MLK and Liberty versus Tyranny

Nice relaxation, a break from the craziness in the world and probably in your own personal lives as well. As we head into this twenty twenty election cycle, of which the impeachment is inextricably interlinked. I want to start today. We'll talk about a few different things. I want to pick up on some threads that we talked about on

Thursday and Friday. In particular, we're going to talk about the Afghanistan Papers, maybe the most overlooked critical story that has emerged about not only American national security and foreign policy, but also what kind of government we have and whether we're really represented ultimately when they're trillions of dollars in treasure and all this blood sacrificed and what have we gotten for it? And I talked about the link between

General Michael Flynn and those Afghani standpapers last week. We'll pick up on that thread today as well with Julie Kelly just a little bit later in the hour. We're also gonna again look at China, but actually through the lens of Taiwan, a country we don't talk about a lot, but which is actually the front line in the Chinese Communist Party's march first for regional hegemony and then for global dominance. And why should we as Americans care about that?

And what should the US relationship with Taiwana look like. And there were recently presidential and broader elections there as well, which have not gotten a lot of press in the US, but are actually quite significant and a good news out

of that part of the world. So we'll talk with Steve Yates about that a little bit later in the show, and then also talk with Margot Cleveland of The Federalist, a senior contributor there, colleague of mine, who is doing some exceptional work parsing going through page by page of the four hundred and seventy eight pages or whatever it is of the IG report on FISA abuse and also looking at potential corruption in the FISA court itself, huge

vital matters that are not being addressed. People are not going in and doing the journalistic homework that they ought to do. And Margo has a very extensive legal background looks at this or the eyes of our eyes the way that we look at these issues and doing some vital work on this. We'll talk about that in our three, but I want to start with this being Martin Luther King Junior Day. A little bit about the politics of this, and I don't believe that national holidays should be politicized.

I think that politics should be taken out of all of these major cultural benchmarks, these celebrations that we have. But the Left has injected politics into everything. So if we're going to talk about the political aspect of a day like Martin Luther King Day, I would suggest that this should be an anti identity politics holiday, because that is actually what Martin Luther King Jr. Espoused, certainly in

the most famous speech he ever delivered. He talked about colorblindness, content of character mattering more than color of skin, skin pigmentation. You and I have no control over that. What we do have control over is what we contribute society, to our families, to our communities, what we bring to the table based upon our individual merit, and that truly is the basis by which we should be judged, not things that are completely out of our control, arbitrary by nature.

Thomas soul the great economist who grew up at Harlem Back, I believe in the thirties or forties, came up through the ranks of basically militant black nationalism leftism, had an epiphany and switched and became one of this nation's leading free market economists, written some of the finest books there are on these subjects. And he wrote something back in twenty thirteen on the fiftieth anniversary of Kings, I have

a dream speech. Then I think it is worth reading at some length, because it puts in context how distorted Americans, particularly on the left, have got in on issues of race, how far away they have traveled from Martin Luther King's ideal where color blindness used to be the highest ideal, the virtue that we sought, the principle that we sought. And now what is the most virtuous is the opposite. It is, let's judge everything explicitly on the basis of

what the races of one person versus another person. That's really identity politics and multiculturalism. What, at the end of the day, is it really about. Yes, they've come up with this academic veneer to try to rationalize the views that have pervaded our law schools and all of our schools and now all of our cultural institutions since the

Civil rights era. It's actually about dividing us. It's about dividing us and then conquering us, rubbing the wounds, old wounds, historical wounds for political gain, playing one group and I hate the term group because we're individuals and we should be judged individually. Pitting groups against each other and that is totally antithetical to what King argued in that speech.

I want to read a little what soul Is said back in twenty thirteen, because it's just as relevant today, and it's going to remain just as relevant until in athless we thwart the identity politics obsessed multiculturalist focus march and get back to judging people by who they are caring most about. The smallest minority, the minority of one the individual under assault by this group ideology of identity politics, which of course is just a ruse a guys to

cover their leftism. It's using the veneer of being virtuous because you're supporting the oppressed, as a means of justifying tyrannical collectivism, where the individual is destroyed, the smallest minority is destroyed. Here's a widow of what Soul wrote, Judging individuals by their individual character is that the opposite poll from judging how groups are statistically represented among employees, college students,

or political figures. Yet many, if not most, of those who celebrate the I have a Dream speech today promote the directly opposite approach of group preferences, especially those based on skin color. He goes on, what was historic about King's speech was not only what was said, but how powerfully its message resonated among Americans of that time across

the spectrum of race, ideology, and politics. A higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats voted in Congress for both the Civil Rights Act of nineteen sixty four and the Voting Rights Act of nineteen sixty five. To say that was a hopeful time would be an understatement. To say that many of those hopes have since been disappointed. Would also

be an understatement. There's been much documented racial progress since nineteen sixty three, but there's also been much retroaggression, of which the disintegration of the black family has been central, especially among those at the bottom of the social pyramid.

Many people, especially politicians and activists, want to take credit for the economic and other advancement of blacks, even though a larger proportion of Blacks rose out of poverty in the twenty years before nineteen sixty than the twenty years afterwards. We should add to that these trends have only gotten worse, and that the great society itself, when measure in terms

of the racial progress, has really been a flop. But no one wants to take responsibility for the policies and ideologies that led to the breakup of the black family, which had survived centuries of slavery and generations of discrimination. And we cannot downplay enough by the way, the disintegration of the black family is a trend that has accelerated across Americans of all races, and the disintegration of family

ultimately means the disintegration of communities, society, and a nation. Altogether, because absent that family structure, everything else collapses. He goes on, many hopes were disappointed because those were unrealistic hopes to begin with. Economic and other disparities between groups have been common for centuries and countries around the world, and many of those disparities have been and still are larger than

the disparities between blacks and whites in America. Even when those who lagged behind have advanced, they have not always caught up, even after centuries, because others were advancing at the same time. But when blacks did not catch up with whites in America within a matter of decades, that was treated as strange or even a sinister sign of crafty and covert racism. Civil rights were necessary, but far from sufficient. Education and job skills are crucial, and the

government cannot give you these things. All it can do is make them available. Race hustlers who blame all lags on the racism of others are among the obstacles to taking the fullest advantage of education and other opportunities. What does that say about the content of their character? Soul goes on a little bit to talk about the passage of the Civil Rights Act and how high hopes were following that act, He says, the bitter anti climax that

did follow provoke no rethinking. Instead, it provoked all sorts of new demands. Judging everybody by the same standards came to be regarded in some quarters as racist because it precluded preferences and quotas. That is, we should judge everyone by different standards, and that's supposed to be anti racist. It's absurd on its face. Soul goes on. There are people today to talk justice when they really mean payback, including payback against people who were not even born when

historic injustices were committed. By the way, this applies to a criminal justice system, for example, in New York, where I mentioned, we now have this no bail reform where criminals get protected under the guise of justice, but innocent victims walking the streets have to deal with these repeat offenders going out and committing all sorts of crimes through no fault of their own, and the criminal is treated as the aggrieved. So it pervades a lot of things.

It's not just the racial relations in this country, Soul concludes. And this was talking back in twenty thirteen. Remember, so this was the Trayvon whole hullo below Trayvon Martin case transpiring. The nation has just been through a sensationalized murder trial and fard on which many people took fear positions before a speck of evidence was introduced based on nothing more than judging those involved by the color of their skin. President Obama did that himself, by the way, in the

case of the Trayvon Martin Travails tragedy. We have a long way to go to catch up to what Martin Luther King said fifty years ago, and we are moving in the opposite direction. And I think the record absolutely proves what Thomas soul was saying. Take for example, something we've talked about in the show before, the sixteen nineteen project.

It is a project by the New York Times to reframe history as if American history really begins when slavery was introduced to the shores of at the time Virginia, and slavery actually had existed here decades, if not a century or more prior to that point. But that is the point at which The New York Times traces our history. So seventeen seventy six isn't the start of America sixteen nineteen is our original sin of slavery is that's where

America and history should start. So it suggests from the very beginning that we were built on tyranny, not liberty, and that every evil aspect of America derives from its this original evil seed of slavery being introduced here, rather than the fact that America was an experiment in liberty where slavery was the great exception to it, where the founding fathers themselves said it was basically intolerable, completely incompatible

with what our founding principles were, completely incompatible with the Declaration of Independence with a constitution not referenced in the Constitution by name, because they knew that it was a blight on our nation, and most of the founders, in particular the abolitionist founders all said basically they found this to be an abhorrent system, one that had to be tolerated or there would not be a union. And then they had language specifically in the Constitution to phase out

the slave of trade within twenty five years. The document itself, of course, could not support slavery on its own merits on the words in it, But the Times instead wants to reframe our history and introduce a curriculum in to school is consistent with the sixteen nineteen Project, which explicitly says that America was basically a country founded on and built in tyranny, that capitalism and all of our other institutions spawn from it, that ultimately it is a deplorable experiment.

