Trump’s Iran Gamble, War Cheerleading, and Meta Meddling, with Matt Taibbi, Plus Bill Clinton's WILD Epstein Comment

Welcome to a somber edition of Afterparty Everyone Obviously, of course now America is at war. Our guest tonight is Matt Taidi of Rackett News who has covered similar events in the past and actually is still one of the best writers on what happened in the lit up to the Iraq war. So we are going to compare some historical artifacts. So what we've seen just in the last 72 hours, but the somber mood, of course, is directly

tied to the loss of American troops, we're praying for those families and for the loved ones of those who have been lost in the last 72 hours, we have so much to get to tonight. I want to start by giving some of my thoughts here, and you can, of course, take them for

what you will. But, you know, there are big questions, I always say, of more questions than answers.

And I know that's frustrating to some people who want me to say what my answer is.

“But in moments like this, it's especially important, I think, for people in the media to”

be conscious of the questions that are more salient than some of the answers, or the questions that are more important than some of the answers. So, you know, Vice President Jay DiVance was just on Fox News, I know Netanyahu is about to be on Fox News, so in the next hour or so. So this is a very fluid situation. There is a lot going on. Let me start by asking question. What actually happened, and is it good?

Did we start a war? First, let me say, Donald Trump himself used the word war in his late

night, slash early morning announcement video that he posted on true social Friday. So, we are now at war. We have lost troops. You can say that this is a conflict that's been brewing for years, rolling for years, and you can start the clock in the 1950s. But the President wasn't using the word war to describe the conflict last week, and now he is. So that's his definition, and I'll take him out of definition as the Commander-in-Chief.

Now this is very important. It is true that one, as Matthew Schmitt's over at compact points out, hopefully, Trump has been bellicost towards Iran for decades, and that includes on the campaign trail in 2024. Check the record. It is extensive. He has been in Iran to talk for a very, very long time. Now, two, it's also true that Trump said, this is a quote, "I'm not going to start war. I'm going to stop wars." So, as with on many

other points, Trump voters take him seriously and not literally, and to Schmitt's point, many probably interpreted that as avoiding Quagmires, Trump saying, "We're going to avoid Quagmires, we're going to avoid dumb wars, we're going to win wars, and we're not going to get involved in long foolish wars." That's probably how a lot of people took it, because

“again, he was very bellicosts about Iran. Now, others, I think desperate for an end to all”

of the foreign inventorism, heard those quotes, and they believed Trump, or they at least believed that Trump would be the better bet, if that makes sense. So, I want to play this clip now, roll the tape. Here's a little bit of what Trump himself said.

Here are finally putting America first. This is the 2020 campaign. Our policy of never-ending war,

regime change, and nation building is being replaced by the clear-eyed pursuit of American interests. I'm proud to be the only president in debt, 2014. This is not a new war, everyone said, "Oh, he's going to stop." They said, "He will start a war. I'm not going to start a war. I'm going to stop wars." Okay. So, those are some quotes

“from 2020, 2024, and I think a lot of people interpreted those, especially people who are so”

desperate for an end to what's happened in the Middle East over the last couple of decades, people wanted an end to that. And they interpreted Trump saying, "Literally, I have that quote, I'm not going to start war. I'm going to stop wars." They interpreted that, as him saying he's not going to start wars. He's going to stop wars. You can say that's foolish. You can say that's silly. For anybody to believe that, you can say Iran gave him no choice.

You could say Israel gave him no choice. But that is what he said. And I think a lot of voters

adventurousism abroad. I don't think, I don't think normal people who went to the polls with that on their mind were unreasonable for adding that into their calculus. People are busy, they don't have time to pay attention to literally every single thing Donald Trump says. And he said that over and over again, over and over again. Yes, it's true. He also was hawkish cords around, over and over again. But that's a pretty specific thing to say. I'm not going to start war.

I'm going to end war. To be clear, we are now at war by the President's definition. Now, who started it by our own definition, by the Trump administration's definition? Well,

as always, like I said, you can go start the clock. You can wind it all the way back and go through

“the tit for tat. This goes back to the West wanting oil, yes, but it also, and I think this is the”

more important point, goes to the West wanting to prevent the expansion of Soviet power rightfully or wrongfully with regard to Masadegg. Now, there are all kinds of concerns, not just among Masadegg supporters, but about the nationalization of oil in Iran. And we were paranoid at the dawn of the nuclear age, rightfully show. So we could use some of that same paranoia now. But let's listen to this cup of Marka Rubio, who did a briefing on Capitol Hill today, and clearly said,

in this conflict, we could talk macro versus micro, but we're in the macro level, now, aren't so we're in the micro level now. And this is what Marka Rubio said about who

struck first. It was abundantly clear that if Iran came under attack by anyone, the United

States, or Israel, or anyone, they were going to respond and respond against the United States. The orders had been delegated down to the field commanders. It was automatic and in fact, it'd be true within an hour of the initial attack on the leadership compound, the missile forces in the South and in the north, for that matter, had already been activated to launch it. And so the president made the very wise decision. We knew that there was going to be an Israeli

action. There absolutely wasn't an imminent threat. And the imminent threat was that we knew that if Iran was attacked, and we believe they would be attacked, that they would immediately come after us. And we were not going to sit there and absorb a blow before we respond. We were proactively in a defensive way to prevent them from flicking higher damage. Have we not done so? There would have been hearings on Capitol Hill about how we knew

that this was going to happen, and we didn't act preemptively to prevent more casualties and more loss of life. So there you got preemptively,

“proactively in a defensive way. Now, this is not semantics. I think Marco Rubio is absolutely”

correct there that if the intelligence was, as he seemed to suggest, that Israel was about to strike Iran, was about to initiate attacks on Iran, that there would be hearings on Capitol Hill saying, "Hey, Trump administration, why did you not join this effort? Why are you late to the game?" I think he's correct about that. We have plenty of leverage over Israel, by the way. I don't want to get into all of that right now. That would be a reasonable response.

Hey, if you didn't want to do this, Israel said it was going to do it. You didn't want to do it. You didn't think it was wise, but your hand was forced because of Israel. Why didn't you use your leverage over Israel? We don't know what happened by the scenes. Maybe they tried, maybe it failed, or maybe there are people in the Trump administration, including the president seemingly, who wanted to do this? And they should make those arguments clearly and honestly,

“you should always be honest with the public when you're talking about people's lives. And”

when you're talking about death, when you're talking about committing troops, you should always be honest.

