The Daily Signal - The Daily Signal Presents "The Signal Sitdown" - The Man Who Laid the Groundwork for the Rise of Trump and the Death of the Media | Larry O’Connor

Episode Date: August 2, 2025

Subscribe to The Signal Sitdown wherever you get your podcasts: ⁠⁠https://megaphone.link/THEDAILYSIGNAL2026390376⁠⁠   It’s Andrew Breitbart’s world, we’re all just living in it. Tragically, Breitbart himself is not. He died suddenly on March 1, 2012 at just 43 years of age. In his life, ⁠Breitbart⁠ was always a pioneer, pushing media and politics to the edges of the map only to open a completely new frontier. There’s something fitting to him exploring the frontier of eternity just a little before the rest of us in his earthly death. Breitbart spent most of his career at the confluence of Hollywood, media, and politics. He was one of the first men on the right to clearly see the complete picture. “Celebrity is everything in this country,” Breitbart once said. “Media is everything. It's everything.” After listening to a radio interview with Breitbart, Larry O’Connor, then a show manager for Broadway productions, contacted Breitbart and wanted to write for his blog Big Hollywood. O’Connor found Breitbart, but Breitbart also found ⁠O’Connor⁠. Now a radio host with Washington, D.C.’s WMAL, probably the most influential political radio station in the country, and author of a new book titled “Shameless Liars,” O’Connor joined ⁠"The Signal Sitdown"⁠ to discuss how Andrew Breitbart saw the rise of Trump, and the efforts to take him down like the Russiagate hoax, coming. Keep Up With The Daily Signal Sign up for our email newsletters:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.dailysignal.com/email⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠     Subscribe to our other shows:  The Tony Kinnett Cast: ⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/7AFk8xjiOOBEynVg3JiN6g⁠  The Signal Sitdown: ⁠https://megaphone.link/THEDAILYSIGNAL2026390376⁠   Problematic Women:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠https://megaphone.link/THEDAILYSIGNAL7765680741⁠   Victor Davis Hanson: ⁠https://megaphone.link/THEDAILYSIGNAL9809784327⁠   Follow The Daily Signal:  X:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠https://x.com/intent/user?screen_name=DailySignal⁠ Instagram:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.instagram.com/thedailysignal/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  Facebook:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.facebook.com/TheDailySignalNews/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  Truth Social:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://truthsocial.com/@DailySignal⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  YouTube:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/dailysignal?sub_confirmation=1⁠    Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and never miss an episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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We'd love to talk. Business. Hi, Bradley Devlin here, politics editor of The Daily Signal, and I'm excited to share this episode of my show with The Daily Signal with you. The Signal Sitdown is one of the Daily Signal's other podcasts, and each show I bring you inside the biggest battles in Washington, D.C., with some of the biggest names in politics.

So if you like what you hear today, make sure you subscribe to the Signal Sitdown for weekly episodes. We'll see you there. At one point, because he talked about the media whenever given the opportunity, He asked everybody in the crowd to hold up their smartphones. And everyone holds up their smartphones. He goes, you are the media. Before Elon Musk was saying, you are the media.

He got that from Andrew Breitbart. He said, you are, in your pocket right now, you have more video and editing and audio power than a television studio did 20 years ago. With your smartphone and with technology the way it is right now and the independence of voices, breaking through the gatekeepers, this is how media changes.

This last election proved that out. Trump beat Biden. And then he beat Kamala Harris, and then he beat the legacy media and made them irrelevant. Thank you so much for tuning into The Signal Sitdown. But before we get to the interview, we'd love it if you'd hit that like and subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you may be joining us. And please remember to give us a five-star review because we love your feedback. Remember, it's your government. And together, we'll expose how it really works and how to affect real change.

Without further ado, here's the interview. Larry O'Connor, welcome to the Signal Sitdown. You can't fool me. Congress is in recess. The Senate's all confirming a bunch of people. You had no one. You're like, I got nobody. There's no congressman. Like none of the 435 would come by.

I will be forthcoming with the audience. We did move this interview up. Because you were desperate. And, well, when the ICE director has to move the interview, you have to move the interview. So I made a call. I made a call to a guy that I thought I could trust. You can always count up. To not reveal this to the audience to come on the show this week.

You got to keep it real, though. I've been telling you. Don't stop with the facade. Let everybody know what's going on. Let my hair out a little bit more. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Listen, the reason that you're on the show today is we're going to be talking about Russiagate.

Good. All the things that we have learned from D&I Tulsi Gabbard. But before we... Oh, I'm sorry, Brad. I was told that it was a nothing burger. Yeah. There's nothing new here. There's nothing new here.

Yeah, yeah. Christian Welker, my superior in MSNBC is... Right, there's nothing new here, but also President Baracko, needs to comment on it. Right, right, exactly. Breaking news. But he talks about nothing except NCAA bracketology and this.

But there's nothing new again. Yes, yes. He's going to give us another score update for the New York Liberty or something. So. I'm bothered that you know the name of the WNBA. It's just, I know the names of the teams that have most recently hit Caitlin Clark in the face. Oh, all right? Well, that's like the best of my knowledge.

At this one. Yeah, exactly. So actually, if they, this is the incentive structure. now. If they keep doing it, I will learn more WNBA teams. That's true. And people will pay more attention. So a few people I know in the punditry class in Washington, D.C. That word.

I know, I know. You're not going to like that word, but it's true. What do you want me to call you a journalist instead? I am an opinion journalist, actually. There is such a thing as an opinion journalist. I mean... I don't mind taking back journalism and making it our own. What we do is journalism, don't you think? Yeah, I mean, I just, it's like, let it die.

It gives you a lot of First Amendment protections when you get sued, too. It's like the Anon, it's like the Anon on Twitter. That's true. The projections are sweet. But it's like the Anon on Twitter saying, didn't you know the swastika was an ancient symbol of peace in India? You know? Exactly.

That's my feeling of the label journalist. Actually. Actually, at one point, Hunter S. Thompson was a journalist. That's right. All these greats, they were journalists. Yeah, but. Now I have to... Fair point.

Now I have to combat with, like, you know, go to war with Nicole Hannah-Jones. I just feel, you know, that's fair. I just feel like pundits are like, you know, Steve Hayes and Bill Crystal and... Yeah. People who just... Their job is to show up and give an opinion that's almost always wrong. Right? And it's like...

And at no point to the network say, maybe we should get some new pundits. Right. If we're asking people their opinion about things to inform our audience and they're consistently wrong, Maybe we should find some of those guys who were right. Like, Jennings, CNN had no idea. They thought they were hiring and never Trump, Scott Jennings, to just sort of come on there and just sort of do a Joe, Jonah Goldberg thing.

And suddenly Jennings is like, actually, everything seems to be pretty good. In fact, you guys are the problem. And now they got a gold mine, and they have no idea what to do with it. Yeah, the, you know, it's like, I could imagine sitting around one of those tables in the networks and being like, how many times can Kramer be wrong before he actually triggers an economic crisis? Right.

Right, exactly. But he still gets a gig. The guy makes, you know, seven figures for being wrong. The guy makes enough to make up his losses in the stock market every year. All right, I threw you off. No, no, few people, yeah, you're a pundit, and a few people in the D.C. Pundit class have existed at this nexus of Hollywood and entertainment and politics. You really stand out in my mind.

Born and raised in Detroit. Right. then you have a full-on career in entertainment before you become friends with Andrew Breitbart in your world completely changed. That's exactly what happened. And, you know, I think David Marcus, I mean, he's a columnist and a writer and a brilliant dude, but he doesn't do a whole lot of commentary outside of his columns. But he's the only one that I know of who has roots in theater as well.

He worked in New York. And I worked in New York for a little while, but then in L.A., not in the creative side of it, although it's impossible to work in that business without being affected by and sort of inspired by creative types. But I was in management for Broadway shows, for Broadway theaters and shows. And then I met, you're right, that's exactly what happened, as Andrew Breitbart sort of upended my world. I started, so I'm listening to the Dennis Miller podcast.

Dennis Miller is a cure. He's amazing. He's brilliant and hilarious. And he had a national radio show. He had Andrew Breitbart on. And this was in, it was right after the election of 2008. All right. And really, Andrew, Andrew's got his website, but it's just like newswires.