And if it's a deplorable, evil experiment, then obviously the answer is you have to turn it on its head. You have to shred the Constitution, you have to repudiate the Declaration of Independence. These documents aren't viewed as the answers to discrimination and to a society that is flourishing and tolerant and truly pluralistic and judges people on their merits, like King asked for, and like Douglas identified centuries before, over a century before, they'd have us believe. It's the

exact opposite, Totally inconsistent. I would argue the sixteen nineteen project with what King called for. Robert Woodson wrote a great editorial on this in the Wall Street Journal recently, and he talked about sixteen nineteen. He said that today the progressive left wants to ignore the achievements and pretend that Blacks are perpetual victims of white racism sixteen nineteen

Project essay series. It's the latest salvo in this attack on America's founding, claiming anti black racism runs in the very dna of this country. This statement is an abomination of everything doctor King stood for. When come right back, we'll talk a little bit more about doctor King sixteen nineteen project and context of it and the importance of the content of character over the collar of his game. Right back, this Ben Wangarton in for Buck sex And

on the Buck Sex And Show. Back in just a second. You're in the Freedom Hut. This is the Buck Sexton Show podcast. Welcome back to the Buck Sex And Show.

This is Ben Wangarten in for Buck Sexton. We've been talking about the ideals and principle as that Martin Luther King stood for and the left standing in contradiction to those principles today sadly, and I was talking about this Robert Woodson Wall Street Journal editorial and he quotes from King and juxtaposes it with a sixteen nineteen project says, in sharp contrast to the claims of sixteen nineteen which disparages the American Revolution and Declaration of independence and insists

America's hopelessly racist king believed deeply in the need to remain true to the founder's vision, quoting him the Patriot

Dream that sees beyond the years. To him that that was the only evidue toward fulfilling America's promise, As he wrote in his nineteen sixty three Letter from a Birmingham jail, one day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down on lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what was best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judeo Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those

great woes of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Okay, well, our leftists today who would claim to carry the banner of king say that the Constitution and the Declaration are inherently evil documents based upon the people that drafted them and what they derived from

Judeo Christian heritage. They'd say, that's code word for white nationalism and ethnocentric Europeanism and these other assinine concepts that they've come up with to try to create an academic veneer that legitimizes they're just anti Western ideology. At its core, our sacred American values in the American dream, our understanding of the American dream as conservative Americans, as traditional Americans,

is the American nightmare. In the left's reading of things, King added, we will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation because the goal of America's freedom, abuse and scorn, though we may be, our destiny is tied up with America's destiny. And then whitson goes on. Doctor King, who saw full participation in America, would never have indulged today's grievance based on any politics whose social justice warriors use race as a battering ram

against the country. In fact, in a letter from Birming M. Jail, King is explicitly warned against the type of group think that characterizes identity politics. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture, said King, But as Ronald niber has reminded us, groups tend to be

more immoral than individuals. I would say to the left, how can you look at what King said and what he wrote, and then support an ideology that is inherently about color of skin, maybe to the total exclusion of content of character, certainly to some extent to the exclusion of content of character. But merit and the individual worth and dignity of a person should be all the matters at the end of the day in America. And we might not always achieve that ideal, but that should be

the ideal, not the opposite, not the antithesis. We're gonna switch gears here and just after the break we're gonna have Julie Kelly on to talk about something I talked about last week, which does deal incidentally without our individual liberties and civil rights in context of General Michael Flynn certainly, and also in context of the government versus the people in the Afghanistan papers. This Ben Weegarden in for Buck Sex and on the Buck Sexton Show. Back just after this.

Thanks for listening to the bus Sex Show podcasts. Remember to subscribe on Apple podcast, the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to the Buck Sexton Show.

This is Ben Weingarten in for Buck Sexton, and as you recall, on Friday, we did a very deep dive into the plight of General Michael T. Flynn and in particular went into great depth on what I think is a document that in and of itself explains why Flynn had to be targeted as persona non grata the number one priority for the deep staters in the Trump administration based on this one interview alone, and that interview was a product of the Afghanistan Papers, one that was flagged

for me by a great writer, one of the best trolls certain way on the conservative side, but also someone who writes just fantastic editorials and does some great journalistic work. And that's Julie Kelly, a senior contributor to American Greatness, and she joins us now, Julie, thanks so much for coming on the program. Thanks Ben, thanks for having me on. Well,

it's my pleasure. And I want to start actually with a news story that I'm sure you saw, you know, one of these stories rolled out once or twice a week, This one about just these bombshew revelations about President Trump defying the generals and other senior officials in the administration, in particular leading national security and foreign policy officials. I wonder if you put that well, first of all, isn't that what he was elected to do? Right? He absolutely was,

and you know he was right to question. I mean, we all support the military. We know what a hard job they've all had to past two decades, from Afghanistan through Iraq and other kind of like. But look, we now know, thanks to the expose that's been published in the Washington Post, what did debacle the Afghanistan war has been from the beginning. And Trump promised his base and his voters that he would look to end these perpetual wars. And I think that that was the crux of his

questioning of these military officials in twenty seventeen. And so anyway, that questioning, I think perfectly parallels what General Flynn asserted in his interview with the Aspects Special Inspector General for the Afghanistan reconstruction efforts, because basically what he was calling out is, look, we've spent now seven trillion dollars in treasure and all manner of blood, and you know, at the end of the day, what did we get for it? It's or what is the return on the investment of

our nation's resources. I wonder if you would summarize for us what you've found in parsing the Afghanistan papers thus far. Well, just so everyone can understand where these keepers came from. So this is, as you said, the Special Inspector General who was tasked in two thousand and eight really to look at all the reconstruction efforts, what was what's been going on in Afghanistan since really two thousand and two

after the invasion. So this Special Inspector General has conducted hundreds of interviews not just with US officials but LA forces and Afghan government officials as well, looking into what worked and what didn't work. And unfortunately we found out that most of what we've been doing there has not worked. So these interviews give really some insight into what has

been happening for almost two decades. And one of those interviews was Mike Flynn, who has been an intelligence officer for decades and served in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and so he also worked in the Obama administration for James Clapper. So his interview was very interesting and we can get into some of the details, but it makes more sense

of why the Obama White House targeted him in twenty fourteen. Yeah, it's amazing in some ways to my mind that he rose to be the head of DA the Defense Intelligence Agency, on the Obama administration. Given his outspoken views. The only thing to which I can attribute it is really that he was so competent that that competence overcame the political correctness that would normally pervade a decision like elevating him to that role. Do you see it that way as well?

I think that that's true, and his experience really is unmatched. And so, but he was founding the alarm early on and how the intelligence was being manipulated and politicized coming out of Afghanistan, and how it was causing people to make really bad decisions. And he alerted not just the

Obama White House, but also CIA officials. I believe it was probably John Brennan, because I mean they weren't exactly equals, but pretty close, and questioning why the intelligence was being manipulated and politicized, and as it got higher up the chain, meaning to the president, he was not getting the truth.

Therefore he was not telling the American people the truth either, And thus far in reviewing those Afghanistan papers, what's been the most remarkable thing that you've been that you found? You know? But I have to say, these are a lot of the same people, and I'm going to have a piece on this later in the week as well. These are the very same people who have been criticizing Donald Trump since he first announced he was running for president. And I hate to make everything about Trump, but he

is such a good clarifying figure. So a lot of these same former diplomats and national security officials, state Department officials who've been high critical of Donald Trump and his kind of ad hoc approach to foreign policy and diplomacy. These are the same people who have been misleading US, who now admit they really didn't know what was happening in Afghanistan. They really didn't know how to fix the problems that they had helped perpetuate, and now we're still

in this disastrous war. I mean, we had two US soldiers killed earlier this month. We had twenty three kills in the country last year, not that anyone in Washington is paying attention. And so you really see this permanent ruling class in Washington at every level just really doesn't

know what they're doing. Yeah, one of the things that struck me in reviewing in great detail the General Flynn interview, was he basically showed that there is rampant policization, as you mentioned of intelligence, there's out and out corruption in terms of the billions of dollars and ultimately trillions of dollars that were poured into Afghanistan and where it all went.

And then there's the other aspect which is uncomfortable to discuss, which is the fact that the bureaucracies themselves, like any bureaucracy, has vested interest in growing bigger, in claiming issues where they may not be there necessarily, or in basically defining a mandate which demands then greater and greater funds, because every government agency and every bureaucracy period is subject to those kind of pressures, and bureaucracies don't shrink themselves, they

only expand. What did you make of his interview generally, I mean, he was extremely candid in what he told the interviewers, and he addressed all the topics you just said, the corruption, the opiate industry that we've also poured billions into trying to help Afghanistan's production of olbiit and destroy

their poppy fields. That's been a complete disaster. And so he really touched on the intelligence, the ongoing corruption, the failure to address all of the other rampant problems there, and the notion that he alerted top officials about this, and so, just to give people the timeline, so this would have been between twenty twelve and twenty fourteen when

he was sounding the alarm. And he basically says in the interview in one passage, if we're if everything seems to be going so great, why does it feel like we're losing? And he was not just telling, and he also was testifying. I couldn't get a copy of it. I believe it was behind closed doors to the Homeland Security Committee in twenty fifteen about this issue too, and so he you know, so the Obama people were aware Mike Flynn was making this public to lawmakers on Capitol

Hill and also to the press. So they viewed him as a problem. And as I wrote in my first piece, he really was essentially a whistleblower, and at a very precarious time. So this would have been, you know, around twenty twelve, twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen, the surge was over, they were bringing troops home, the situation was deteriorating. Joe Biden and Barack Obama were trying to make this sound like a success, but it was not, and for many reasons.

