Real Lefties Support Trump For Taking On The FBI! with Christian Parenti
01:02:25 Share

Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Chicagoland area with WGU. With courses available online 24-7 and monthly start dates, WGU offers maximum flexibility so you can focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu. ♪

Come see us on tour in Dallas, Austin, Baltimore, Hartford, Connecticut, Syracuse, New York, Atlantic City, Levittown, Cohoes, and Providence, Rhode Island. Go to JimmyDore.com for the link for the cheapest tickets. Hey, this is Jimmy. Who's this? Hello, Jimmy. This is Elon Musk calling you on the telephone. Oh, hello, Elon. Wow. What an honor to talk with you.

Oh, the honor is all mine, I assure you. I've been a big fan of yours for a long time. Joe Rogan turned me on to your show, and I've been watching your videos. Mutual friend Joe Rogan. That's right. Mutual friend is Joe Rogan. I've been on his show several times. Well, this is something else. I'm glad you identified yourself, because I'm not really sure what you sound like.

Well, no one really knows what I sound like. I don't know either. In fact, one of the things we're trying to get to the bottom of at Doge, get to the bottom of what this accent is really. Uh-huh.

Because, as you know, I'm from South Africa, but have lived in the States for a long time. So there's something about the mix of Boer, Ofconner, British and U.S. American that all mixes together and comes out sounding Asian somehow. Interesting.

Very interesting. Asian, I have the accent of a Western-educated Chinese industrialist, and we need to figure out why. And we are going to figure that out, and everything else, Doge was tasked to do. And that's why America elected Donald Trump, for transparency. Where do our tax dollars go? Why am I Asian? Well, best of luck to you there.

Uh, thank you. And what is it that you do? What is your role? My role? I'm Jimmy door, host of the Jimmy door show. Interesting. Didn't you say at the beginning of this call that you were a fan?

That is possible. You must forgive me. My mind works in such a unique way. I think it structured itself in this manner so I could contemplate so many ideas and problems simultaneously, even while talking about a completely separate topic that occasionally to make room for new data, my brain does a small data dump, which I assume is what happened with your show information. I think normal people just call that forgetting.

Oh, well, I'm not a normal person. I'm Elon Musk. I need to see a spreadsheet of your expenses. Wait, my expenses?

For what, Mike? For what? What expenses? I am speaking as an operative for Doge now. You should be aware. We need to know how you are spending American tax dollars. We are looking for waste and fraud. Look, buddy, I pay tax dollars. I don't spend them. The money I have is from viewership, not government grants. You think the Jimmy Dore show is funded by the U.S. government?

Look, I think in the spirit of inquiry, we simply have to be sure. I mean, who knows? Honestly, I'm finding out all sorts of crazy things. So that was suddenly placed in this position. I mean, $50 million you marked for condoms for Hamas. Who would have thought that such a ludicrous thing could have been possible, let alone found? There is definitely a lot of waste out there for you to identify and clean up, but I'm afraid that condoms for Hamas claim isn't true.

I'm sorry, did you say not? Yeah, not. The 50 million part. Nothing.

Okay, well, as I said in my totally normal Oval Office press conference, I will be making mistakes and I will be transparent about them. But just because one thing I completely made up may be false, that doesn't mean a second thing that I completely made up isn't true. You have to have somewhat of a sophisticated mind to understand this. So you're just making things up and then going on one by one to see if they're true? That's what you're doing?

I'm sorry, who is this now? I'm sorry, my mind did another data dump, a frontal dump, because the cerebral cortex just solved a very complex trajectory problem for a Mars mission, a very high degree polynomial equation. This will make entry from a polar vector much less turbulent, which was a mission objective solved by a part of my brain acting almost...

independently of conscious thought such is my mind be honest okay i forgot what we were talking about because i was doodling and made a really neat curly q i'll send it to you view uh via neural link okay i see well i assure you the jimmy door show neither receives nor spends government money

Well, in that case, I'm happy to grant you the Doge seal of approval. Congratulations. You are free to proceed in your content creation. However, full disclosure, this does not give you immunity from potential future audits. Okay. Well, we'll try to keep our books in order. Hey, how about looking at the defense budget?

Oh, very much yes. I mean, Jimmy, you and I both well remember the apocryphal $1,000 hammers the Pentagon was spending money on a long time ago. I would very much like to look into that. A $1,000 hammer would have, I would imagine, properties vastly superior to an average hammer. To hold such a device in one's hand must imbue one with an immense sense of power. I think the point is that they were regular hammers and they were hiding money.