That was very honest from Marco Rubio, unusually honest. I would say not for Rubio, but for anybody leading us into war for politicians in general. That was pretty honest. We'll see how much more of that we get, but people deserve that when wars on the line. So the question then, you have Rubio saying it's clear we attack proactively. This was preemptive. Was it legal? As ever, my position on that is our current war powers are completely out of step with the spirit

of the Constitution and with the framers vision, but they can basically be cooked up legally to meet technical thresholds very easily, especially in the first 60 to 90 days of a conflict. So, yes, it should be voted on by Congress, but I also think we've dispensed with the tradition

And again, you can basically cook up legal argument to meet the threshold pretty easily, satisfy

the definition easily enough, satisfied the law easily enough. And process and substance are intertwined, yes, but a lot of Trump's critics are now cloaking their substantive arguments with him in process, I'm sorry, substantive agreements with him in process complaints. So there's that. Everyone should ask Democrats who are raging against Trump right now, whether or not they have an actual substantive disagreement, if they could vote on whether or not Trump should have

done that, whether or not he has to know, or they just cloaking their support for it in complaints

“about war powers. Now, I think complaints about war powers are very important, I think they're using”

them cynically right now. So is it going to work? Let's ask for the objectives. What is what going to work? Will it work? Well, what is the it? Caroline Levitt laid some of this out. I'll put it back up on the screen and a post on X just a few hours ago. So she said, on Saturday, President Trump released a statement laying out clear objective objectives to the American people for Operation Epic Fury. Let's all be clear, I had about this and take the administrations

words seriously. So Caroline says, let me reiterate those objectives. Destroy the Iranian regime missiles and raise their missile industry to the ground annihilate the Iranian regime's navy. Ensure the regime's terrorist proxies can no longer destabilize the region or the world and attack our foes. Stop them from making and using IEDs or roadside bombs, which have gravely wounded and killed thousands and thousands of people, including millions of Americans, including many

“Americans, Caroline said that it's true in Iraq, by the way, Secretary Higsev talked about that today”

as a veteran. Caroline goes on to say, another objective is guaranteed that Iran can never obtain

a nuclear weapon preventing this radical regime as terrorist leaders from threatening America and our core national security interests is a clear eyed and necessary objective. All right, so those are the objectives. Does it work? Well, I was reading the free press this morning. They actually had a range of opinions on this from people who are worth listening to. Neil Ferguson, there was Elliot Akerman who was against the move, but let me start with Neil

Ferguson. I'm basically going to be reading now the comments of people who are largely supportive or are very helpful about the success. And I'm not just picking on the free press. I actually read a lot of the free press and I found these particular op-eds to be useful. So Neil Ferguson said, quote, is this the cost, is this the cast of characters for a full blown Iranian civil war as

“opposed to regime alteration? No one knows, or is the real risk that Iran implodes and creates a”

vacuum of power that gets filled as former Israel is real defense minister. You have galaut warrants by an ascended turkey. Again, no one knows at the quote. Yes, it wasn't just you have galont. It was also also former prime minister, Nafta Ali Bennett, who was saying, this is actual quote, that Turkey is the new Iran. So no one knows. That's in the span of about three sentences. What Neil Ferguson reiterated twice. Now, here's a very hopeful son and seabag Montafiore.

In the free press, also historian, he says quote, this is the great gamble of the greatest gambler of all the commanders in chief of the American history. It stakes original if not planetary. It's causes admirable and noble. It's opportunity maybe unique and confidential. His prices are desirable and constructive, but its risks are colossal. It's perils eye-watering and its consequences uncertain not just in the Middle East, but for the world,

game and American democracy itself that makes me feel much better. We all agree that it's extremely risky, even Michael Deran, who wrote in the free press. Again, in support of this, air power alone cannot fully eliminate a dispersed missile network. If the conflict lasts long enough, and if the ARGC manages to launch enough missiles, American is really interceptor stockpiles will grow thin. If oil markets can vaults an American casualties mount,

political pressure might rise in Washington, much of Trump's own domestic political coalition remains wary of foreign Tanglement. In other words, the IRGC is bank-event. It can weaponize them. Deran goes on a right Trump is gambling that precision force can reconfigure the Iranian state without chaos. It's a high risk strategy, but it has a realistic chance of succeeding. All right, so there's a realistic chance of succeeding. That's the quote. According to one of the most

supportive voices in favor of this war, who also explains that it's high risk.

After Iraq and Afghanistan, let me just ask, is that wise? I can't say 100 percent, yes or no,

being in probably tell him skeptical. Some believe this gives us an edge on China neutralizing their biggest supporter in the Middle East. Others actually believe that it will deplete

distracted by another conflict in the Middle East. They're conflicting opinions even on that. Again, nobody knows to quote many of the people in support of this war. We were told Iran would be put in their place, had been put in place in their place in July.

How many more troops have to die for that to finally be true? Here's what worries me. This is

not a salute of solution to an intractable conflict with mutually exclusive theological

“and existential elements, and that's what this is. Israel is a country that was founded on existential”

terror. Jewish people were really wiped off the face of the earth and eliminated by industrial scale racism and anti-Semitism. Some of the victims of the Holocaust are still living and in Israel. And many of them, many of their children are part of the government. They're citizens of the country. They are voting in Israel. They are rightfully horrified for their future. They are scared. And consequently, by the way, I heard Tucker Carlson say this, I think he's correct.

They want to be a quote unrivaled regional power, and that is understandable. That is in their interest because some of their neighbors also have eschatological and theological claims to the same land. And to their existence, Hamani is not just a cult of personality like a maduro. He let a spiritual movement that consumed not in significant portion of the country that has now been thrust into chaos. And with plenty of weapons, where people will also potentially flee from as refugees.

So I wanted to pull this clip of Kasra. I'm not going to pronounce any of this correctly. As you know, I'm not going to pronounce it in this correctly. A grobby who's the director of

Islam, who is the director of the research into the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps at

United Against Nuclear Iran. This is going to be a little bit of a long clip. I do want you to

“hang in there with me because I think it's a very explanatory about what is actually going on here.”

So I'm going to play it now. Since 2009, the IRGC is focused. It's an interview with the Sun for a couple years ago that it's been radicalizing its members and their families. And this is the militaristic doctrine of Matiism. Now amongst is the most ideologies, the militaristic doctrine of Matiism is the most extremist doctrine. It's a sheer doctrine primarily, but because of how extreme is, we actually see ISIS al-Qaeda

using it as part of radicalization. So this doctrine is all sent around the return of the so-called hidden Imam. Who, sheer Muslims believe, was withdrawn into a state of different disappearance miraculous state of disappearance by God in 874 AD. One day, he will return bringing justice to the world. He will reappear. To do this, by the way, according to sheer historic sheinerations, he will return with an army of 313 commanders that will wage a war against the infidels,

the non-Muslims, and prior to his arrivals, prior to Mati's arrival, prior to the hidden Imam's arrival, there will be an apocalyptic war where Jews worldwide will be eradicated and killed. There you go. Now, the IRGC since 2009 has been indoctrinating its recruits on the basis that the IRGC is the militaristic vehicle to speed up Mati's return. Because they have been communicating and radicalizing their recruits and stating that there are barriers to the hidden Imam's return.

