Judging Freedom - Ray McGovern: Is Russia Trying to Influence the Trump/Harris Race?

Episode Date: November 4, 2024

Ray McGovern: Is Russia Trying to Influence the Trump/Harris Race?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you. Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, November 4th, 2024. Ray McGovern is here with us now. Are you ready for this? Is Russia trying to influence the Trump-Harris race? Well, probably not. But why does the government want you to think that? That, of course, in the latest on Ukraine and Israel right after this. A divisive presidential election is upon us, and the winner is gold. Let me tell you what I mean. Since 2016, our national debt has grown a staggering 70 percent and gold has increased by 60 percent.

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Remember, hope is not a strategy, but gold is. Ray McGovern, welcome here, my friend. I'm smiling because I'm looking at one of the viewers' comments who is apparently a big fan of Ray McGovern, and he simply writes, Go, Ray, go. He doesn't mean go away. He means go at it. I want to talk to you about the American federal government three-letter agencies that are trying to get us to believe falsely, I think you're going to tell me, that Russia is trying to influence tomorrow's election to push the outcome toward a Trump victory. But before we get there,

as our friend Larry Johnson will discuss shortly, the New York Times finally acknowledges that Ukraine is in bad shape. Its statistics are way off, but its conclusion seems to be nearly the same as yours, mine, Larry's, and everybody else on this program who opines on it. Why the sudden realization two or three days before Election Day? Well, I don't know exactly, Judge. It's been a long time in coming. Over the last couple of weeks, there have been several articles intimating that, whoa, actually, Ukraine is not winning. Russia seems to be winning. The denouement is coming within the next few months, for sure, maybe in the next few weeks. So I see the Times just covering their rear ends and say, well, look,

we did say in early November that this was not going so well. And I think the American people, kind of the ones that read the Times, will say, oh, well, yeah, the Times acknowledged that before it happened. It's a terrible performance. The press and the media have really let us down. And the intelligence community, as I say, telling the president, President Biden, to tell everyone in the world from Helsinki in July of last year, Russia has lost definitively. There's no way that they can win this thing. So it's really kind of strange. I guess we would be more concerned if this were the Washington Post, because then we know whose views the Washington Post would be mouthing. So let me ask you point blank, if the Times is saying this, are these leaks from the CIA or are your former colleagues sticking with leaking

to their favorite entity, the Washington Post? Well, I'm sure there are leaks, Judge. This is par for the course. And I'm sure there's lots of dissent in the intelligence community. After all, there have to be a couple of honest people left, and they have to be willing to say, you know, this is a charade that we have a chance in Ukraine, and they would be likely to go to the Washington Post and the New York Times. The difference is that the Times and the Post will print it now, because it's so clear that this is a fool's errand, and everything depends on tomorrow as to whether and for how long it goes on. When the intelligence community leaks, obviously to influence the narrative, is this done by rogue agents, or is this done with official authorization or both? I mean,

stated differently, would they say the same thing to the New York Times that they say to the Washington Post? Yes. I mean, there's a script that they read from. They favor one or the other, depending on their mood. There are legitimate leaks, judges. You probably remember, wow, 20 years ago, just before the 2004 election where George W. Bush was reelected, James Risen was in receipt of really dynamic, devastating leaks showing that the Bush administration was playing fast and loose with the Fourth Amendment. Now, Risen had that story several months before the election. He went to his New York Times people and they said, no, no, I better not do that because Salzburg has talked to George W. Bush.

That would endanger our socialism methods. And so James Risen meekly waited until the following December, like December 2005, and then he published a story with Eric Whitbow in the Times in December, and then his book came out. You know, Risen did not rise to the occasion, and again, he's playing the same game. He had an article in The Intercept just over the weekend. It's really quite remarkable because it even goes into charges that the Russians hacked the DNC emails prejudicial to Hillary Clinton. And that has been debunked by just about everybody. Only Ryzen is continuing to repeat this story. He'll serve whatever master is in being there. And it's a real commentary. After all, you know, the Intercept, the Intercept was founded by people like Jeremy Scahill

and Glenn Greenwald, for God's sake. And they saw what was going on. And Glenn is the only one. Now, this is four years ago, Glenn was the only one to carry the Hunter laptop story, you know, namely that the FBI had it. The FBI knew there was not a Russian disinformation intelligence operation, like 51 former intelligence directors said, and The Intercept would not let Glenn Greenwald publish that. And to his credit, a man of principle, he quit. He quit The Intercept that he co-founded. Now, for years, I have been a big fan of Glenn Greenwald, not because we agree on nearly everything, but because he is

a man of principle, and I commend him for that. But do the three-letter entities in the government, the DNI, the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI, we all know what that is, the DHS, the Department of Homeland Security, today. Today's the day before Election Day. I know people are going to be watching this throughout the week. But do they expect us to believe that today, Russia, the government of Russia, is trying to influence the outcome of the presidential election in America tomorrow? They expect us to believe that, Judge, and they're doing everything they possibly can to make us believe that. Now, you probably know that just two days ago, the three-letter agencies you mentioned, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and others have come out with a memo.