Okay, even more of a situation to look into, Jimmy, you are already proving yourself to be an asset. Sorry, I have to go now. I have a scheduled phase transfer shortly for rejuvenation purposes. For a brief period, I will be completely inaudible and also invisible to the naked eye while I am reconstructed at the molecular level. Goodbye for now. Doge.

Oh, yeah.

I told you there was 5,000 FBI employees out of their 13,000 FBI employees were hired or were directed to look into January 6th. 5,000.

Right. So Trump is now firing a bunch of FBI people and there's a bunch of pearl clutching happening everywhere.

in the mainstream media and in the Democratic Party. And for myriad reasons, the FBI has been basically a criminal organization for most of my lifetime, and especially since 9-11. And their big thing is to entrap people, and they don't actually solve crimes or fight crimes. They spend most of their time entrapping people into crimes. But here's what CBS has to say about Trump's firings of the FBI.

The head of the FBI Agents Association is urging Congress to protect nearly a thousand federal agents against potential termination by the Trump administration. The president of the FBI AA warned Congress, quote, displacing these rank and file public servants would create a gap in the FBI workforce that could be devastating to the FBI's mission. What exactly is their mission? The answer just may surprise you.

Or will it? End quote. The letter is in response to a White House memo that went out on President Trump's first day in office. It mandated federal agencies to identify and assess the retention of all employees on probationary periods as part of efforts to overhaul government.

For the FBI, that includes every active duty agent in the first two years after their graduation from the academy. The letter comes one week after the FBI Agents Association expressed concerns about possible retaliation against Justice Department employees who worked on cases connected to January 6th. Thomas Dupree joins me now. He's a former U.S. deputy. OK, so an article written by our friend Christian Parenti says progressives should cheer Trump's FBI purge.

The Bureau of Bullied Antiwar Radicals, like my father, the Trump 2.0 is battle-hardened and arrives with a wrecking crew and an aggressive plan to dismantle or weaken the key institution of America's unaccountable security state. This is good and necessary.

The FBI has long and sordid history of framing people, disrupting, misdirecting, and destroying progressive social movements and blackmailing politicians of any persuasion. As a result, there are many who dislike Trump yet cheer for him because they dislike the FBI agents.

Even more. We are in the opening rounds of what will be a long and brutal confrontation over the right to enjoy authentic political contestation rather than a politics stage managed by men in black progressives who wish to preserve room for real politics and who know their FBI history should stand with the Trumpians.

Thank you.

Work has been featured in HBO documentary titled Fixer, The Taking of Jamal. I can't pronounce that. I'm going to have him pronounce it. Currently, he's the professor of economics at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. Welcome back to the show, Christian Parenti. Hey, Christian, how are you? Hey, Jimmy. Good. Good to see you. Thanks for having me on the show. So now you I've been catching a lot of heat because I've been supportive of the

Some of the things that Trump has been doing, I've been highly critical of others, right? I've been highly critical of his H-1B visa. Of course, his Gaza ethnic cleansing plan is a no-go and horrible. But I'm all for him dismantling USAID and doing whatever he wants to the FBI, including firing as many of them as he wants. Well, tell us a little bit more why you're supportive of his position with the FBI.

Well, I'm supportive of his going after the FBI because the FBI is out of control for the better part of a century. It has targeted primarily the left, including organized labor and all manner of social movements. It's been very destructive. It hasn't just repressed the left. It's also actively engaged in misdirecting and confusing the left.

And it's a real problem. It's not just that it's a nuisance, but it is a real threat. It is a cancer within American democracy. So I think this is a very important opportunity to deal with this rogue agency and

Many on the left will say, well, you know, they'll just replace it with something worse or as bad. But we don't know that. And also there's going to be an opening if they actually dismantle this thing or cripple it or, you know, really attack it. That's going to undo all sorts of sort of, you know, an institutional legacy and institutional knowledge, which is.

unhelpful for democracy and unhelpful for progressive politics. So get rid of it and pressure the government, pressure the Trump administration to make sure that there isn't some recreation of the FBI. Also, it's unrealistic to think that you can recreate

almost a century of something overnight. I mean, this is an agency with really serious momentum, a legacy of intimidating and bullying. So that's the kind of abstract reason, and more specifically,

As I mentioned in this piece for UnHerd, you know, my father, Michael Parenti, was a radical, again, you know, anti-imperialist, peace activist in the 60s and 70s and was targeted by the FBI, not as badly as members of the Black Panthers who were

you know, imprisoned and killed and stuff like that. But my father was beaten up pretty badly by the cops and harassed for a long time by the FBI. Got his file, had a thick file. They bothered my mother, you know. So I was raised with these guys being the enemy, not in some abstract sense, but like rather tangibly. So that's why I'm in favor of removing these bullies from our politics, if possible.