It's not an opinion site or anything. And he's still working with Matt Drudge on the Drudge Report, like three Matt Drudges ago, back when he was, you know, whatever's going on now, I couldn't tell you. And so Andrew's talking about how he's about to start a new website. Because people don't know a lot, know this or they know it, but they've forgotten. Ariana Huffington, three Ariana Huffington's ago as well, she was sort of a quasi-conservative. She was like a bit of a dilettante with New Gingrich back in the 90s and stuff,

and she had a conservative column. Right, she's like, back then, she was where Barry Weiss is now. That's probably a fair country. Although I would say she was even more conservative politically than Barry Weiss, yes. So we'll see what the next two iteration is. Exactly.

And so she gets funding for a new website called Huffington Post. And the idea and concept behind it was it was going to be, it was balanced. It was going to be people on the right, people on the left, people in the entertainment business, people in big tech, whatever. And then it almost immediately became a radical left-wing George Clooney, you know, people in Hollywood writing their opinions that we don't really give a crap about. Andrew, though, was hired by Ariana.

They knew each other. And he was hired to sort of help create this website and make it successful because he had his experience with the Drudge report. I think he lasted six months, and he realized, I don't want any part of this. I thought that there were going to be conservative voices and stuff. So then he leaves, and I hear him in this interview with Dennis Miller

talking about how he's going to now do what he hoped to do with Ariana, which was to start a right-of-center blog for people in the entertainment business who aren't liberal, basically, and they could have a voice. And I hear this, and I had been working in the theater business,

I'm right of center. I grew up in Orange County, California when Ronald Reagan was president. Bob Dornan was my congressman, B1 Bob Dorman. I mean, it was very Republican. So of course, very different Orange County. Very different Orange County, although it's still sort of the last bastion, I think. Huntington Beach, California is still. Yeah, I mean, I'm from Urbillinda, right? So yeah, you know, it's just like where the Nixon library is. I love Yorba Lund. Which is why my whole office, as you just saw is decked out Nixon. Little disturbing. You know, it's, it's, I've written a few pieces about Nixon himself and just the kind of parallels with Nixon and Trump and Biden at the same time during the 2024 election and reflecting on just how much Orange County has changed in my lifetime alone. It has.

It's when I was just back there this week and it's, it's a little jarring about somebody. Yeah, I mean, you landed like LAX and it's like, you're at a circus salee. Yeah. Pretty much. This is just disgusting and terrible. So I reach out to Andrew and I say, listen, I know that you're. looking at TV and film people because this is LA, but I work in theater.

I had just finished being the manager of a major 2,000 seats touring house for Broadway musicals. That's really what I worked on mostly, but I had started becoming, I was an independent general manager and producer at that point. But I had a pretty good resume.

I've been working in the business for quite some time. I reached out to Andrew, I said, I know you're looking for TV and film people. I work in theater. I'm a conservative, you know, could I write for you too? And he immediately replied, on an email and said, call me, gave me his number.

We talked for about half an hour, and he wanted me to write two articles, one about a topic that I cared about, and then write an article about David Mamet. David Mamet had just recently come out. The article he wrote was, I'm no longer a brain-dead liberal. Right. For the Village Voice, famous article. And so I wrote about that, and I wrote my own story that I wanted to write about, not about me, but about something going on on the news.

And he said, you're in. And on day one of what the website was called Big Hollywood. And then he rolled out big government, big journalism. And I started writing for all the sites in that first year. And then he hired me. And I was on his payroll in my life has never been the same. So big Hollywood. This is like something that's totally memory hold in the conservative movement.

But it was, you know, like you really influential site. And you look around now and you talk about all these, you know, Hollywood stars who are more willing to partner up with MAGA movement or like at least be perceived as MAGA adjacent. Yeah, yeah. You see the tech folks, Silicon Valley folks, a lot of folks whose house burned down in Malibu. They were suddenly like, hey, maybe. Hey, maybe this isn't such a bad idea. This whole conservative, responsible government thing. And that is, I think, really the benefit, that these guys are coming over because of all the seeds that Andrew Breitbart planted.

Yeah. Back in the early, or late, I guess, 2010, late 20. Yeah. Early 2010? Big Hollywood started January of 2009 before Obama was inaugurated. He was planning the seeds a little before that, I would say in 2007, 2008 with some activism and some relationship building. But yeah, that was... But most of the people were under pseudonyms, right?

Like, your pseudonym was stage right. And, I mean, first off, great, great student. Yeah, that's a good one. Low-hanging fruit. That's the best type of a pseudonym is a low-hanging fruit one. And that was a good one. Why didn't I think of that? Yeah.

A year later, I couldn't use it anymore. Because when he put me on payroll, he said, can't be anonymous anymore. Right. Because it was tough. It was tough to make that choice. Yeah. Take us inside that choice.

I mean, it's like now you've hitched your wagon. Right. And you're going across the country, right? Like next stop, Oregon or California. Yeah. And dysentery. Yeah. Oregon Trail.

It was, you know, part of the real, I'll be honest. Part of it was cowardice because there were some people, that I worked with and knew and who were friends where you know you don't always talk about nowadays nothing you do you talk about nothing but politics back that it wasn't as you know paramount and and you know people in the business and in southern California in particular at that time would be ostracized if they had wrong think about certain topics it's not it's actually gotten a little bit better I think because of what Andrew's been able to do and because of this part of the Trump movement this last time around in particular was a pop culture

movement too. You know, it was when football players started doing the Trump dance when they score a touchdown, when people, you know, music stars and stand up comedians, God, the stand-up comedians have led the way on this because they recognize that the path of the woke left is a path of censorship.

And frankly, most importantly, and most egregious to a comedian, it's not funny. If they're telling you what you're not allowed to make fun of, that's just the opposite of funny. And so that sort of became this pop culture shift with Trump this last time around that Andrew absolutely laid the groundwork for. But at the time, it wasn't happening. And I understand everyone says, oh, it's because

of Trump. It's because of, no, this was when Bush was president. Right. If you said that you supported George W. Bush in the, you know, 2006, 2007, you were ostracized. There's something wrong with you. And so the part of it was that. The other part was that I still had contracts. I working for people. I was making money as a manager of shows or theaters at the time. And I would represent, you know, a general manager in the theater business, basically a producer hires them to run the show for them. So I represent that guy or that woman. And if I'm an outspoken, conservative political, you know, pundit working and writing for Andrew Breitbart, and at the same time, I show up and I'm negotiating with the theatrical union or hiring an actor, you know, that

could endanger my relationship with the person who's hired me. And I was respectful of that. So I stayed anonymous until I couldn't anymore. And I just sort of had to make that decision. And I said, okay, well, I'm going to turn that. I'm going to throw that life away for a while. I could always go back to it, maybe. But I'm going to try this thing out.

Being a columnist and writer and editor, I did the video editing for Andrew. So all those big videos that Andrew was famous for all funneled through my department of what was called Bright Bart TV at the time. Yeah. And then I started experiment. with this brand new technology, which was live streaming audio on the internet. Right.

It was really early stuff. And you're doing that and you're doing traditional radio too. I mean, you kind of like make the decision to become, to fully invest in this world to take the stage right and buy line off and put the Larry O'Connor. Byline on. But I wasn't doing traditional radio because nobody knew who the hell I was, right?

And so I was doing this live streaming thing, but doing the live streaming radio show, got me on radio programs, like traditional terrestrial radios. But it's like a very, it's like a very quick shift. It is. Within, within months. Yeah. I'm now guest hosting for radio hosts because they liked what I was doing with Andrew. And Andrew loved the streaming show that I was doing.

No video at the time, by the way. Nobody had that much broadband bandwidth at the time. So we were live streaming audio and then posting it as a podcast later. And like a really young upstart guy who I gave a break to, in the early days was a frequent guest. His name was Ben Shapiro. Back when Brett, Ben was... He was writing for Andrew and a lawyer.

He was a lawyer and he would write stuff for Andrew and, you know, we need a guest on my two-hour nightly show and I'm like, yeah, let's have men on. And I'm joking when I say I... But it's true, he did not do a whole lot of radio or podcasting up until that point. Right. But Ben is a dynamo and everything that he's built.

I'm just saying it was fun to sort of say that he was one of the early guys. And anyway, that got me some radio opportunities because suddenly because Andrew put it on the site and it streamed across all of his sites, it got a lot of attention. It was fun. It was fun. And then by 2012, I actually got the job in D.C.

