MTracey podcast - "Today's News" -- 4/20/2026: British Pedo Paralysis

Episode Date: April 21, 2026

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All right, welcome to today's news, not at all, the pedophile report, not the moral mania hour or whatever the hell we're calling it. And not at all half-ass. It's not like we just put together this show at the last second and just now logged on. We put a lot of work into this, a lot of preparation. I hope you had a good weekend. Michael, how are you? I'm good. I'm good.

I don't know. I'm shocked. I've been contemplating how to structure this show for what seems like days. we've been having a long back and putting a solid eight hours per day of prep work that's right that's right and it's going to show in the execution of the program which is uh going to be flawless on i mean it says that's that's true though because what am i doing on a given day procrastinating and not writing usually forcing myself to write for like two hours ideally and but beyond that just absorbing things going on in the

world maybe gathering some fun clips and storing that in my sort of mental deposit that is then helpful when we have to come on in front of the good people out there watching and listening and i don't know so i guess you could call it work or prip in a way like it's just life it's it's work and look it turns out to be a good thing so uh we're going to like a lot of weird stuff happen as uh is always the case with america and weekends now although nothing like access altering happened this weekend, which is a little unusual. But there were stuff. But we're going to start with across the pond with our good friends in the UK who had a nice juicy debate on the floor of the House of Commons today.

Today, right? Yeah, it was today. this is not the ordinary Prime Minister's weekly Prime Minister's questions which is on Wednesday I think this was an emergency sort of ad hoc session that was called

specifically so Kier Starrmer could address an escalation in the controversy around his appointment of Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the United States which has already been dogging him for many months now

But a new layer to it was added when I believe it was the Guardian reported last week that Mandelson had failed to pass an internal security vetting process. And Mendelsohn, by the way, he's, he's a lord, right? He's got some exalted title. He's a kingmaker in British politics. I'm going to go ahead. Sorry, go ahead. Yeah.

Yeah, I think, I think there are calls. to strip him of his honorific. But anyway, so the extra dimension to the controversy that burst onto the scene last week was that the civil service within the UK government, having it, you know, some department within the foreign ministry, I believe conducted a security check on Mendelsohn's background and found that he failed the check.

And we don't know what criteria was employed or on what grounds he even supposedly failed this check. But this is supposed to be supremely controversial and scandalous because Kirstormer claims he wasn't told that Mandelson failed this check. Yeah. And it's a very quintessential British scandal, actually. It's kind of like very procedural and very sort of in the weeds having to. do with the propriety of some kind of obscure internal... The UK SV.

Yeah, the UK, yeah, exactly. I don't even know, like, what is that? The United Kingdom... Security vetting thing, I guess. Yeah, I guess... I guess there should be another S on there, but, yeah, they didn't complete their check. Starmor kind of lied about it or sort of did or something. We don't know.

He claims he wasn't. told. He claims there was a procedure in place where he would be informed about his potential appointees clearing the security check or not. And he claims that he wasn't told by whomever was supposed to inform him of the finding. And then he fired or sacked to use the British parlance that individual last week. And it's all coming to a head. His government is, you know, very unpopular anyway. As I'm sure you know, and there has been lots of the speculation that his continuation of the, in the prime ministership is no longer tenable,

blah, blah, blah, blah. So, you know, there are a bunch of people calling for him to resign today at this impromptu meeting of parliament. But, you know, again, but, you know, for all the fixation on the procedural minutiae here, there's one reason, one reason only that this is even a controversy, right? It's because Mandelson is seen to have been tied to Jeffrey Epstein and Jeffrey Epstein was the world's most notorious pedophile.

Okay. It's not just some flaw in the security clearance vetting process and some like department of a department of a department that nobody's ever heard of. It's all to do with the taints that is now just engulfing Starmor by virtue of his appointment of Mandelson and also Starrmer like validating the criticism by, you know, constantly apologizing this what a horrible decision this was and how it re-victimized the victims

and blah blah blah. Let's just roll the first tip because this is just classic. It's meta, meta, it's meta, meta, stupid. And we'll get to all the metas. But it's basically an excuse for a whole big crowd of people

to yell pedophile at pure Starmer and for Starmer to take it because he's British. I don't know. Let's watch. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. With permission, I'd like to provide the House with information that I now have about the appointment of Peter Mandelson as our ambassador to the United States.

But, Mr. Speaker, before I go into the details, I want to be very clear with this House. But while this statement will focus on the process surrounding Peter Mandelton vetting an appointment, at the heart of this, there is also a judgment I made that was wrong. I should not have appointed Peter Mandelson. I take responsibility for that decision. And I apologize again to the victims of the pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, who were clearly failed by my decision. Thank you, Mr.

Okay. Okay. Let's get to the other. There's another one that's worse. There's a bunch more, but can I just interject for a moment? Yeah. So, I mean, this is going to be overlooked by everybody who consumes this probably. in any sector of the media or even in the general public,

but in what sense was any of these purported victims, quote, failed by... Oh, I know, I know. What harm was done to them? How are they inconvenienced or mistreated or how are they inflicted with any misfortune whatsoever by way of an ambassadorial appointment by the prime minister of the United Kingdom

whom they would never have even known about it's just like one of these assertions that gets made and everybody's like expected as I wrote in the tweet just kind of like nod and solemn you know sullen affirmation of it and like nobody has to ever spell out like what the freaking logic is because it just makes zero sense it's just like what of these it's just one of these like ritual incantations you have to make

it's political mad libs it's something something the survivors something whatever respect pedophile you suck and all right so so here's Pizza, grape soda. Pizza, grape, soda, pedophile, blah, blah, blah, liar. So I don't understand this procedural moment. If somebody from the UK can explain it to me, or maybe Michael, you can,

let's watch this. This was kind of amusing. Sir Rostov. Speaker, in September the Prime Minister stood at this dispatch box and told the House he had full confidence in Peter Moundelsov. A man whose relationship with convicted, pitiful, Jeffrey Epstein, was public knowledge. The Prime Minister knew and backed him anyway. Now he claims he had no idea.

that this twice-fired government minister had failed MI6 vetting, despite journalists putting that directly to Downing Street that very same month. Mr Speaker, we all know that the Prime Minister appointed Mandelson because he owes his job to him. He appointed him, he defended him, and now he claims to know nothing. He is gas-sliding the nation. So let's call this out for what it is. The Prime Minister is a bare-faced liar, and if you hadn't decency-law...

Order. Sit and leave. Leave now. Leave now. Leave me otherwise. I've gone now if I have you. Leave. I'm not leave.

You've been, I've known them. I've given the option to leave. I'd leave if I were you very quickly. Move before I read it and give you one option. Like a minute, you have no duties. It's my duty to carry out and control this house. One chance. Do you want to leave no or not?

Right. I name Zara Sultanah. Minister, I beg to move that the name, the said member be suspended from the house. Mr. Speaker, call Jane Kitchen. Jane Kitchen. I bet the move that Zara and Sertan will be suspended from the service of the house.

The question is that Zara Sultana be named and leave this house. All those in favour? Aye. Leave. I'm sorry you've done this. I really am. Right. So is that making a false statement?

Yeah, okay. So, so, so, so, so procedure Literally, naming is the formal declaration by the speaker, where on his discretion, he can determine that a member of parliament is out of order. And one way in which a member of parliament can be out of order is using unparliamentary language, such as like personally impugning a colleague. So you can't actually, you can't actually accuse somebody of lying directly. or you can't say you're a liar or so you can obviously allude to it or hint at it

but if you directly allege it then you're violating parliamentary codes of conduct and you're named meaning you're you're kind of formerly reprimanded and then you are expelled from the day's proceedings so you have to physically leave the house in terms of what this is this is like sort of this is like essentially how a

how a typical prime minister's questions session transpires, which is that the prime minister makes a statement, the leader of the opposition responds, and then the speaker calls on everyone technically, but the speaker, after the kind of customary prime minister and then the opposition rebuttal, he will determine who to call on from, you know,

the government party, the opposition party and other parties. So that's what's going on here. People who want to stand up and make a statement or ask a question, they submit their request to the speaker and he chooses. If you call the speaker a knob, you can be thrown off the floor. Is that the idea? Yes, yes, yes. More often than not, they're calling the prime minister a knob.

I'm sorry. Or a wanker or a some kind of other funny little slur. Because they don't want to insult the speaker, right? Because if they insult the speaker, that means that the speaker probably won't call on them again. Right, exactly. He's the one with the gavel, right? And he controls the parliamentary proceedings. Okay.

And, okay. And interestingly, because the woman who stood up and made a big stink, Zara Sultana, it's sort of interesting that she did this, right? Because she was a former Labor Party member, but she was, she's in the, probably the rough equivalent of what would be the squad in the Labor Party as in the, you know, the squad in the Democratic Party in the U.S. And but she, so she was kind of like, you know, I think she even, you know, she self-declares as like a Democratic socialist along those lines. Obviously, the Labor Party itself used to be formerly a socialist party. but she was in the more activist inclined sort of youthful socialist contingent. She recently tried to, has been in a controversy with Jeremy Corbyn who got expelled from the Labor Party as well,

despite having been the former leader of the Labor Party, but one thing that Kier Starmor did when he won the leadership in 2020 was pledged that he was going to purge all, you know, any trace of the anti-Semitism that Jeremy Corbyn was supposedly supposedly, allowing to run rampant to the party. So he got thrown out. And he's been independent, but he tried to form a new party called Your Party,

with basically co-founding it with that Zara Sultanah. And then as was like painfully predictable, they end up having like a hardcore internal dispute over something that Zara Sultanah seems to have instigated against Corbin. And the whole thing was just a disaster. But so she's coming at this from like, I guess, you know, the anti, you know, the anti-labor left. And interestingly enough, it's cross-ideological. Like, is also often the case with Epstein clamor in that it comes from every direction.

It's a, it's a full-blown ideological synergy. So it's such that you can't predict what ideological orientation any given person will be if they have like a especially history on a cake on it. So this next guy, this is Robert Jenrick. He ran for the Conservative Party leadership. He ran the Conservative Party leadership race against Kenny Badernock, who's a black woman who won. And she's now the leader of the opposition. And by the way, she also threw out convicted pitiful over. Oh, did she?

I didn't like the whole thing. Because Jenner, because Jenner just defected from the Conservative Party and joined reform, Nigel Farage's party. because he thought that was maybe, you know, because reform has been, it basically has supplanted or nearly almost, in most instances, supplanted the conservative party in the opinion polling and they're performing better than the conservatives

in like local elections or by-elections. So Jemmer kind of calculated that would be a better platform for him to continue his aspirations because he was a pretty close raise with Kemi. But like he sounds, aside from this little preface, he gives where he's like complaining about some immigration stuff you would never know that he's coming at it from a right wing angle or and you also never really know that uh zara's a tonal's coming here

from left wing i go aside for some of the rhetorical flourishes like you're gaslighting and so forth i guess that's maybe a little bit more of a left wing sort of rhetorical twist but anyway yeah um i feel like i know that this this guy worked in moscow at one point uh did he yeah he was he was it's Scadden Arps, I think. A little bit after I left. But I think you can tell he's coming from the right. There's a peculiar kind of dickishness that comes through. Yeah, that's right.

That's different from the other kind. And look in the top right, you can see Corbyn slumped over. Right, right, right, yeah, exactly. Like, he's now a literal backbencher. That's pretty funny. And the origin of the term, too, right? Yeah, yeah. Let's listen in.

Robert German. The Prime Minister's aides brief that he's furious, angry Stama. But why is it that he only ever seems to get angry when he's trying to save his own skin? Is he not angry about the 600 men who crossed the English Channel on small boats on Saturday? Is he not angry about the people who are queuing up for fuel at the forecourt and can't afford the Chancellor's taxes? Isn't the truth that his government? The government is now so paralysed that its only agenda is cleaning up the mess left by the paed by the paul Peter Manor. I think any minister of any government that hadn't been provided with this relevant information would rightly be frustrating and angry.

Emily Darling Darlington. Thank you Mr Speaker. I wanted to take a moment during the statement to focus on the young women who were exploited, abused, raped by Geoffrey Abilings. by Jeffrey Epstein and his friends. Wait. Years of being trafficked for... Okay. Let's keep going for a second.