And so now we know it's, you know, in worse condition than when Obama and Biden left it, and another mess for Donald Trump to try to clean up. Yeah, it bears emphasizing the point that you made about General Flynn being a true, true whistleblower, and you wrote a column about this, which is what drew my attention to Flynn's interview. I wasn't even aware that it was in

those archives in the first place. He was a whistleblower, and he paid the real price for it, first in the Obama administration and then subsequently for a short lived time in the Trump administration. So he should be the one that's really held up as the blower, not the so called whistleblower that's at the core of a you know, a sham of an impeachment process who will probably never testify. It seems no, no, he won't. He's been protected and heralded as a hero and a martyr, and so we

never have to hear from him. Meanwhile, Mike Flynn's life is destroyed. Obama's FBI under Jim Callmey, as we know know opened up an investigation into Mike Flynn. The targeting of Mike Flynn actually preceded any of that. It really started in twenty fourteen. So now you know, we see

the unequal fates of two whistleblowers. Well, why aren't the Afghanistan papers in your view, given that it's living history, it remains relevant and there has never been a lessons learned, it seems, either in the executive branch or the legislative branch on this issue. Why aren't they getting more attention? Well, I think there's a few reasons. One, the Washington Poet published this series in the beginning of December, so it was buried amid the impeachment drama and also the Michael

Horrowitz report advisor abuse. So I think that that was part of it. And obviously, you know, official Washington does not want to bring attention to the documents and interviews contained in that exposed a so they are willfully ignoring it. I think that that's part of this distraction. Now with what Donald Trump allegedly said to military officials in twenty seventeen about the war, and these were excerpts from a book that were published in The Washington Post, the same

paper that's published the Afghanistan Papers. So this almost seems like a little bit of a cover up for what you know, these officials are now being exposed as having done. There's not one person to blame as far as the Afghanistan War. I mean, this runs over three administrations and hundreds of thousands of officials, so there's not one person to really target here. Although I do have a piece up tomorrow about Joe Biden. We can talk a little

bit about that. He's now trying to rewrite history. Big surprise about his role in Afghanistan from the very beginning two thousand and one, you know, up to the present date. And so it's unfortunate, and that's why we are trying to cover the papers a little bit more to bring more attention, because it really has been buried since you've given us that little tease about Joe Biden. We'll pick it up on the other side of a short break. This has Ben Weegarden in for Buck Sex and on

The Buck Sexton Show more with Julia Kelly. Just after this, you're in the Freedom Hunt. This is the Buck Sexton Show podcast. Welcome back to the Buck Sexton Show. This is Ben Weegarden in for Buck Sexton, and we've been talking with Julie Kelly, a senior contributor to American Greatness about the Afghanistan papers. I think Julia just made an excellent point that bears repeating, which is that there is no one person to whom we should point a finger

at with respect to the morass. And frankly, the failure called a success repeatedly for almost two decades of Afghanistan. The fact that it has transcended administrations, secretaries of defense, all manner of generals, folks at every level of government, and in the military as well, and that we've ended up in this situation. I think if anything speaks to a much more pervasive problem, it would be even better.

It would be a much better situation if you could actually point fingers and there would be lessons learned that only implicated a few people, and we could make corrective action going forward. But the fact is that it transcends party year generation. That speaks to a serious failure that we have currently in our government and in our ability to execute wars to the extent we should be executing

the wars that we're entering in the first place. But I want to bring back Julie specifically to talk about something that is coming in a fourth coming calm, I believe. And that is how Joe Biden is implicated in all things Afghanistan. So Julie, take it away. So Ben, You'd be hard pressed to find a politician in Washington who has his fingerprints more on the Afghanistan War than Joe Biden. Right. So,

he has been a Senator since the nineteen seventies. He was chairman and then ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee. He voted to approve the authorization for the war in two thousand and one. In two thousand and two, he helped co author legislation that authorized this rebuilding effort that now has cost over one hundred and thirty billion dollars more than the Marshall Plan, if you can believe in

current dollars. And interestingly, in two thousand and seven, when he was running against Barack Obama, Joe Biden wanted a new surge of troops, a new influx of troops. He called it a surge into Afghanistan, redirecting troops from Iraq

into Afghanistan. Now he's on a campaign trail claiming that he opposed the surge, which there's some details about that that he's kind of right but mostly wrong, because he did he did support a search, just not to the degree that the generals wanted and that Obama eventually settled on. So again we're getting half truths from Joe Biden. And I detailed this in a column tomorrow from Joe Biden

might qualify as successful. And when you consider his whole record and foreign policy and national security, I mean, I think it's almost safe to say that his only success when it come with any implications for foreign policy, is enriching his family members. Is that accurate? I think that that's probably true, and I think that that was his interest.

And you know, it would be interesting for somebody to go back in detail how anyone profited off of his continued support of reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan, because he was an early champion of this, and so I'm sure that there's I'm sure there's some Biden family members who have profited off of that too. But look now he's promising

to end the warren Afghanistan. Think about this, then, if Joe Biden somehow miraculously takes the White House when he is sworn in if Donald Trump does not bring all of our troops home. If Joe Biden is sworn in, he will inherit a war that he helped start two decades ago that he has perpetuated, that he has approved. His fingerprints are on every aspect of the Afghanistan War since the beginning. But now he's allowed to, of course,

rewrite history and back away from his involvement. And he shouldn't be, especially in light of these reports that we have. You know, it would be great for someone to challenge Joe Biden on the Mike Flynn interview and what he knew about intelligence. I mean, he brags all the time how he is, you know, Barack Obama's foreign policy whisper. Well, what did he Oh? I'm sure that he would challenge the person asking that question to a push up contest

and that would be the end of it. He'd say, Hey, look, Jack, you know that's not true. Jack, come on, man, talk about the facts. His favorite pivot. We've got about under a minute left. I did want to touch on one more piece that you wrote recently related to this, and that concerns ice IG corruption. That is, the Intelligence Community Inspector General who's implicated in the whistleblower that the quote unquote whistleblower that we talked about before and bringing his

case forth tell us a little about that. So here's the guy at the center. This is the one transcript that Adam Schiff won't release, and this is the transcript closed or testimony of Michael Atkinson, who's the Intelligence Community inspector general who kind of helped launch this latest impeachment crusade. He handled the complaint the whistleblower I use scare quotes whistleblower complaint. He told Congress that it was a matter of urging concern, tried to go over his body, his

head and bring attention to this. Michael Atkinson is closely tied to many of the key figures in the Russia Gate scandal. He worked directly for the head of the National Security Division, which was in charge of handling Carter Page's FAIZA. He was the chief counsel for Mary McCord, who was the head of that division, who also oversaw the Russian collusion bogus Russia collusion investigation, and he worked

for her for months. He stayed in that agency until he was inexplicably approved by the Republican Senate to serve as the watchdog for an intelligence community that's been trying to destroy Donald Trump from the beginning. Anyway, my point, and it's in my piece, is that Senate Republicans are smart.

That's a big if. Their very first witness, in my opinion, should be Michael Atkinson asked him about his role in Russia Gate from the beginning from July twenty sixteen, when all of this really started happening, until he left at the end of twenty seventeen. Here and we're gonna have to leave it right there. Joy, Thank you so much for coming on the program. This Ben one Garden in for Buck Sex and on the Buck Sexton Show back just after this. Thanks for listening to the bus Sex

Show podcast. Remember to subscribe on Apple Podcast, the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to the Buck Sexton Show. This is Ben Weegarten in for Bucks Sexton. And although I hate talking about this topic impeachment, obviously

we're rolling right into it. This week is where it really takes off in the Senate, and there was some substantial developments over the weekend with the Democrats putting out a brief explaining making their case for why Trump must be removed from office, even though they know they can't get the two thirds in the Senate. It's pretty funny actually, if you look at some of what they discuss in their brief. They say, they tell other senators follow the

constitution and rise above partisan differences. As you hear the case, president Trump abused the power of his office to solicit foreign interference in our elections for his own personal political gain, thereby jeopardizing our national security, the integrity of our elections,

and our democracy. The impeachment manager said in a statement, So, you want senators to rise above partisan differences and follow the constitution, but you are putting forth an entirely partisan impeachment process where you had Democrats in the House either of staying or switch parties altogether. But you want senators to rise above what does that mean? They want senators to turn their backs and stab stab their voters in

the back, basically is what they're asking for senators to do. Really, of course, you know this is just a charade to try to throw as many things as against the wall as possible while taking those going against for example, Joe Biden off the campaign trail in the Senate as a means of trying to inflict maximum political punishment rolling into the twenty twenty election. So then the White House put out a short concise, I think, pretty strong defense, and

they say the articles of impeachment violate the Constitution. They are defective in their entirety. They're the product of invalid proceedings that flagrantly denied the president any due process rights. They rest on dangerous distortions of the Constitution that would do lasting damage to our structure of government. And then it goes on to say that in the first article of the House attempts to seize the president's power on Article two of the Constitution to determine foreign policy. This

is the abuse of power quote article. In the second article, this is the obstruction of Congress. None of these are high crimes defined as high crimes and misdemeanors, or any of the other actual crimes stated in the impeachment quause of the Constitution. Of course, in the second article, the House attempts to control and penalize the assertion of the executive branches constitutional privileges while simultaneously seeking to destroy the

Framers system of checks and balances. By approving the article, is the House violate our constitutional order, legally abused its power of impeachment and attempted to obstruct President Trump's ability

to faithfully execute the duties of his office. They sell to undermine his authority under Article two of the Constitution, which vest the entirety of the executive power in a president of the United States of America, in order to presume and I think this is, by the way, the most important paragraph and the whole thing, in order to preserve our constitutional structure of government, to reject the poisonous partisanship that the Framers warned against, and by the way,

many of the House Democrats who were there during the Quinton impeachment warned against. To ensure one party political impeachment vendettas did not become the new normal, and to vindicate the will of the American people, the Senate must reject both articles of impeachment. In the end, this entire process is nothing more than a dangerous attack on the American people themselves and their fundamental right to vote. And that's true. And again, what drives me nuts about this whole thing

is that this even has to be written. There shouldn't have to be a brief because the whole process is illegitimate. The process is illegitimate, the substance is illegitimate. It's a joke.