The biggest barrier they claim is the existence of the state of Israel. Okay, let me stop it there. He goes on for a longer, really important to them. No, we really talks about it. Matiism. So let me put up on the screen. This article from Raymond Ibrahim, who is a critic of Islam, I should go watch a podcast he did recently with Victor Davis Hanson. He's an Arabic speaker, he's a scholar on Islam, and he, again,

like I said, he's critical of Islam, but he wrote to the point that we just heard and often this

Matiism is made by people who are trying to support hawkishness against Iran,

“backers of Israel. But actually, I think it's in many ways, an argument against what is happening”

right now. Here is Raymond Ibrahim writing, Iran is getting more radical, not less. He says, "insured, well, Matiism has been around for ages, certain developments are recent uptake in indoctrination in an entire generation of fanatical, Matiism's coming of age and at the helm of Iran, make it especially dangerous in the current era, though few in the West are even aware of its existence and role." He goes on to say in other words, when it comes to Iran and nukes,

widely accepted model, the more nations have nuclear weapons, the more quote balance they are

“apt to behave toward one another, no one, they shall be tempted to press the button if it”

knows that doing so will cause the binary press against it. This, however, only applies to rational nations interested in self-preservation." Okay, it's obvious, the implications of that are obvious and as Raymond writes, that has been embedded into the ROGC for a long time. Not every of memory of the ROGC was just killed, as we know. So not even the entire leadership was killed. And so that is what's happening in Iran. It does not represent

out of the entire population of Iran by any means, and I wouldn't want to apply it, that is the case. But it's not insignificant, it's not insignificant. So, Iran is a very messy country of

90 million people, many of whom are radicals who hate Israel, they hate the West, and if we

destroy their nuclear sites and set them back decades or a decade, as we were told months ago, is the best argument that it's wise to thrust their country into chaos and hope what comes next is better. Hope that a new generation of Iranians isn't seduced into religious radicalism, or at least enough of them to constitute a formidable political power. Is that worth this much American blood and treasure uncertain as the final sacrifice will be at this

moment? Will it make the situation better or worse? I will concede the calculus changes here, if it's true, Trump's hand was forced by Israeli action, though we also have plenty of leverage to influence those decisions, as I said earlier, if we wanted to. Then no, assuming our hand was forced, the administration would have to consider whether an action was an even worse alternative.

We don't know what happened behind the scenes fully yet. But here's what J.D. Vance said just

last hour on Fox News, talking about Trump, quote, "He didn't just want to keep the country safe from a nuclear weapon for the first three to four years of his first term. He wanted to make sure Iran never had a nuclear weapon and decided to take action to protect the nation's security

“four years of his term." I think J.D. Vance said, "All right, you want to take action to protect”

the nation's security." It's a little bit different than what was said on the campaign trial. Now, finally, I just want to conclude with a word of encouragement to my friends and independent media and conservative media. It took us a long time in the odds to recognize what was happening in Iraq as a country. Now, there were some clarion voices who were out there had many on the left, not all. Bob Novak was of course Landored as what was he called like an anti-Semitic Jew by David

from and the Atlantic for opposing early stages of the war. But think of how long it took us to recognize that ISIS was stepping into the power of vacuum. That ISIS was coming out of the power of vacuum. So my word of encouragement is to call balls and strikes. That is what is best for all of us, that is what is best for all of us who consume news. I'm one of them. Be careful. Be careful. This is serious stuff. The future of humanity, really, in the nuclear world,

China has nuclear weapons. We have nuclear weapons. Russia has nuclear weapons. So be careful. And don't be afraid to criticize the administration because while there are many people, many Republican voters, many conservatives who support with the president did,

people also deserve your critical coverage. If you tell them you're going to do a critical

“coverage and you're going to call balls and strikes, you should do that. Not just for your own”

career, but for the sake of your soul. Be honest, call those balls and strikes and also remember that a lot of my theory here is that the weirdos, the random people who have been created in that space, who are critical of Trump from the populist side and are legitimately fringe characters, racist characters, the rest. Some of their viewership is not from people who agree with their racism and bigotry. Some of it is from people who are so desperate for a criticism of Trump

from the right that they too do those people. So keep that in mind. All of us keep that in mind. And I've talked way too long at this point. I'm going to take a quick break and bring in Matt Tyebian one moment of first. I have been planning ahead lately so that I can responsibly enjoy a few drinks with friends after a long week or after a long day. Maybe after a long hour. Maybe after a long 15 minutes. And my trick for staying balanced is Zbiotics. Pretty alcohol. So world's

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and use the code afterparty. And check out for 15% off. Let's bring in our guests tonight. So I stopped monologuing. Matt tight e-be of racket news. Matt I'm so sorry for talking so long. Thank you for being here. Good to talk to you Emily. And also congratulations to what you guys have been up to at racket. I'm loving the new swamp newsletter. Loving Emily Cop. Ryan Lovelace is fantastic. It's so good to see you guys growing, Matt. Oh well thank you. I appreciate it. Yeah that was

an interesting move. We know we're trying to focus more on just the investigative reporting. And as you know when you have like these sort of one person sub-stack that's it's kind of hard to do anything that's in depth. So that the I-dee behind that was to bring in more reporters. It's much better. It's definitely terrific. So it's as much needed. I wanted to talk to you about some of what we're seeing from the press right now and actually

“from the government right now, Matt. Because you know I remember reading I think we even have this.”

This is one of your pieces from a few years ago where like I don't want to make you feel old, Matt. I was like 10 during the invasion of Iraq in 2013. But I was reading one great piece for

that's always one great piece from you. Yeah this is F5. That's always stuck with me. This was from

2019. You were about the Scarlet Letter Club. And you talked about Dick Cheney going on meet the press. This is a pretty famous example. But going on meet the press to launder his own intelligence through the New York Times. I think it was a dearth miller story or co-bioline. If I remember it correctly, but you've been a student of how the propaganda machines sort of worse into action. And I wanted to play for you a couple of clips of what we've been hearing from the government. Let's start with

“we're hearing a lot. This is not necessarily Iraq. This is not necessarily Iraq. So let's hear”

this clip of this is Pete Hikes at this morning at a press conference at the Pentagon. This is S. This is going to be S. Let me see. I want to make sure I have the exact right one. This should be S3. This is not an endless war. To the media outlets and political left screaming endless wars stop. This is not Iraq. This is not endless. I was there for both. Our generation knows better and so does this president. He called the last 20 years of nation building wars at

dumb. And he's right. This is the opposite. This operation is a clear, devastating, decisive mission. Destroy the missile threat, destroy the Navy, no nooks. Israel has clear missions as well for which we are grateful. Capable partners, as we've said since the beginning, capable partners are good partners. Unlike so many of our traditional allies who ring their hands and clutch their pearls, Heming and Haing about the use of force. And now let's rewind the clock

to hear from Donald Rumsfeld as five. I can't tell you if there's any. The use of force in Iraq today would last five days or five weeks or five months. But it certainly isn't going to last any longer than that. President Trump has all the latitude in the world to talk about how long it may or may not take four weeks, two weeks, six weeks, it could move up, it could move back. And that was a juxtaposition from the group home of the brave and anti-Trump

group, finally Matt for good measure. Let's roll Mark Wayne Mullin talking about Iraq. I mean Iran.