I'm sorry. Great. No one to turn to. And years are people not believing them. The idea that Mendelssohn would call Epstein's conviction wrongful is disgusting. And I can't not imagine how it felt for the survivors to hear that. The PM was right to say. So can I ask the Prime Minister to take the opportunity again to say to those young women that this House believes them and this government stands by them and is he confident that no person with financial or personal links with sex traffickers would receive to add

DV in the future Can I thank her and she's right to focus on the victims in this and that's why I started this statement is the biggest by making it clear that this was a judgment error on my part. And the apology I have made is to the victims because I know the impact that this will have had on them who have already suffered so very much. Okay. Go ahead.

No, go ahead, go ahead. Well, first of all, this whole thing about the victims who have been raped and trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein, has he ever been charged with, rape and has there ever been ever been anyone who's been who's claimed to have been trafficked and raped by other men well virginia roberts scufray claim right yes and that's enough for them because you know on there's another clip where she's she's cited as the saintly figure basically uh the new the modern joan of arc but go back to go back to what uh don't literally bring

it up but as to what generick said his claim is that the government of the United Kingdom is paralyzed. It's in a state of paralysis by virtue of a all-consuming pedophile crisis. So according to him, the only thing the government can do is clean up the mess that Mandelson and his peto-pals have left behind. His pet-o-pals! Yeah, there's a fraternity of pet-o-pals who are just busy cleaning up their mess and they can't attend to the affairs of state, which is just an amazing statement, right?

Because like, okay, in terms of what actually took place in the UK, it's all Virginia Roberts Guffrey. I mean, she's the one who introduced the claims against Prince Andrew, right, and led effectively to Prince Andrew also having been. How old was she at that point? She, at the time that she claims, she was trafficked or she was, you know, a sex slave who was directed to satisfy Prince Andrew. It would have been in March of 2001 when she was approximately six. 17 and a half years old, which would have been above the legal age of consent in England. Okay. So, and that's really the only UK specific claim that people are aware of.

Now, there's, there's a handful of other stuff that, like, maybe if somebody's really in the weeds or, like, they're like a maniac like me where they could, like, cite chapter reverse on so much of the stuff. But I don't, so, like, you know, one of the alleged victims in the, uh, Maxwell, Charles. Crial claims that she had met Epstein initially by way of Maxwell in London when she was approximately 17 as well, which also would have been above the legal agent of consent. That's going to know she could de Gorshue. And there's also like talk of some kind of renewed investigation around Epstein's private plane trips to various airports in the UK. And we have to go back and now scour through the passenger logs to. who some of these unidentified females are to see if they're the trafficking victims from Eastern Europe or something. But there's never really, there's never been anything that could be

even reasonably construed as a pedophile allegation as it relates to the UK. But they just take that for granted. And also. And they also leave out the fact that, well, let's look at the last clip with St. Virginia. because this whole thing hangs on one person who whose account, let's say is not exactly without issues. I mean, I'll say it a little bit more bluntly.

Whose account no sane person could take it face value unless they're... Whose account her own publisher? Unless they're saying, but they're also trying to... to just propagate a totally blinkered narrative. But like any sort of,

let's say I'll revise. Any person who would dispassionately evaluate the evidence could not seriously claim that the account is remotely credible. But of course,

that news doesn't penetrate any of these people. I shouldn't maybe use the verb penetrate in this context. But like that's not something that they're going to be conscious of. They're just like, again,

just absorbing snippets and myth, mythos yeah so so virginia jufre or how do we say gufrey i say gufrey yeah because they there's a nickname something we are vr g uh vrg uh all of the issues with her testimony and um accounts have been washed confabulations yeah exactly the fact that the her book nobody's girl there's not is not not clear whether it's fiction or not. The publisher claimed to me that it was nonfiction. Okay.

Even though. It was based on an admittedly fictionalized earlier draft. Right. Which maybe they weren't aware of. I don't know. It doesn't seem like they did a whole lot of due diligence. All right. Let's roll this tape.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I thank the Prime Minister for his statement. And I thank him even more for the apologies on the appointment. of Peter Mandelson and being here today. I want to commit the words once again to the record of Virginia Dufray. I think they are particularly relevant to Peter Mandelson. She said, don't be fooled by those in Epstein's circle

who say they didn't know what Epstein was doing. Anyone who spent a significant amount of time with him saw him touching girls that you wouldn't want a creepy old man touching your daughter. They can say, They did not know he was raping children, but they were not blind. Now on the house, across the house, there is consensus that we need to get to the bottom of this. I absolutely accept that the Prime Minister did not know about the security vetting.

But can the Prime Minister please update the House and when we can have the next tranche of documents from the Humble Address so that we can get to the bottom of who did know what and when. Prime Minister. Can I thank her for her campaigning on behalf of these victims, and many other victims, in relation to abuse, sexual abuse in particular, and her insistence always that we must put the victims first. We are complying with the humble address as quickly as possible, and we will comply with it fully.

So in the UK, they have their own, like, little, they have their own mini Epstein files. Yeah. Saga going on, which are the files. I love how Britain has a small version of everything that we have. They have a smaller, sadder version. They have like a limp version, where we're flaccid with our Epstein files

we're sorry we're rock hard with our Epstein files too messin yes yes but basically though what they're referring to what she's referring to there is like the next tranche of documents that they can expect having to do with the internal memoranda and emails and so forth

around the appointment of Mandelson and you know just various documents related to that appointment so it's kind of limited I think they I think they are. I think it may be a little bit broader than that, actually. But like the first tranche that came out had only really to do with Mandelson and they weren't that illuminating. I mean, I read them.

I guess they're like mildly interesting. It's always just like mildly interesting to see how this internal stuff works. But there was nothing hugely revelatory. Well, the only revelatory thing is the one thing they don't bring up, which is the tip about the bailout, the UK bailout. Right. But that came from the US files, though. Didn't it?

Right. That came from the U.S. files, right. I'm just, I'm just saying that, that they seem obsessed with some vague allegation about Mandelson and pedophilia,

even though, of course, Mandelson is gay. There's no allegation that he had anything, anything whatsoever to do with that. And there isn't even a concrete allegation, a real allegation that he knew. There isn't any allegation of actual sex with children that he would have known about.

There's just this one. With virtually anybody who was accused of having not known or having, they're denounced for having associated with Epstein, but not done something about his presumed continued predation of children or, like, there's really no grounds to think that any of these people, whatever the extent of their association with him, say post 2008 when Epstein was convicted or when he entered his guilty plea,

that they ought to have somehow known that there was something, there was like illicit conduct going on sexually with children because there's no claim really ever that, there's no credible claim that's ever been made, really, that post Epstein's conviction in 2008, he had any sort of contact whatsoever sexually with anybody under the age.

of 18. But again, that's not something that's ever been publicized to the degree that any of these members of parliament would be aware of it. People keep asking this of me and, you know, this person must have known this. No, what? They would have known the same thing that people know, for instance, about Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots right now. This person had a charge for solicitation and there were some stuff behind it. But, you know, they wouldn't have known about all these other allegations that were suppressed as part of the non-prosecution agreement. And they wouldn't have been able to evaluate them the same way that we aren't able to right now.

I mean, depending precisely what year you're talking about, so I don't know, let's say 2010, if you wanted to do a true deep dive, you could have found some of the early civil litigation that made allegations about related to other conduct. But I don't know. Like in order to associate with somebody or have a friendly kind of relationship with somebody, do you, you know,

do a full-fledged Lexus Nexus search on them and like look through every possible. I do it. Everybody whoever comes within a mile of my home, I do a full. I mean, one thing that's so annoying about this. And one way that the morality of this is so skewed or like the claim morality is that like,

yes, it's true that if you are, or anyone had legitimate grounds to believe that somebody that we knew or associated with was actually an active predatory threat to children, then it would be incumbent on us to take some kind of corrective action. Especially if you have children. Well, even if you don't, I mean, if you're just like a sane person, right, like that's something that anybody would intervene in. But there's there was no grounds for anybody to suppose that.

they're being denounced for not having done something. So we have this now inverted morality where like something is kind of retrofitted onto them. And now they're moral monsters. And it's really got nothing to do with protecting children at all because there were no children who could have otherwise been protected had they done something. Yeah.

So this one drives me nuts. There was a period in the U.S. where the term convicted sex trafficker was in vogue in every major newspaper. And that's not correct either. I mean, he was arrested in charge with trafficking, but he was never convicted of it. Gellane was. But convicted pedophile is, you know, that's a bridge beyond.

And not even a criminal, there's no, there's no statute. whereby somebody could be convicted of pedophilia, right? Pedophilia is a pathology, right? It's something that you can mean not to get too deep in the weeds on this, because, you know, although I should say there's nothing more I love than having fraught discussions of pedophilia on the Internet. Right. But you can be a pedophiles, you can be somebody who qualifies

for the clinical definition of a pedophile. And you're a pedophile because you have pathological thoughts or fantasies or attraction to prepubescent children. You could be a pedophile but not act on it, right? But you can't be convicted of that in a court of law. You can't be convicted because of your foul thoughts. So when somebody gets convicted, let's say somebody does commit a genuinely pedophilic offense, against a five-year-old or something.

They're not going to be, like the charge is not going to include the word pedophilia. So, I mean, maybe that's a little of the, bit of a of a nitpicky type way nitpick but like it's it's just not something like convicted pedophile is just not something on six convicted sex offender okay convicted maybe a child sex criminal possibly

but no not convicted pedophile but that's just used now as the shorthand right but I mean and also by people also the very the first thing that we that I wrote that you cross published on

racket was on this very question was Jeffrey actually convicted pedophile that was back December of last year. So people are interested in the full Yeah, and that was great and we took a lot, actually a lot of shit for it, but you're right. And look, you're right. There's no term

in the criminal code in the United States that has the word pedophilia and it would be something like endangering the welfare of a child or criminal sexual conduct with a minor or something like that, right? But still, when you say convicts,

convicted pedophile that certainly implies a conviction with a charge that involves sex with children, right? And there's nothing like that here. And we have members of parliament saying it over and over and over again from both part, you know, from both. Well, I mean, what's ironic is, what's ironic is if they were to, like, if you were to argue that you can rightly call Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted pedophile, then you would have to go to the 2008 entry guilty please by guilty by Epstein in Florida. Jeffrey Epstein treats objects like women, man. Okay.

I'm sorry, that's, that's, Lobowski. Go ahead. Oh, gotcha. Okay. I mean, I, I mean, let's see that. That's something where I know some of the major catchphrases about Lavowski, but it's not something I can call to mind as readily as you. I admire however your brain is wired.

Well, that's because only the unimportant stuff is at the front. But anyway, go ahead. But, you know, so we have, you know, the 2008 conviction where yeah okay in the state of Florida you could call him a convicted

pedophile if you're defining pedophile as any as a sexual contact with anybody below the age of 18 right so it was the 17 year old who was the one minor victim who was cited in that guilty plea but if you're going to call it that in England

then you're calling somebody a convicted pedophile for sexual activity with someone whom would be considered under 16 no no who would be considered a non-minor in England? Right. Yes, I know.

But what they mean is, what's the term over there? It's, um, hang on. Sexual activity with a child under 18, rape or assault of a child. They always, the word child appears in all these offenses, right? Um, but that's not what's going on with this case. Yeah, but this matter. I mean, it's, um, Again, I was on LBC, like the London Radio Network, and I was naive because I thought that maybe the head that had seen some of like the relatively decent commentary on me that had been coming out in certain precincts.

But it ended up being, you know, just what I ought to have expected was just me getting battered over the head with the same old pedophile interrogation, no pedophilia definitional interrogation. And so I had to just litigate this for the 10 millionth time. But they said they're even more flippant about it in the UK media where like I was, because I cited to him like, you know, there was like some little iteration of the Mandelson story that had come out the day before. And in like an ITV report, it just, you know, widely referred to FEC as a convicted pedophile. It was just not correct. But it stayed over and over again.

over again. I think even more commonly there than here, because maybe they're not even like, they're even less attuned to the underlying facts and evidence. Well, and who's going to challenge it, right? Yeah, right. That's the thing. The penalties for lying in England

are much higher in media. But when there's no plaintiff, he's been deceased for six and a half years. Right. So it almost seems like these kinds of generalized untruths. They're much looser with them even than we are here. And we've gotten terrible about it.

And really, just in the last couple of years, it's really become a thing where we just routinely say stuff that isn't correct. Because I think you actually successfully shamed a handful of people in the media around their casual use of the term convicted sex trafficker, right? Right. Yeah. A couple of them retracted. Yeah.