So those are all great reasons, and that's why I also support what Trump is doing with the FBI. Now, there's lots of people who I respect in this space who just what you were talking about. They kind of just dismiss it, saying that Kash Patel is just going to replace those goons he kicks out with goons that are loyal to him and Trump. And as you say, we don't know that.

We don't know. Well, I always...

say, let's wait and see. And then when something happens, we'll assess and oppose it then. But you can't oppose. So you're just waving the white flag. We'll never, ever be able to do anything good with the FBI. And and we can never have a reform. And of course, of course, there's certainly lots of people in the establishment who hate Donald Trump and oppose him vehemently to the point of two assassination attempts.

So he's definitely a disruptor. And so it just it it bothers me to see people on the left just have a reflex and a hate boner, as I call it, for anything that Trump is doing. They just try to find that. And so do you feel the same way? Do you feel that kind of frustration? Yeah.

Absolutely. I feel frustrated by that. And again, it's not that I like everything that Trump's doing. I mean, you named some of the things that are pretty awful, like this insane proposal to ethnically cleanse Gaza. But

Yeah, I also want to be realistic about, I don't see any other possibilities on the horizon for reforming the FBI. I don't think Bernie Sanders and AOC are going to have some sort of commission and have the institutional power-

to do a better job than this a couple years down the line. This is a rare and imperfect opening to deal with a major problem in American politics. And it's tragic that the left can't see its own history and its own interests going forward. They're just completely wrapped up in this Trump derangement moment now.

It's destructive too. It's not just annoying. It's very, very unfortunate because lefties were out there defending USAID. Ilhan Omar, who had some pretty good votes on foreign policy when many others in the squad were voting for war credits and stuff like that. I mean, she voted against the funding for Israel's Iron Dome when AOC voted for it. And then there she is defending USAID, which from the

Beginning, you know, 1961 on, it's just been a cutout for the CIA. I mean, in the first 12 years of USAID's existence, they actually had an office of public safety. They used to train police forces in third world client states, many of which were found to have been engaged in torture. So we have the left defending that kind of stuff.

Yeah, it's really disturbing. And now we just saw that Trump has said something about how he would like to have a tripartite agreement with China and Russia and move towards reducing military budgets by 50%. I mean, the left needs to get in on that and push for that. But I imagine the left is going to oppose this. So yeah, the FBI has been totally destructive. I mean, most recently, you know, it infiltrated the Black Lives Matter movement.

There was an FBI agent provocateur in Colorado. That's what we know about so far. A guy shows up and he's claiming that he fought in Rojava with the radical left Kurds and he starts handing out guns to people, selling guns, and immediately, you know,

activists, important activists in this movement start getting gun charges, right? So it's like, this isn't also just about like, oh, in the 60s, they did this under COINTELPRO, right? They're still doing this to left activists. The left should be concerned with, you know, ruining this agency or dismantling it. One could go on and on with examples of the malfeasance of the FBI.

And what do you say? So there's a lot of people, you mentioned USAID. I've heard a lot of people who are what I refer to as naive in the extreme, but

who think that Trump and Elon Musk is just getting rid of USAID because they don't like the idea of them sending aid to poor people in foreign countries. But what do you say to the people, which is just, it's laughably ridiculous and just naive in the extreme. If we can pull out for a second, I mean, this is like Trump has tons of faults, but for his own reasons,

He is making war on the deep state, the deep state, meaning the intelligence agencies, elements of the security apparatus, you know, domestic police and, you know, the DOD that, you know,

For, rightly or wrongly, he sees that they have come after him. Many on the left won't accept this, but we now have significant evidence that elements of the deep state, particularly the FBI, did come after Trump by force.

recycling the Russia gate claims from the Steele dossier and really launching that whole thing, and then suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story. So these are the reasons that Trump doesn't like the FBI. But it's not just about the FBI. He's going to go after this entire deep state because he thinks that they stole the election from him. And I think that that's right.

The deep state, the FBI being part of it, is a very serious impediment to democratic politics and progressive reform and progress on achieving a more democratic political economy in this country. And this is our opportunity to undo some of this power. This is totally unaccountable power that

has overthrown governments all over the world. Not the FBI specifically, but like the milieu that it is part of. The blob. The blob, yeah. And, you know...