It's up to the Iraqi people, or I'm sorry. The Iranian people to change their next leader. It's up to them to rise up and kick this regime out of place. If they do not, then they will be with a different leader, but the same regime. If they choose to get a different leader that we can have a relationship with, which we would love to. Prior to 1979, we had a good relationship with Iran. But if they choose to pick up a leader, we will surround that leader, not necessarily

with boots on the ground, but with assets to make sure that that leader can be protected, rise up and then Iranian people will have the opportunity to choose their next leadership.

Iraq, in fact, George W. Bush before 9/11, of course, had campaigned against,

Middle East involvement and forever wars. What say you of the parallel? I think it's a direct parallel. Interestingly, the British put out the Chillkout report which was like an autopsy of the arguments for war heading into the invasion of Iraq. And one of the interesting revelations of that report was that the Republicans were perfectly fine saying that our reason for going into Iraq was just we want to change the government.

“But our European allies were not. And so that's why we cooked up this story about W. M. D's”

an imminent threat and yellow cake and all this other stuff. It would be refreshing if they

would just come out and say that the goal is that we want to have a new government there. I mean, when Hexeth says, this is not a nation building. Well, how could it not be? If the goal, yes, you have a clear military objective in destroying the armed services of Iran. But we have an outstanding example of what happens when there is unsuccessful a nation building with ISIS. What is the plan if they're not going to build a new nation in Iran's place?

So this sounds to me like the same kind of stuff that the government said in 2002 and early 2003. It's a little bit different because it's much more sudden back then we had a long runway to this decision and here it kind of crept up on us in a different way. But a lot of the exceptions are similar. Also, there's also the campaign deception here. You mentioned George Bush campaigning against being the world's policeman, but not getting involved with these kinds of wars

was overtly part of Donald Trump's message. In fact, the decision to go with Vance instead of

“Marco Rubio and I remember we had sources who were in the room during that decision making process”

at the convention site when they were going back and forth over who was going to be the VP and the running mate. All of that was about the question of whether we're going to have this sort of neocon-based foreign policy or whether we're going to have this America first. Let's enjoy the peace dividend a little bit version of the Trump movement and they advertised that the more inwardly focused version of Trumpism had won and clearly did not. What do you make of Donald Trump's

I don't know if contradiction is the right word because Trump is this unusual political figure who says contradictory things, but and this is not even just a charitable spin. It's reflective of

the reality. They're not always mutually exclusive even though they sound mutually exclusive.

“So I was reading the Matthew Schmitt's piece in compact which I think rightfully points out”

that Trump has been an Iran hawk. He's been bellicose on Iran for a very long time. At the same time as he was saying, he's not going to start wars. He's going to end wars and people interpreted that as saying, "Well, we're not doing nation building. We're not doing George W. Bush. What do you make of how he's thinking?" I mean, I know I'm asking you to be the Freud to Trump right now and I apologize for that. Not really, but it's like, how is he thinking

about this? What should we think about how he's thinking about this? It's so hard to know, right? I mean, Donald Trump is the hardest politician to read and probably in modern history. I can't think of anybody who's harder to analyze. Despite the fact that people call him a symbol to and he's anything but simple, he's very difficult. It's very difficult to know exactly what is going through his head at any one moment. But I will say it's been striking reading the

news coverage in the last couple of days and seeing expressions of support for this action coming from Mark Carney and Kier Starmer and all of these people who have been just sort of overtly enemies of Donald Trump's presidency. And there is a whiff of a deal in the air here where seems

problem that was caused in part by the Ukraine War. Ukraine, you see Zelensky offering

“expressions of support for this because Iran is tied to the Russian regime right or to the Russian”

government or using Russian weapons. So this draws the West and Europe and United States even deeper into the conflict in Ukraine in a way. I mean, there is a way to look at this and think that everybody is getting what they want out of it. Trump is getting essentially a support

of foreign leaders that he never got before. He's getting support in op-ed pages that I've never

seen before. Thomas Friedman had a half-hearted, you know, this was kind of a, I kind of like this sort of article in the New York Times today. And suddenly the people who are, you know, calling Donald Trump is, you know, hysterical and, you know, in the pocket of Israel, they're not entirely in the majority anymore, right? There is a, there is a union of interests

“between the Europeans and America that we haven't seen in a while. So could this, could the whole”

first part of Trump's presidency have been in negotiation and that's possible or they just thought of it this weekend? I don't know. I mean, it's impossible to know with him. And so glad you brought the op-ed pages. Tom Friedman put on his maga hat and had them like Miller

High Life this week. Right? Amazing. But, you know, this is interesting because Meghan Kelly,

obviously, and her show today was talking about how she was talking about this before too. When she was at Fox News, she looks back on that now as seeing the autopsy of the build-up, like that she can look at the, now she can look at now what was happening then as like an autopsy of how the propaganda was made. But she would have kind of just implicitly known what to say. This is something Cheomsky talks about that you know, what does he say to that interviewer? He says,

you know, if you were being told what to say, the interviewer says to him, like in the 80s,

all right, nobody's given me a script. And Trumpsky says, well, if you need a script, you wouldn't

be where you're sitting. You're sitting here because you don't need a script. So I think we have this clip of Meghan that I wanted to ask you about Matt. Honestly, Fox News is insufferable right now, insufferable. I was there for 14 years. I've already told my right answer. I'm sorry if I were Fox News anchor right now. I'd know exactly what to do. Cheer-lead. Cheer-lead. That's it. It's all about