And it pains me that Republicans are being forced to play defense by Democrats rules when Democrats don't control the Presidency, and they don't control the Senate either, And that is why, as I said last week, it is so imperative that Mitch McConnell and the other Republicans step up and fight the Democrats just as hard as the Democrats are fighting them, whether they realize it's an attack on themselves or not.

If for no other reason, then protect the institutions, whatever reason you have to find to muster the defense that the President deserves, the American people deserve, the Constitution deserves

against an anti constitutional, poetical adversary. So there was news that Mitch McConnell has built in a kill switch in the rules governing the impeachment, and you always, the devil is always in the details in a process like this, And as I've said, McConnell knows all the different kind of parliamentary procedures, how you can phrase the language properly to fight the Democrats with the same fervor that they're fighting the President and the Republicans. So he supposedly inserted

this kill switch. What does that mean? There's a measure. According to Senator Josh Holly, Republican from Missouri who has been very good on impeachment and many other issues for that matter, a freshman senator who emerged as a top eye of the president, had previously drafted a measure dismissing the charges if the House did not formally transmit them

by changing Senate rules to do so. He said that the rules package for the impeachment trial includes a measure that allows for the president's legal team to quickly push for a summary judgment or dismissal at any time should things get wild. The way Hally describes it himself is my understandings that the resolution will give the president's team the option to either move to judgment or to move

to dismiss at a meaningful time. And it's sad that it's come to this because we couldn't get enough Republicans to dismiss the thing general. Now instead we have to in some sense legitimize a charade, and that is what really sticks in My craw about this whole issue is that if it's illegitimate, the fact that we put all these constitutional niceties on it, these bells and whistles, and we're treating some we're treating an adversary who wants to kill us, as if they're operating in some form of

good faith. And that's why it's not just about dismissing or acquitting. It should be about punishing Democrats for putting this thing forth in the first place. And again, sort of like with Hillary Clinton, how she was never actually brought to real justice. The only justice was her losing the American people putting Donald Trump in the Oval office.

It's the same thing in twenty twenty. I have a feeling that we're going to be the only ones that have a say in terms of whether Democrats really pay a price for this fraud that they've been foisting on the American people. Another illustration of the fraudulent, the whole fraudulent tenor of this quote unquote impeachment non impeachment, and this is from Jonathan Turley, again a civil libertarian on the left. He wrote a little post on Gerald Nadwer,

House Judiciary Chair. Complete phony in this by the way.

I wrote about this right after the mid term elections when he was on a train ride back from New York and Molly hamming Away, of my colleague at the Federalists, reported that she just happened to be sitting in the train car behind him where he announced basically that they were going to be doing impeachment, and a bunch of calls to supposedly private cause should have been private cause, no discretion, I guess from nadwer were he telegraphed that

this is the way that we were going into impeachment. And I wrote after that about some video that if anyone go on c SPAN, take a look at the impeachment proceedings during Quentin nat were made the most rigorous defense you could ever have for President Donald Trump. Never have it. You should never have a partisan impeachment. It should never be one sided. It's a disaster for the American people, it's a disaster for the constitution, it's a

disaster for liberty. Showing himself to be a complete hypocrite now and so Turley talks about the fact that Nader doesn't want Hunter Biden to be called as a witness. He says there will be no trades of witnesses. Well, here's what Turley says, if true, that nadver will not do this trade of witnesses if Hunter Biden is a part of the deal, witnesses to be called during the Senate trial. So if Democrats get to call John Bolton,

Republicans get to call Hunter Biden. If true, is the House prepared to give up on proving its case to protect the Bidens from the ignoble moment of answering questions about the Ukraine contract. That is a considerable price to pay to protect Joe Biden. It's also another reason why the decision to rushed impeachment vote was such a historic blunder by Speaker Pelosi. They waited a couple of months, They could have called these witnesses and not handed over

control of the Senate. Instead, they impeached by Christmas and then waited a month. So why would they do that? Was that a blunder a tactical blunder by Pelosi and her colleagues. Well, again, I think it points to a motive potentially for or pretext a justification for taking off the fields Joe Biden's competitors. If you looked at impeachment purely through a Biden prism, his competition has been taken

off the playing field. If this trial goes for weeks and weeks number one and then number two, Biden unethical behavior, real quid pro quo, real bribery is at the heart of the whole impeachment sham. So is the impeachment sham, like the more Special Council, in effect, another cover up more special council tied up a bunch of loose ends with respect to misconduct on the government side in pursuing Trump.

Is this again Democrat attempt to obstruct misconduct on their side with Biden because qui quid pro quo and bribery which Democrats would no longer apply to President Trump because they know that it's not there and they know that it doesn't fit their impeachment article. Is when they pull tests, you know, what are the words that work? Could it once again be that they engaged in the very behavior

that they accused Trump and Republicans of? And could it be once again that they are trying to cover up that malfeasance by claiming malfeasance on the other side. Urge you to read by the way Peter Schweitzer's column on how five Biden family members have all profited handsomely during his time in office, sometimes directly and other times indirectly related to the positions senior level positions that he's held for decades and decades, and then I'll leave it with this.

On the impeachment subject, Byron York also wrote a great column where he talks about two of the deceptions at the heart of the brief that the Democrats put forth explaining why it is imperative that we must remove the president today even though they have no case, and they say for protecting the integrity of the current presidential race since last time he got help from Russia and he accepted it. Read York's column, I urge you to read it.

He talks about these two deceptions, one of them being that Trump wanted Ukraine to investigate quote unquote a debunked conspiracy theory that Russia did not interfere in the twenty sixteen presidential election to aid President Trump, but instead of Ukraine interfered in that election to aid President Trumps opponent Hillary Clinton. Okay, I would question that assertion York gives them concedes the fact that effectively Russia was solely trying

to aid President Trump. I mean it doesn't say solely in their quote, but trying to aid President Trump, when in reality, Russia was trying to sow discord. And if you look at it, they paid for ads for a bunch of candidates, not just President Trump, including Democrats. But weave that aside for the sake of argument. There's never been an argument that Ukraine interfered to help Hillary Clinton and not know Russia involvement. That's a flat out lie.

So that's York's first points, which was a very good point, and it's very clear that there's absolutely evidence out there of Ukrainian officials who did not want Trump to win and put out words to records to that effect, including I believe the New York Times reporting on this thrown under the rug now shoved under the rug. And then the other part is about asking Russia for help when obviously, as you know, Trump welcomed Russian election interference. Was not

what Trump did, he said release the emails. It was obviously in jest in a context of a much broader narrative. So what York argues that it's totally misleading to say that that was genuinely asking for Russian help and Russian interference in the election. As he writes, Trump did in fact welcome Russia based weeks, but grossly out of context.

The context is this Trump welcome Russia based weeks about the Quinton campaign because the media were enthusiastically embracing and repeating Russian based weeks about the Quintin campaign print, Internet TV. Everyone was accepting, repeating and amplifying the material release by wiki weeks from the Russian hack of top Quinton campaign official John Podesta, and then he runs through a bunch

of articles talking about this as well. It's just representative the fact that these two assertions would be at the heart of the Democrats brief It's just so representative of the fact that this whole thing is a sham. It's a joke, and that's why it should be treated as such. It should be taken seriously from the perspective Democrats are going to fight tooth and nail and claw and do everything they possibly can to extract as much blood as

they possibly can from this process. But it is a joke on the merits and it should be treated as such by us certain way. It's a serious attack on us, the Republican Party, the president, representative of the forgotten man in this country. But the way that it's being handled exposes the nature of our opponent and they cannot be dealt with is if we're fighting on an even playing fielder here for them, it's always the ends justify the means.