And they were nice about it. But in a lot of cases, that's because they're looking at another news story that uses the term. Yeah. Yeah. And it's just ubiquitous in the UK. Right. And I think this is the thing that people don't know about how fact checking works is that in

many cases, there's a list of publications where if they use a term or, a fact, then you can say, okay, we assume that's checked, right? So if, so once one newspaper does it, once one television. It's common knowledge, right? Yeah, yeah, it becomes common property. It becomes the mistake. All right. So I got, I have a sort of pop cultural question.

How much does, um, does Kier Starrmer resemble Michael Gambon in the alley, L, L, G, uh, respect scene? Can we see that? I'm just going to fake knowledge of what it is that you're referring to and agree. You haven't seen this scene? I mean, I remember watching Ali Jeeve, you know, almost under duress. This is, this is the movie. Okay.

Government's conduct of economic policy has not only been in copper. It has been unscrupulous and trustworthy and untruthful. They is disin our pussy. I'm going to sort this. The brain The brain I'm not a adolescence I'm not sure about it is to me

The use of the top down and step up to me Relax Yeah, batty look at you all you ever do all you ever do day long is cast each other R-E-S-T-E-C-P P-E-D-O-F-H

You even know what that spells Resteqpa Yes Resteqpa I was anyone out there meant to R-T-P-E-E-C-E-R-T-P But he's totally Michael Gambon, I think

Keir Starmer. He's just more nasal. And he's just such a pussy. I'm sorry he used that term. But he gets up there and all he does is apologize for things he didn't really do.

He's like a polar opposite of Donald Trump, right? Trump will never apologize about anything, even stuff he actually did do. Right, right. He'll bulldoze right over any allegation or any demand. He wouldn't apologize to the Pope last week. Right.

right things although that was kind of funny i have to no i know i mean it is funny but that's just his thing never apologize that's one of the core targets of the art of the deal are the reality but but with with starmer and some of these more like living you know uh left of center squish men especially their mantra is just like constantly apologize which of course the apologizing never satisfies anyone so they're shooting themselves in the foot like is anybody satisfied now because you know because Mandelson would have been arrested

you would think people would have been satisfied when Mandelson was arrested for some kind of cooked up unrelated infraction that they invented under this catch-all

statute, right, for just like a public misconduct. Same with Andrew. But that didn't satisfy anyone. It just inflamed the issue even further. And going back to what you said, oh, you know, they don't care about the

about the information that was allegedly passed by Mandelson having to do with the 2008 bailout. I think that does get mentioned. I don't know. I can't recall exactly if it was mentioned here or today. I think it probably was. So it's not like they're totally ignoring it. No, but I mean.

I don't know, but I just question because like, okay, so, you know, that Gordon Brown was the prime minister then. Mandelson was serving in a government position under Gordon Brown. Gordon Brown has come out recently and declared that Epstein is the biggest political scandal in modern British history, which he'll, I guess, used as one of the pegs that, as the allegedly insider information that was passed. But it's got to do more, like he's sketched out this whole grandiose trafficking theory and like Britain's complicity in it. And when they have to do a forensic reexamining. of how they enforce trafficking laws and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And, like, he even did, like, a private investigation himself of, like, the airport, of the airport schedules and calendars and the flight logs and so on. So I don't know. I just feel like, you know, what's been, I know there was an email that came out that appeared to show him giving some kind of indication that something was going to be happening with a bailout, but like, do we even know enough about what happened there to say that it was this? No, no, but I mean, my only, obviously damning thing.

My only point is that that actually... Or that Epstein ever acted on? Did Epstein like get a big payday because of that? I don't think that he ever did. No, there's no allegation that I know of that he went out and front ran the information somewhere. But the point is all the communications involving Epstein and Mandelson, apart from the picture of Mandelson and his tidy Whitey's, which... I don't think means anything.

The one email that looks like it would be in a clear avenue for investigation would be that, right? You certainly don't want a high-ranking official giving, you know, advance information about, you know, a major financial decision by your country's government. Like that's not a good, especially to a financial professional, right? I mean, that's the kind of thing that could cause major havoc in the markets. And it's, you know, if that's indeed what was going on, that probably was illegal. But instead, we've got this sort of crazy Alice's restaurant conspiracy theory where everybody's harping on things that are demonstrably not true about people who clearly could not have been implicated in sex crimes

about trafficking that didn't happen, about rapes that didn't happen. About harm that couldn't possibly happen by way of the appointment of Manelson. Namely the Epstein victim, quote unquote, who endured additional harm by, virtue of that appointment i mean it's just absurd an absurdity but but on terms of the like the potential insider information i mean the suggestion was that when mandelson was arrested he was arrested for an offense having to do with that so there's some investigation of it underway yeah there's there's an investigation of it my my my my my pre disposition toward those both those

investigations of and mandelson you know barring further information is that they were essentially pretextual, meaning that they were clearly instigated by, you know, this larger, you know, Alice's Restaurant or Alice in Wonderland fervor around the petto stuff, which is what people really care about, but they could nail them on something that was kind of a fueled from it. I don't know. I mean, I don't know enough about British law to say one way or another that that email constituted some kind of illegality. Yeah. So the... I haven't seen enough people talking about the charge misconduct in public office, which is, it's the kind of law that freaks me out in general. It's like the espionage act. It's one of these things where they can just throw it at you and you're basically guilty no matter what happens. misconduct um it it's very vague so let me look let me look at the the wording here misconduct

in public office is a common law offense that can be tried only on indictment it carries blah blah uh let's see uh do all right it's also it's also not even clear that prince andrew willfully neglects to perform their duty and or willfully conduct misconducts themselves what does that mean to such a degree as to a themselves willfully misconducts themselves to such a degree as to amount to an abuse of the public's trust in the office holder without reasonable excuse or definition. I could be like throwing a water balloon or I don't know like that can mean anything. Right. It's also not even clear.

We don't have a law like that, you know? Yeah. It's a catch all. It's like whatever the prosecutor wants it to mean given the political circumstances. Also, it's not even clear that Prince Andrew held a public office in the way that would have been. contemplated when that law was structured. Well, no, but he does have... He had an informal trade envoy.

Right. Yeah, yeah. But that wasn't a public office. I mean, it's just unclear whether that would constitute a public office. So, so, but, but the, the lack of clarity, of course, was no impediment because what were they doing? They were satisfying this public clamor for some kind of, um, accountability. Okay. So, uh, at Spacey 118 wants to... know, Michael, if you like the Epstein class. I'm assuming he's talking about it. I don't know.

That's not even phrased in the form of a question. It just seems like a statement. So I'll let it stand. You're right. I agree. Okay. I like it. You like the Epstein class? I like it. I like it. I love it. I want more of it. All right. So while that was going on, while that madness was going on in Britain and knowing the British, they'll make, they haven't finished making the mountain out of that molehill again. So there's a ways to go. And this is a country that has a good history with mountains, right? I mean, a lot of famous mountain climbers. Well, King Charles is coming to the U.S. soon.

And there have been calls, yeah, for like a state visit with Trump. And there have been calls for him to make some sort of statement once he gets here about Epstein or about his brother. And I think it's, you know, it seems more likely than not that he'll have. probably end up doing it. All right. I'm going to really enjoy the, although I guess it's Trump, so it makes a little bit of sense, but having a member of the Royal Family lecture the United States on sexual morality will be often.

I don't think he'll lecture anybody. I think he'll do another one of these endless apologies or he'll make an appellate, like a statement of support for the victims or something like that. Right, right. Yeah. Like Roe Conner's been saying, if Prince, if King Charles is going to come here, he better address the abstinent survivors.

Oh, my God. You know, I used to like, bro, kind of a fair amount. I thought he was a really smart guy. What's your take on, I mean, I guess he's just committed to this thing now.

Yeah, he's committed to the bit. I mean, same with Massey. I used to like Massey as well. Yeah. Massey was somebody who had an unusual, intricate knowledge of a legislative,

procedure where he would know what's going on in the rules committee, which he served on, where like most members of the House don't even know what goes on in the rules committee, but he could like explain to the public and, you know, Mike Johnson's doing some kind of chicanery and he would report it out and whatnot. And, you know, he went, he did go against the grain, like he's somebody who's independent minded at least. Absolutely. But both he and, and Roe Conna. And similar to Rokana, yeah, I mean, if among the people in Congress who I would have any, just any degree of respect for whatsoever, they would have been among that small group. But they both rode this algorithmic wave of Epstein starting last summer when they sensed an opening politically. And they sensed like potentially a vulnerability in the Trump coalition.

It was just an untapped potential for them. And, you know, Massey in particular, he was, you know, falling out with Trump and he had to come up with basically a unique donor base for his primary in Kentucky because Trump was gearing up to support a primary challenge against Massey. So he can't go to like the donor class of the Republican Party. Which, you know, in a way, you could say, reflects well on him.

But it was just like, you know, once they dove head first into this thing, they just kept, you know, diving deeper and deeper and deeper to the point that you almost can't reason with them anymore. And, you know, Rochano thinks he's, I guess, going to be running for president with an Epstein class stump speech, meaning purge the Epstein class. You could see him like rehearsing this stump speech as he goes on now. And, you know, maybe even Massey will run if he like manages to ward off a primary challenge.

I mean, I know a lot of people who, you know, almost worship the guy at this point and and and massey yeah yeah and and i understand what he's that he is independent minded but when you come out the beginning of a scandal and you say like we're not going to be satisfied until there are people perp walked out of this thing um like for what like you're you're announcing that you're going to punish before you have the crime um as a supposedly due process minded and civil liberties and uh championing libertary Libertarian, yeah, exactly. And I'll, I still can't get over that the two of them maligned and slandered,

a bunch of random men in New York City, including an auto mechanic, an IT manager, as implicated in child sex crimes, and then never even apologized for it. Wait, when was this one? What's that? When was this one? This was early February. after the big release of the Epstein files January 30th, what were they doing? Of course, they were scouring for anything that was the most incendiary or which they could

use to claim that the cover-up was continuing, right? So they found this one document that they didn't stop for a second to get a context for what they were looking at, but they saw maybe some genuinely superfluous redactions. And so they were going to say, look, we'll get these unredacted. We're going to go to the DOJ and get them unredacted. They get a partial unredaction by the DOJ. And then both Massey and Rose start going around saying, look, look at the DOJ was covering up. They were covering up these perpetrators.

Rocotta went to the floor of the house and gave us floor speech saying, look at these powerful men that we uncovered who the DOJ was trying to cover up for some grave offense. And it turned out to be guys who had nothing whatsoever to do with Epstein, who were just kind of like incidentally included in, because they were in some kind of a police. line up on an unrelated case. But so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, Michael, can you know, they were, giving a press conference in front of the DOJ building. Massey says that, um, yeah, there we go. a California Democratic representative read a list of six names on the House floor earlier this week

and said they were, quote, wealthy, powerful men that the DOJ hid in the recently released files related to Jeffrey Epstein. After questions from the Guardian, the Department of Justice said that four of the men Kana named had no apparent connection to Epstein whatsoever, but rather appeared in a photo lineup assembled by the Southern District of New York.

Okay. So when the Guardian is checking you, you know it's bad. But Jacqueline Sweet is independent. she contributes to the guardian but yeah I mean yeah well because it was unimpeachable what she came up with so the guardian had to run it

but Massey went even further prior to that four speech from Rokane I don't remember if she mentions it here but she said he said that these men were likely incriminated that was a quote in monumental child sex crimes so they didn't bother to do

two seconds of like contextualization to understand what document were looking at. They just immediately fired off the most inflammatory renderings of it. And they continue to like blame the they blame anybody but themselves.

They can blame the DOJ. They blame anyone but them for being so reckless firing off these defamations. They haven't even had the decency to apologize. Cona posted on X that I wish the DOJ had provided that explanation earlier instead of redacting them and then unredacting their names.

They have failed to protect survivors, create a confusion for innocent men and a protected rich and powerful abuse. Like, are you kidding me? Come on. Like, it's their fault. Um, and then, okay, here's, here's at our worded one. No, and if you're a member of Congress and you're making these, uh, you know, scandalizing public statements that impugn, private individuals in some of the most heinous, you know, crimes that anybody can never be alleged of committing, then it's your responsibility to do like the bare minimum due diligence to check what it is that you're saying. But they don't think that they're obliged to do that. They could just blame the DOJ.