This is, you know, you have to, as Rumsfeld said, right, you go, you go to army, not with the, you know, the army, you go to war, not with the army you want, but the army you have, right? I mean, you do politics, not under conditions that you want, but under the conditions that you receive. And this is what's happening now. Trump has his reasons for going after the FBI. They're not my reasons. I get the impression they're not your reasons, but he has the power and there's an opening here and progressives could, uh,

help shape this, but you, I think that progressives are probably going to turn against this. And so, you know, going after the USA ID was kind of like an opening act to create, uh, you know, a kind of like, uh,

spectacle around this and my one criticism of that would be that they didn't produce they didn't dump a bunch of documents right and Crucial in Trump's attack on the deep state has to be if it's going to be successful and if it's going to be done in a way that progressives can I think give it a progressive hue and You know make something

progressive out of it is if there's massive declassification. Now, Kash Patel in his book said he wants to do that. He said he wants to set up offices for declassification that would run 24 hours a day and just like get the documents out there. And this, I think, is very important because a lot of this reform is going to have to happen in Congress. And while the

Republicans in Congress are intimidated by Trump's power. He has more connection to their voters than they do, and so they all have to go along with Trump.

But they're going to act like they want to reform the deep state or dismantle it. But they're going to be a lot of them are under pressure because the FBI and the CIA and other agencies have compromise on them, have been tapping their phones, have been sending, you know, gifts and prostitutes their way and all this kind of stuff. This is something the FBI doesn't.

and CIA, they do this all the time. This is standard operating procedure, right? So there are going to be politicians that are intimidated. There'll also be politicians that for their own ideological reasons are really loyal to these agencies and they're going to like act like they want to do what Trump's talking about, but they're probably going to slow pedal and try and sabotage it. What's needed to prevent that, what's needed to prevent

Congress from sabotaging any effort to reform the deep state is a massive public awareness of what's going on a massive open national discussion of the history of these agencies and the criminal things that they have done and continue to do and that can only happen if there's really wholesale declassification right so hopefully Tulsi Gabbard can can do that uh

RFK can do that and Cash Patel can push documents out. Doge so far, its raid on USAID didn't do that. They're telling stories to us which do check out, but they're not providing the primary documents. You've got to go to USAfunding.gov and look into it and it's pretty hard to use and you can see, oh wow, it's true. This is like the USAID was funding EcoHealth Alliance and that sort of thing. But

So, yeah, I mean, that's what I think is going on here. And that's what I think progressives, and not just progressives, that people who are concerned about this issue should be pushing for, is that we need, the public needs to be part of this. And that's done through declassification and a kind of public history project of progress.

documenting, unpacking what these rogue agencies are doing and have done. And that'll then help build pressure on the political class to either pressure them and or give them cover to do what needs to be done. Hey, you know, here's another great way you can help support the show is you become a premium member. We give you a couple of hours of premium bonus content every week.

And it's a great way to help support the show. You can do it by going to JimmyDoreComedy.com, clicking on Join Premium. It's the most affordable premium program in the business. And it's a great way to help put your thumb back in the eye of the bastards. Thanks for everybody who was already a premium member. And if you haven't, you're missing out. We give you lots of bonus content. Thanks for your support. ♪

Hey, Prime members. Are you tired of ads interfering with your favorite podcasts? Good news. With Amazon Music, you have access to the largest catalog of ad-free top podcasts included with your Prime membership. To start listening, download the Amazon Music app for free or go to amazon.com slash ad-free podcasts. That's amazon.com slash ad-free podcasts to catch up on the latest episodes without the ads.

So well said, and there's no greater radical progressive than your father. I'm a big fan. We listen to his speeches almost weekly.

The the. Yeah, it's just amazing, you know, is just such a wealth of knowledge and and consistency you don't see very often in a public figure. And I just and, you know, you talk about it being, you know, more than annoying, but destructive to see progressives just find ways to dismiss progress.

Trump's war on the deep state, just bending themselves in pretzels to find ways to dismiss it instead of finding ways to, you know, as Frederick Douglass said, I'll join with anyone to do right and no one to do wrong. So when Trump is doing something right, why not get your head out of your fucking ass and

and join with him and create pressure for him to do it the way you want it done, like the way the progressive. So there is an opening now for something progressive to happen. And so instead of having your reflex saying,

be your hate boner for Elon Musk and Trump and Kash Patel, why not actually have a thoughtful response to it and look at the reality that you go to exactly what you say. You go to war with the army you have, not the one that you want. And this is the army we have. So let's try to make the most out of it. And let's join with MAGA because MAGA is all for this dismantling of the deep state. They're all for the dismantling of USAID.

and the FBI and the CIA. Here's what you say. The FBI is reeling from these early blows, but unless Trump and his colleagues are determined and systematic in their efforts, the security apparatus will regroup, shake off the dust, and strike back. And so what I'm urging progressives to do, people with a platform, people with influence, people with a voice, is to...

laser focus on this and not let this opportunity go by and make sure that this doesn't happen, that the security apparatus regroups, shakes off the dust and strikes back. That's what... So here, I just want to... People talk about Trump's dismantling or the exposure of USAID and now the NED.