We need to take that deathly seriously. This has been one going in for Buck Sexon on the Buck Sexton Show. Back just after this, you're in. This is the Buck Sexton Show podcast. Welcome back to the Buck Sexton Show. This has Ben Weingarten in for Buck Sexton. I want to turn from domestic developments to international developments, and on this show, I like to talk about China as the main focus on the national security and foreign policy side, because we should never lose track of it. Number one,

number two. Much of the main news stories that the mainstream media is going to focus on are only seeing through the Trump focus prism. Number one and number two missed the context of just how substantial this reorientation in US national security and foreign policy is towards viewing China as the number one international threat to our liberty. That is the essential story. It shouldn't be lost in the fog of a disinformation war that the left has created

and propagated through their communications arm in the media. And in just a couple of minutes we're going to bring on someone who is, in my view, one of the best China experts and very focused on Taiwan in particular. But I do think again it pays to level set always with what is the nature of this regime? And last week I talked about some of the brutal human rights abuses, the tyrannical totalitarian nature of the Chinese Communist Party that controls every entity in China and then seeks

to control dissenters abroad and suppress them as well. There's an article I really I urge you to read it in its entirety because it is chilling and it should underscore just how serious this threat is emerging and coming on fast. There's an article in The Diplomat titled Exporting China's Social Credit System to Central Asia and the subtitle is Beijing building a cross border social engineering system, one

software solution at a time. Now, you know, this social credit system is basically where China collects intelligence, monitors, tracks all of their citizens and assigns them a score based upon effectively how closely do they adhere to the Chinese Communist Party line and the aims of the states. And if you don't, you pay all sorts of penalties, including not being able to take flights outside the country. It could impact your actual credit score, your ability to get

a mortgage. There every aspect of your life under a microscope of the Chinese Communist Party. So here are a couple of the anecdotes about that. By September twenty eighteen, fourteen point six million untrustworthy Chinese nationalists were banned from buying plane tickets. By December twenty eighteen, three and a half million Chinese nationals have reversed their untrustworthy status through various forms of community service, so they came in line

with the party. Many Chinese nationals have quickly adapted to this new way of discipline. It works, and now China's handing out a system to its neighbors, and that's the problem, by the way, for us and the rest of the world. So this article goes into all these other countries that have been consulting with China in its near and further abroad about implementing this sort of system. Theirself to judge their own citizens. And who runs those systems operates four

of them. Where's the software coming from in the hardware, Oh, comes from China. Can you imagine what China can do with that information, that power, and that control. When they say you are the product and China's offering this free in many instances, you really are the product. Here take a short break. This has been one for Buck Sex on the Buck Sex and Show. More on China just after this. Thanks for listening to the bus Sex and

Show podcasts. Remember to subscribe on Apple podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to the Buck Sex and Show. This is Ben Weingarten in for Buck Sexton, and before the break, I was talking a little bit about China's social credit system, one of the most Orwellian advents that we've seen in the twenty first century,

and they're exporting of that system abroad. And it speaks to a more fundamental issue, which is at China does not and the Chinese Communist Party itself does not just desire to obviously dominate its own mainland, but it has expansionist, you could argue imperialist ambitions as well, and one of

those imperialist ambitions concerns Taiwan. Here to join me to talk a little bit about recent developments in Taiwan and this theme that I just mentioned is former Deputy National Security Advisor to the Vice President, Dick Cheney and CEO of consulting firm DC International Advisory, Steve. Thanks so much for coming on the program. My pleasure. Happy to join. So, Steve, you were recently in Taiwan for their elections, which was resulted and I believe a resounding victory for the DPP

Democratic Progressive Party. First of all, why should Americans care about what just went down in Taiwan. Well, Americans should care because, first and foremost, this is the only democracy on the planet that the establishment deep state folks in Washington, DC have convinced the US government to help isolate and ignore, so we don't give them diplomatic relations. We've sent former Secretaries and State when they were in office to negotiate

with the likes of the Iranians. We've established diplomatic relations with Cuba, but somehow this self governing, free and democratic island we've been complicit in isolating. So first and foremost, I think as Americans, we should want to fix this mistake. But second, the Communist Party of China has taken on a very aggressive kind of all options on the table approach to influence operations, in other words, trying to shape politics and national security decision making in many parts around

the world to their favor. Their right to try, but we have been slow in the free world to wake up to this challenge. Taiwan is by far per but of the most attacked territory on the planet by the Communist Party of China in these ways, and so watching the democracy of Taiwan and action is a good lesson for us to basically be smarter about what we do here in the United States and how to bolster our allies to keep the pressure on the Chinese Communist Party in Asia so they can't place so much on our

own turf. And I mentioned the Democratic Progressive Party their president remaining in power and it being really a resounding victory in contrast to the party that is viewed as more aligned with the Chinese Communist Party and open amenable to some form of a reunification. What were your takeaways from the recent election. Well, I think the Communist Party of China was on the ballot in this Taiwan election.

I take nothing away from President taining One, who did indeed win a resounding reelection, but there are a couple of unusual well things that happened. In most developed democracies, we have polling that shows the youth vote going strongly one way or another when it comes to their candidate preference or party preference, but then they don't tend to turn out to vote as well. Well. The developments of Hong Kong changed that profoundly for the younger demographic in Taiwan.

They saw the youth of Hong Kong being willing to risk everything and frankly continue to get arrested to stand up for their fundamental rights against the Communist Party's encroachment, and the youth of Taiwan felt even more committed to turning out. There were a lot of people from Hong Kong that were in Taiwan for the election. It was really moving commentary to hear them tell Taiwan audiences about why they need to protect the democracy that they have,

don't let themselves become the next Hong Kong. So I think really Hijingping, the leader of the Communist Party, of China and the party itself the ballot and overwhelmingly lost in Taiwan, which represents the second popular massive rebuke of the Communist Party if you count the local elections in Hong Kong. Not that long ago. You mentioned real genuine

foreign interference in Taiwan's democratic election system and government. What are some of the lessons for Americans based upon Taiwan's experience dealing with in effect attacks, information warfare attacks, at the very least from the Chinese Communist Party there? Well. Number one, we have to stop playing sort of junior high school games about the twenty sixteen election and whatever

was done by way of Facebook adds. What the Chinese Communist Party is doing is much larger in scale in terms of geographical reach, but also in terms of money and assets involved. And they don't limit their information operations or influence operations to just some online postings of fake news. They have ways of trying to put pressure on our academic institutions, putting pressure on our media organizations. And this is what you learn when you watch things in Taiwan

up close and personal. They have learned that they have to track what they call red capital money that comes from the mainland directly or indirectly to control or shape the information environment they operate in. And so they have the classical spy versus spy stuff where former military officers get induced to come to the mainland to sell out

their country. We have to watch out for that. But they also have these modern techniques that are quite successful in some ways, where they throw money at universities, and the universities become less open to free speech and free thought, and they basically conform to what their donors do. And it's one thing if those donors are from free market, free world. It's another thing if they're basically taking their marching orders from the Communist Party of China. And that's

happened in American universities. But the Taiwanese have more educated and engage population now taking it seriously. We can learn

from what they're doing to resist. I think it's worth reiterating the point that's sort of implicit in all of this, which is that information warfare is really a fight to win a war of ideas, so that you can ultimately triumph in the way of getting other nations to bend to your will or even worse, without ever having to fire a shot at the core isn't really what China is attempting to do, to exert their power wherever they see fit, whenever they see fit. At the end of

the day, I think it is. I don't think it's much more complicated than that, and they have every right to try. But we just need to remember that this is not just two average athletes taking the field. We have a force that is fundamental evil and taking free will away from the people that governs, and another force that sacrifices every single day preserve that freedom to choose. It's not just for ourselves but others around the world, and the Communist Party of China has been at this

for a long time. We have chosen, I think unwisely to invest in ways that have made them more modern, more capable, and more powerful to our disadvantage. And I think we've sobered up a bit. But the challenge is very real and we're at the front end of figuring out how to meet it. And you're quite right to note, if we're smart about this, we have a lot of means at our disposal where this doesn't have to end

up in a classical military clash. We can and should be doing more to make things more complicated for them at home. After all, they're failing their people too, not just challenging ours. Yea. And to that end, there were reports, for example, of a directive from the National Security Council that would have authorize the US engaging more an offensive

cyber warfare, which clearly would implicate China. What would you advocate that the US government to do in terms of going on the offensive as opposed to being reactive or, as we've been in the past, wilfully ignorant or willfully blind to it. Well, sadly, you're right, you have been willfully ignorant and too passive. And I do support offensive cyber operations, after all, our enemies are going to do that to us. I just don't believe in the false

distinction between offensive versus defensive capabilities. If I have a gun in my hand and the barrel is pounded outward, it's defensive to me and it's offensive to somebody else. And it's nearly no different with a lot of the

tools that are in the cyber world. But fundamentally, what we're talking about is trying to break down the great firewall of China that is keeping people in and under control and basically turn some of these tools that were men to promote freedom and empowerment and prosperity into really meeting those ends. In other words, within China, the internet and social media have really been used to create an

Orwellian surveillance and control state. But we have been complicit and being passive about pushing information, choices and the truth in the China so that the leaders would have to be accountable to that truth. We're very behind that. On the other hand, we've allowed our freedom in some ways to be our vulnerability. We want people to like us, we want them to have a taste of what we have. We think it will influence them, and that works some

of the time. It just doesn't work as well when you have a determined, basically ideologically committed enemy that's operating

against you. How one of the things, just to level set a bit on Taiwan specifically, that our listeners may not be aware of, is that China basically undertook a campaign to other nations to a test you're either with us or you're with Taiwan, and most people sided with the People's Republic of China so called not Taiwan, and thus Taiwan sort of is in diplomatic limbo in some ways, in terms of not being recognized by many nations that we see an official basis, including being in a sort

of fluid position with respect to the US. How much of a propaganda coup would it be against the Chinese Communist Party if nations started to recognize Taiwan one Domino foul and then several foul, Well, it would be a diplomatic cool of sorts. But I'm afraid it really would just be a reclamation of common sense and truth. And so, I mean, it's not something that you would do out

of any sense of malice towards China. It's something we should do out of self respect and sort of looking at this island nation of Taiwan as never having been under the sovereign control the People's Republic of China. The Communist Party of China declared revolution on the Chinese people back in the nineteen forties. They did, in fact when that civil war and took control of the mainland. They

never took control of Taiwan. And I think it's been weak minds, an appeasement mindset that has granted them the latitude to control our language and our thought for the better part of the last fifty years in trying to say there is one China in the world and the Taiwan is a part of it. What all you have to do is look at a map and you'll see that the island is significantly offshore. And if you just read a little bit of history, you'll realize the Communist

Party has never controlled it. If they want to unify with Taiwan, it's their business, but we should be there to help insist that it be peaceful and with the consent of the Taiwan people. I don't think that they'll win that consent, but really that is where we need to be. And I think the US government under the Trump administration has made a significant shift in the right direction, at least initially in pressuring Taiwan's remaining allies to stay

firm and not get bought off by Chinese inducements. But we would do right by ourselves, not just as a favorite of Taiwan, to say we're going to increase levels of diplomatic recognition for Taiwan. And it's really only after the United States leads the way that others will have the courage and common sense to do so as well. I think it would be an investment in ultimately peace and prosperity and put the pressure on the mainland to improve itself if it really wants the acceptance of the

Taiwan people and US. Lastly, looking just to our north, today, March the beginning of the extradition trial of Huawei's CFO, who is being held effectively under house arrest in Canada based upon US brought charges involving both bank fraud and then dealings with Iran that Huawei allegedly lied about. What do you make of this trial and what is its significance? Well, there are a couple of things that play in it.