So that's what the next transition is you leave Los Angeles, you leave Sodom and then you head for Gamora? Yeah, pretty much. With way homelier people, by the way, present company excluded, but. It's like it's just as, you know, Old Testament's sinful, but it's just not as glamorous. It's just humid, you know, it's like you think of hell as like a dry place and some, you know. In some places it's super dry and other places it's suffocatingly humid.

And that's a good description of D.C., especially this time of year. But the food is mediocre, so that makes it pleasant. Yeah, yeah. Oh, the Mexican food is just as good. No, it's our biggest, actually, whenever you meet a California in Washington, D.C., you usually bond over how. crappy the Mexican food is. I know. You know I married an Oklahoma girl and they think Tex-Mex is actual Mexican food. See, we can...

Would you help me convince that? I don't want to get canceled. You people have no idea. Tex-Mex is not real. Listen, I'm afraid of Texans. I have a lot of resentment for Texans. Really? Harbor in my heart. Yeah. Boots with suits. Stop it. Stop it. That's fair. Text-Mex, no. Tex-Mex is great. It's not Mexican food.

It's not Mexican food. It's its own thing. Yeah, yeah. Let me take you to Santa Ana. That's right. Right off Main Street in Santa Ana, you get off the five, and you're in, that's, that's Mexico. Right. That's Mexico. And it's like, you know, take five, take five dollars. That's all you're going to need, the watered up $5 bill in your pocket, and you'll get a great big old Mexican food, a plate of Mexican food, and it will be authentic and it will be delicious, and they need to get out of our country.

Exactly. Let's say here legally. Yeah, yeah, yeah. When I just said it was in something, we got off at LAX, and for some reason, they had, and for some reason, they had. shut down Los Egana so I couldn't get the 105 so I had to drive through Inglewood to get to the yeah because I had to go to the 105 first to drop off my son and then I hopped on the five to get down to the 55 to the 73 to Crona Omar yeah see this is this is the perfect LA conversation this is the Fred Armisen you know the five I love that's good uh-huh so anyway we're driving through inglewood and we're like on a side street

in a neighborhood and there's a food truck there and I kid you know they have all these like digital displays. And on a food truck, at 11 p.m. on the sidewalk in Englewood, it says, best tacos in Southern California. And I said to my wife, I bet you that's true. You had like a buddy the elf moment where you're like, wow. Let's go. World's best cup of coffee.

Congratulations, everybody. You did it. It probably was true. So that's, we've gone a little. This is what happens with you. You have one, your podcast, you weave, you, You take me around. Well, as Trump says, you know, stable geniuses, they do the weave.

They bring it all back together so beautifully. I did. I moved. But it was because, so I wanted to work in terrestrial radio. And so I got that. Again, WMAL in Washington, D.C., it is, for those of you who don't live in Washington, it's like the most important and powerful talk radio station in this country because it's in D.C. And D.C. is a top 10 market.

And WML just dominates. Like most cities have a couple of talk radio stations And can I just ask something on this? Like the people driving around LA and New York Like they're normal people so they're listening to music. Right. But like... Well, now KFI does some pretty good stuff there.

They're talk radio stations. Yeah, but it's not... But when you think of L.A. and New York folks, they're listening to music in the car. In D.C., I think, you know, all the joy has been sapped from their souls. And so they don't listen to music. They find no joy in the human things.

And so we're all like driving around like psychopaths. Like I hardly listen to music in the car anymore too. I'm this way. You listen to news and politics? I listen to news in politics and the radio and podcasts and like that's it man Either that or I'm driving in silence Yeah, no you're right. That's much needed sometimes we know this you know Nielsen breaks down the ratings and they break down the demographics and everything and you can see where those stations rank for men 35 and over in Washington DC the top three radio stations are all three of them news and talk and politics and analysis that's unheard of. This city is stupid. It's broken. But God bless them. There are our audience. So we love them. And also the offer came a few months after Andrew died. Andrew died in March 1st, 2012. And it was an incredibly jarring experience in my life. He became a friend. We were friends.

And we worked together. Everybody who worked with Andrew was a friend. And so, you know, you lose a friend, you lose a brother, you lose the best boss you'll ever have. And you lose this guiding light who is changing the world in media and in politics, and he's just ripped from us at a moment's notice. And I think when I had the opportunity for a change of scenery and a change of lifestyle, it was like, yeah, I need this in my life. I need to get out of here because everything, everywhere I look reminds me of Andrew. So that was another reason why everything sort of fit. And I've been here ever since.

Yeah. And a little bit more about the Beltway, the radio market. I mean, it's not the same as a lot of these syndicated guys who are, scattered throughout the country, and they have their radio show blasted out to everybody from coast to coast. Yeah. But, like, every morning,

like, you can count on a bunch of members of Congress listening to your radio station. Yeah, it's weird. And you know them. Yeah. And they call you. Yeah. And it's like, it's, like, totally, it's just wacko.

It is. It is, like, totally not at all how this industry is supposed to work. And D.C. is the only place, probably in the world. Yeah. Where it works like this. It is super weird. I'll never forget, like in my first year on the air, we would go to a commercial break and then our hotline would, because everyone in town knows our guest line because they're guests, right? And so a line would light up and it was a senator who was listening, who wanted to talk to me.

Like, what the hell did I say wrong? Right. But he wanted to add more to the interview that I had just done and give me more information and more context. And then, like, a week later, I'll never forget, I'm interviewing, I think it was Ryan's. Prebis, the chairman of the R&C at the time, and interviewing him, the segment's over, and then the phone rings, and my producer says, Larry, Mark Levin's on the phone

for you. Like, oh, crap, now what have I done? And Mark's like, Larry, you're doing a great job. Let me tell you about something about that guy you were just interviewing. He was wrong about this. And I'm like, Mark, do you want to come on the air and say this? This would be great. He goes, no, no, I'll talk about it tonight. All right, love you, bye.

What is happening? But that is very normal. That happens on a regular basis. And then when you know, if I am on Capitol Hill for one reason or another, it's weird when congressmen say, hey, you were great this morning, good talking. And Jim Jordan listens all the time. And that still freaks me out because he's like Jim Jordan, you know. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Here he is like, you know, hauling university presidents in front of Congress. Right, exactly. He's listening to your show every morning. And you never know when you're going to get one of those calls or how these people are going to react. It's surreal, man. And there's no, you know, it's like you're hosting a lot of the, it's like you're hosting like a conservative work.

working group conference meeting across the street on Capitol Hill, but it's broadcast to the world, and it's predominantly focused on media. It is, yeah. Although when we talk policy, it's interesting. We get a lot of guests who really want to talk policy because they know it's like, when we're booking guests and when we're like pitching the show

and to our advertisers as well, oftentimes we do what a lot of radio stations do, which is like we've got this big audience, and this is the demographics, and they live in Loudoun County, and they live in Fairfax, and their annual salary is actually. averaging out this, you know. And oftentimes you're like, no, no, I'm only worried about 50 people who are listening, and they all work in this building right over here. They're either staffers or

their legislative directors for, you know, a handful of senators whose votes they need. And it really does get that narrow for them. But they know that they're listening, and that gives us a lot of influence. And it's kind of fun. It's also kind of daunting. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, going back to Andrew, I mean, Andrew saw this media landscape coming because he saw the success. Oh, he helped make it happen. Yeah, he saw the success that Rush was having. He saw how the internet could fundamentally change the game here. And now we're living in this, I mean, it's just like a world that he created, you know,

both on the media side and on the politics side, on the media side, this rise of the independent media or the rise of the, I mean, I think independent media is the wrong term, the authentic media, right? Like, I'm not independent. I'm conservative. Right. And I'm okay saying that out loud. And more people are now feeling okay, telling their audience all about their biases. Yeah.

And saying, you know, I'm going to try to do the other side justice here and talk to other people on the other side. I won't be. I won't lie. And I'm not going to be unfair. But I'm not going to act like I don't have any principles. Thank you. And I'm going to sit here and I'm going to know that I have these principles and I'm not going to ignore them. I know for a fact you did not. read my book.