Now he's defunding the NED, which is another great thing. I can't get over it, that this is happening in my lifetime. Glenn Greenwald says, those who failed or refused to see the massive opportunities from this Trump-led realignment and instead enslaved themselves to the broken, ossified, unimaginative status quo perpetuating the Democratic Party are some of the dumbest people on the planet.

I couldn't agree with that more. And so, well, here's, go ahead. I don't understand what it's all about. It's like, I think it's linked back to COVID. Are we allowed to talk about COVID or are you going to get demystified if we talk about COVID? Well, now we have a new HHS secretary, so I think we're okay.

But I understand that it's still there's like still censorship on YouTube. Yes, there is. Of course there is. I've got I've gotten videos to monetize recently with Dr. Drew, where we talked about the COVID narrative and we talked about masks and vaccines and they demonetize it. But let's take a shot. What do you want to say? Well, I mean, I think I think I think some of this panic on the left has to do with their inability to rethink the positions they took during the pandemic.

And that there's a kind of unreality has set in since then and a kind of this emergency mentality, this, you know, frenetic fear factor. Hopefully that doesn't that's not enough to get get us, you know.

Shunt it aside. But I mean, I think that's part of what has to do with it. But what I what I see in this is, I mean, it's really puzzling. And I think we've talked about this one other time when I was on the show. I mean, it's it is perplexing. Like, why? Because it's not just dumb people. I know very intelligent people on the left who are doing the exact same thing that, you know, Glenn describes in that text. And it's like.

I don't know what that's about. And it's very dangerous, but it's like this kind of panic. There's also it reveals a kind of lack of faith in left politics and left analysis. And so it's this purely reactive Trump centric kind of panic mode that is, you know,

based on denial of facts, just ignore stories you don't like and grasp at little details that you can spin as negative Trump stuff rather than really trying to have a more holistic picture, which if you do, doesn't mean, oh, Trump's a wonderful guy. It shows that, okay, there's a lot of contradictions here, which means there are some real openings for progressive forces to change politics for the better going forward.

I've heard also people on the progressive left say things like, or, you know, when I'm enthusiastic about what Trump's doing with USAID and now the NED and the FBI, they'll say things like, oh, you don't know what his real motives are. You think his real motives is to reform this stuff? And my response, I'd like to get your response, but my response to that is I don't care what

Elon Musk's motives are for exposing the corruption and the wastefulness inside and the real mission of USAID or the NED or the... I don't care what his motives are. It doesn't matter. In politics, your motives don't matter. The only thing that matters is the end result. The legislation it produces, the results it produces, we'll know them by their fruit, right? And it's like what I say is like it doesn't matter if...

if Lincoln freed the slaves because he thought it was going to help him get laid. It doesn't matter what his motivation was. It matters what happens. What do you say to those people who are constantly, constantly can't stop saying, you think that their motivations are correct? What do you say to that?

I mean, I think that's a dodge. And I think we do know what some of his motivations are. I mean, I think that, you know, there is a clear record that the FBI broke the law. Now, maybe they did it against a candidate that you as a leftist don't like, Donald Trump. But they're guilty of election interference. We cannot tolerate that.

Okay? Just because it's against a candidate that a progressive might not like. I mean, if you're okay with the FBI knowingly confirming that the evidence on the Hunter Biden laptop of corruption is real and then actively lying to the public, lying to social media and saying, "We're expecting a Russian disinformation campaign and election interference and you need to be prepared to basically censor this story." That's election interference.

If they can do that to Donald Trump, they can do that to Bernie Sanders, any progressive. Cornel West. That's the case I tried to make to Cornel West, and he called me a Trumper when I made that. I said, you know, if they can do 92 felony indictments, and if they can use the exact same grand jury and the exact same RICO statute to indict Trump that they did to the Stop Cop City protesters, don't you see the game that's being played? And

And Cornel West's response was to call me a trumper, which just revealed him...