Number One, we have the relatives of high ranking communist leaders that get posh exceedingly well paid jobs to go around the world pretending as if they're not affront for the Communist Party of China and their commercial enterprise. That's an important wake up call for people to look at. The second, this company, Huawei, was actively engaged in avoiding

sanctions against the Iran. So we have the dublicity of the Chinese government at the United Nations occasionally going along with a broad based vote on sanctions related to counter proliferation or otherwise, but then commercially actively working to undermine those sanctions. And then the other thing I think is really really important not to forget this high ranking Huawei officer was, in fact looks pretty guilty of doing these

things that undermine our national security. But the Chinese, in retaliation against the Canadian government took a couple of Canadian NGO workers who haven't been seen since. And so we have this dichotomy of Chinese commercial slash party person on trial in Canada but living in Martha Stewart luxury prison accommodations. And then we have these two poor NGO workers that have been put into what I'm sure is a much less humane environment in China and have been taken off

the grid. So that's what that stake in that trial. Are we going to have rule of law and a China that honors obligations and put outward. Are these companies for real commercial or are they political and strategic? And then we have this whole issue of retaliation that really hasn't got the international attention to deserve. We're gonna have to leave it right there. Steve, thanks so much for coming on the program. Always appreciate it my pleasure to take care of And this is Ben Wegarden in for

Buck Sexon on the buck Sexton Show. Back just after this you're in the Freedom Hud. This is the buck Sexton Show podcast. Welcome back to the buck Sexton Show. This is Ben wein Garden in four Buck Sexton. I want to transition from Asia to the Middle East. And there was a story out of the Middle East that well, someone was brought to justice who should have been brought to justice. Let's put it that way. The headline on American Greatness was Islamic State heavyweight nabed in Iraq so

fat he had to be loaded onto flatbed truck. The Iraqi military have bagged a biggin the five hundred and sixty pound Islamic state Mufti, known as Job of the Hut or Job of the Jihad. I believe is the way the New York Post wrote it up. It's so enormously fat. After he was captured, Iraqi forces had to load him on into a flatbed truck because he couldn't fit in a police car. The ices heavyweight at Abu Abdullabari, also known as Shifa Alima, put the fat in Fatua.

According to The New York Post, he was napped Thursday by an AID swat team of the Ninevah Regiment in the city of Mosul. Stars and Stripes reported on Friday. Despite his more bid obesity, the Islamic state official was known to be a cruel monster who raped and murdered civilians. So I think this is a good representative of who these Islamic supremacists are because this guy could not move and he was a coward sending out people to commit the most heinous of acts in the name of his religion.

This Islamic supremacist monster. We're gonna talk a little bit more about some Islamic supremacist monsters right after this quick break. This has been wager in for Buck sexon on the Buck Second Show. Back just after this. Thanks for listening to the bus Sex Show podcast. Remember to subscribe on Apple Podcast, the iHeart Radio app, or wherever you get

your podcasts. Welcome back to the Buck Sexton Show. This is Ben Weingarten in four Bucks Sexton and before the break we were talking a little bit about this transition from Asia to the Middle East, and in particular in this case a little bit north to Iran, and there was a video making the rounds over the weekend, being propagated, of course, by the Islamic supremacist regime in Tehran's minions. Let's call them Solomani because them Solomani holding his grandson

and cooing and coddling him. And so one commenter on this was noting, Iran carefully shaped his image in life and continues to do so in depth. And all I could think to myself looking at these images and there it's revolting to see them try to portray this man

as some kind of humanitarian. Remember, Solomani had the blood of hundreds of Americans on his hand, Dad Americans from roadside bombs that he was responsible for perfecting, thousands of other Americans injured, maimed, not to mention thousands of other civilians around the world. It's hundreds of thousands of people in Syria, all of the Europeans who have had to

deal with the Syrian refugee crises themselves. This man has done incalculable damage as a human being, as the leader, the orchestrator of Iran's imperialist ambitions, growing them around the world. And they put out this picture and all I can think to myself is this man is a monster. And you should read the comments because the comments in this case, read the comments because those other people have hit the nail on the head with respect to this sort of

jihadas propaganda coming out of Iran. And you know, the sickening thing really when you think about it, is how much different is this image being portrayed of him holding his grandson. Well, first of all, again, how many people will never be able to hold their child or their grandchild because of what this man did in his life. This monster did in his life. That's my real takeaway. This man has destroyed an incalculable number of families and nations for that matter. But also this is sort of

the way that our media portrayed him as well. Yeah, not an austere religious scholar per se, but whatever is analogous to that when it comes to being the architect, the mastermind of Iran's imperialist global ambitions exporting it's Islamist revolution around the world. There was other news out of Iran as well, though that was overshadowed by some of

these other headlines, but is husually significant. So here's a headline from the Daily mail exclusive secret document that proves Iran was voting a nuclear weapon as far back as two thousand and two, even while they claimed the technology was only for peaceful purposes. Document was seized as part of a raid by Israeli intelligence agents on a compound

in Tehran in twenty eighteen from an Iranian official. This document requesting the parameters of a warhead fitted on a missile in November two thousand and two, and scribbled in the top life corners a note from its nuclear chief who signs off on the plans. And this document is apparently the centerpiece of an as yet unreleased report highlighting

Iran's quandestine nuclear activities. Once again, how could you have a deal with a regime that's lied about and concealed and obviouscated and deceived on every aspect of its nuclear effort going back a couple of decades. It's the same guys in power, and it is the supreme leader Kamane

running the whole regime. Yeah, when the Obama aministration tried to create this moderates hardliners split within leadership, what they failed to address is the fact that the elected leaders quote unquote are only eligible to achieve those positions if the malocracy controlled by Commander and others around him approve of them. It's a rubber stamped regime. It's a puppet regime. At the end of the day, it's a puppet regime. So how can you have a deal with them? What

is the deal? The deal isn't worth the paper that it's printed on. The deal is Iran continues to advance his program more quandestine way, with one hundreds of billions of dollars more, and then gets it legitimated at the end because of the Sunset provisions that allow Iran to be treated as a legitimate nuclear power to continue its ballistic missile proliferation. And meanwhile, our media, of course headline

from the Atlantic this is pretty good. And this is in context of the unraveling of the so called i Ran nuclear deal, as even our European partners start to suddenly realize, hey, maybe this isn't a regime that would actually honor the garbage JCPOA. This is a tweet from Mike Duran and the headline is from the Atlantic, which grudgingly admit that the killing of Solomoni was a masterstroke, but it can't bring itself to give Trump credit for

knowing what he was doing. So here's the headline, Donald Trump stumbles into a foreign policy triumph that when you have to resort to that, you know we must have done something right. And the article is actually, I think pretty revealing. This is from a European correspondent for The Atlantic, and he writes, well, it's clearly too early to judge the long term ramifications of the president's decision to order

the killing. The initial assessment among many in the foreign policy establishment here in London is not quite what you might expect. The attack, in the view of Anos and British officials I spoke with the letter of whom requested and inimitated discuss government discussions, has at a stroke reasserted American military dominance and revealed the constraints of Iranian power.

Although Trump's foreign policy strategy, if one even accepts that there is such a thing, of course, they have to be snarky like this and question everything, legitimacy of everything, has many limits. His unpredictability, and most crucially is willingness to escavate a crisis. Okay, that's one way to portrait.