But. Because you just gave you the copy. But like my second or third chapter is the name of the chapter is the myth of objectivity. Yeah. And I begin it with an anecdote with Andrew Breitbart. And the story goes, you know, I was in charge of Breitbart TV. And so we would pull, this is before people were, you know, we had Twitter, but Twitter wasn't handling video at the time. And it was really our site, hot air, and real clear politics that would aggregate videos

of things that happened on cable news or maybe you grabbed it off C-SPAN from a committee hearing. Grab the video, arduous process back then, too, by the way. We didn't have a whole ton of tools. It's 2009, 2010. You post the video. Basically, Breitbart TV was like an aggregated YouTube for conservative viewers who wanted to see videos that would appeal to the conservative viewer focused on politics, right? So my job was to pull all those videos.

And a lot of what I would pull would be Keith Oberman being an asshole on. Can I say that? Yeah, you're fine. We won't. Yeah. Being an ass on MSNBC or back when he had a job on MSNBC and saying horrible things. And Reverend Al Sharpton when he started his show and the famous video of him fighting with the teleprompter resist we much. That was me.

I pulled that video. I posed it. It's like, that's what I would do. And Andrew called me one time. And he's like, you know, and it's like, it's always great with Andrew. But usually he would text or usually he would AOL aim you, instant message you on AOL. But when he calls, it's like, okay, something's up. Hey, what's up?

He's like, you know, I've been watching the site and, you know, traffic's good. But if you notice, you know, your videos are all kind of the same. And I'm like, what do you mean? He's like, hey, you're just focusing on MSNBC and the study. I said, yeah, because they're, you know, crazy liberals and they're saying horrible things and funny things. And, you know, he's like, yeah, but they're not the problem. I'm like, what do you mean? They're not the problem.

He's like, we know who they are. And they tell us who they are. And they're not trying to be anything else. Rachel Maddow is not the problem. Anderson Cooper is the problem. Everyone at CNN. In fact, Andrew saw CNN for what it was before the world saw CNN.

Back then, CNN still pretended and most people thought CNN was just the news, the most trusted name of news. He's like, no, no, no. They pretend to be objective. They pretend that they don't have an opinion. They pretend like they're bipartisan or nonpartisan that they're just looking

for the facts, but you can see that they're not there the problem. It's this myth of objectivity that they end up using as a camouflage. This whole idea that journalism is supposed to be objective, that's actually a relatively new phenomenon in the journalism business. Back in the 19th century, we all know that you had your conservative, you had your Republican newspaper, you had your Whig newspaper, you had your Democrat newspaper. Well, this is why I went back to, like, right in the beginning of her conversation, where I called you a pundit and you were like, I'm an opinion. Journalism. This is why I hate the labeled journalists.

And I tell this to a lot of young journalists that I lecture to or young operators is that like the professionalization of the journalism industry is a complete and total myth. Yes. And the faster that that myth dies, I think the better off.

One, we all will be as citizens. Two, we all will be as people working in politics and in journalism. Whatever remains of journalism. And three, like, it leaves you with a healthier country because everyone now understands where everybody's priorities lie, where everybody's opinions are.

And it's inviting them to a higher political conversation. Like all the pamphlets in the revolutionary area, common sense, the Federalist Papers. Are you sure you didn't read my book? Okay. Well, then I... That's like you're ripping it right from my book. You're right. I think you came to one of my presentations and then he ripped it off and then you wrote a book about it.

Thomas Payne was the original blogger. He had a printing president of his barn. He didn't have a laptop. and it was the same thing. And an anonymous blogger, by the way. Yes, it's exactly right. And all of this, all this stuff, you know, invited people into a much higher political conversation

than the types of political conversations we're having right now. That's right. Well, at least the ones that are going on on the roundtable of cable news after they interview a profession. A hundred percent. 100 percent. And this is the type of media environment that actually would be beneficial. Like, I think the era of the partisan press,

when you know that the Democrat Republican is slapped on the label or the Federalist was slapped on the label, you know what opinion you're getting. And it would just be better if we actually renamed CNN the Clinton News Network. And it would be better to rename all of these, you know,

pseudo-objective or the Wall Street Journal. Maybe we don't change the name of that one. I think that's pretty on the nose. Right? That's the only accurate one. But like the New York Times, it's like the Mamdami campaign. We just rename it to that.

And here's the beauty of all. of that, it actually respects the viewer and the reader a thousand times more than this, this, you know, performance art that they're putting on there. Because if you tell the reader or you're telling your viewer or your listener where you stand and what your opinion is, but at the same time, here I'm going to deliver what's going on and I'll give you my opinion, but I respect you and your opinion enough to know that you can get this exact same story delivered with a different opinion somewhere else and ultimately you're going to be able to work it out yourself i respect your intelligence to be able to come up with it and that's what andrew wanted that was his vision yes we're

conservative the new york times is more liberal than we are conservative but they pretend to be objective and that's the original sin of where we are in journalism today and that's sort of so all of these like opinion-based podcast and live streams and all of these shows that are as he put it in the and I read about it in the book, citizen journalists. You know, he was at a tea party rally in 2010 in Washington, D.C., and at one point, because he talked about the media whenever given the opportunity, he asked everybody in the crowd to hold up their smartphones. And everybody, it's a great moment.

The video is out there. You should see it. It's just, it's a beautiful thing. And everyone holds up their smartphones. He goes, you are the media. Before Elon Musk was saying, you are the media. He got that from Andrew Breitbart. He said, you are in your pocket right now, you have more.

video and editing and audio power than a television studio did 20 years ago and you are seeing what's going on with your smartphone and with technology the way it is right now and the independence of voices breaking through the gatekeepers you this is how media changes and I think that this last election that's why I wrote about it in this book this last election proved that out Trump beat Biden and then he beat Kamala Harris and then he beat the legacy media and made them irrelevant he it's six You know, you have to go on 60 minutes. Donald Trump says, no, you're liars. I'm not going on 60 minutes. And it's funny. In fact, let me talk about this real fast. Sorry, because I'm done like, you have an agenda here. I don't have an agenda.

Mr. Devlin, and I'm taking you all of it. Think about what Trump did in this election with regard to the media. The 60 minute story is my favorite part of it. And beyond the fact that he got a $30 million settlement from them to build his, his library is going to be so amazing with all this money. They had a 40-minute interview with Kamala Harris, and they edited it down to 20 minutes. And they refused to tell the American people what was in the missing 20 minutes.

They wouldn't show it to them. They wouldn't give them the transcript, nothing. You don't need to know. We're 60 minutes. We'll tell you what you need to know. So half of that conversation got scrapped. And when pressed on it and pushed on it, they said, well, listen, it's a 40-minute conversation.

We're a one-hour news show. We've got to edit it down because the American people have a short attention span, so we condense it for them so that they can see what's really important. Or you need to get to commercial break. Or maybe you need to get to the commercial break. In the era of YouTube, there's no excuse. Exactly.

So Trump says, screw you, that's not the reason. It's because you're lying. I'm not going to go on 60 minutes. So what does he do instead? He does Joe Rogan for a three-hour sit-down, and it blows up, right? A three-hour sit-down. 60 Minutes claims they're editing this down because of America's short attention span. It's always your fault.

It's always the viewer fault. You're too stupid to see all 40 minutes of Kamala Harris's word salad. So we're going to edit it down because you have a short attention span. Meanwhile, Joe Rogan is making more money than anybody on 60 minutes, and he's sitting there for three hours and everybody watched all three freaking hours of it. Don't tell me I have a short attention span. We'll watch three hours of an important and interesting conversation. if they're not watching 60 minutes, it's not because they don't have a short attention span,

it's because they suck. And it's because the product is sucks. And it's the perfect sort of example of what the media does. The product of 60 Minutes is a small cohort of boomer journalism, boomer journalists, acting surprised at the world that their generation rock. Right. That's what it is.

That's a great way to put it. Leslie Stahl, for these people. The tone in her voice, apparently, apparently people. Apparently, people then click on a link and they can get the story right there. Can you believe what's happening in Aurora, Colorado? MS-13 is taking over full-on apartment building. Yeah, Leslie, we do.

We believe it. We actually knew that six months ago. We've been talking about it for a year. And so, yeah, no, it's this classic, you know, and these journalists think they're letting their hair down as they do it. They're like, these are the human interest stories. Right. These are the undercovered stories that I'd like to get full feature treatment to.

And it's just a small cohort of legacy boomer journalists discovering the world that they've created. But the mob here in this town, the media mob, they revere it. Or they used to. I think that it's been so tarnished now in damage that it is a bit of a punchline. But it was so revered and held up as the crown jewel of American journalism. And it was all a fraud. Right. All a fraud.