“Ra Ra Ra Ra. Go military. That's what's patriotic. Praise the president. Support the troops,”

support the war. Day in day out. They've got one mission. And that's to support these military groups, the military itself, and president Trump. It's just, it's just funny. But I've interviewed enough soldiers, missing legs, and soldiers who almost killed themselves due to PTSD, who don't see any value in what they did over there, especially after we gave it up under Joe Biden, that I know now, more caution is needed. Cheer-leading may make you feel good,

may spike your ratings, Fox News, but it doesn't necessarily help the guys who are actually going to have to put those boots on the ground and go fight this war. Matt, did it curse me as we're listening to this? That actually a lot of those guys didn't have big megafones until independent media knew media came along and gave folks like Sean Ryan access to a big megafone via podcasting and YouTube. Yeah, it's such a good example. On Sean Ryan, where he said he's a

recovering neocon, and of course he's saying this isn't neoconservatism, but hard to see how this doesn't spill into nation building. So talk to us about, because you have studied this for a long time, how the propaganda kind of gets baked in the oven of cable news and the New York times up at pages and they're like, "Well, I mean, Megan's absolutely right that part of this depends absolutely on a completely compliant press that is going to do what it's told without

being told explicitly. Now that's not the situation. The one thing that's very different from between now in 1993 or 1992, I'm sorry, 2002, 2003, is that Donald Trump doesn't have the New York Times Fox and MSNBC all in his pocket. Back then, the entire spectrum of commercial media was on board for this thing. If you remember famously MSNBC on the higher Jesse Ventura,

Donald, he was getting great ratings, and they hired Ventura, because he had been a Navy seal,

“they thought they mistakenly thought he was going to be for the war, and when they found out that”

he wasn't, you know, they unhired him, but they he had signed the contract, so he he got the build himself a house in Mexico. He still has it, he calls it Casa MSNBC, and so they paid him five

million dollars, but this that is not the situation that Trump enjoys at the moment. He does have

that with Fox News and some of the conservative media, and Megan's probably right that they're doing substantially the same thing that Fox did in 2002 and 2003. The difference is that back then the public really needed to be swayed. There was a much more elaborate effort that was made to try to convince people that this was absolutely necessary, and that included the, you know, the development of a national intelligence estimate that was heavily edited and, you know,

we didn't find out until well over a decade later that they left out all kinds of things when they told the public about Iraq's ability to manufacture WMVs. That's such an important point, Matt, there's a pause quick on that, because we've heard as we did before midnight hammer competing intelligence reports. So, well, actually, we've heard reports that compete with the administration's line from the administration, meaning that there was no imminent nuclear threat

from Iran before midnight hammer that was Tulsi Gabbards will not her assessment, but the intelligence

“communities assessment that I think she testified in like April or May of last year in front of”

Congress, too. And then this time around we're hearing all kinds of different examples of why this was necessary. I think we have the clip of JD Vance that we should roll if we can ready because he was just on Jeff and Jesse Waters a couple of moments ago talking about why this had to happen. President has clearly defined what he wants to accomplish and there's just no way. I said this before the conflict started, I'll repeat it again. There's just no way that Donald Trump is going

to allow this country to get into a multi-year conflict with no clear and incite and no clear objective. What is different about President Trump and it's, it's frankly different about both Republicans and Democrats of the past is that he's not going to let his country go to war unless there's a clearly defined objective. He's defined that objective as Iran cannot have a nuclear

weapon and has to commit long-term to never try to rebuild the nuclear capability. It's pretty

“clear. It's pretty simple and I think that means that we're not going to get into the problems”

that we've had with Iraq and Afghanistan. And bear with me one more time. This is how Speaker Mike Johnson today talking about why we had to do this when we had to do this. They had to evaluate the threats to the U.S. to our troops to our installations to our assets and the region and beyond and they determined because of the exquisite intelligence that we had that if Israel fired upon Iran, it took action against Iran to take out the missiles, then they would have immediately retaliated

against U.S. personnel and assets. We have troops in harm's way and we have many Americans in the

region and that was of a great concern. That actually to me sounds like he's always trying to use

Israel's a fig leaf and saying, "Oh, well they tied our hands but we had to do this anyway." So, Matt, all those rubio, right? You had the topic. Yep, no, right? Yep. Yeah, he said something super similar like in the same place that could have been minutes or hours. It was this afternoon this evening. So, I play both of those just because I know that you've reflected on what happened in the lead-up to Iraq and of course Afghanistan as well, but particularly Iraq for these purposes.

And we're, they used, they both used the word clear, but this is not very clear at all. We're hearing different things about why they said to happen now. Are we not? Am I crazy? I'm trying to be good faith and understand exactly what's going on, but it seems to me like the messaging is totally muddled. Yeah, they seem to be changing it from minute to minute and they should frankly have learned the lesson of the Iraq conflict, which, among other things, taught us that the American

public probably would have preferred it if they had just come out and said what their real objective was. And we know what their real objective was now because of things like the choke out report. We know that people like Don Rumsfeld believed that if we went in and set up a democracy in Iraq that it would change the politics in the region, that we would, you know, a host of

move, that was the big quote, right, would solve all their problems. Instead, they cooked up this

cock-a-mimi story that kept changing and was easily proven on true and created a huge problem for the United States after the invasion, which was that, you know, the Cases Bell and for the war had clearly been in error. If they just were straight with us and said we want to do this because we think replacing it around will be advantageous to all of our allies at the us and to Israel,

“that would probably go over better than this, I think. Well, that's something people saw”

as different with Trump, actually, as I kind of said the quiet part out loud. Well, right, yeah, but then here he is doing this kind of Neo-Con tapped-ance thing and in the one thing that's absolutely, you know, incontrovertible in the wake of the Iraq war is that that did not work, that the messaging was a complete failure, not just in terms of the corruption of the intelligence process, which was, I think was a very serious crime that went unpunished, but also just the

line, the undermining of the press, right, which never really recovered from that. I mean, frankly,

the commercial media in the United States never got over that episode, and one of the main things that happened after Iraq was that the people who were the biggest cheerleaders for the WMD line of excuses, weren't fired, weren't reprimanded, didn't, you know, they weren't removed for getting things wrong and they're reporting except for Judith Miller. A lot of them were promoted to positions of responsibility and they added to this day major map magazines, and that was-

How dare you? How dare you? I think I know you're talking about his name rhymes with

meth, low the bird. Right, yes, it does, but we won't point that out. That would be in polite. Yeah,

it would be in polite, but no, to be serious, that episode was really bad for the corporate media,

“it never really recovered from it, and that's why this is going to go over worse, it's one of”

the reasons why Donald Trump was- when he got elected, he thanked podcasters for helping getting- get him elected, or maybe it wasn't him, it was- it was staying away, he said that. Right, but either way, the sort of power of persuasion has moved away from these big corporate enterprises and has moved to the independent media since Iraq and Russia gate, and, you know, for them to go back to that same playbook is odd, like why would Trump- Trump of all people should know

that there's peril in going this route? Well, as you said, that Matt Taipi article, I referenced from 2019 about Cheney laundering the intelligence he planted in the times, on Meet the Press,

“was in the context of Russia gate, if I remember incorrectly, yes?”