Go ahead. So I think Trump's motivations are actually clear. He thinks, okay, these guys stole the election from me. I'm pretty sure they don't say it publicly, but I'm pretty sure that Trump and the Trump family are highly suspicious about the events in Butler, Pennsylvania and the way the Secret Service mishandled that. And so I think his motivations are pretty clear, which is like, he thinks these institutions

probably successfully did keep me out of office once tried to keep me out again and very likely tried to kill me so i want to dismantle them okay that makes perfect sense i've got first of all i don't want

Secret police agencies, intelligence agencies that do any of that, even against politicians that I don't like. That's totally anti-democratic. So those motivations make sense to me, and this is an opening. So that's what I would say about the motivations, and it's a dodge.

And not only did you bring up Hunter Biden's laptop and not only that, but the FBI lied to the FISA court 17 times. And that's by the calculation of the inspector general. 17 times they lied to a FISA court so they could get...

a phone tap on Donald Trump's campaign. And so not only did they have Donald Trump's phone tap, but they had his entire campaign's tap. And then they had that two hop rule, which means they get to not only put it, put a tap on everyone in his campaign's phone, but then anyone that they talk to their phone was also tapped.

So if you talk to anybody inside Donald Trump's campaign, your phone was also tapped by the FBI. And they did that by lying to a FISA court, which as far as I can tell, is unconstitutional to start with because an FBI lawyer was convicted.

altering an email from the CIA to get one of those FISA warrants. He was convicted, could have gotten five years, got no time. I mean that was reported in the mainstream press. You can Google that, dear viewer, and see that this is not paranoid conspiracy, right? So yeah, I mean they played dirty, they broke the law, and if they can do it to him, they will do it to anyone.

So I'd like to... So here's what the FBI says back to people like me and you. Here's what they're telling the brain-dead, brainwashed mashes who still turn to the corporate media for their news and information. It's just remarkable to me that after Russiagate, after Ukraine, after 20 years of Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, which is now an al-Qaeda-run Syria with our help, that now they still...

turn to the corporate media for their news and information, and they're not scheduled. Here's what they say to people like us who are excited about what Trump's doing with the FBI. Here we go. - Danger here is fairly obvious, at least from my perspective, is that if you wind up firing thousands of FBI agents

Who is going to be performing the agency's mission? Who is going to be enforcing the laws of the United States? Who is going to be carrying out counter-terrorist operations? Who is going to be busting up drug cartels? The FBI does a lot of day-to-day bread-and-butter work that many Americans have no idea they're out doing. They're working in the shadows. They're investigating crimes. They're bringing people to justice. And if you go in and you fire thousands of these people,

on-the-street agents, you're at least creating the potential that a lot of this crime will go unpunished and possibly lead to even more crime. I want to ask you about...

So what would you say back to that U.S. Deputy Assistant Attorney General who is a big defender of the blob and corruption inside the FBI? What would you say to them? Go ahead. I mean, you know, first of all, there's lots of problems with this war on crime. But like, you know, he's overlooking a lot of the other stuff the FBI is doing. For example, they just framed...

Chokwe Antar Lumumba, who is a progressive mayor in Jackson, Mississippi. Now, Cooperation Jackson was for about 10 years a darling of the radical left. These are socialist black nationalists who have won the mayorship in Jackson, Mississippi. They have

you know, organized in the community. Chokwe Antar Lumumba's father, the first mayor, died of a heart attack. His son later gets elected. This guy was framed by the FBI for taking bribes. Now maybe Chokwe Antar Lumumba takes bribes. I don't know. But the fact of the matter is he has been indicted

Because the FBI created this fake shell company and approached him about some land that the city of Jackson, Mississippi had. And this is to remind people, right? Jackson, Mississippi had a major problem with lead in the water. I mean, it's a very, very poor town, right? And what Cooperation Jackson is trying to do is very noble, right? So they...

They entrap him by saying, oh, pretending to be a company that wants to buy and develop this land. And then they charge him with accepting a $100,000 bribe. Now, maybe he did accept the bribe, but, you know, we haven't heard the defense yet. Maybe maybe his defense is that way. I didn't accept a bribe like they offered to give some money to like this or that charity or whatever. Right. I mean, indictments are not proof.