Of their own making. They made it into a fraud. And Trump exposed that, and that's why the third victory was over the media in this last election. You're clearly very optimistic about this new age of independent media or of... It's allowed to stay independent. Authentic media. Yeah. It's allowed to stay independent.

But Andrew... I think YouTube coming back off of their censorship regime is a huge part of this, too. And that also has a lot to do with Trump. As long as that stays, as long as we are still free to express our opinions and say, hey, maybe masks aren't the best thing when there's a pandemic and stuff like that. Because the stuff that was being censored in 2019 through 22 was pretty atrocious. But now it seems to be free. And by the way, they're making real good money.

Everybody's doing well now that actually free speech is free. Yeah. And, you know, I think one of the reason that Andrew is such a legend is because he could see things coming that the rest of us couldn't. I mean, what do you think Andrew would think about this media environment? Would he be optimistic about it? Would he think that, you know, what skeletons are in the closet that we just haven't found yet as we kind of enter into this new media environment? He was always great at identifying the threats. Oh, yeah.

He knew it going in. And no, he would be thrilled. And a lot of people are like, you know, what would Andrew think of Donald Trump? Which is kind of a boring question, actually. And by the way, anybody who tells you what Andrew would think about anything in politics or media, they're just guessing because Andrew was incredibly unpredictable. he really was. And there's this clip that flies around. When Trump was flirting with running in 2012,

there's a clip of Andrews saying that Trump wasn't a conservative. And so everybody holds that up saying, aha, aha. Also, by the way, in that interview, Andrew says Trump knows pop culture, Trump knows the media. And that's going to be a huge advantage for him. I'm paraphrasing. But he isolated that part of who Trump was back in 2012

when it was rumored that he might run. But by the way, Andrew said he's not a conservative back in 2012, I don't think Trump was very conservative to tell you the truth. We only had the data going that we would, that we had. Yeah, well, that second Obama term was pretty radicalizing. Right. For all of us. Yeah.

I don't know. I assume that Andrew would support Trump. I do, but I don't know that for sure. What I know for sure is that he would be positively orgasmic over how Trump has gone after the media. The no holds barred's attack on the media, the invention. of fake news as a description for these networks. To not act like you have to kowtow to them and actually call them on their bowl is fantastic.

And he would be thrilled with what's happened now and the democratization of the media landscape, the platforms. And, you know, everyone talks down the algorithms and they get all, and I don't like how the algorithms operate when they screw with them and they sort of tinker them so it goes counterintuitive to how human,

behave. But I love the fact that I can, you know, find a new podcast on YouTube or a new streamer on YouTube and I like it and then suddenly I start getting suggestions for similar content. That is great and it helps buoy some of the smaller voices and channels that never would have gotten an opportunity or attention. So many people find my show on town hall because they're watching Megan Kelly or they're watching Ben Shapiro or Matt Walsh. suddenly I pop up as an alternative for them or as a suggested piece of content, that gives opportunities for smaller voices and independent voices, like you said, to be right side by side with a Megan Kelly or with a Tucker Carlson.

And that's what Andrew wanted. Andrew wanted to be able to give all of these people who were just starting out or have an opinion and have a voice that are worthy of being heard, the opportunity to be heard. You said it. I mean, Andrew saw a Trump or a Trump-like figure coming a mile away. with this whole confluence of media politics, Hollywood, etc. Oh, yeah.

And they're, you know, these forces kind of converge with Trump and propel him to the presidency in 2016. And there are always, you know, equal but opposite forces, these forces on the left in media and culture and politics. At the same time operating to create a hoax in the Russia hoax that, It's like Wag the Dog, right? They scripted it just like De Niro in that movie. And it's a perfect confluence of the exact same forces that propelled Trump to the presidency. Well, now those same forces are trying to destroy him and take down his presidency. I mean, if you look at, you know, the fact that it's Russia, Cold War era, Red Dawn.

That's right. You know, that type of... Time to bring him out of retirement. That's right. That's right. They're not useful to us anymore. You know, it's a rocky movie, actually, when you think about it, Hillary Clinton is rocky and Trump is, you know, yeah, what is it, Igor?

You go. And then the, you know, Hollywood sex scandals. Boy, that sells. Yeah. Let's throw some prostitutes in there in a Moscow bed. So what are the natures of the allegations in the Steele dossier? Like, straight out of TMZ. Perfect for TMC.

Every single, you know, the spy. And by the way, all of the elements of this story is just like the equal but opposite reaction to the forces that brought. Trump to the presidency. Yeah. And now this hoax has been completely exposed, blown wide open. Yeah. I mean, Tulsi Gabbard, that is how you do a rollout.

Yeah, thank you. Of information. Madam Attorney General, please pay attention, yeah. What have we learned? Well, it is funny, and I think that's a great setup there, Mr. Devlin, if I may say. You've learned quite a bit from me. Well done. Horrible that I did that.

You know, what Andrew was able to observe in his adult life was politicians who were great politicians who figured out how to use the media and pop culture, right? You had Bill Clinton, you know, famously playing the saxophone on Arsenio Hall and suddenly that's a game changer, right? And Barack Obama, Barack Obama understood, and he used social media. He did cocaine. I mean, sorry, yeah. Allegedly.

Maybe once or twice. He utilized social media too. What happened with Facebook in the 2008 election is absolutely legendary, and he was able to harness that too. But he figured that out. But the heart of it, he was a politician. Bill Clinton was a politician. They just figured out how to use the media and use pop culture.

Trump was the opposite. Trump was a pop culture icon and a media superstar. People forget how big of The Apprentice was. I mean, literally the number one show in the country. For nearly a decade? Yes. And it must see. television and the spinoffs and the just all of it.

And even before that, he was a celebrity figure in Manhattan just as a developer and just he was an iconic figure. So he was a media giant who figured out how to do politics. That's frankly more powerful. Yeah. You know, than a politician who can dabble in media. And that's what Andrew was waiting for. This is the project that Hearst failed at.

Yes. Yes, 100%. And so he knew that was happening. He knew it was coming. And I think that he knew that Trump had potential. Again, it was rumored that he might run back in. Really, it was in 2011, but it was for the 2012 race. So he had contemplated all of that.

And he knew that, you know, having all of that know-how and those skills were going to be huge. And I think it's also one of the reasons why Trump had to be destroyed by the left. Because he came from their world. He knew them. He understood them. And that's why they pulled out all the stops to try to stop him. this Clinton dossier was a script. It was a piece of fiction.

It was script. And ironically, of course, as we're learning now, although most of it's funny, like all these things that we've learned from the rollout are the things that we sort of figured out, but it hadn't been validated with a paper trail. But Tulsi Gabbard declassifying this is validated it all with the paper trail. And what we've learned is that the people who were colluding with the Russians were the Clinton campaign. Hillary Clinton, paid people

and some of that money that went to Fusion GPS and to Christopher Steele, the former MI6 agent, ended up being handed over to Russian oligarchs to pay for information that was fake and phony, but they put their name on it and that's what the compromise

that ended up in the Steele dossier. And you mentioned the Taudre sex stuff. There was really only one thing. It was the so-called P-Tape, right? Yeah. That had the sex to it, but isn't it remarkable that of all the things in the Steele dossier and all of the things in the uh john brennan's made up intelligence community assessment that james combe picked that thing to brief Donald trump on that day in early january before he was

sworn in james combe decides yeah i i need a private moment with the president elect i have to brief him on something that the russians have and he picked the p-taped to brief trump on why that of all things and then of course the very next day that's leaked to jake tapper and cnn How did that get leaked? And why did that get leaked? It's all scripted. It was all planned. It was all choreographed.

And I pray that people are convicted of crimes on this. And I think the next step, as this administration continues to push, and Congress seems eager to potentially pull some people back from the Obama administration in front of Congress and ask them some pretty tough questions about it. I think that's the right. There's really only one question. Why did you lie to me? Right.

Because you sat in that same chair. John Brennan and you told you lied. Right. You know, all sorts of potential ramifications could come from that. I mean, I've got perjury. Yeah, I liked the Shady Bunch meme that President Trump posted on truth social with all these people in orange jumpsuits. I think they look really good in orange. They would look great on my set too.