And look, I mean, the redaction protocol was a mess. So I'm not denying that. But there's also, but the responsibility for your statements lies with you. Yeah, just because they, they put it out doesn't obligate you to, to stand in front of a microphone and accuse them of stuff. And this is exactly if you asked, I mean, there aren't that many left,

but if you asked any real civil liberties lawyers, what's a danger in this Epstein Files case? It's people standing on the floor of the house, leveling accusations at innocent people, which is something we saw in the 50s with the Hughack hearings, because they have the problem. have in my hand a list of 60,

McCarthy would always change the number of people who were supposedly communist infiltrators. So it would be like 65 or then, you know, it would depend on how drunk he was that day. Right, exactly. Yeah, it was two, 201. And then it was, it ended up being, we talked about this, but a wheeling, wheeling West Virginia. Wheeling West Virginia. That's right, the big speech that he gave.

But how about, I'm asking, I mean, how is it consistent with civil, any, any notion of civil, libertarianism for massy to have just presupposed the guilt of people that he's and calling for the arrest of people while saying he doesn't have the evidence but the evidence is the evidence has been hidden and that's part of the whole cover up and like we can only ever be satisfied right if people are being marched to jail and handcuffs like that's that's that's a that's not due process and that's not really a that's not really upholding civil liberal. but you know all you know all bets are off when it comes to this story because people don't care about maintaining civil liberties they want some kind of cosmic vengeance for something that they can never really quite articulate so here's a student loan activist Alan college uh saying people on all sides cannot stand the Epstein class and all that represents it is a very deep core of anger in this country goes well beyond Epstein Massey knows that so does row that's absolutely true I get I get the politics of it but it's it's fucked

you know yeah I'm not saying it wasn't politically shrewd of them did Matt just uh Matt did you just uh did you freeze or am I freezing right now no I froze I went off to an astral plane for a moment okay I was worried all right so no I mean

I'm not saying it wasn't politically clever of them they clearly tapped into something I hate that that uh that uh that uh terminology. They clearly identified of like an opening in like the political marketplace for somebody who would be like entrepreneurial on the, for people who would be entrepreneurial on this issue and use it to their advantage. So I'm not denying that. I'm not denying if like you just like invent some nomenclature like Epstein class given the, given the connotation of Epstein,

people are going to agree that they don't like it, whatever you're referring to. But it's a, it's a conspirator tarded term. It's a conspirator to terminology. Like what is Epstein class. Who's a member? What are the criteria for inclusion? Like, it's never really spelled out. Is it anybody who sent a,

a, a, a, a, uh, , a, uh, a, it's just like,

a, it's just a, it's just a, it's just a dumb down shorthand. It's like the newest version of, um, Occupy Wall Street.

We are the 99% and we're going after the 1%, except at least, I guess there was like some. No, there, there were something genuinely, this is, this is,

no, I mean, there's something genuine about that. that this is like sort of a perversion of like a the perversion of that but now it's it's framed in terms of pedophilia which makes zero sense it's not even like a materialistic thing per se that's the problem it's linguistic bootstrapping it's you're you're taking people who are not really associated with pedophilia in any way uh and you're you're attaching the name epstein to a class now now it's this idea of a of a class of powerful elites who are bonded by

you know, a pedophilic sex ring. And it's that magic. Epstein class has those connotations, whereas, you know, the terms they were using before did not. All right, let's go to SOT 6. Now we're going to move to the American moral mania. Also, is there anybody who would agree that everyone from Donald Trump to that the woman who I think didn't you have some kind of brawl with,

who's the delegate that represents the U.S. Virgin Islands, What's her name again? Oh, Casey Plaskett. Yeah, yeah. Would any, is there anybody who would apply consistent enough criteria to how they deem, how they determine membership in the Epstein class that they would agree that both of those individuals are members? I doubt it.

I really doubt there's anybody. So it's going to be fluid membership criteria based on whatever your partisan imperatives are, which is another reason to, to abrasively discount the legitimacy of the whole terminology construct. Of course, it's going to be completely non-specific but but also deadly at the same time, right, for your career. All right. This, this is another thing in, uh, in your strike zone, Michael. This is attorney Lisa Bloom, um, talking about, uh, her client, Lana Drew. This is a lob right down the middle of the plate. Yeah. This is a straight down Broadway. Uh, as, I would call this average cheese, which means, you know, not that great of a fastball.

Let's, let's, let's, let's, she doesn't have her stuff today. Right, exactly. Doesn't have, doesn't have, uh, the cheese with hair on it. So let's, um, let's hear Lisa Bloom. Well, I'm very proud to represent the brave Lana Drews. Right after the press conference, we went to the sheriff's station in West Hollywood, which is the appropriate jurisdiction for her complaint. We sat down with a detective there and a couple of other deputies. She answered all of their questions, provided some evidence, and they then took it under

submission to investigate. They asked us to return for a follow-up interview. It's now been escalated to the special victims unit and an attorney from the district attorney's office. So we returned yesterday with these new folks. And Lana, again, went through the whole story, answered all of their questions, provided evidence. She has some additional evidence. She needs to get out of the storage unit. There are some additional witness names, people she talked to after the incident. So we are following up with all of that, fully cooperating with the sheriff's investigation. And at this point, I mean, just given that, would it be fair to say that you think law enforcement is taking this seriously? Oh, absolutely. I mean, you know, they have raised it up to a higher

level. They're taking a great deal of time, and there's no question in my mind. So what's notable about this is that Lisa Bloom here, again, who notoriously confected the Katie Johnson hoax for the points and single action that we talked about. Can we put the Katie Johnson suit up on screen while Michael talks? The Kay Johnson suit. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's unbelievable. It's amazing.

It's saying that she and her client, this woman who accused Swallow last week, scroll down a little bit of drugging and raping her in 2018 she then proceeded to go to the LA County Sheriff's office and give her statement and you know supply evidence allegedly and answer

questions then she went back for a second time but Lisa Bloom is saying the woman is still is still yet to go into some storage unit to a storage facility yeah into a storage to go to some storage facility

and retrieve evidence that she has not yet provided and how Lisa Bloom words it makes it a little bit unclear but she seems to be indicating that in order to provide law enforcement with the names of witnesses

whom this woman allegedly told about the incident with Swalwell at the time that it happened she has to go into the storage unit which she's yet to locate yet or she's yet to find the evidence with that's allegedly contained in the story

like a thing you would want to would have wanted to get in you know yeah yeah exactly especially like you know especially especially especially before trip two to the sheriff's

department or with the to meet with the special victims unit at the prosecutor's office right so I guess we're all waiting with bated breath to see if she like is able to burrow through her old storage you know boxes and find I don't even know what she would be

what what's the item that she would be finding that would somehow tell her what the names are of the witnesses that she has spoke to six years ago. Yeah, I'm assuming it's written notes about the incident theoretically. I mean, a diary. I don't know. Theoretically, theoretically. And by the way, folks, look at these factual allegations in the in the Katie Johnson suit. If you scroll all the way down, I mean, I don't know if it's on this one, but there's like an affidavit where it's, it's the most graphic version of the application. Yeah, on the first occasion involving the defendant Donald J. Trump, the plinked of Katie Johnson,

was forced to manually stimulate Donald Trump with the use of her hand upon Donald Trump's erect penis until he reached sexual orgasm. And there's Jeffrey Epstein with forcible rape. On the third occasion involving the defendant, the plaintiff, was forced to engage in an unnatural, in an unnatural lesbian sex act with her fellow minor and sex slave, Maria, Do age 12 for the sexual enjoyment of Donald Trump. Anyway, this is this is stuff where they couldn't even establish the dates and, you know, you know, where this exactly happened or they couldn't prove it anyway. I mean, I know, no, actually, you know, so there's a version of this law, I don't know,

there's a version of this file you could find where at the, at the end, there was an affidavit that's sworn by quote, unquote, Katie Johnson where she's reciting what. happened in the first person supposedly and I think she does actually make a claim as to the location of one of the you know brutal gang rapes but you know I don't know people might not remember this but so this kind of this was introduced maybe like June of 2016 and then it got reintroduced a new version of it was filed in like October of 2016 and there were supposed to be this big climatic payoff where Lisa Bloom was going to be holding a press conference where she was going to unveil

Katie Johnson. And at the last second, Katie Johnson never showed up. And Lisa Bloom made some kind of statement where she was in fear of her life. She was, you know, it was too dangerous for her to show up. She's too, she's too frightened. And then they just dropped it.

And then her and her mother, Gloria Alwood got caught basically running this kind of operation to field accusers against Trump. you know, in concert with like Democratic Party entities. And, you know, it was very, very sleazy.

And they made lots of, like, they basically fundraised. You could find like a political article. I think it was from Ken Vogel, maybe from early, from 2018, where they go through how Lisa Bloom and Gloria Allred. They claim that they, Gloria Alberg claims she didn't get making money. But it's clear that like Lisa Bloom was raking in lots of cash from like, frantic democratic donors to see if they could somehow subsidize her to go on a successful fishing expedition to find somebody, anybody who could make a like an actually damaging sexual assault claim against Trump. And like she ended up finding like a former apprentice contestant that, you know, that I want to kind of fill apart.

But that this was sort of the fruits of that effort. This paragraph is, uh, is something just as a work of political satire or fiction shortly after the, sexual assault by the defendant Jeffrey E. Epstein and the, on the plaintiff, uh, plaintiff Johnson was still present when the two defendants were arguing over who would be the one to take plaintiff Johnson's virginity. The defendant Donald J. Trump was clearly heard referring to the defendant Jeffrey Epstein as a quote, Jew bastard as he yelled at defendant Epstein that clearly he, defended Trump should be the lucky one to quote, pop the cherry of plaintiff Johnson. So that's, that's the level of that lawsuit.

All right. So here's like folks, so here's the version of it where it's told in the first person. It's even, you know, wilder. So for example, this is supposedly Katie Johnson narrating it. Defendant Trump had sexual contact with me at four different parties in the summer of 1994. On the fourth and final sexual encounter with defendant Trump, defendant Trump tied me to a bed, exposed himself to me and then proceeded to forcibly rape me.

During the course of the savage attack, I loudly pleaded with defendant Trump to stop, but he did not. Defendant Trump responded to my pleas by violently striking me in the face with his open hand and screaming that he would do whatever he wanted. Immediately following this rape, defendant Trump threatened me that were I to ever reveal any of the details of defendant Trump's sexual and physical abuse of me, my family and I would be physically harmed if not killed. Defendant Epstein had sexual contact with me at two of the parties that summer. On the second occasion involving defendant Epstein, defendant Epstein forced himself upon me and proceeded to rape me anally and vaginally despite my loud pleas to stop.

Defendant Epstein then attempted to strike me about the head with his closed fists while he angrily screamed at me that he, Defendant Epstein, should have been the first one who took my virginity, not defended Trump, before I managed to break away from defendant Epstein. Immediately following this rape, just like Defendant Trump, defendant Epstein threatened me not to ever reveal the details of Defendant Epstein's sexual abuse or else my family would be killed, etc. And then there's also like, you know, the gang rape accusation and whatnot. Yeah, yeah, that's what I was reading from. and so like this was like this was above and beyond

like even just any ordinary confabulation like they actually can have confabulated a first person narration of it from some yeah yes and and at MIEP Kelly asked this is obviously made up BS why are we wasting time here is there a point

there's a point who's forcing you to watch this I mean that's a good follow up question that's one follow up question but another one is that this person leases Bloom is in the middle of this spiraling major scandal in America right now where, you know, her client is leveling the most serious accusation at, uh, at Eric Swalwell, the former, now former, um, this is creating a precedent for how the House of Representatives organizes itself. Right. Exactly. And look, this is,

This is a, this swallow thing is a big deal, right? Like it's, it's, it's, it's the kind of high speed, uh, sort of political assassination that, um, you know, can now be done in, uh, days rather than weeks previously, right? Or less. Hours. Right. Um, and, you know, as we, as we talked about. about the, you know, the accuser, Drew's basically had been, she'd been using kind of therapy called EMDR, which, you know, we did a little research over the weekend and we talked to some folks who were a specialist in this field. and you know the consensus is that it can be it's the kind of thing that can be helpful if there are real memories

but if if the memories are not there that there can be real mischief and real problems um and so this is this is not confidence inspiring background uh to have Lisa Bluma and EMDR therapy in the same package yeah you know people were angry at me for for uh not being nice enough about the supposed efficacy of this EMDR treatment. If it's found to be effective for someone, you anecdotally or clinically, there's no empirical basis to believe that the technique specific to EMDR therapy, meaning the waving an instrument in front of somebody's eyes and causing their eyes to flutter in certain directions, that that's like the causal mechanism. by which they're getting some beneficial results. Now, the therapy can be conducted in a way where it includes like this thing called exposure therapy where basically you're kind of confronting this traumatic this traumatic

memory of yours that you're not wanting to grapple with. And so it's really, you know, bothering you. But like once you kind of expose yourself to it, you know, it kind of like lessens in its impact on your your psychological state. So that can happen in concert with the eye fluttering technique in EMDR therapy. But in terms of the like the thing that's unique, the aspect of it that's unique to EMDR therapy, the eye fluttering thing where you know, the wand waved in front of your eyes essentially, there's no empirical basis to think that that's effective at doing anything.