And whatever the case, it's like, you know, it was the FBI that offered the bribe. This is classic entrapment. They've done this to a progressive black mayor within the last couple of months. You know, this is the kind of stuff the FBI gets up to way too often. And it's for these reasons that all the same people who three, four or five years ago were, you know, loving Trump.

uh cooperation jackson jackson should should be like trying to prune back this agency which is doing everything it can to destroy cooperation jackson and just they did it to the example that might affect some of these leftists they they just did it to the yuhurus i don't know if you're familiar with that case yeah out of st louis and tampa st pete they went and they uh and even the judge

even though they found him guilty of something, they didn't give him any jail time. And the judge said, you're basically, these people are guilty of free speech. Right. They were accused of being Russian agents because-

I mean, I forget what the details were, but yeah, it seemed pretty minimal. I mean, this is an old thing. This goes back to Hoover, targeting mainstream black politicians. I had a friend years ago who worked for Willie Brown, who was Speaker of the House for many years, Speaker of the California Assembly in California for many, many years, African-American politician. They used to say he would have been governor of California if he had been white rather than black.

She worked for him during the anti-apartheid struggle, and he actually allowed her to do a lot of anti-apartheid organizing. Anyway, one time there was some gala –

and they were selling tickets for it and at the last minute some company that had made legitimate donations to Willie Brown in the past said, "Oh, we want a couple more tickets." They'd even bought some tickets the proper way, like through the credit card or a check or whatever. And they were like, "Last minute, can we get two more tickets? Here's some cash." And my friend said, "Oh, this seems reasonable." And she gave this cash to Willie Brown's chief of staff. And this woman was like, "Absolutely not. You do not ever accept cash."

My friend was like totally shocked. What could this overreaction be? Well, lo and behold, it turned out this was a sting operation. But Willie Brown was hip to it. I mean Willie Brown was not some sort of radical. Willie Brown was like a mainstream Democrat, is a mainstream Democrat. And it was this – they had some fishing like –

company that the government sees somehow the FBI was using it looked legitimate and they were trying to just sneak this little cash payment in to then say up Willie Brown is guilty of you know taking bribes all blah blah but me that's the level of security

that successful black politicians in America have had to develop over the decades because of the constant harassment and attempts at entrapment and blackmail by the FBI. And we'll get to the press about this, but this sort of stuff happens

all the time. Paul Jay So yes, and who would be directing the FBI to have that kind of politics? What is that about? Do you have any theories on that? Richard Averbeck I mean we have hints from the Hoover days that it was like about racism and this fear of a black messiah and that the Hoover was personally like very concerned about black people in America

uniting and getting organized. And so they didn't just, they being the FBI, didn't just focus their ire on radicals like the Black Panther. They were also concerned about maintaining control of the elected political class. It's not that they would necessarily prosecute Willie Brown, but it's just like, you want to get dirt on everyone. You

I mean, who nowadays would be in charge of that? I don't know. But this is part of the whole thing about institutional legacy and culture. And this is also hopefully some of the stuff we can find out if there really is a campaign of massive declassification of documents, right? Because Hoover's long gone. It started with Hoover. It was his obsession. He puts in print, you know, the danger of a black messiah. But

But but who would be doing that in the late 80s? Who decided to set up Chokwe Antalamumba in Jackson, Mississippi? I don't know. Yeah. Well, it's just because, you know, as Chuck Schumer revealed when when he said you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.

So what he revealed when he said that is that the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, they don't work for the president.

They don't work. So that means they don't work for democracy. They don't work for the citizens. They're working for some dark money group, which is to me, you know, the handful of billionaires who actually run things in the Western world. That's that's what the FBI actually works for. They don't they're not actually a crime fighting organization. They're a political organization that is is undermining democracy.

citizens from coming together and opposing oligarchy. They work for the oligarchs, they don't work for the democratically elected politicians. Yeah. Their mission has been to keep us disorganized, to keep us on the back foot so that we are easier to exploit, easier to rule, and easier to shift the burden of taxation to working people and liberate the

the elite from paying their fair share of taxes and all that stuff. That's absolutely what it's about. It's a kind of class warfare. Whether or not the FBI even understand it as such, that's absolutely what's going on. And they are also empire builders and it's their own, these networks of people who are in it to win it and you have to curry favor with these powerful interests along the way up.

You know, one hand washes the other. You know, and so just to wrap this up, when people say, well, you know, Kash Patel is just going to hire his own goons that are loyal to Trump or they're not, you know, they might get rid of USAID, but they're not against the mission. They're just going to fold that back into the State Department and do it. Hey, we'll deal with that monster when it shows itself. You can't deal with the hypothetical. So, again, that is destructive. I find that very destructive, right?

just as you find it destructive. And instead of taking advantage of the moment and taking advantage of someone who's an obvious disruptor and is an enemy of the establishment, Donald Trump, Tulsi Gabbard, RFK Jr., Kash Patel, instead of taking advantage of that, they're just pissing it away. And it's naivety in the extreme. And they're siding with the FBI. They're siding with the USAFB.