Your oranges is stunning, yeah. I'm glad my book is within the hue. Have I mentioned my book yet? Yeah, I think you've mentioned it once or twice. Yeah. you wrote my book. Exactly. So this is all super interesting to me though,

because when we, like, this whole thing, Crossfire Hurricane starts off with George Papadopoulos talking to an Australian diplomat revealing some information. Of course, who does that Australian diplomat end up being? Oh, his name is Alex Downer. And when he was in a place of prominence

in the Australian government, he used the Australian government to funnel $25 million towards the Clinton Foundation and its fight against AIDS. Then, of course, you have the Steele dossier and all of the improper tomfoolery with that. Then you have the FISA court and using these completely fabricated stories against President Donald Trump to justify spying on his campaign. And I remember back when he was saying that they spied on his campaign in like early 2017, we all were kind of like, maybe he's like. Maybe he's a little in front of his skis, but I get the point, right? I see where he's driving at.

No, completely right, completely vindicated in that. Put another coin in the jar of Trump is right. You know, they're still saying that that was a lie. He tweeted out, just found out that Obama bug, wiretapped Trump Tower, unbelievable worse than Watergate. And they're saying, well, technically Obama didn't wiretap Trump Tower. Are you kidding me? Technically Nixon didn't break into the Watergate, too. You know?

Yeah. Yeah, another FBI, CIA operation trying to take out a great president, but that's, you know, maybe a topic for another episode. But no, you're right. It was all rolled out. It was all rolled out. It was all fake. And at the same time, the intelligence community is saying

that the Russians are not interfering in the United States election. Right. In the ways that at least the democratic apparatus, the deep state, were saying that they can't. could. Right. Cyber means, I don't exactly know what the interpretation of that is in all these documents, but like cyber means to me doesn't just mean hacking voting machines. Right. It means, you know, digital ad campaigns or whatever kind of digital campaigns that they were doing, that it wasn't, it was having a negligible effect on the election. It wasn't changing anything.

They couldn't, they couldn't, they were not the people making sure that Trump was having all this momentum in 2016. Of course not. Of course not. And that stays consistent. Even as Peter Struck and all these people are going forward with spying on the Trump campaign. And we get to December now that we've learned this from Tulsi Gabbard, December 8th, after the election, Trump has won. Wait, can I pause you for a quick second? I was just talking to Sean Spicer the other day about this. And he said, oh, they actually called it the FBI and one other agency pre-election day

called Spicer in to have a meeting and a couple of other people from the Trump campaign saying, listen, we have verified the Russians have. no ability to affect the outcome of the election with all the cyber activity. And we need you guys to say that publicly because at the time they were afraid that Trump was going to undermine the results of the election when he lost. Remember, the whole narrative was that Trump would not accept the results of the election. That was even a question in the debate. Will you accept the results of the election? Because they were sure he was going to lose. So they bring Sean Spicer in and some other people from the campaign and they try to have them publicly.

say that we agree, we know for sure the Russians can't tamper with this, so there's not going to be anything. So go ahead. So knowing that, then Trump wins, and then we get to our December meeting. December 8th, the intelligence community is then going to bring another report to the president on how the Russians did not impact the outcome of this election. Right. A presidential daily brief by the way that Donald Trump would have received because he was now the president elect. That's a key fact here because they scrapped it. They pulled it before the president could get briefed. So Trump was never privy to that conclusion. And so now these questions are, who is the intelligence community officer that pulled it? Did that intelligence community officer

received directives prior to the December 8th? What type of directives were that? And then on December 8th and 9th, there's this meeting, high-level ranking Obama officials, high-level intelligence community members that says they are actually to, as the documents say, per the president's request. Obama directed them. Investigate what's going on how Russia actually influenced this election. That's critical. Obama directed them to find intelligence to support the conclusion that Obama had reached. That's not how intelligence works.

She's supposed to look at the intelligence and then reach a conclusion or the best conclusion you can reach based on the intelligence you have. This was opposite. This was, we know what happened. Russia helped Trump, and they did it because they liked Trump and they wanted Trump to win. So now find the intelligence to back that up. And the three pieces of evidence that they found setting aside the Steele dossier, which they all, they all knew was garbage at the time. Brennan brief.

They couldn't have not known. What do you mean they couldn't have not? They had to have known. Yes. They had to have known that it's garbage because this was a Clinton campaign product. And Brennan knew that. Brennan briefed Obama on it. Yes, exactly.

And in fact, interesting, Brennan knew that the Steele dossier was a product of the Clinton campaign and knew that it was garbage. And he knew that he's the CIA director. So how does he know what the Clinton campaign is doing? They're not supposed to spy domestically. Well, he didn't.

He knew it from foreign sources. He knew it from foreign. Foreigners knew that Clinton was doing this. Right. So the CIA knows that this thing is out there. They know that the Russians expect this to actually quite possibly be effective, based on his work.

He briefs Obama about it. He briefs other intelligence community agencies about it. Guess who he never briefed about it? Trump. The Trump campaign. The CIA knows that there is this nefarious false thing going on that involves foreign entities to affect the election and to harm the Trump campaign,

but they never let the Trump campaign know that it's happening. Isn't that odd? It's on. And it doesn't that. seem wrong. And it's wild to think about that because I think, and you know more about this than I do, but in situations like that, typically you want to find at least the people that you know are on side and say, like, we don't know exactly who's involved in this thing. Right. You need to make, basically you want to turn someone in that apparatus into an asset for you to extract more information if this thing is true.

But they didn't do that because they know it's fake. It was going to be a waste of their time. That's right. And they don't want to. And they should have done. And they lack. thing that they want to do is sick dogs in the Trump camp on the Trump campaign and these everybody looks around each other and goes oh all of this is bull crap but but if they were not political and if they really were doing all the things that they said they were doing it was we we were just you know honoring our oath to the constitution and doing our best job to protect our nation the CIA then if that were the case they would have alerted the Trump campaign and they say listen be on the heads up for this because there's some dirty tricks going on and it involves Russians and

you should know about that because that's what you expect them to do, but they didn't. And yeah, yeah, so Obama directs them to do that. They work at lightning speed. The intelligence community never comes up with an assessment of something this big in three weeks, but they cobbled it together. The evidence outside the Steele dossier was not reliable, and the career professionals in the intelligence community said that it's not reliable. Brennan overrules them.

In fact, my favorite quote in one of these emails that Director Gebert has declassified was a career professional saying that the steel dossier is completely unverified. It looks like garbage. They've actually already proven some of the things were false in the steel dossier. Like the fact that Michael Cohen supposedly was in Czechoslovakia, he doesn't even have a patent or he doesn't have a valid passport or something like that. He hadn't left the country. So they knew some things were fake in it.

They bring that to Brennan's attention. And Brennan replies and says, yeah, but it rings true, doesn't it? It rings true. That sounds like it's probably right to me, John Brennan. That was the exact phrase that Brian Stelter used to describe Bob Woodward's book called Fury, when he got called on all of the factual inaccuracies in that book. But it rings true. Yes, because it feeds into my preconceived bias and therefore we're going to use it.

Right. And especially when the things, like the entire purpose of this exercise is to build the narrative. to ensure that it actually does ring true. Right. You know? Oh, a year later. If it cannot, the conclusion cannot ring true in any way, shape, or form, if fundamental parts of the narrative construction are flawed. Right.

It's just, it's impossible to actually make it ring true. You can be a little, you know, you can make mistakes on the details. I'm sure I've made mistakes on this podcast about the details. someone is 48 years old rather than 46 years old or whatever, that's not something that's essential to the narrative. Right, right. What's essential to the narrative is that Jane Doe and John Doe were at the same place at the same time on July 1st. And they did this thing. Yeah, yeah, and now they're both in jail.