Another way is diffuse a crisis by using overwhelming force such that Iran will think twice about doing anything hostile to the US willingness to escavate a crisis using the US military and economic strength have turned the table as on Iran in away few thought possible. What is more, the strike has exposed the gaping irrelevance of Europe's leading

powers Britain, France and Germany in this whole crisis. The E three, which were the main parties to the deal, along with the United States and Iran, which have long sought to keep the Iranian nuclear deal alive by undermining the US policy of maximum pressure in Iran, have so

far failed to do so. This week, they were finally forced to admit the apparently terminal collapse of the Obama era a nuclear deal, releasing a joint statement to announce that they were triggering its dispute resolution clause because of Tehran's failure to abide by the terms of the agreement. The reality of the situation is startling. Europe's attempts to keep the deal alive have achieved little in Tehran because of the continent's powerlessness. In European opposition to Trump's Iran

policy has achieved even less in Washington. In an interview, Boris Johnson all but admitted defeat in keeping the nuclear deal alive, calling instead for a new Trump deal. In other words, Trump exposed reality there was no deal to be had. And as I've written in a couple of articles recently at the Federalists and I'll share them, they were cheating on the deal the whole time. We have

documentary evidence of it. But beyond that, we couldn't even have visibility into any of the military sites where likely the nuclear weapon work took place. So okay, they could argue that they may be complied with some of the terms of a deal, but we only saw the places that they wanted us to see. Iran wouldn't let internationally recognized inspectors certified under the deal to verify and do actual checks at the sites where their malign activities actually

took place likely take place. So my friend Omri Seran, who's the National security advisor for Senator Ted Cruz and must read it on all things I ran, tweets out news out of Iran. The regime is threatening to decrease cooperation on nuclear issues if the Europeans pressure them over their checks. Notes confirms yep. If the Europeans pressure them over their lack of cooperation on nuclear issues, and that was in response to an article I may review cooperation

with IAEA. That's the inspector body. If EU pressure mounts so they didn't abide by the deal, they wouldn't let us check if they were abiding by the deal. And now now if we pressure them over lack of cooperation, they might really get angry. There's no deal to be

had with Iran at the end of the day. The only deal ultimately is either this momocratic regime stays in power and advances towards nuclear weaponry, and ultimately we're probably forced to engage in a military response, massive military response, or and the Trump's policies, whether by design or as part of a way to get towards forcing a surrender of this regime, has destabilized this regime to an unprecedented degree.

And while a destabilized regime may lash out, at the same time, Iran has been exposed to have major problems, and the incompetence was on foe display. Tragic incompetence was on fot display when they shot down a passenger plan and killed dozens of their own people. As well as

people from all over the world, from Canada elsewhere. It's a big deal that even for the European countries, Iran has breached too many of the steps in the deal, too many of the constraints, the strictures and the deal at this point that even they can't stand by IDOI anymore.

And by the way, this dispute resolution mechanism that was discussed in that Atlantic article I mentioned, ultimately it could get towards the UN reimposing sanctions on Iran, crippling sanctions which in a country that is already they lost Solamani, They're overstretched abroad, dealing with protesters in all of the different countries that they count as their proxies, Chaos in Iraq, streets of Lebanon, on their own streets, having to resort

to murdering, persecuting thousands of their own people. Right now, their coffers going dry, shut out of the international oil markets, main source of revenue. They could be on the ropes and worth it pointing out one more thing while we're sticking on the Iran topic, this was a good piece, a good reminder. Urge you to check out this article on power Line Bernie's history with Iran. Like I said, the left historically in our last episode always stands with

these horrible totalitarian regimes. This is in the Daily Beast on April nineteen seventy nine. This is Powerline, quoting that article. April nineteen seventy nine, the theocratic Islamic Republic of Iran was proclaimed Aetola Rojola Commani, who had returned to Iran from exile to assume command of the revolt, became supreme

leader in December of that year. His rise was accelerated by the seizure on November four of fifty two American diplomats and citizens and citizens of other countries at the usmbassy in Tehran. Then we have the hostage crisis. Virtually all American Democrats, Republicans and independence united and support of

the hostages and the international call for their freedom. One prominent political figure on the twenty twenty stage, then almost completely unknown, stood apart by joining a Marxist Leninist party that not only pledged support for the Iranian theocracy but also justified the hostage taking by insisting the hostages were all likely CIA agents. Who was that person? It was Bernie Sanders, Bernie Sanders, member of a Trotsky eight party,

stood with the Iranian moocracy. By the way, he's not alone in that romance of those sort of regimes, none other than Elizabeth Warren. And this this was unveiled previously, revealed previously, but brought up again recently in an article at front Page called on the Obama administration to clear Ethel Rosenberg's record. Who is Ethel Rosenberg. Well, you'll recall she was tried for treason essential in helping the Soviet

Union develop nuclear capabilities the Adam bomb. Rather, as the article states, she could be the next commander in chief. Caught on the Obama administration to formally exonerate Soviet atomic spy. Ethel Rosenberg sent a letter data January ten, twenty seventeen, on behalf of one of her sons, constituent request that you provide a thorough review of their request that you

issue a proclamation exonerating his mother. Ethel Rosenberg, executed by the US for conspiracy to commit espionage in nineteen fifty three, effectively a treason this act. She wasn't alone, by the way, in the Democratic Party. But that goes to show you the nature of who we're dealing with on the other side. Right now, once again there has been one going in for buck Sex and on the buck Secon Show back just after this, you're in the Freedom Art. This is

the buck Sexton Show podcast. Welcome back to the buck Sexton Show. This is Ben Weiningerten in four bucks Sexton and let's transition. We just talked about a little bit at the Middle East, Iran's malevolence, the left embrace of that those totalitarian regimes, be it Iran or elsewhere around the globe, and there's another similarity in terms of their ideology. And I'll get there by waye First of talking about the fact that this week President Trump is scheduled to

be at Davos. What is the main topic at Davos this year? Naturally climate change? The head of the World Economic Forum, it's founder, Klass Schwab said, we do not want to reach the tipping point of irreversibility on climate change. We do not want the next generations to inherit a world which becomes evermore hostile and ever less habitable. Just think of the wildfires in Australia and we'll get to

that in a second. An annual risk survey published by his organization, put climate and other environmental threats ahead of risks posed by geopolitical tensions and cyber attacks the first time. The survey found the top five long term risks were all environmental. Talk about groupthink, from extreme weather events to businesses and governments failing to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

Part of this is sustainability, the theme at this year's Davos meeting to deal with grapple with global warming becoming worse because of growing divisions among nations and businesses on

how to tackle it. The meetings, which will see over fifty heads of state and government, including German Chance or Angolo Miracle and Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, descend on the Alpine resort, seeking to give concrete meaning to stakeholder capitalism, a concept that businesses should serve the interests of all society rather than simply their shareholders. Remember I talked about woke chroning capitalism last week when it came to Blackrock.

That's the agenda on the table for all of the leaders, the business heads, the politicians around the world meeting at Davos, and I cannot wait for Trump to smash them. Into smithereens during this meeting. Over this fifty three heads of stayed at Davos, seventeen hundred business leaders, including CEOs from eight of the ten most valuable companies in the world. Eighty percent of the cars used by the World Economic

Forum are electric or hybrid. Climate is the excuse for the totalitarian, anti capitalist system that they all they're all like minded, all the globalist leaders, they're are like minded on this. Why do they care about the environmental stuff because it means power and control. It's a way to use science to justify control over your life. And they will profit, of course from it, because they're the ones in charge of all of these green initiatives, invested in

the green companies. It's a wealth redistribution scheme to them. In the process it impoverishes all of us. So I was happy to see on this topic the Bernie Sanders and as well AOC Alexander Acazio Quartez came out and panned the USMCA that the Trump administration just was able to push through in the Senate. Here's Bernie, not a

single damn mention of climate change in his tweets. Seems like a happy guy and the Sanders suggested on the campaign trail that fossil fuel executives are probably criminally liable for climate change, and he's expressed interests in potentially prosecuting them. That's totalitarianism. That's if you have wrong think, you should be shut up stifled. So urge you to read this article from Rupert Darwall in The Hill, and I've interviewed him separately as well. Look it up on YouTube and

I can share it as well. Climate religion is fueling Australia's wildfires. Getting back to that, and what he shows is that the wildfires in Australia that have been husually destructive to their environment are largely the consequence of environmentalist policies. It's not because of climate change, quote unquote, it's because they haven't been able to control the brush that has led to these massive wildfires. They're not allowing people to burn the brush which would prevent them there for being

these massive conflagrations. So environmentalism has real consequences. It is irrational, is what Darwa argues in this article. It is a religion, but it's a religion that the true believers truly believe in science is infallible and that the science is settled on this issue, which is not. But it's also a religion that totalitarians use for control over all of us. This Benegart in for Buck sex And on the Buck Sex and Show. Back just after this. Thanks for listening

to the Bus Sex and Show podcasts. Remember to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to the Buck Sex and Show.

This is Ben weine Garden in for Buck Sexton, and we were just talking about totalitarianism of one kind, which is the use of infallible science in furtherance of an anti capitalist agenda that ultimately is about power and can troll over you and for the people loarding those policies over us and imposing them upon us to our great detriment,

impoverishing us while they benefit. We'll shift to a different kind of creeping sort of totalitarianism, which is an assault on our individual civil liberties under the guise of national security while the bad guys actually remand get off scott

free and there's no justice. And that concerns the recent Inspector General report on FIZO abuses, which comes of course in the broader sort of mosaic around Spygate and what we've been dealing with laboring under for the last three plus years, and I fear we're going to continue dealing

with for many more years to come, unfortunately. So we're going to talk with senior contributor to the federalistic colleague of mine, Margot Cleveland, who spent nearly twenty five years as a permanent lawkwork for a Federal Appellet judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals and as a former full time faculty member and current adjunct instructor for the College of Business at the University of Notre Dame. Margo, thanks so much for joining us. Thanks so much, Ben.