Now obviously you can have placebo, you can have, you know, maybe incidental benefits from some other aspect of therapy, whatever it might be. It's just like there's no actual credible study. Yeah, yeah, yeah, just like being in the, being a therapeutic setting. So that's my point. But then and then, but when you add on top of it, I mean, where the, the potentially nefarious part comes in is if like you're purporting to be able to use this EMDR therapy to cause people to reimagine their memories or implant different emotional content on them, then you're liable to just basically catalyze them into generating brand new memories, even if they think. they have, even if they think it's a real memory, that they're just like reimagining. Yeah.

That's one of the things that we were told here at Rackett, that there are, there are, um, memory undermining effects that there, there can be that you can, uh, you can remember incidents that didn't, didn't happen. Especially if, especially because you're, yeah, especially given the suggestibility of, of, the therapist dynamic, or the, meaning if you're going, if you're, if you're, if you're seeking therapy at like a trauma center of some kind, then it's presupposed that you're experiencing trauma from whatever the memory that you've got is. And so they're already starting from like a, the assumption that you had this traumatic memory and the job of the therapist is to sort of

extract it out and get you to sort of mold it into some new memory or, you know, some reimagined memory. And so like all like the trauma jargon is already kind of this defaults premise. And so you're then very liable to be to have like, you're going in there in like a suggestible posture. Right. for the therapist to kind of shape your conclusions about stuff. Yeah. My understanding is that it's very therapist dependent.

It depends on what kind of therapist you got. But the point is, this is not an, if you're reporting on this, it's not the kind of thing that makes you feel good when you see it, when you're reporting the account. All right. So Eric Swalwell's being hit from all sides now. There are stories coming out. New York Post had a headline.

Staggering number of booze deliveries. Eric Swivel charged to campaign, including Vegas Bender, political magazine. Eric Swabell will thought he was untouchable until he wasn't. And this, again, fits a pattern that we're seeing where there's an incredibly serious charge, right? the the the the the the the the the the the charge is you know couldn't be more serious uh he drugged me

raped me yeah uh choked me right and then we're coupling that with there is booze delivered to his office um and then there's another question now about how this story came out and i i can't believe that i missed missed this when i first read it uh but a person named ariel fodor um who is often, what's her nickname again? Mrs. Frazzled. Mrs. Frazzled. Which I'm annoyed I even had to learn. Yeah.

So she played a key role in this whole thing coming forward by, if I remember correctly, she essentially tweeted something very positive about. It was TikTok. It was TikTok. It was TikTok. She became a big TikTok influencer slash content creator by, doing these sort of like parody style videos where she would speak in the affectation of a kindergarten teacher,

which she was previously, but act as though she was like speaking to Donald Trump or speaking to some other political figure as though they were a kindergartner, right? And apparently this has made her now a big influential influencer such that she got involved in this because I guess, I was going to say Epstein. Swalwell's campaign was seeking her out to get him on for an interview with her. Yeah, and she endorsed him. I don't know if she officially endorsed him, but she was like favorable toward him.

Yeah, she said something very favorable about him. And then was contacted. That's why she was going to be doing this quasi interview with him. Yeah. And she got contacted by a bunch of people. Now, let's look at Sot 8. This is her on CNN, Ariel Fodor. and see if that name rings any bells, see if this face and presentation rings any bells.

But let's listen to this little interview here, bits of it anyway. I saw your post from a few weeks ago where you had talked about how this all kind of first came to your attention, as someone who's not this Washington insider, but as someone who got messages from people you knew with allegations about. the congressman yes and i mean i am so thankful that he is stepping down and doing the right thing here but the bottom line is this never should have happened in the first place and i am just so proud of the women like ali who came forward i know how much it takes and i am just like in awe of them like they are so courageous can you talk about what it was like when you had first you had done an interview with him and you had posted about it and it was in response to that that that women had reached out to you

it sounds like with similar stories or that they had heard similar stories to what ali was just telling pamela in that interview yeah at first when i was on like his creator launch call thing i thought wow really charismatic guy very great on camera and then i had an interview scheduled with him and he had posted a story and I reposted it just sharing that sentiment and instantly people started messaging me. I had three people say, slow your role. This is not a great guy. He is like, don't give him your phone number. He'll send you inappropriate messages, all types of things. But I just, I mean, that is not normal. I interview a lot of politicians and that is the first time ever that that's happened. So I was gobsmacked, to be honest with you. I was.

like, what the heck is going on here? What do you make of the reaction you got when you first shared this? I feel like I'm in kindergarten listening to my t-shirt talk. I know, I know. But you'll feel more like that in a second. With Eric Swalwell saying he's going to resign his seat in Congress. He's still saying he's going to fight these allegations. He's still denying some of them.

And while acknowledging clearly, as Pamela was saying, in that denial, that he said mistakes have been made. What do you make, though, of what happened then to where at Coleman Well, you know, I never really set out to when I, by the time I was posting, I was never thinking, oh, this is going to be received very well. Like the goal always has been just, I need to essentially bang pots and pans on the internet so that these women do not know or rather the women know that they're not alone. They thought that they were the only ones that had happened to. They didn't know in many cases. Pause, pause.

Sorry. We have to pause for a second. Pause. Yeah. Bang pots and pans. Well, hold on a second. First of all, she's, everybody's supposed to be commending their courage.

Their courage to what? Anonymous, well, blah, blah, tongue-tied, because I'm so annoyed, anonymously whispered to one another. Yeah, no, and. About what exactly, meaning they keep saying,

what happened to them? Okay, how come they never fell out? What these women are saying allegedly happened to them? Because she was contacted by people who were not even alleging anything assaulted. They were alleging kind of like creepy behavior, they claim,

meaning he would have these messaging exchanges with younger women. That's what she was being alerted to, not rape. Right. No, I know. I know, but it's all being lumped together. Yeah, it gets all lumped together. Right. Because, you know, Caitlin Collins, of course,

never would ask a clarifying question along those lines. And why not? look, I don't believe for a second that the journalists don't know exactly what the deal is here. When they want to be very specific, when they want to nail people down on things they do. And with this, they know exactly what they're doing. And they know that things are being confabulated. I don't know. I'm sort of, I wonder, like maybe they're just so oblivious or maybe they're just so inattentive

to it that, so you're saying that Caitlin Collins right now is consciously thinking to herself, you know, I could ask a clarifying question to just get on the record what conduct we're even talking about here supposedly and she's just, you know, cynically choosing not to. I don't know. I think they're kind of just in this bubble when these stories emerge that, I don't know, it just didn't even occur to them. How could it not occur to you, though? If you're on air and you're directing a show and somebody and somebody and you've guided somebody

to the point. where they're now telling a story about ostensible sexual misconduct and you don't nail down exactly what it is? I don't know. Maybe you're right. Because it would be so ridiculous if she did actually spell out the conduct that caused her to launch this big fishing expedition, which was it was seriously that there was women who were claiming

that they got messages from him. and they maybe like flirted for a bit but and then this was all you know retroactively supposed to be understood as predatory because there was a power dynamic that's it so so that's how this whole thing got started and that's that's how we get the wrestling tag team maneuver to Lisa bloom and and and a very very serious criminal allegation right yeah Lisa bloom got tagged in and delivered the power bomb right but okay but in between you know Who is Mrs. Frazzle? Who is Ariel Fodor? I can't believe I forgot this.

Let's travel back in time to 2024, summer 20204. And this is a clip from the White Women for Harris group chat. And everybody grab a bucket. Ariel Fodor, affectionately known as Mrs. Frasl, to her combined audience of over 1.5 million followers, is here to help gentle parents, us through this election. Thank you.

Gentle parent, me, daddy. I'm so honored to speak today. I am like shaking to just be among such incredible company. We are here because I'm sorry. There's something about her whole aspect that would cause me to want to blow my brains out and I had to be exposed to it for like more than two and a half. Yeah, this is this is get more level shit. But go ahead.

Yeah. Popped us in as white women to step up. We got to back up for a second. selection season. You missed that, Michael. We are here because if you were here earlier, you've heard Bipak women have tapped us in as white women to step up, listen, and get involved in this election season. This is a really important time.

What did that even mean? That's not a wrestling reference. Influence for the greater good. No matter who you are, you are all influencers in some way. Is it like a relay race for you like to tap the. I'm going to share some do's and don'ts for getting involved in politics online. Wait, dudes and don'ts. the toxicity that comes with it. And spoiler alert, as much as the toxicity can come from the outside,

it can come from us too. So first, don't isolate yourself. We can do our best work when we're in community together like we are tonight because the toxic feels smaller when we support each other. But don't make it about yourself. As white women, we need to use our privilege to make positive changes. If you find yourself talking over or speaking for BIPAC individuals or God forbid correcting them, just take a beat. And instead, we can put our listening ears on. So do learn from, you can amplify the voices of those. That was the key. That's the key vote. I guess that would include Kamala Harris. Like, God forbid anybody to like correct, attempt to correct her on one of her contested political

claims. Yes. But if God forbid you, you are, you catch yourself correcting them. Here's what you should do. forbid correcting them, just take a beat. And instead we can put our listening ears on. So do learn from and amplify the voices of those who have been historically marginalized and use the privilege you have in order to push for systemic change. As white people, we have a lot to learn and unlearn. Okay. So do.

This is literal infantilization, meaning she's speaking at an adult political event of some sort. as though she were speaking to her kindergarten class because this is what made her popular on TikTok, right? And this is why she was invited on and had such a big audience where she was seen as this big asset for the Kamala, a little satellite campaign

that they were running for white women. It's like, you know, sometimes like if you say something is infantilizing, it's sense to be a little bit more figurative. But no, this is so on the nose. Yeah, as I've mentioned before, I have a literally jar upstate. where my my kids are not allowed to use the word unless you really need to use literally.

But this is literally infanalyzing. Right. Right. And yeah. People use literally now to mean figuratively. Right. Yes, exactly. Which I'm guilty of it. Or very. Right. And, you know, this whole thing, which she plays a, you know, a kindergarten teacher who has to talk. down to people and it's a schick and now it's bled into her actual persona but the weird thing is

is is the seamless way that that fits with this didactic bizarre academic theory where you know we're always wrong and god forbid put your listening years on anyway the fact that and now with the small thing you know that you're never supposed to correct the women who claim that the survivors, right? Exactly. So it's it's it's just the same thing. It's just moved over to a different as one as one professor I was listening to recently said the the the I don't know what I'm sorry. I think it's like the the I was victimized isn't isn't equal. In other words, there are different levels of I was victimized. So this is a just a different victim group, but everybody,

there's a taxonomy of victimization. The taxonomy of victimization, but it's just another group that has to be believed at all costs. And, you know, now there's a sort of open celebration. The New York Times had a story. The women behind the Whisper Network that brought down Eric Swalwell that referenced Fodor along with Cheyenne Hunt, who's another influencer.

And there's a lot of sort of proud discussion about this whisper network. Yeah, we're supposed to all be thrilled that a whisper network, meaning whispering rumors behind the scenes to one another, we're all supposed to think it's like this great triumph that that is sufficient to take somebody down now.

Right, right. Yeah. And because influences are doing it. Nobody always had to handle the new political sway that influencers enjoy. Remember when Democrats were a hand-wringing not too long ago about how they lost young men? How do we bring back the young men? How do we tweak our message so that we're appealing to young men? Ding, ding, ding, ding. Yeah.