Because they robbed a bank. A year later, when Democrat voters in America were pulled and the question was, do you believe that Russia altered the outcome of the election to help Donald Trump, 66% of them said yes. That was the end result that they wanted. And to undermine the legitimacy of the president, you've seen all the video montages of all of the pundits and the politicians and the news anchors

saying Russia hacked the election, Russia hacked the election, what does that mean Russia hacked the election? They planted that story. In fact, the day after Obama directed the intelligence community to create this document, it was leaked to NBC News, New York Times, Washington Post. Why was that leaked? It was leaked because they wanted to start planting the seeds of the story that Donald Trump was an illegitimate president. It is one of the most nefarious things. And by the way, it is a

crime. Everyone's like, oh, okay, it's really bad, but is it a crime? Well, first of all, our intelligence agencies, it is illegal to use our intelligence agencies for political purposes. Right there, that is a crime. That is a crime. Donald Trump had his civil rights violated. That is a crime. It is a law to violate somebody's rights. And if you go look at the law, go ahead and search it, Google it, Bing it, whatever duck go it, whatever you use. But search for federal law violation of constitutional rights. It's on the statutes. And if you read it, one of the constitutional rights that you have, that every American has, that it is a crime to violate that right, it's the right to serve in public office when you were duly elected. You cannot be encumbered from, if you run for an

office and you win that election, it is illegal to try to encumber your job performance, to try to get in the way of you performing your duties. That is exactly what they did. It's exactly what they intended to do. It is a crime. And it was a conspiracy to commit that crime because there were more than two people involved in it. And in my opinion, the Mar-a-Lago raid continued the conspiracy because these documents, the Tulsi Gabbard is declassified, many of them were included in those boxes. and that's why they raided his home. That's what I believe, I think, that the evidence will support that. And hopefully, we will actually get some of these conspirators.

You know, conspiracy theories have gotten a bad name. Conspiracy theory is tossed around and people say, oh, that's a conspiracy theory, which immediately means it's some wacky lie that could never be true. Conspiracy is a crime. It's a real thing. And if you have a theory that a conspiracy took place, technically that is a conspiracy theory, but in this case, it's not a theory.

It's a fact. Right, right. The difference between conspiracy and conspiracy theory at this point is six months. And haven't we learned that by now with the Wuhan lab and everything else? So I think it's moving in the right direction. And I disagree with some of my colleagues who think there should be a special prosecutor. That would be a horrible idea. I think they should keep it in the hands of the Justice Department and let, like Cash Patel at the FBI continue to investigate it.

So, and that's, and I mean, this is where he made his bones. I mean, he was with. He knows the story better than anyone. He was with Congressman Nunes, who was the chairman of, of the House oversight? No, intelligence. Select Committee on Intelligence, and he was the lead counsel or chief of staff.

Yes, thank you. And they were the ones Cash Patel wrote the memo in 2018, you know, way too long after the fact that Congress got these answers. Right. You know, but leave that aside. When they did get the answers, they wrote this memo that showed how bad the abuses had been.

Yeah. And when you point that out to people of the left, they will constantly tell you, well, like other assessments at the time from Congress, say that the Russians did try to meddle in the 2016 election. Well, a lot of that goes back to what we didn't quite get to, which is the January 2017 intelligence assessment that was the product of what Obama had requested

in early December of 2016. And that was used for all those other congressional. That was the source material. So how far does the fruit of the poisonous tree reach? Yeah, exactly. That's the question. Yeah, everyone's pointing to the Senate committee that was co-chaired by Marco Rubio, by the way.

First of all, what they're saying, Marker Rubio said in that assessment is not actually true. And he had his own addendum statement as well that was much more skeptical of the findings. However, the findings, yes, utilized that assessment as source material, which we now know is fruit of the poisonous tree. Also, there was a whole lot of other stuff that, you know, it's like, well, they had all this information.

No, they didn't. It's just been declassified. Even the Senate was not allowed to see a bunch of this stuff because Barack Obama claimed executive privilege on a ton of these things. So that it is, again, it's furtherance of the lie in the distortion to try to create that. The ultimate bottom line on all of this is the narrative was set that, number one, Russia successfully tampered with the election. Everyone's like, oh, well, of course they tried.

Yes, of course they tried. We know they tried. We try in their elections too, by the way. So we, of course, set that aside. The narrative was that it worked, that they did it, that they succeeded, that Trump was president because of Russia. That's the narrative. And number two, they did it because they favored Donald Trump. There is, to this day, not one bit of evidence to support those two assertions.

Not one. Period. End a story. But you said no special prosecutor. I don't think so. Keep it in the DOJ. Let Cash Beto. Let him cook, baby.

Well, let cash cook, okay. Keep it in the hands of the DOJ though. Pam Bondi, a lot of people at this moment in time, as we're talking, would say, are we sure about that? Because of what's happened with the Epstein files. I hear you. I think that Pan Bondi deserves all the criticism in the world for her handling of the media and the rollout and all that stuff.

I don't think, is horrible. What do you think happened there? I don't know. Because it doesn't make any sense because I would say, Well, maybe Pam Bondi decided to just, like, extend herself and she loved being on Fox News so much that she decided to say something that she had that she didn't really have.

But I don't say, I have, I'm sorry, that can't, it can't be that bad. It can't be true. I don't know. I, the, the spectacle of the binders with the phase one documents out there and in the hands of some of those people that got those binders know the story very well.

Jack Posobic knows the story very well. They were very upset. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and that's the real. original sin here is that not only did they, you know, do this big public display, but then pissed off the very people that you shouldn't piss off on this story. And they had every right to be upset because they were used for a photo op. And that's, that was bull. But I think another part of the

problem, I don't know the extent of the Epstein story. Not a lot of people do know the extent of the Epstein story in terms of the legality of it. You got a lot of competing interests going on here right now that all Americans should care about. First and foremost, we should all care that young girls were harmed and abused and exploited and their lives were destroyed by evil individuals here. And sadly, I think oftentimes when we talk about Epstein, we lose sight of that. That's part of the reason why I didn't like the spectacle of the binders, because you had these people who were smiling and yucking it up for the cameras. And I'm like, if what's in those... If Mitt Romney can't get away with saying binders full of women that he hired, you probably

shouldn't be doing that. Because if what was in the binders was what we all thought was in the binders, it's a horror story and it's nothing to be excited about, right? And I think, again, that's partly because some people, I'm not talking about my friends, because some of those people are my friends,

but I think that there are some people who saw the Epstein story as a political weapon, and they used it as a political weapon. This is such a good point, and what I want to actually talk about. Because not what's being used as a political weapon. You see this, I mean, day in and day out, covering this issue on the radio in D.C., you're probably getting some people calling into your show

not too happy. Right. I mean, this is the political hot potato now. That's right. And we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that at the root of it are little girls' lives who were destroyed. That needs to be remembered. And by the way, that's why people are so passionate about it.

Why has it become this hot potato? Oh, it's easy. Because it feeds into the notion that if you are rich enough and you are powerful enough and you have enough rich and powerful friends, you can literally do the very worst, unimaginable thing and get away with it and nothing will happen to you. And I'm not talking about Epstein at this point because he didn't get away with it ultimately, eventually, unless you're one of

the Epstein suicide truthers who think that he's still alive, which I think is a fascinating rabbit hole to go down. I'm talking about all the people connected to him. That it is alleged participated in these evil things. And if they can get away with it just because they're rich and powerful and connected, then the regular Joe in this country doesn't stand a chance. And sadly, we've seen way too many examples of very rich, very powerful, very connected people who have broken the law who do get away with it because they're connected to very powerful people. Hillary Clinton's a perfect example. Hillary Clinton's use of classified documents on a private email server violated federal law.

She should have been prosecuted. She got away with it and came way too close to being president of the United States. whereas a sailor on a submarine who takes a picture with her cell phone will go to jail for years if he does that. And you know that very well. My daughter's on a submarine. Yeah. Yeah, she knows the rules. You know, no cell phones when...

But that's what makes most Americans... No, dad. You can't have a new picture. It makes us angry, but it also feeds into kind of a sense of hopelessness. It's like, what's the point of voting? So this adds to why it's a hot potato, because now we've got a guy in office, and we've got a director and frankly a deputy director

of the FBI. Dan Van Gino made a name for himself. You can see the videos of him on his podcast saying, I know people who have told me that the Epstein files say this, this, and this. Now, either the Epstein files say this,

this, and this, or those people who Dan Banjino trusted lied to him. Either way, we should know that it says this or this or this. Or if it was a lie, Dan Bongino should be revealing who lied to him. Right?

Yeah. And so now, so it makes people so angry and so frustrated because we put our trust in these guys, and now they're acting the same way, you know? And so it makes people feel hopeless. Then what's the point? So two options kind of lay in front of us if you wanted to go for alternative routes. Special prosecutor or special investigators or special investigations. Is that an appealing route?

Or recently the oversight committee in the House, chaired by James Comer, voted to subpoena everything that they got on Epstein. Right. They have the power to do that. Yeah. And Combs- They don't have the power to release it.