So let's start by level setting a little bit the IG report on FISA abuse with respect to carter Page. So it's seventeen significant and accuracies and omissions and the bureaus applications for warrants to surveil carter page under FISA, starting I believe back in twenty sixteen. What is the most underreported element of the IG report that you've discovered thus far in parsing it in great depth. So I

would say there's actually a tie for two. One is that the IG completely missed that the DOJ FBI had told the FISA Court that Steele has this network of sources because he used to work as a spy for the British government. And the reason that is such a huge revelation is the five The court didn't really do much here. They did pretty much a rubber stamp except

for the first goal round. And on the first goal round they presented what they present a copy to get some feedback, so they presented what they call a read copy to a liaison at the court. The recopy gives them a chance to go through and see if there are any issues. And one of the issues that was raised was how does your source, Christopher Steele have this network of sources that he was able to get this

information from. And the response that was given is because he used to work and it's redactive, but everyone knows what it is. He used to work for m I six and the liaison, the lawyer working for the FISI court told of the government to change and put that

detail in there. I'll swear though in the IG report is a finding that Steel was not using those sources, None of those sources that he used for his dossier had the connection of being from his former work with the UK British intelligence and significant because the court cared about that, they asked about it, and all the government said was, oh, yeah, he has this network of sources because he used to be an intelligence for our British colleagues.

Think about that as a judge, You're looking at and saying, well, this subsource, this is going to be a legit because British intelligence relies on the same people. But the truth is no, they don't. They did not. Steel did not use the same sources. So I would say that is one underreported story that it should be huge. I think that he should have called that out as an eighteenth mistake.

I think that was significant and maybe even more so than other ones because the five courts specifically asked for it. And then I would say the second mistake or second underreported comment here was that in the IG report there was this just little passage exchange where it said that or Bruce Orr, who was one of the DOJ deputy assistant Deputy Attorney generals, he was the one who was

kind of feeding stuff from Steel to the FBI. It said that he had called a meeting an interagency meeting, And the only reason we know about this is after the meeting, one of his colleagues asked, Or, why would we work with this Russian oligarch? And it was Olga and I'm not even sure how to pronounce his name. Ar Yes, thank you. So the colleague asked after the meeting, why would the US work with him? And Or said that the reason why was because there was corruption in

the Trump campaign. The question was all the way to the president and he said yes. So there's a couple of things here that no one's really picked up on. Was he Or called this inter agency meeting? So who was at this meeting? What other agencies were involved? And it seems to tie back to Or's official role, which was in charge of this interagency group. But Or said, oh, I didn't talk to my bosses about Christopher Steele because it had nothing to do with my real job. So

that's one component of it. But two, it looks like Or was trying to push cutting a deal with the oliguard in order to get Trump, because he told his colleague that afterwards. The other part of the is the timing of this. This came after Or had met with a couple I think there were three other folks that were looking at the charges against Paul Maniford and it had nothing to do with them. Yet they were trying

to figure out how to get this pushed. And Andrew Wiseman was one of the individuals, And one of the things that the IG report said is they were trying to come up with strategies of how to move that case along. So one of the questions I have was this reach out to these other agencies part of the strategy. So I have two separate pieces over at the Federalists

there a couple maybe a week or so old. There's been so much on the IG report that has gone unreported, but those two really should be blockbusters and people should be focusing on this, and I hope that bar and Gurham are because those are a huge missing components to it.

How culpable is the fiz Accort itself? And I think you have identified them as being culpable in some of the abuses with respect to the case of Carter Page, which, of course that invites the question of how many other cases has the fiz Coort effectively botched or not held to the proper standard that such important cases should be held to how culpable is the court and what would be the proper way for their culpability to be remedied or for there to be justice for the FISI court

individuals personnel involved with this themselves. Right, So on the latter point is, judges make mistakes. Lawyers who work for judges make mistakes. There really is no culpability other than that it's a black eye on them, and it should be. But it's unfortunate because it doesn't seem as if they're recognizing that they're pointing all the fingers at the DOJ and the FBI, and their fingers should be pointed there. The PHIZE Court trusted the lawyers, and they should have

been able to trust the lawyers. But at the same time, someone should have caught that there was no established reliability for these subsources. That Steele was the only one who supposedly had reliability, and that's where it's the DOJ and

FBI's fault for misrepresenting that. But he cannot build up the subsources and the sub subsources, and yet the phiz A Court allowed what the subsources said happened to be the basis for probable cause, even though the fires of warrant or fies that applications were clear that neither neither Steal nor his primary subsource had the direct knowledge of this, and that actually ties back to the point I just made about They likely thought that these subsources were ones

that the British intelligence information and intelligence, and because of that, assumed that they were reliable and didn't go that next step and say where in the application doesn't see that, So there is culpability. I don't think it's nearly as great as the DOJ's and the FBI because they made so many mistakes, but they should learn from this and

hopefully look at things more closely. The other part of it that I found in reading the IG report and some of the kind of the text messages that were going back and forth between the parties is it looks like there was a little bit too They were concerned about how one of the individuals involved in the process would kind of lead the talk to the liaison. So apparently someone from the group that handles the FISA applications

talks to the laison and they were concerned. Peter Struck was concerned with how is he going to set it up? Is he going to make it iffy or is he going to make it sound like a done deal, which to me indicates that there's a little bit too much reliance on the DOJ's presentation and that they should be looking at it a little bit more objectively. So I think that again it's much more on the DOJ and FBI, but the FISA Court definitely has some culpability for it.

Looking at the remedy is that the FBI proposed when the fifth pointed the finger, as you said, back at them and said what will you do basically to ensure that the court isn't missweat again in the future. It as a wayman, and your eyes can easily gaze over looking at the sort of language that's used to explain what the FBI is going to do down the road to reform themselves. Is that they were basically toothless reforms.

Is that a fair assessment? You know? Then I'll have to be frank, I have not looked at what they suggested doing. I'm still so buried in what they did in the past. And I also kind of look at it as you're always going to say the nice stuff.

That's when the rubber meets the road. That I really am going to care about it, and I think that there's the more significant change would be that the FISA court requires that you have and amycus someone who's arguing on behalf of the person who's going to be tapped. So I really have no idea if it's going to be toothless or not. But there's there's so much that went wrong, and until we know everything that went wrong,

it's hard to say how do you reform it. One more point that I think is worth thinking is that before this FIZO abuse report came out, there was another IG report that didn't get nearly as much focus by the media, which was on confidential human sources i e. Informants i e. Spies. How significant is that report in context of the FIZO abuse report. It was so key And I guess now I'm going to have to say it's a three way tie. What's the most underreported stories.

So the IG report that came out, I want to say two weeks before the Carter page one made clear that the FBI was not putting derogatory information in the confidential human source files because it was harming the prosecutors the US Attorney's ability to use them. Because they would have to turn it over in discovery to the defendants, and then it would make them not seem as credible. That should be huge. We're not talking about one guy who accidentally made a mistake or one guy who purposely

deleted or changed an email. The IG report made it clear that this was a fairly prevalent approach, a very prevalent opinion that the FBI recognize that they don't want certain things put in these files, which means, how in the world can the FBI say that this individual is credible, that there is nothing derogatory when they don't put it in the file. And to me, you read those two things in conjunction, it makes the second report even more damning.

But everyone was so focused on what the Page report was going to say and looking forward to that they missed what the IG admitted the FBI was doing. So there's so much that has gone unreported, and part of it's just amusing to me that for two years, every little thing that happened that maybe looked like Russia collusion was blown up and just read into so much and reported. The IG Report's been out from what two three weeks,

and it's old news and there's so much buried in it. Yeah, and you've done it, just an exceptional job reporting on it. I urge all of our listeners and viewers to check out Margot's work at The Federalist. We're going to have to leave it right there, but Margot, thanks so much for coming around the program today. Thanks so much. Bennett was nice to talk with you. And this has been one in for Buck sex on on the Buck Sex and show back with some closing thoughts just after this.

You're in the Freedom mund This is the Buck Sexton Show podcast. Welcome back to the Buck Sexton Show. This is Ben Weingarten in for Buck Sexton. And during the break it was just thinking about what is sort of the unifying theme that ties today together, and that is really one of liberty versus tyranny, the tyranny of an all powerful government that uses science as an excuse to

stifle our rights and profit personally from it. Whether it's our adversaries, be they the Chinese Communist Party or the Iranian molocracy and their malign imperialist expansionist efforts, or whether it be our leftists at home not only in the realm of under climate change, turning us into an anti capitalist bastion, but as well seeking to divide us as a means of conquering us through poisonous identity politics. And again, what Martin Luther King Junior argued for was the antipthesis

of that. It was about freedom, individual liberty, respecting the dignity of the smallest minority, the individual, consistent with what our founders advocated for in those founding documents. And one of these enemies of what unifying Americanism, which is the strongest bulwark against all of this, is ilhan Omar. And I tease this last week and I'll reveal the title of my book now forthcoming next month is American ingrit ilhan Omar and the Progressive Islamist Takeover of the Democratic Party.

And I'll be talking more about the book in the coming days. But subscribe to my newswetter. I'll give you a heads up when it's available. It's bit dot ly slash bhw News. Urge you to subscribe there and you'll be abreast when the book comes out. I want to thank you for taking the time to listen or watch us over the last few days, as I've had the privilege to fill in for Buck. Want to thank Buck for giving me the opportunity to fill his big shoes. This has been ben wingaren in for Buck Sex and

on the Buck Sex and Show. Give me a follow at BH Winegarden. Look forward to talking next time. Thanks so much