I mean, I don't know. Maybe the fact that all you need now is a whispered network where some, you know, activist, ladies can decide that a certain behavior is creepy, which, you know, certain cases it may well be, you know, that's fine if you don't want to date them. But if you're going to spin it into like this condemnatory career obliterating, perhaps even criminally inculpating political narrative, then I don't know. I mean, some guys, yes, are going to get the, not me, bad people. okay so like leave me out of it i know everybody wants to kind of spin you know turn things around on me as though i'm

like projecting these deep like subconscious you know desires or something no i mean people there are going to be guys who look at an episode like this and think to themselves huh it seems like in the democratic party if you give any sign that you're kind of like a little bit boisterously or that i think masculine and you're like courting of romantic engagement then you're going to be on the chopping block and this happens over and over again to men uh because like the most vulnerable to this are who in society it's me older you know men maybe i was going to say older men i guess eric swallow wasn't that old but you know relatively older men and not even who are democrats or liberals white men i mean they look at conners right yeah yeah well i mean Andrew Cuomo right like they're the most susceptible to this because they have to do this

high wire act where they on the one hand have to seem to be placating some of the ideology around believing women and so forth or being hypersensitive to these kinds of complaints but then also refuting them

when their level of them which kind of like doesn't always really work out so well it's kind of like an impossible scenario whereas you know Republican you know not that Republicans are totally immune to it but they're not like they're not dealing with the political coalition where they have to cater to these kind of excitable, you know, misfrazzled types who can just like, you know, snap their fingers and all of a sudden, you know, the,

the knife gets stuck in whoever they're going after. So this is an actual intellectual theory at work here. They're not, they're not just riffing. The idea behind a whisper network is that the, you know, people who are sexual abusers, whether it's Epstein or Swalwell or Trump or whoever, they're impossible to dislodge using the normal processes. So we can't rely on the processes. And we can't afford due process anymore. So we're going to move over to a whisper network, which has this power to vaporize politicians. overnight and that's a good thing you know it's a necessary evil uh and it's an exact reversal of

what democratic liberal politics used to believe right like the the the fundamental principle of liberal politics at least when i was growing up was that you you know you would bend over backwards to prevent one innocent person from being yeah better that 10 guilty men go free than that one innocent man goes right and so i mean in honesty like i don't know this is an uncomfortable question but how does it how does a man vote for the democratic party at this point like i mean i maybe not maybe you can't vote for the republican party either but

amen for the democratic party uh it's very difficult because they're they're they're coming up with these ideas uh that basically say that if you get accused you you don't have recourse, you're guilty already. Yeah, I mean, I guess there would be men who would say, look, I would never, I would never, I would never get caught dead engaging in any of this kinds of behavior. And look, I mean, Swalwell probably was a little outside the norm in terms of his, you know, assertiveness and maybe kind of like just going, like constantly looking for who he could possibly hook up with. Oh, no, there's no question that he, but like, you know, just to kind of steal man the case, I guess. for these whispered networks or these informal networks of women, right, who kind of link up amongst themselves and warn each other about some guy

who they would advise, you know, a friend or acquaintance to not get involved with because he has a pattern of questionable behavior. I mean, okay, let's say there is like a, there is a guy who does do like what they would regard to be genuinely creepy

stuff, okay? Meaning, yeah, I don't know, uh, get just two, aggressively flirtatious with somebody who wasn't really expecting it.

Maybe he used kind of like a pretext or a ruse to start up a personal, you know, exchange with them. I don't know. Like there's something that you could like imagine potentially being reasonable that like younger women might want to warn each other about, especially in the context of like a congressional office or something. So if it comes to just per private dealings or, you know, just no dating or like social events like.

that that could be defensible possibly, you know, right? But then, but suddenly the whisper network, which was supposed to be a, like, the whole point of a whisper network was that it was contained to whispering. It was supposed to be this public spectacle. Yeah, but now it gets converted to, megaphone network, yeah.

Yeah, but now it gets converted into like the grounds on which somebody can be publicly defenestrated. So it's no longer a whisper network. Now it's a cudgel. to be used like in the in the public glare so now it's something else now it's on a whisper network anymore and can't be defended on the grounds yeah and it's not just about losing not not just about losing your job not just about removing people from office not not just about getting people out of political campaigns but but triggering criminal investigations i mean this is

exactly yeah and this you might remember the the the shitty liberal media man i was just going to mention that yeah shitty media men shitty meeting men and like I knew some of those people and uh some of them I guess that there were there was a little bit of something behind it but other others were just mystifying um and okay look here's a question it was an so that was an anonymous spreadsheet that got circulated around the time of me too because it was like okay you know we we we we started with Hollywood then we did um whatever other industries now we got to go to like digital media and do have our own thorough

Me Too reckoning. Reckoning. Yeah, everything's always a reckoning. And there's this woman and what's your name now, I forget, who, you know, she started up this anonymous spreadsheet for shitty media media media. And that was supposed to be like an almost, that was kind of supposed to be a whispered network as well.

Meaning the claim was that that was never supposed to be public. But of course, you know, anything that gets circulated widely among the media is going to be made public. So anybody who was on it was assumed, like, you know, assume guilty of some kind of sexual violation. Yeah. It can be career destroying.

It can be life altering. So I guess, you know, just to sort of like as fairly as possible understand what a counter argument could this could be, if there is, you know, just like a informal group of women who do feel like it's imperative to warn one another about the genuinely kind of questionable activities of some guy, you could see that being defensible if it's actually confined to a whisper network. But like a whisper network is no longer a whisper network If we're not whispering about it

And we're talking about it In public, it's like a decisive political factor Yeah, and we've got DAs issuing subpoenas And grand juries and shit like that Here's at Brian M slash G6L And I was not on the shitty media men list people, okay? Were you? I was not. I was not.

Oh, you're not. Just in case anybody gets any bad ideas. I wasn't either. Maybe life would be more exciting if it had been on it, but yeah, it's not. So here's a quote. Swalwell was quote a little outside the norm. Yeah, just like Epstein, right?

I don't know what people mean by this. I've never denied that Epstein was. Epstein was incredibly abnormal. Are you kidding? Yeah, incredibly abnormal. Has anybody ever been photographed more in human history than that guy? I mean, it's wild. And, you know, the few people who I've talked to who knew him, from what I can tell,

you know, severely abnormal, maybe, you know, a monster, I think is a word I might even use. Maybe a, maybe like a, I don't know if I would say,

whatever adjective, like monstrous or something, but there was also some kind of crazed genius to him as well. Yeah. Like, as a con man, completely.

Well, no, no, but people just say in terms of his raw intelligence, like his, you know, just cognitive aptitude.

Like there are people who have told me that they think, you know, multiple people have independently told me who knew him that he was either the most or one of the, one of the most intelligent people they ever interacted with him their lives. And that's, that's people who don't even necessarily like him that much, you know. Yeah, I mean, he held all these weird, uh, sort of ad hoc seminars with academics in the 90s that, and there were no women at those. These were some of the, you know, the top people in academia for years.

But I've never denied that his personal conduct was like outrageous, criminal, abnormal, all that stuff. I just think, lumping him together with Eric Swalwell, Eric Swalwell, we just don't know yet. And the problem with Swalwell is we have this mixture of accusations, some of which are like the absolute most serious things that you can be accused of.

And then there are others that are like he touched my leg at a bar. You know, he made an inappropriate comment on the internet. Like, and it's all lumped together. And, you know, I think that the press is complicit in this, in this smushing of serious and unsurious, which, I don't know, I worry about that trend a lot, right? Because you can do almost anything to anybody. everybody. And here's how it works, right? So you might have not even seen this. So last Friday, right? So we were, I think, so it was like the morning after we recorded our last get together here. The San Francisco Chronicle did a follow up on Swalwell, where they're mostly just kind of summarizing what's gone on with him in, you know, what had them been the prior like, you know, it's five days or whatever. But here's the headline. So this is, uh, this is, uh,

April 17th. So this is the same two reporters from the San Francisco Chronicle, who again, who again, like some of these influencers ended up coordinating with. Eric Spawallel's rapid fall leaves allies reeling as more women come forward. So that they don't lead with the new women coming forward is enough of a tell, right? Because they're nothing stories.

They have to combine it with this kind of just generic retelling or like generic sort of roundup of the latest news, right? It's not just like headline women comes for new women come forward. So here you go. One woman whose story is first reported here, so they quote, buried the lead to use the journalistic cliche, because there's no reason this shouldn't be at the top if it's really that blockbuster.

Says she met Swabo in early 2016 when he visited the campus Democratic club at UC San Diego, where she was a student, the woman, then 27 said she spoke with, so in 2016, she would have been 27 and he would have been what he would have been probably i think 35 something like that so you know harrowing power dynamic um the woman then 27 said she spoke with swall

about a problem with financial aid applications that's delayed her from pursuing a college education and that she hoped he might take up as a cause after giving swallow her phone number to follow up the woman who shared her experience on the condition of anonymity so like Like, no explanation needs to be given for why this person warrants the ascription of anonymity. They just, she just wants it. And that's enough. Said he began sending flirty messages on Snapchat, which allows people to send messages and photos that disappear in seconds. The woman took videos to some of the exchanges, which she shared with the Chronicle, showing,

Squawal inquiring about her love life, sending photos of himself lying in bed and asking to meet up. Though she initially felt validated by the attention from a member of Congress, the woman said she cut off contact when she learned Swawa was married. Quote, our politicians are supposed to be the best amongst us and they're not, she said. That allusions shattered around that time. Okay, so the sum total of that allegation with which that anonymous woman, quote, came forward. Another melodramatic cliche is she gave him her number. They chatted for a bit.

it got a little bit flirt flirtatious and then she decided to stop talking to him when she found out that he was married i think he might have been actually married after that because he got married in like late 2016 or something so who knows what the timeline is exactly but that that that's it like that's a woman coming forward so then how is that then um cast it's oh more women come forward to corroborate the more outlandish allegations right right that that's that's the slight of hand journalistic trick that that scares me about this whole thing right you have something you there isn't even a thing look look is it smart behavior by a you know member of the house to be to be to be flirting online with somebody you just knew like of course not they met in person

apparently well yes but but even so like i think in this day and age you like i think yeah in that was even pre-me too. Yeah, I guess so. I guess so. I just don't, okay, so look, I mean, if I, if I was like, if I was his chief of staff or something or advising him, like knowing that he wants to

maybe, you know, run for president or become governor, I would tell him, you know, like, you know, cool your jets, be a little bit more cautious, fine, but like, it's not this, that is not like extreme behavior. I'm sorry. No. And then here's the second.

So there were two women who supposedly came forward, according to this new, this, uh, San Francisco Chronicle article article. So this one was more was more This one was originally online. Yeah, this is it. One woman a Bay Area resident whose story is first reported here. Oh, wow.

Great scoop. Said she reached out to Swalwell on Twitter, now known as X because she had family members stuck overseas. She said he was very helpful and continued to check him with her after it was resolved. Within a few weeks, the woman who was 23 at the time. So these are women in their 20s who I guess just by like, just by citing their age, that's supposed to have us assume that they,

are incredibly vulnerable and like preyed upon yeah yeah um and shared her experience experience on the condition of anonymity again no further justification needed for that um so i swallow swallow swallow added her on snapshot et cetera uh so it's the same pattern the messages were you know kind of got got eventually more flirtatious they started to come late at night blah blah blah blah but she didn't want to cut them off yeah the woman said she never sent swallow photos or floated back I mean, who knows. But she didn't want to cut him off either because he was offering mentorship for her career. She continued the conversation for a few months.

So it was such a troubling experience for her that she continued for months to engage in these conversations. But eventually that, but she felt he was trying to take advantage of her. It was just so predatory, she said. Maybe she thought, maybe he thought I was a young night. girl who would be amazed at his position in who he is and his power. I'm sorry, a 23-year-old woman knows if she's in a predatory situation. We're not talking about an 11-year-old. A 23-year-old woman knows if she's in a compromising or predatory situation such

that she would not carry on with it for months and just willingly subject yourself to this predation. I mean, give me a break. Yeah, and then look at the picture below the fold here, below the digital fold. Right. Now, it's the rape alleging. It's, it's the, it's the forcible, well, the, the rape well unconscious, you know, I said no, he, he choked me, claim. Like, you know, I don't want to be unsensitive about the whole thing, but I do. I mean, don't we have way too much oversensitivity? Like, don't we need like a bit of a corrective here?

Yeah, no, there, there has to be a little bit of pendulum swinging back. And, and I can't reiterate how much I can't stand there. Eric Swalwell. Why should I, you know, bend over backwards to evince my sensitivity towards these anonymous adult women? So the 27-year-old in 2016 would be how old now? 37? Right.

