decline.
And back to Justin Trudeau, this was his line.
He explicitly urged Canadians to reconsider international trips to America. He said, now is the time to choose Canada, which is not unlike something you would hear from President Trump America. First, right, I'm sure America, this administration would much rather us spend our travel dollars here in this country as opposed to going to Canada, for instance, or anywhere else.
But that's a pretty big difference there.
Eleven fourteen, nineteen percent from just the same month last year. They said that in recent weeks, Canadians have been noticeably absent from the Ontario bar Brooklyn Dive, devoted to all things Canada. The Bat Blue, which is my favorite beer of all time. Blue is on draft. Moosehead Canadian Logger is available in bottles. They've got some rye whiskeys behind the bar, but the mood inside has been dour somber.
He said that they always ask for ketchup chips or comment on the Canadian beers, and there's less of.
That that I think you're going to see. The specific or those geographic areas, the ones that are closest to the border, the ones obviously going to be the most impacted. Whitefish Montana is sixty miles away from the border of BC. Spending by Canadians was down fourteen percent in January compared to a year ago.
See I heard people I had heard in two different places right before I went to Mexico Port of Iarta last month, or around that time. Whenever I went recently, two people in two different locations were like, oh, well, Mexico's really challenging right now because of the tariff situation and this administration and they're not looking kindly on Americans. There's no change whatsoever for me and my trip to Port of Iarta.
Other thing that that I think a lot of people assume is that as much noise is made by the guy who's in the White House or the guy who's in the head of Canadian government, they make a lot of noise, But in general, your trip to Whistler is not going to be impacted.
Exactly.
You think about who you're engaging with when you travel.
The service industry, Yeah, I mean, and they know that you're there to vacation. They know why you're there. You're there to spend money and keep them employed.
Exactly, So they're happy to see you. They're very happy to see you.
Still in Mexico and Canada all right, coming well, I don't know about Canada. I remember going to Canada as a child and being I felt they were very rude in Quebec because of the French.
It's the French. It just comes across very terse. Interesting when you're a dumb American kid. You didn't see it as the language of love.
No. No, I saw people looking at me like you dumb American kid.
That hurts, doesn't it? All right up.
Next, why malls around southern California look like nobody lives there because nobody lives there.
Next on Gary and Shannon, you've been listening to The Gary and Shannon Show.
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