Yeah, I was trying to bring that up because this was something that was happening repeatedly all the time with Russia gate, so for people to remember the episode, what happened was the Bush administration essentially gave a piece of intelligence about- uranium, right? Uranium, I believe it was, yeah, right, and this was the whole thing about stove piping, where they went directly to the source, who had the best intel, and then they gave

that to the New York Times, and when the New York Times did the story, then Dick Cheney went on Meet the Press and said, you might have seen in the New York Times the other day, or yesterday, whatever it was, that this major report came out about Iraq's capabilities, and that was something that they did over and over again in Russia gate. Somebody, an anonymous source, would give something to a big paper at the time, for the post, and then there would be a quote from a democratic

party politician, typically, who would say, now we see the presses on the case, right, when they actually had a shift office. Right, yeah, or it was Hillary, the Hillary for America campaign, right? We saw a couple of instances of that. So, David Korn, who, by the way, wrote about

Yeah, David Korn, right, and there was another one, Yahoo, right? There was a coffee, yeah, exactly,

and so, it's one of the things that makes this whole thing odd of all the people who would think who should know that it would go over better if Donald Trump's got on TV and said, look, I just want to do this. You know, here are three reasons why I personally want to do this. That would go over better than this shifting landscape of excuses that, you know, nobody's going to believe, but the thing about this, that's interesting is that we've seen in the internet

age that if enough governments get behind a certain message, the sheer force multiplying effect of censorship and bots and amplification, de-applyification and amplification, they are able to, if they have accorded messages, they want to send, get almost anything, into positive territory in terms of public support, including, you know, electing a president who could barely speak, right? Like, that's the kind of thing that can be done if you have consensus

“beyond the scenes. That's why it's notable when you see Starmer and Carney and politicians in Germany”

and scan the Navy suddenly getting up and supporting this because that's something the Trump never had.

Maybe that's part of what this is all about, right? Like, you know, for the first time trying to get a presidency that has some institutional support behind it internationally, but I don't know, hard to say. That's a super interesting point. All right, we're going to pick this conversation up in just one moment, quick break here. The skincare industry, you know, this has been gaslighting women for decades. They're pushing these like $200, $300 in terms of $400 of, basically,

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“Back now with Matt Taivi of racket news, Matt Democrats are cloaking. I think what is their”

substantive support in many cases, not all. But in many cases, for Trump's action and Iran in process complaints. So they're saying he should have gotten a vote in Congress. I think both you and I would probably agree with that. But that's a little bit inconsistent from the likes of, I don't know, Nancy Pelosi. We have a clip, but let's go ahead and listen to former House Speaker Pelosi on Libya. Adam leader, you're saying that the president did not need authorization initially

and still does not need any authorization from Congress on Libya. Yes. Thank you all very much. Yes, thank you all very much. Her comedic timing is on par with the best. But you could not write this stuff. It's like, it's straight out of the thick of it or worse. And it's a comedy. But anyway, go ahead, I'm sorry. Well, you were sticking around like Democratic circles, leftist circles, progressive circles, during the Iraq war, Nancy Pelosi came to be an opponent of that. Many of

the people who supported it came to be staunch opponents of it. That was during the Obama administration, Obama campaigned against the Iraq war and against the Bush era of foreign policy. And I mean, listen, I hear a lot of, I think, reasonable points about war powers, war powers resolution,

“when you have to vote and the light coming from Democrats right now. On the other hand, though,”

seems like some of them actually, like Chuck Schumer, for example, would not have made a different decision if they were president. I don't know. What do you make of that, Matt? You know, you kind of know this world from that era. You can give us maybe a little comparison point A to point B here in 226. Yeah, they, you know, in that particular instance, by the way, that was another one where they

the story about how the rebels in Libya were distributing condoms to their children, because because of all the rapes that they were going to commit. And that turned out not to be true. Sorry, right. But they, you know, she is correct, technically, that the authorization to use military force allows presidents to basically invade whom ever they want. So long as they make a decision ahead of time, designating the target as a designated terrorist organization, which did happen in the case

of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard in 2019, if I'm not mistaken, Trump did that. So then, you know,

“we noted back then, I remember writing about this, I think, in Rolling Stone, that the moment that”

he did that, it made any future military action against Iran legal, there have been numerous moments in time since the Bush administration, when Congress has had the opportunity to roll back this ridiculous sort of cancellation of the war powers concept in the Constitution, and reinstate, you know, congressional approval, and both parties have declined to do it. The Democrats basically blocked these efforts during the Obama administration,

and the Republicans have, um, on a number of occasions, refused to go forward with, um,

restoring congressional approval for these kinds of things. So it, it is technically true. And people, let's see, it was technically right, but it's absurd and hypocritical for anybody to complain about process complaints, because they've, you know, they've all, they've all had a chance

“to do something about it and done nothing. Yeah, I think the AOMF has been used in 14 different”

countries since it was passed. At least, I think it's, you know, I've heard different ones. Yeah, I've heard it too, like 25. Yeah, I think it could be even more than that, because, you know,

there was that one, I think when Trump first came into office, there was a leak about the number of

countries that were being, where we had military operations, I believe it was seven countries in that year, or a loan. So it, it's an enormous number of Brown University to study on this, and the, yeah, the AOMF basically made it possible for us to, to invade anybody. Even, even the law spells out that the groups have to have had some kind of concrete connection to 9/11. We've invaded, uh, and attacked groups and countries that didn't even, like, groups that didn't

I don't think it's ever been used in Saudi Arabia. Right. No, it hasn't. And that, that's wasn't, that is the one thing that's interesting about this moment, though. However, uh, whereas Iraq was not an enthusiastic sponsor or terror in the Middle East, um, you could have said that about a couple of countries now, not, uh, the, the, um, 9/11 in the World Trade Center and, uh, Al-Qaeda, that was, uh, those were Sunni terrorist groups, right, so that wouldn't have been Iran.