The DNI, April Haynes. Yeah, right, April Haynes, the overall guru, okay? The DNI, the FBI, and a portion, a cyber portion of the Department of Homeland Security. They came out with a thing saying, whoa, wait a second, there's lots and lots of election interference. And at the same time, who appears on Rachel Maddow? But Victoria Nuland. And she says, Putin is at it again. She's at it again. And Rachel, she talks about how he's trying to influence. And then she says he got another tool this time, a more powerful tool. His name is Elon Musk.

So they're at it again. Russians are trying to form this, trying to interfere with the election. because he has the most, he repeats every single debunked charge about the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election to include hacking the DNC emails, which has been disproven by court testimony by the head of the cyber firm who was investigating that hacking, which wasn't hacking, but rather a copy onto a thumb drive and taken to WikiLeaks at the time. Chris, can you look for the clip of Victoria Nuland? I think she's on Rachel Maddow's show. We ran it about a week ago. I know it's going to upset some of our viewers

because she's not very popular with them, but we do have it. Here it is, right? He's at it again. This time he's not even trying to hide his hand, and he has far more sophisticated tools. You know, his AI is better, so he can make these fake videos.

He has done things like spend $10 million trying to buy American influencers and get them parroting his lines and not even know it's happening. But he's also got a brand new, very, very powerful tool, which is Elon Musk and X. You know, in 2020, the social media companies worked hard with the U.S. government to try to do content moderation, to try to catch this stuff as it was happening. But this time we have Elon Musk talking directly to the Kremlin and ensuring that every time the Russians put out something like this, it gets five million views on X before anybody can catch it. So it's it's quite dangerous, although I do think the American electorate has gotten more sophisticated and more savvy about this stuff. One of the viewers writes in, oh, my God, Judge, I'm eating breakfast.

All right. All right. I know she's not that popular with those of us who put the program on and those of you who watch it. Does anything she's just said make any sense? Well, it makes sense as to what they're trying to do, Judge. They're resurrecting this thing. You know, I did a little tweet over the weekend, and my webmaster who does my tweets, he's a literary guy, and he was taken with alliteration. And what he said was the title, Risen Raises a Russian Hux Rerun.

Risen Raises a Russian Huxax rerun. Well, you know, they think we're gullible, and I dare say most people that watch Rachel Maddow and have some very good friends who swear by her, you know, what they're parroting is what Bryson has said here. I'll just mention him one more time. Here's the title of his article in The Intercept, okay, just two days ago. Here it is. Trump's campaign ties to Russia were no hoax. Oh, that sounds sort of defensive, doesn't it? It says, look, this happening again, we ought to be unaware of it. And not only that, but here's the Washington Post on November 3rd. What's that, yesterday?

Yeah, here it is. Russia feigns indifference over U.S. election, but is rooting quietly for Trump. Come on, give me a break. I don't, you know, Putin, I've watched Putin for a long time, as I have other Russian and Soviet leaders. The thing he cares about is predictability. He has said that. We ought to listen to him, okay?

I think he gives a rat patootie as to who wins unless they're unpredictable. And I'll leave that to the viewer here to decide who he would prefer. I mean, unpredictable is the little name of one of those candidates. I don't think he favors him at all, but the intelligence community can assess, assess, assess.

What would the intelligence communities have to gain? Why do they want the American public to think that the Russians favor Donald Trump. Oh, my God, Trump. I mean, Judge. Look, the intelligence community in the person of James Comey, the FBI, John Brennan of the CIA and other- I'm talking about the current intelligence community, not four and eight years ago.

Well, these guys don't forget, Judge. Comey, Brennan, and their satraps are still around, okay? So with Trump realizing now that they did him in, they tried to do him in in 2016, they did him in in 2020. Let me explain. This may not have been determinative, but you'll recall that Hunter Biden's laptop was uncovered several weeks before the election back in 2020, and it contained very damaging things, including reports of bribery or on the take by his dad as well as from Hunter. And what happened? Tony Blinken, Secretary of State now, called up Mikey Murrell, former acting CIA director, and he said, Mikey, we're going to the last debate

between Trump and Biden. We need something to put this hack, to put this Hunter, to put this Hunter Biden laptop. And that produced the 50 or 51 former security officials swearing that it was a Russian hoax. None of them know anything about it personally. Yeah. Well, yeah.