Why does that person warrant my sensitivity? I actually think she warrants scorn because it's cowardly to do this. And, you know, the same scorn should be directed to the journalists who enable it. Like, why is that person anonymous? What is she a victim of that would entitle her to anonymity under the cover of some journalistic auspice? The only reason I can think of as a journalist to give that person anonymity is if they gave me something that was incontrovertible, like screenshots or emails. And, you know, I knew it was true, right? So, um, I think it's just, it's just like a reflex where because like something, whatever she's alleging is in the vicinity of victimized, victimhood.

Therefore, it's presumptive that she'll be afforded, you know, anybody. Right. Right. Well, I mean, that's like, because they could ask, hey, go on the record with this, right? That's what you're supposed to do. Right. Right. But that wouldn't even be a thought because the practice is anybody who alleges something, that could be construed as at all victimizing is automatically afforded an anonymity. It's like a dogma. It's the quote policy that never gets examined somehow. Same with the youth survivor. Like I wouldn't use that word.

I wouldn't, you know, not until after the case, but the, yeah, look, this is a general problem in journalism where we were, it used to be there was a presumption that if you had anonymous sources in the story, look, sometimes they're necessary. Sometimes there's no other way to get a story out if you think it's really important. You're sure it's true, right? But the presumption used to be that as soon as you possibly could, you had to get somebody on the record. You had to start moving those off the record sources to on the record as quickly as possible in order to give the whole thing some validity. That all went out the window.

Like, you know, think about all the Russia gate stories, even the WMD stories, right, where they had unnamed sources. And there was never any pressure on these people to put people on the record. But with these kinds of cases, now

there's a specific, like, affirmative thing where... It's not even an aspiration to get these people on the record. Right. Yeah. The aspiration is to assist them in retaining their anonymity. Right. Even people who have nothing to hide, you know, they're, these are like

political operatives. Political operatives. They're on, they're on TV all the time, but, but they're blacked out. It's weird. It's, it's a weird thing. So that all, that's all advancing a pace really quickly. Michael, I wanted to get really quickly to one last kind of story that I think is an interesting it's another interesting reporting story

it's the bit about cash Patel in his spat with the Atlantic Yeah yeah Did you read the complaint? Yes. Yeah, I did. So, okay,

it starts with a story in the Atlantic. Can we see the headline here? The FBI director is MIA. And let's... I think there might have been a different headline initially because don't they claim in the complaint that they still the stealth edited the headline

oh did they did they do that I don't even remember if you if I didn't see the self edit but it's alleged in the complaint that there was a stealth I remember that the allegation about the stealth edit hang on a second so this is kind of it's an interesting story

it's it's sort of a conundrum but essentially this Atlantic story alleges that Cash Patel is a drunk and it relies on anonymous sources hang on, let me find the

stealth well this in this opening anecdote about how on April 10th as he was preparing to leave work he couldn't lock on to his internal computer system. In the complaint it's verified that that actually took place. they just he's just complaining that it was mischaracterized right or that he didn't think that he was fired

which is what is which is what reportedly happened to according to the Atlantic but you know ironically he just confirmed that there was some incident where he was not able to lock onto his computer system yeah yeah the whole thing can't be fabricated right like there was some credibility underlying whoever told

this reporter about that episode yep actually can we not see the complaint can we go to the to the to the fox segment number 18 and this is patel talking about the lawsuit now he sues for 250 million dollars um do we do we so this is just him bringing the lawsuit in his personal capacity right is the fbi funding is the fbi paying the lawyers here are they doing a pro bono is he paying them out of his own pocket has it ever has something clarified uh the well the government's not a plaintiff.

I know. So presumably he wouldn't be using FBI resources to do this, but who knows with the second Trump administration? That's true. Yeah. All right. So here he is on with Maria Barter Romo. Let's see what he says. So if I'm not doing my job, if I'm not working, then how is it that the FBI delivered the safest America under President Trump's leadership in the history of our country? And so you know what? They can beat their drums and stand next to toxic waste all they want, but that doesn't make it toxic waste. and Maria, I'm happy to announce on your show that we're not going to take this laying down. You want to attack my character?

Come at me. Bring it on. I'll see you in court. We're not going to take it. Absolutely. It's coming tomorrow. Tomorrow you will be dropping a lawsuit against the Atlantic magazine. Yes, yes, I will for defamation.

And because you know what, Maria, we have to fight back against the fake news. It's one of the many things that President Trump is so successful at in leading out on, because no one is attacked as baselessly as he is and as much as he is. And our leaders that get attacked under his brilliant leadership must do the same. And I won't tolerate their attacks on me because they are indirect attacks on the men and women of the FBI that we've cleaned up. And this historic, prolific year of crime reduction across the board is something that all Americans should be. We're going to get after the fight. And if the fake news mafia wants to, you know, ring their drum bait as loud as they can,

they're never going to stop me from completing the mission that President Trump asked me do which is safeguarding america and we're doing it better than ever before so can we can we just can we reflect for a moment on something that is wild about this i'm not glamorizing the past or the past iterations of the fbi or like you know we got to look at every prior FBI director through rose color glasses or anything but it would never have been thinkable before that the fbi director would be just like you know another sunday news talk show guest and you know you making these, you know, blatantly political appearances where they're teasing a lawsuit that they're going to file in their own personal capacity the next day and, you know, they want to do a whole,

like, show of it, well, show of it. And Hachmatel does this all the time. Yeah, I mean, that's because you, we would never have had a situation where, um, the FBI director would be, sort of anxious to tie his or her own political fortune to that of the president, right? Just quickly, you're right. The original headline in that article was Cash Patel's erratic behavior could cost him his job. And the subhead was the FBI director has alarmed colleagues with episodes of excessive drinking and unexplained absences. The three things that I think are, that seem to be most substantive in the complaint are they self-edited the headline really quickly. The request for comment came two out.

The 19 question request for comment came two hours before pub time. So it wasn't a legitimate request for comment, they say. It was pretextual just so they could get a no comment and then rush ahead with it. Right, right. And then the sources were all anonymous, right? And so, you know, this is, it's, it's an interesting case. Like, it feels kind of like an edge case to me. Like, he's not going to win, right?

Let's, I don't think it's an edge case. I think it's, it's pretty plainly meritless. Meaning there's no actual. I don't think there's any reasonable claim. It's not, it's not actionable, but the, but this is, this could be an op-ed where he's criticizing the piece. Yeah, I mean, defamation, no.

Like, okay, 30 years ago would a newspaper have gone on, gone on record calling somebody an excessive drinker without an on-the-record source and without giving the person a chance to really reply.

And the edit makes me think that there was an editor who's had a no shit moment right after it was published. So, you know, I don't know. This is the kind of thing that I, like, personally, I wouldn't go near if I were, if I was an editor, you know, an anonymously sourced accusation about something like this. Maybe it's true. I don't know, but, but, but one of his, one of his, one of his points is closely that he's

sort of like purporting to know, purporting that he knows who the source is most be and that there are people with an axe to grind. Yeah. Okay. Let's just stipulate that that's true. It may be true. Anonymous sources telling a reporter unflattering information about a prominent public official, even if they do have an axe to grind.

That's not going to be something that could satisfy the criteria for actual malice. I mean, you could criticize the journalistic validity of it if you wanted. But in terms of defamation, no, I just think it's too much of a stretch. I mean, this seems almost like Cash Patel's version of what Trump did when he sued the Wall Street Journal after the Wall Street Journal published the birthday book letter over the summer or reported on it. And they quoted from it.

Trump said it was all fake. Yeah, but the birthday book letter it's not quite analogous, but it seems like the tenor of this lawsuit is pretty similar. And Trump, like, it was also purporting to sue in his own personal capacity. Right. In that lawsuit, it's so funny. Like, he's a private person. He claimed he's a private citizen, like a private resident of Florida or something.

And, you know, one of the reasons why it constitutes actual malice, they, Trump claimed in that complaint that got tossed out last week. was that Trump told them that the information was false, with the idea being that just their, just his denial of the veracity of what was being reported ought to have been sufficient for them not to publish. And Cash Patel makes a similar claim here. Like the Atlantic was told that this was false by us,

and therefore that shows that their state of mind was one of actual malice, which is just like a ridiculous argument today. Well, yeah, but no, the argument is, is, is they didn't lay it out very well, but the argument is really they, they weren't interested in the contra case because they only contacted us two hours before press time. And they couldn't possibly have had a chance to investigate that. And, you know, that could be malice, right?

Look, this is something that came up in a case. with somebody I knew when I was very young. And it's this concept that journalists can escape liability just by attributing the defamatory statement to their real sources, right? You can't say, you can't say, like, well, you know, I did have three people telling me this. So it's okay. I only bring this up to talk about a general trend in journalism.

Like, for instance, if you go back to, remember that story that the Washington Post published about how Carter Page was an agent of a foreign power, right? Like, by the book, there was nothing wrong with that because they did have a, there was a court ruling there, right? They did have a source who was talking to them about it. But the underlying information wasn't true. and they might have had an indication that that's the case, right? We have no basis to think that the Atlantic had reason to believe that this wasn't true.

I mean, maybe it's possible. We don't have any basis for that. It's possible. I guess I'm bringing it up. Because like they say that Casper tell was seen to get drunk or seemed to drink alcohol to excess at like some club in D.C., some club in Las Vegas. And then can we see, let's do the hockey video too? He doesn't deny that he consumed alcohol. neither of those places. He denies abusing alcohol, which is subject to interpretation.

So that's sort of like telling because, you know, in order to establish actual malice, he would have to establish the falsity of it, not just the contestability of the characterization. And yeah, he's on video chugging beers here. Yeah, let's watch. This is not a great look either. It's like a frat party. Why are, why didn't he worry? I wouldn't, I wouldn't allow someone to put the metal on my,

why is he even there? I don't know. I don't know. I can't tell. Oh, and the people will spot, and it's from a beating in hell. What's the song again?

Can't tell. Oh, courtesy of the red white and blue. Courtesy of the red white and blue. All right. Look, that's, it looks fucked. There's no question about it. One of the lyrics in that song is, well, put a boot in your ass or something.

I think that's, that's actually an actual lyric. And, uh, isn't it Toby Keith? Is it, is it Toby Keith? I don't know. Look, the story might very well be true. It's just that this is, this is a thing that's kind of bugged me late, uh, for a while now. Not even specifically about this case, but it's this whole thing where, Yeah, we don't really know whether it's through.

Somebody told it to us, though, and fuck it. We'll put it out there. Okay. Yeah. So, I mean, so we'll put a boot in your ass. It's the American way. Those are actually weird. It's from 02.

So this is like a post 9-11 anthem for a country anthem by Toby Keith. Right, right, right, right. Not a great look. Yeah, he's not going to get that $250 million. Let's put it. I think that's safe to say, but, but. I mean, do you think there's an argument to be made that? this is chilling or there's something objectionable about the FBI director having this kind of response

to an unfavorable news article, even if you might question some of the journalistic methods. I think it's I think it's bad look in both directions, frankly, because what ends up happening is that, look, this kind of stuff became routine under Trump. People would just print any kind of thing, anything, right? Some of it turned out to be true. Some of it didn't. And when it ends up happening is people just don't believe the press, or they half believe it, or they sort of believe it,

or they believe part, you know, a little bit of it. And I don't know, makes everybody look bad in the end. The FBI director shouldn't be responding to this. in this way or or if he if he does this respond to it it shouldn't it shouldn't be on TV right and if it's so and if it's so you know deny it walls yeah I mean you're you're breathing more life into it

yeah you're breathing more life into it rise and effect right I mean I mean right quite the right way of putting it because it was going to be a good decently big story regardless right but I don't know it's like a little bit of a Doth protest too much moment?

Yeah, for sure. And here's what fire said. You know, fire, you know, very much, you know, laudably nonpartisan pro free speech organization, unlike, you know, the ACLU, which got hyper politicized in, not politicized, but it started to approach its supposed advocacy of free speech with a much more partisan, lens in the in the Trump era. The fire did not commendably. But here's what they said.

On April 20th, FBI director, Cash Patel filed the lawsuit, etc. The Trump administration has a record of punishing critics and its officials are no strangers to filing lawsuits meant to silent dissent by driving up the cost of speaking. Today's filing by FBI director Casper tell has all the markings of that playbook. The First Amendment sets a high bar on defamation cases against public figures. In order to win, Patel must prove not only that the Atlantic published false information but that the reporter knew it was false or had serious doubts serious doubts about it and published anyway that high standard is important so that all of us reporters and citizens like can hold our government accountable but sometimes the lawsuit is the punishment slap suits

are weaponized by the wealthy and the well connected to punish speakers with cost of litigation even if the suit is ultimately thrown out there are abuses of america's legal system and fire fights against these violations of our first amendment rights we deserve to know the truth about how our government works with news outlets knowingly published false information, they will be held responsible by courts and the readers they serve. But unless Patel can meet the First Amendment's high standard, debate on important issues must remain, as the Supreme Court said, uninhibited robust and wide open.