But the, there are a number of Shia bacteri groups, and they are sponsored by Iran. So this would have more of a, there, there is more of a reason here, um, than there was with Iraq, but it's, I don't know, uh, it's, it's thin at best. It seems to me. Yeah, and people, when you, when you see

“muddled explanations from the government, that's obviously a red flag, and people should remember”

how long it may take to actually dig down and find out the truth so much of it is cloaked, um, right now in the intelligence world and alike. Matt, before you run, I did want to get your take on a story that caught my attention over the last couple of days because you have, you have followed the censorship machine, not just in the United States, but as it's been exported and supported, uh, by European elites as well, uh, this European conservative story caught my

mind, uh, ahead of the elections in Hungary. So the author wrote several Facebook pages belonging to Hungarian pro-government county newspapers were rendered in accessible on Friday, February 27th, and what could be a politically charged intervention just weeks before the country heads to the polls. Remember, of course, that Victor Orban, who is just liked by much of the West and the European elites and American elites is on the ballot, really in the fight for his political life. Uh, so this

says, according to post-circulated on Reddit, the Facebook page of Baba De H U, the Baranya county

argued the page contained quote unquote war threats, which met a Facebook parent company deemed to

be in breach of its community standards shortly afterwards. The Facebook pages two other, uh, outlets in Eastern Hungary were also taken down the effect of publications belong to the pro government media conglomerate media works, again, that's something that Orban, who operates very differently than somebody within the United States, set up and in ways by the way, I would disagree with others in the West would disagree with, uh, and they say together, the pages reportedly commanded hundreds

of thousands of followers, the timing is more than suspicious, Hungary will hold parliamentary elections on April 12th, 12th. Matt, this is Facebook. This is meta. This is meta. This is meta who is allied with Donald Trump in the AI race, the data center race right now. Some of these details

are murky. It's always hard to tell with social media pages what the actual reason is of

something got flagged accidentally. A part of that is by design so they can say, what's this was a mistake? The algorithm did this. We're fixing it. But again, we saw this in Romania. We've seen many other examples of this. Uh, and I want to just get your take on what might be going wrong if this reeks to you like some of the other stories that you followed ahead of this huge, huge election by the definition of the elites who are freaking out over Orban in Hungary in just a couple

months. Yes, so this, that's a great question, Emily, and this story does remind me a lot of the

“Romania story, uh, which was, I think, an incredible story that I don't know, no coverage here in”

the United States. Because most people don't realize this. What happened in Romania is that in early round of elections, um, put a nationalist named Cailing in Jerjesco in the lead, and he was set to become, um, you know, when the election in Romania, at that point, the digital services act,

kicked into gear. Now, there was a separate, uh, local investigation. But basically, there is a

European law that has to do with political content online and it's the stuff that I was in Michael Schellenberg or we were researching with the Twitter files. Um, but part of that law does actually allow Europe to cancel elections. Uh, if they deem an election to have been influenced by foreign actors, where, and in the case of Romania, the idea was that Russian, um, uh, a crowd, yeah, for a Putin account said influence that election, and, uh, basically lifted Jerjesco

at the last moment. And so, even though it wasn't technically the DSA that reverse that election, it was pressure from, um, the EU, and it was because they were wielding the club of the DSA, over Romania that essentially made that happen. Now that's, so that's a censorship law, um, that essentially reversed an election. And it looks, you know, this has the look and feel of the same thing to me, uh, where somebody behind the scenes is making an argument to, to meta or Facebook

“that you must remove these pages because they violate, you know, X, Y, and Z of the digital services act.”

If it's not that, that's that'll be unusual. But, uh, it is striking. And, uh, and that is what JD Vance, I, you know, at the beginning of the Trump presidency, we had high hopes, because JD Vance went over there and said, hey, you know, it's not cool to just turn over an election. Like, we may not like these people that are going to elect, but we, we can't just, uh, throw out the results. And, you know, now, uh, are they going to have the same moral authority to make that argument?

I don't know. Will they even make that argument? I don't even know. Oh, but that's a really important point. Um, right? I, yeah, I think my guess is maybe not. I'm probably. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, you just, you just gave me a depressing little note there. Uh, that's stupid. Uh, well, yeah, I just wanted to ask a little bit more, um, one more question on this, because part of your reporting on the Twitter files got into

what happened in 2020 with the Hunter Biden laptop and the 52 former intelligence, by the way, the recurrence CIA, active CIA email addresses that were partially being used to organize that letter of former intelligence people saying that it had all the hallmarks of Russian disinformation, the Biden laptop and the New York Post. Uh, and so it also happened a bit with COVID as you've

“covered, uh, this is a machine. And I think a lot of people thought electing Donald Trump would”

maybe turn that machine off. Is it, do you see, uh, that being true or is it just sort of in Europe? Now, like, I don't even know what to say about how meta who's very close to Donald Trump might potentially be meddling in one of the elections of his, his ally, uh, or upon his

little cozy with China, lots of stuff going on there, but that's an ally of Donald Trump.

“So it's, it's very weird to see this happening now with an American company, by the way.”

Yeah, absolutely. Uh, it's a little, uh, it's odd to see meta not coming out and telling us exactly what's going on. Um, you know, you asked the question, uh, you know, did, uh, essentially the question is did the deep state move to Europe, right? Uh, uh, and, and you know, there is some evidence for that, uh, we had an episode recently where a cabinet minister and you in the UK was fired because essentially labor was investigating journalists, they were outsourcing, uh, stormy's

number two, we're talking about Morgan McSweeney. Yeah, I don't know. Actually, it was Josh Simon's, but McSweeney was involved in this as well. This is what Ryan Grim reported a drop site about the center for digital countering digital hate, which one after, where I worked at the time, the federal list. Yes. Yes. Uh, um, uh, I was, uh, one of the people investigated, there were a number of

“people, um, well, you, they should have investigated you. That was, yes, that they were right to do that.”

But, you know, that, that's something that people have talked about since Trump came in is, is that, some of the sort of permanent, um, permanent state type organizations and, uh, sort of capabilities have moved, uh, or might have moved to Europe, or might have, might have sort of taken leave for a little while. Um, there's a story that's percolating now about, uh, Susie Wiles and Cash Patel, uh, and specifications that went on there, and we're going to have some

stuff coming out about that. That's just that there is this kind of, uh, not exactly accountable

to, um, current governments, uh, sort of second force out there, right? Um, but who's, who's in charge of

it, right? That's the big question. And, um, we, you're right to say that we thought that, you know, lacking Donald Trump, we put it into it, uh, and you know, states are at least some of some people did, and, uh, it's not entirely clear that that's the case anymore, right? Uh, there are factions within the Trump government, um, and we'll have to see which one wins, basically. Oh, I guess that's kind of helpful, Matt. But I'm really sorry to keep you so long. I am so glad

that you're here. It's so grateful for everything that you're doing at Racket, and for you taking the time tonight. Thank you. Thanks so much. I'm really appreciate it. Take care. You're so love, love having Matt here. Please do check out Racket, the new Swamp newsletter that they're doing

is incredible. It's been, there's been a whole in the market for what they're doing with that. All the

other newsletters, literal swamp newsletters are so often, um, just like advertisements for Lockheed and Hummus Bear Owls, but they're going into the nitty-gritty. It's awesome. So I can't recommend it. Enough, a little bit more, uh, when we come back and we're going to talk about the videos are just released. I'm actually going to show you a video that was just released from that deposition Bill Clinton, or somebody who's a pillar of Clinton, uh, the full video has just been

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pds.com/emili. All right, everyone. Like I said, I'm going to close out the show here with some clips from the video of the Clinton depositions and the Epstein case that were dropped right before

“we went to air, like within a couple of hours. And I think the Hillary Clinton one is like four hours”

long. The bill one has to be hours long as well. So obviously, even on two times speed, I haven't had enough chance to dig into either of them in full, but some clips are starting to pop on the internet. And one really caught my eye of Bill Clinton in particular. This is very interesting. I think you'll know why when you see it, but let's roll Bill. Remember, this is a deposition by the House Oversight Committee. It was conducted in Chapacoa last week. That's where the Clinton's live.