They don't have the power to release it. But they have the power to subpoena it. And he has not yet sent that request. He's dragging his feet on it. I think he's pretty thankful for August recess at the moment. What do you think? I think you have to figure out what the end game. So I'm going to be really controversial.

Do you mind if I'm controversial for a moment on your podcast? You can go ahead and do that we're about an hour into. I'm going to say something that might not be popular and a lot of people aren't considering. But I should. It's possible that when Dan Bongino and Cash Patel did that interview and they said, yeah, he did kill himself. The evidence supports that. And, you know, we haven't seen anything more in the files.

and case closed, it's possible that that's true. I just want to throw it out there. I know that that seems, but I trust the guys who are in office right now. And it might be weird. If it is true, think about this for a minute. We know that there are names connected to Jeffrey Epstein and to the island and to the airplane. But if there is not enough evidence to bring charges against somebody, then we shouldn't know their names. because if their names are in those files and they're released and there's not enough evidence to convict them or even bring charges against them,

but they're associated with them without that evidence, they're going to be presumed guilty until proven innocent in the mind of the public. And that's not how we operate in this country. So I know that that's, I'm cutting against the grain here on that. But I've got to think that if Dan Bongino, his deputy director of the FBI, had access to the Epstein files and all the stuff that he had heard, was confirmed, he would have done something about it. I think this is my theory, which is kind of a crowd-sourced theory of the discourse in the past few weeks as this has really become an issue for the administration.

Yeah. Why has Trump turned and called it a hoax? This is what I think happened. Epstein is arrested under- Can I pause for a second? Has he said the whole thing is a hoax? I think the hoax was that Epstein didn't kill himself. When he said it's a hoax, I thought he was talking about the suicide.

I have no idea what he's talking about. Oh, right, that's fair. That's fair, too. All right, sorry for her right. I really, I really have no idea. But I just didn't think he was talking about the whole narrative was a hoax. Maybe, maybe not. Yeah.

Open question on what he thinks is a hoax and what he does not think. All right. Epstein is arrested during the late stages of the Trump administration. First time around, Bill Barr is the Attorney General, President Trump. You know, he's sent to New York where he kills himself in his jailstel. This is the official narrative, at least. Then the Biden administration comes into power, and the Biden administration is really tasked with continuing on this investigation

and figuring out exactly everything that went wrong. Finishing up prosecuting Galane Maxwell is part of that effort as well, if I'm not mistaken. And I think they ran back the playbook on Russia Gate. I think because they knew that President Donald Trump had known Jeffrey Epstein because he's a feature of New York High Society that intelligence operatives and investigators were told to spend a lot of time focusing on the ties between President Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein. And so with these volumes of research that have been conducted, a lot of those pages reference President Donald Trump.

Right. And the intention of those pages is to do exactly what you just said, which is to if they ever push for a full transparency and it gets out there in the open. Trump, correct. Goes down with everybody else. Trump will be presumed guilty even though there is not enough there at all to press any charges. And that's why I think he's starting to say that it's a hoax.

And the extent of the to which he thinks is a hoax, I'm not sure. But I think that is part of the reason is that he is signaling that this investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, when we should have been more concerned about the Wexner connections and about what money? Why was he getting hundreds of millions of dollars for accounting, for helping out with their accounting? Where, you know, not only the people who flew on the airplane, you know, all these people he took vacations with, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera,

just goes down the list. Why was he hired at every juncture by financial firms when he had none of the requisite experience to do any of the jobs that he ever did? Yeah, yeah. Why? Yeah. No, that's a good theory.

What's with this sweetheart deal? And I think they left a lot of meat on the bone for this Trump administration to investigate if they wanted to. And so I don't understand why the July 7th Mammoth closed certain avenues off for us to continue investigating. But I think that the Biden administration probably weaponized this against President Donald Trump. And the only reason that we didn't get that information leaked during the 2024 presidential campaign is because nothing's there. Yeah. This is the FBI of Peter Strzok. This is the FBI and CIA of the, you know,

Clapper Brennan Acolytes who were in charge during the Biden administration. And if they had that information, it would have gotten out. But they didn't. Nevertheless, an inordinate amount of those files have Donald Trump's name on it for no other reason than they wanted to try to get Donald Trump again. And so that's why we shouldn't close ourselves off to this thing. We should just be like, it's not. a delay tactic. It's do everything that you can to get to the bottom of this terrible,

terrible tragedy because even if those people in the files, they don't have enough to actually charge them and you're worried about destroying these people's lives for no good reason, you know, hey, I don't fully, I'm not fully there. I understand the constitutional concerns for sure. You know, if there's no information to charge these people, there's still too many questions left unanswered where you can you should be good enough at politics to investigate and then accurately and and properly communicate that to the American people in such a way that doesn't destroy these people's lives so let me let me float this out because I think it's untenable to bring in a special prosecutor

because the DOJ has already said case closed there's no crime so that that puts them in a tough position why are you hiring a special prosecutor at the deal and by the way let's say Larry O'Connor's name is in the F-Steefiles. It's not in the FSTead files. Let's say my name is in there. And a special prosecutor is now brought in, and he finds my name in there, and he thinks there's enough evidence to bring charges against me. And so he gets a grand jury to indict me. I have a document from the Justice Department with the FBI letterhead on it, too, that I can hold up and present that as exhibit A as my defense saying, I'm sorry, Your Honor, I don't know what's going on here, because the the Justice Department had all of this information. They looked at it. They had years to look at it. I've got a deputy director of FBI who was a bulldog on this story.

I've got a director of FBI who was a bulldog on this story. And they produced this letter saying there's no crime here. So what's going on here? There's no new evidence. It's all the same evidence. So it's really hard to now justify bringing a special prosecutor. Right. Given the fact that the DOJ has just said we don't see any crimes that we can bring, any charges.

That's number one. What about this? What about this idea? We're just spitball in here. Although I've mentioned this earlier. What if we do with the Epstein data? Because there's a ton of data now. Everyone knows that there's documents.

There's names. There's all this stuff. And we're now having to trust the FBI and the DOJ that, yes, all that information is there, all that evidence, but none of it leads to a crime. What if we do with all that data, what Elon Musk did with the Twitter files? And we get, we, we fight, it could even be the same guy. Matt Taeeby, Michael Schellenberger, and Barry Weiss. But we find someone who the American people would trust if they got the clearances, if they went through all that data, told us, broke it down, explained what it was,

redact names that need to be redacted, but at least be as transparent as possible to give the American people the narrative of what these files say, what we know, and why charges weren't broad. but something. We need something to regain trust in this entire escapade. And you mentioned previously that if this, they're allowed to get away with it, it just means that the average show doesn't have a chance.

That's why this is such a time bomb. Yeah, last question for you. I mean, what's writing on this? This is, I feel like a lot of folks in this town are split on how important the Epstein files are to the American people. I tend to agree with you that this is a bigger issue than people in this town would care to admit. I think it feeds into the worst despair that the American voters have felt in the past,

where we get energized, we get motivated, we raise money, we knock on doors, we elect people to do what they say they're going to do, and they don't. They turn around. This is a campaign promise, and we need to have more than we've been given right now on this. It feeds into that despair. It also feeds into the despair at the same time. that the rich and powerful get away with the worst, and but the government's gonna come down on me

if I get $10 wrong on my taxes. And it's that unfairness aspect of it that the little guy always gets beaten down on and the powerful people can do this horrible thing, you know, screw this place. That sadly, it feeds into that, which is actually probably the most destructive thing that a constitutional republic

that utilizes democracy to choose our representatives can ever endure the hopelessness and the cynicism of the electorate, which I think got a breath of vitality back into it a couple of months ago when Donald Trump won that election against all odds. Because think about it, they went after him. Donald Trump always said, if they can come after me and do this to me, think about what they can do to you. Well, that's what we're all feeling right now with the Epstein story.

And that's why, again, I'm not saying that there's there in terms of criminal charges. but we need to know why, and we need more than what they've given us. And the alternative to despair is radicalization. That is correct. And that is just as undesirable. That's not our brand, Brad. Yeah, that's just as undesirable. Yet.

Uh-huh. Larry O'Connor, thank you for coming on the signal set-down. For the Brett. Well done, sir. Nice job. Thank you so much for tuning into the Signal Sitdown. Before you go, be sure to hit like and subscribe on YouTube's bottom or wherever you may be joining us. And please remember to give us a five-star review. We not only love your feedback, but it really does help the show.

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