Okay, so that meant it's a little bit kind of a platitudinous. It's a little bit more platitudes than I would like. But, you know, I think the spirit of it is kind of, right? Because, like, we shouldn't be looking at this as though it was any run-of-the-mill person who feels that they've gotten the famatory media covers. it's got like the de facto weight of the government behind it, even if it's technically him filing the lawsuit in his personal capacity, which like it's just not tenable,

just like it wasn't tenable for Trump to be filing a lawsuit in his personal capacity. Yeah, okay. Wall Street Journal. But against the Wall Street Journal, yeah, but so you know I love fire. I'm a long-time supporter of them. I love everything that they do. I a little bit disagree with them on this issue, though, because some of those suits had merit, right?

Like the Stephanophilus suit, I think had merit, right? That was when Trump was a private citizen, though. I mean, I agree that that one did have much more straightforward merit because that was, Stephanopo was making a statement of fact about Trump having been convicted of rape or something like that, right? And, you know, that was straightforward misrepresentation that would be rightly seen as defamatory. But Trump wasn't present at the time of that.

No, he wasn't, but it would still be messed up if they did it now. That's the thing. Like, I guess my, I probably have to sit down and think this through a little bit better, but I'm responding kind of like in the heat of the moment to something that's been bothering me for a long time and not just about Trump or Patel, but just it's this general thing where we know we know we can get away with with some stuff at the edges now. So let's push the envelope a little bit. And yeah, absolutely, he's, he's, you know,

it's an overboard response. But I don't see that as, as, you know, what's ended up happening now is that people are describing lawsuits as inherently like speech chilling. And I don't, I don't think that that's the case necessarily. But, um, no, not inherently. I do think we're in a little bit of a different place when we're talking about the president or the FBI director filing a lawsuit where it could be seen. I mean, there's more speech chilling potential there at the very least than with some run-of-the-mill defamation lawsuit.

Yeah. He's not going to win, though. So it would be. to win. That's what that's what fire is saying, though. He doesn't have to win. Like, the lawsuit is the point. The punishment is the, the punishment conferred by the lawsuit is the point. And that's what does the chilling. Yeah. Now, I don't think it probably will chill much. I think, I don't think news organizations are going to be that. But that's, that's, that's kind of my point. Like, if you go back and look at Atlantic's, Atlantic's got a whole bunch of stories in the last, you know, 10 years or so that are like, where, you know, like, you know, like, you know, like. We're, you know, like, you know, like. We're. You know, like, like the Bounty Gate story or the, you know, the story about Trump at the graveyard in France, right? You know. And the Wall Street Journal lawsuits obviously did not dissuade the media from continuing to cover Trump's relationship or not with Epstein.

Right. Yeah, exactly. Because that, because that lawsuit in particular was just so ridiculous. Right. Right. Yeah. I don't know. it's a conundrum i'm not i'm not exactly sure how i feel about all this stuff um but i mean look if

there was something that was just straight like if there was something that was more like the stephenopoulos thing then i'd at least be willing to entertain it i would still maybe have some reservations if we're talking about some of the most powerful public officials in the country but i'd be more willing to entertain the justifiability of bringing a suit like that um but but to me you know the the the Wall Street Journal, one with Trump was just like almost in your face farcicle in terms of the merits. And this one would be a little bit more ambiguous, but I read it and saw that as pretty straightforwardly meritless too. So then you have to wonder, okay, so what's the purpose of this? If there's no plausible expectation that could actually get a favorable judgment from a court.

Okay. The purpose of it has to be something. I mean, what would be the purpose then? The purpose would be to meet out some kind of punishment, however ineffectually, using the implied authority of the office that they hold. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. No, that's probably true.

I have to come up for some more. It's a complex, it's a complex question. We don't necessarily have to have all the answers right on the fly here. Yeah, I mean, it's this thing that I'm reacting to something that's kind of been in the ether about how, you know, we can publish a bunch of stuff with anonymous sources. And because, you know, according to the letter of the law, we've dotted our eyes, it's going to be okay. with public figures, that's, it's just gotten to a place. I guess that's always been true, though. I mean, it's just more, it's been more exacerbated with, in terms of politicians,

um, in recent years. So, uh, yeah, anyway, I'm sure Bill Clinton would have loved to sue somebody during what. Yeah, exactly. And stuff was getting leaked constantly about Ken star, you know, and Hillary Clinton killing Vince Foster and all that shit, right? Um, but, you know, yeah anyway interesting case uh and i don't the the prediction the the larger story here is that there's there's a widespread expectation that he's or or they're there but the atlantic is predicting that he's going to be ousted soon which will um that would be interesting if that turns out to

be the possible in the uh the labor of secretary was just ousted today not that anybody was following her uh really 10 year that close that yeah lori uh shabre I think that's her name. I heard from somebody right after the hockey video leaked that he was done. So, well, that was a while ago now. Yeah.

No, I know. I guess that wasn't right. Yeah, I guess that wasn't. All right. Which is probably why he's doing these, you know,

very showboaty media appearances, almost like he's like mimicking Trump. Right. It's a career saving move. I mean, I mean, does this strike you as that crazy that when he got locked out somehow of his computer system, he might have been a little freaked and think that maybe, okay, maybe this is, this is it. Maybe I did finally get the boot. I don't know. It doesn't strike me like straightforwardly so out of the realm of plausibility.

Oh, I don't think it's implausible. I just, I'm thinking in terms of what, what's going through the minds of the end. Maybe this woman at the Atlantic has like a real source. I mean, that's a possibility too. Yeah, it's possible. It's very, it is possible. I just, I don't know. I'm getting, I'm getting crotchety in my old age.

Like there's, um, all right. I'm plenty crotchety too, but I'm trying to, uh, when you get to be my age, wait till you, wait till you see how crotchable you'll get. Um, more crotchety about like my, uh, body aches and things. Oh, yeah. Well, that, that's a lot of fun. Um, all right. You have old like basketball injuries and stuff that you're constantly.

Yeah. I've got the old sports injuries that come and play all the time now. So those are great. Plus, I just, I have shitty eating habits and, you know, I don't really care about seeing them anymore. Yeah,

totally. Well, you maintain your figure very well. Thank you, Michael. That's very nice. Take your shirt off right now. All right. What do we expect that's going to happen later in this week for us?

Let's see. Well, I mean, we didn't even mention Iran, but. Oh, that's right. God. There's a yet another like ultimatum deadline coming up supposedly on. Yeah. I think it's tomorrow evening because like it's going to be two weeks tomorrow at 6.30 p.m. roughly that Trump declared the two week ceasefire.

Yeah. And he seems like he's actually, who knows. but there's been a lot of escalatory movement. Yeah, no more Mr. Nice guy. But it's not just the rhetoric. Like he ordered the U.S., he ordered the Navy to fire upon an Iranian vessel in the Strait of the moves and then seize the ship. And, you know, it's still like unclear what's exactly happening

with these potential negotiations that are like being talked about taking place tomorrow. Islamabad like Jady that's what was going to go but then Trump says he's not going because of security reasons but then he is going because who knows what's even happening with that you know it's otherwise going to be Whitkoff and Kushner which is like the kiss of death for Iran pretty much right because they'll they'll negotiate something and Trump will mix it but you know I I wrote something yesterday like Trump is not bluffing because like you know as much as people want to kind of like dismiss the rhetorical excesses as just like order the deal bluster.

If you go through and look at the record, like the stuff that Trump has threatened that he's going to do, by and large with Iran, he has ended up doing it. I remember people dismissing his bluster when he threatened to assassinate the Supreme Leader back in June of 2025.

And then he did it. Or in March of 2025, he says, look, if they don't capitulate to our 60-day ultimatum where like the negotiated outcome has got to be just basically surrender, then there will be bombing.

And then there was the promised bomb. right when the 60-day window expired. So it seems like we're kind of coming maybe to a head here where the threat to blow up all of Iran's power plants and bridges could be happening. And you had Mike Walsh, the UN ambassador, on all the Sunday shows yesterday, preemptively kind of volunteering of a justification

for Trump doing this, meaning saying, oh, look, we do this in World War II. This is how America wins wars and is like unapologetic about it. So I don't know. It could come to a head, but we, you know, we went like two hours without mentioning that. But yeah, we could be on the verge of something.

Like, apocalyptic within the next like 48 hours. Yeah, we'll go to Iran or what's left of it, but at the end of the week. One quick thing in exiting. Let's look at SOT 18. This is Erica Kirk entrance, her entrance, at a Turning Point USA thing last Friday. I got a question for you, Michael.

and then I have my own comparison about this. Saute 18. Do do, do, do. Here we go, here we go. Please welcome. Turning point, U.S. S. CEO and Zeta, Erica Kirk. all right that's exactly what happens whenever i enter a room yeah i was going to say uh is there a wrestler who who has who uses that song or or uh as an end not that i know of not from like the w f attitude

era not one that i would be instantly familiar with but it is kind of like a wd i thought Triple H maybe, but no. No. It turns out not. I would know the Triple H entrance music. Okay. All right. Well, here's what it did remind me of. Can we watch? Triple H is, he had several versions of the interviewer's time to play

the game. Oh, no, no, no. Let's not watch that one. Let's watch the one from Oh, yeah, that's triple H. That's exactly what I was just singing. Yeah, let's, okay, let's watch it, quick. See, that's, that's, that's more of a, uh, that's more of a rock. thing. Yeah, the other one was beat smash, right? Yeah, or it was like, I don't know,

skill wrecks or something. All right. That's pretty good. You know what? All of this stems from in the 2016 Republican convention when on one of the nights, Trump does a WWE entrance essentially where like the light,

it's like he's walking out of the tunnel in the classic WWE set up. Oh, he totally does the, he said, no, he said, he said, he said Vince McMahon, and advised him on it. Right, right. Yeah.

No, they, they totally do the WWE thing. And now that's become like a standard. With Erica Kerr thing, okay, look, obviously I don't co-sign any of the Candace insanity obsession around her.

But there is like it's almost like she goes out of her way to just come across as odd and how she carries herself. And look, so on the one hand, she's a grieving widow who nobody, you know, it's with the horrible manners to ever criticize. or even look askance at.

On the other hand, she's this like aspiring Republican Party Kingmaker who's running what we're told is like the most politically influential organization of the country, Turning Point USA. She already endorsed Vance months ago for a president in 2028.

She had this event with Vance that she was supposed to be attending last week at the University of Georgia and then canceled the last minute for on like kind of trumped up grounds that didn't really make any sense for like, you know, undefined security threats, meaning like, I don't know,

there's people, like, blabbing on social media or something. But then, like, the security threat went away and she could easily get to the Trump event where she could make that entrance. So it's almost like she's inviting some of the crazy speculation. I don't,

I'm not accusing her of being complacent or anything. I'm not in the, I don't even follow what, however, Candice kind of blurts out about this stuff. By the way, we have to do a whole show on Trump's insults about all.

all these people like Candace Owens at some point. But, all right, here's what it reminds. He had a funny one. In this truth social, he said, he referred to her as, Candice and just random quotation marks. It didn't even make sense, but that's why it was so good.

All right, here we go. The last thing. All right. Just the point is like art imitates life more and more, life imitates art more and more. And I don't know. I thought that shit was funny. The other card thing.

All right. Thanks everybody for hanging out, Michael. Thanks for taking so much time. And we will see you later in the week. And we'll pay attention to the thing that's actually happening like in Iran next time. Yeah, we'll be live from the straight of Hormuz. Live from the Strait of Hormuz. Live from the Strait of Hormuz.

it's the private pedo party. We can get like a bunch of pedos in like headdresses and things. Oh, we need a pet. What's the name of the pedophile band? We can be shirtless. You know how Swallow and Ruben Gailo got in trouble for that old photo of them riding camel's shirtless? We got to do that. Oh, yes.

Yes, absolutely. The shirtless camel riders. All right. Thanks a lot, everybody. have a good night and Michael thank you too. Thank you Mr. Producer and we will talk to you again soon. See you next time.