And so questioners are members of the House Oversight Committee. You may know people like Lauren

question about what he thinks happened to Jeffrey Epstein. Like to ask you personally and directly, do you believe that Jeffrey Epstein killed himself? Are you asking him to speculate on how Mr. Epstein died? I'm asking. I'm going to pause this briefly for the listening audience. It I just want to point this out also for viewers. Watch how his lawyers, the attorneys on one side and the other side

“of Bill Clinton react to this. Remember Bill Clinton, I don't need to remind anyone of slick willy.”

Bill Clinton is in attorney himself and is rather incredible at lying and misleading. So we got

the Michael Jordan of political lies on the stage right here in the at the table right here for this deposition. And watch how his lawyers react. You'll hear it if you're just listening as well. What Mr. President thinks. So you're asking his opinion? Mr. President was your friend Jeffrey Epstein, who he is testified in a letter. He said he was friendly, but you've asked for his testimony. Mr. President, do you believe that Jeffrey Epstein was suicidal? Do you know?

Was he ever suicidal? Do you understand? I don't know. I don't know what the medical

funding was. I think maybe he finally got caught. Okay, you heard his attorney say that's it.

As Clinton said, I think I only know what the medical examination was and then you have the elderly Bill Clinton going on to say, I think maybe he got caught. I'm just going to play the rest of it too. I don't know. I don't know. I think I've accepted it. His lawyer in our own money doesn't know. He killed himself or that he did not. But I don't know. Yes, sir. They did. We don't know. They didn't know. I don't know what happened. Mr. President, what will you accept?

“That's important. I think I got caught. I don't know. One more time. I think maybe”

he finally got caught. Did you hear his attorney saying that's it? And then Clinton goes on to

say, I think maybe attorney says that's it. Clinton goes on to say he finally got caught. Now that can mean many different things. He could have just been speculating. And the end of that sentence, if his lawyer hadn't, you know, encouraged him, I should say, well, the end of that that thought, if his lawyer hadn't encouraged him to end the sentence, the end of that thought could have been, maybe he, I think maybe he got caught and finally decided he needed to end his

life. For all we know, that's what Bill Clinton was about to say. In the context, what it sounds like Bill Clinton was saying is he doesn't know. I think maybe he got caught. Dot dot dot, he got caught and he ended his life or I don't know. I think maybe he got caught and something happened to him. You can say I'm making too much about little clip because it's possible Bill Clinton meant I don't know. I really don't know. Maybe he got caught and he just

“decided to end it. I think if that's what Bill Clinton was saying, he would have finished that thought”

instead of allowing his lawyer who says that's it to make him just stop at that sentence. Is very possible. We just heard a little slip-up from former president Clinton there who has some questions like the rest of us about the extremely bizarre circumstances of Jeffrey Epstein's death in a New York prison. Now, these are not questions only from the French and that's partially why it is now a bit foolish to dismiss concerns that Jeffrey Epstein, who was obviously a

sexual predator of one kind or another. Maybe you believe the wildest conspiracy theories or maybe you believe that it was all trafficking of girls who were lying about their age or girls who were of age and it wasn't really trafficking because it was consensual. I'm not even going to debate the full spectrum of beliefs on Epstein at this point. But whatever you think about what Epstein was doing, he was a sex criminal. Obviously. So the very fact that his death was so suspicious and

suspicious to the point where even CBS news, when the footage from Epstein's prison cell and prison in general was released, even CBS news was raising questions about the inconsistencies and that the guards, what happened with the guards, is bizarre. Medical examiners, Michael Bodden, has raised concerns about the medical examination, inconsistencies, and the medical examination. This is not fringe conspiracy territory. So it's possible that what you just saw from Bill Clinton was an admission.

hours and hours, especially somebody like Bill Clinton who likes to talk, who thinks he can answer

“these questions, who thinks he can spin house oversight and he's probably a better attorney than”

his attorneys to be honest. This is why you do the depositions because it sounds possible. He just looked up and said, well, maybe he got caught. And what would that mean in the context of Epstein being allegedly dead by suicide in a prison cell? Well, that would mean somebody, quote, caught

Jeffrey Epstein. Who might that have been? And why might the former president, so casually be

wondering if maybe Jeffrey Epstein got caught? And ended up dead in a high security prison. There's gonna be a lot more to chew on from these Clinton depositions. And I'm telling you, you know, we do the show live at 9 p.m. So even by the end of the night, I'll probably have more of a grasp on what came out of those hearings. There's some really fiery moments with Hillary Clinton, the moment where she discovers that somebody had taken a picture of her, one of the

house oversight, women had taken a picture of her and posted it on social media. She was furious. She says, hold me and contempt. That's that Hillary Clinton temper that people like Buzz Patterson, guy who held the nuclear football for Bill Clinton, wrote about all the way back in, what was that 1999 or 2000 when he wrote his book, behind the scenes Hillary Clinton has a famous temper.

“I think you saw a full air in that particular clip from the deposition, much much more to come.”

She's obviously furious that she even has to be there. Bill Clinton much more relaxed in the clips I've seen so far, but that's again why, in the course of a multi-hour conversation with somebody who knows a lot not just about Jeffrey Epstein, but how geopolitics work, how the intelligence community works is a former president, former president who seemed to be flirting with the idea that potentially Jeffrey Epstein got quote unquote caught and unalive in his prison. So I'll leave it

there for now. We have a lot to get to on Wednesday. Those Texas elections, again, most important

“primary, most interesting primary, I think in the country, happening tomorrow, down in Texas, so you”

know we'll have a lot to say about that later this week. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'm so about reminding everyone, subscribe, subscribe, please subscribe. It helps us hit us up on YouTube wherever you get your podcast, you can email me at [email protected]. I'll take your questions, especially if you put the subject on happy hour in them on this week's edition of Happy Hour and we'll see you back here, crazy news week, prayers for prayers, prayers for everyone in harm's

way and everyone coping with what's happened over the last several days. See you back here on Wednesday, everyone. God bless.