I mean, the FBI had the laptop. Did any of those 51 people think to go in there? Do you have all the telltale signs of a Russian intelligence disinformation operation? No, they didn't. They just saluted. And I don't know, as I say, that couldn't have helped Trump. But Trump naively at that last debate after this went down, he said, what about that laptop? And Biden was all primed. And he said, Mr. Trump, for God's sake, don't you realize that we're over 50. So that's the way that went down in 2020. So the three-letter agencies, the people who are still around, Trump knows who they are. His vice presidential

candidate has said he's going to clean house. And there's a lot at stake, including the documents showing what happened to John F. Kennedy. This time, Trump says he's going to release them. He told lots of people he's going to release them. This time he's really going to do it, he said, and they can't tolerate that. It's an institutional thing. You don't want to belong to an institution that assassinated. So what do you, last question on this,

unless your answer provokes more questions, what do you think these three-letter agencies think the Russians are doing? I mean, have there been fake ads on television that purport to be Harris vomiting on her shoes, but it's AI? Have there been fake ads of Trump on television purporting to show him as a mythical figure? What are they doing to influence the election? Well, it's not only the three-letter agencies, it's the Attorney General, for God's sake. This was about a month ago. But they're talking about these plants, these things on the internet, Facebook, and so forth. Judge, the last time this went down in 2016, it turned out that the

proportion of Facebook exposures with these ads was 0.00000001% of the content that American viewers or listeners were exposed to. When they indicted the people who were supposedly doing these interferences from St. Petersburg, they hired an American lawyer. And he did a court case about them, and they dropped the charges because they couldn't prove it. So it's all a hoax, just like James Risen says. It's not a hoax. It's a hoax, and it was a hoax. The problem is that these guys are going to really suffer if Trump wins by the now dead Hamas leader, Senwar, all of which purport to show Prime Minister Netanyahu

in a favorable light. Some people have been accused. One person has been arrested. Fingers are pointing at the circle right around the Prime Minister. Do you have any thoughts on this? Yes, Judge. Laptops, faux laptops, make-believe laptops, are one of the arrows in the quiver of the Mossad.

Laptops were infamous for showing how close Iran was to a nuclear weapon. Laptops are manufactured. So we have an internecine warfare here in Tel Aviv. It's Netanyahu has to keep fighting, and he's a master at this, to the degree that Mossad is helping in this effort. I see this mostly as a desperate attempt for Netanyahu to defend himself because things are not going well on any of the three fronts, Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran. Your friend and our colleague Alistair Crook agrees entirely with you to the point where Netanyahu is crafting imaginary victories.

Oh, we crushed Hamas. The hostages will soon be home. Let's go after Lebanon. Oh, we took care of Lebanon. It's now time to go after Iran. Oh, we did so much damage to Iran, they're not going to bother anybody. None of this stuff is true, even though some of it has been repeated in, of all places, the Wall Street Journal. Well, of all places, you know, the Wall

Street Journal has been the forefront of all this. I have to tell you, Judge, and our audience, that I deliberately avoid watching Alistair Crook early in the morning because he is so good that I fear that I will, you know, be guilty of false confirmation, you know? He's a big fan of yours, Ray McGovern. Well, that's good to hear because when I find myself in sync with Alistair, He's a big fan of yours, Ray McGovern. by other things, but I also think that it's very true that the U.S. leaned on Netanyahu not to do what he wanted to do. I think that's provable. Now, just now, that is two days ago, Axios was told by some senior administration official that this time, no, they're not going to restrain

Netanyahu. They're not going to restrain him. They're going to let him do what he wants to do. There will be no, what was the word, no calibration of an attack on Iran. And, of course, we have the Iranian Khamenei saying just Saturday, oh, there's going to be a bad attack. So I don't know what's going to happen, but hopefully tomorrow we'll throw new light on what's going on. And people, the main actors, the bad actors, as we say,

will be able to determine what the pluses and minuses would be to have yet another round of escalation and another escalation. Thank you, Ray. Always a pleasure, my dear man. Much appreciated. And we'll see you at the end of the week with Larry Johnson. All the best. Thanks, George. Of course. And coming up at 11 o'clock this morning, the aforementioned Larry Johnson on many of these things, with an emphasis as well on just how bad off Ukraine is and why the New York Times is suddenly acknowledging it. Judge Napolitano for Judging

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