Yeah. You know, and Kash Patel is important to remember. He got his start as a defense attorney. For eight years, he was a defense attorney in the beginning of his career in Dade County. And he, in his book and elsewhere, has expressed this defense attorney's sense of, you know, the law needs to be stress tested.

tested constantly. And he does seem to have a genuine concern for the rule of law and democracy. So, I mean, I kind of, I take him at face value until we see otherwise, that I think he thinks that America will be a better place if we do not have an unaccountable, corrupt, bullying FBI, but that we actually have a responsive, accountable, transparent government.

crime-fighting organization. And we're a long way from that now. And if Pam Bondi and Kash Patel decide to go after the free speech of pro-Palestinian protesters, we'll deal with that then.

Yeah, right. What you can't you don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, which is what many, many progressive leftists are screaming at the top of their lung. Throw the baby out with the bathwater because I disagree with their policy on this. I'm going to get rid of all the good things because because they're Zionists. I can't work with them, which is the opposite of how organizing works.

To use a medical metaphor, this position that we're criticizing is sort of like if you had a cancerous tumor, oh, I don't want any treatment. I don't want an operation. I could get an infection if I have this tumor taken out. It's like, yeah, you could. That's a risk. But then you deal with that when it happens because right now you have a tumor. This is the problem you actually have. Yes, you might have another kind of problem in the future, but right now you've got this problem and it's growing and it needs to be dealt with now.

Christian Parenti, I really appreciate you taking time. Everybody should check out his latest article about why progressives should be supporting Trump's efforts in dismantling or doing what he's doing in the FBI. It's over at Unheard. Thanks again for coming on. I really appreciate it. Always great to talk to you. I learn a ton every time I read your articles and talk to you.

Well, thank you very much. And right back at you, Jimmy. Keep up the great work, man. You're doing really important work. And there's many, many of us who follow you regularly and just are very, very thankful of all you do. And as I've said before, I know you are under a lot of pressure. It's not all applause. It's like you've got these –

you know, these platforms that are very difficult to deal with. So keep doing what you're doing. We'll do. I appreciate the kind words. Thank you very much, Christian. Come see us on tour. We're going to be in Baltimore, Hartford, Connecticut, Syracuse, Atlantic City, Levittown, New York, Cohoes, New York, and Providence, Rhode Island. Go to JimmyDore.com for a link for tickets. Guess what? Trump is now dismantling the National Endowment for Democracy.

And I know what my Hollywood friends are going to say, but Jimmy, now how's the rest of the world supposed to get their democracy? It's like natural gas. We pipe it all over the world, that democracy. That democracy. And by the way, the National Endowment for Democracy, doesn't it sound like they just went in to get bigger tits? Isn't that what that sounds like? But I got to tell you, fake boobs are more real than any of the...

democracy they spread. Was it Maxon or Aaron? We had that woman from the NED on who didn't know it was a CIA cutout and it was either Max or Aaron told her. Yes. And she looked flustered like she genuinely had never heard this before.

So here's what it's been a slush fund. The national the NED, the National Endowment for Democracy, has been a slush fund for neocons driving disastrous regime change ops across the globe by doing in public what the CIA used to do in private. And he put together this brief history of the National Endowment for Democracy's meddling. And he did this in twenty eighteen.

This is the part of it. Let's watch. Pelosi was among a bipartisan cast of lawmakers on hand to pay homage to the NED. Though the NED markets itself as a politically benign entity advancing democracy and human rights, its record tells a different story. The NED drew its original leadership from a group of Cold War ideologues who had formerly belonged to the Trotskyist Social Democrats USA party.

Founded in 1983 by then-President Ronald Reagan, the NED became an international vehicle for the neoconservative agenda.

It's good to have you all here to help celebrate the launching of a program with a vision and a noble purpose. Over the years, the NED and its partner organizations have largely served the interests of right-wing free market parties and corporate interests around the globe. From ABC, this is World News Tonight with Peter Jennings. Good evening. For 10 years, the U.S. supported the military attempt to overthrow the Sada Disa government in Nicaragua. It never succeeded. Today, the Sada Disa government has been overthrown at the ballot box.

The NED's first success was the defeat of the Sandinista government in Nicaragua's 1990 elections, replacing it with the right-wing party of Violeta Chamorro. The dictatorship of the Somozoic and Marxism-Leninism is over today!

Since then, the NED has advanced US interests in countless countries. It helped swing a Russian election for Boris Yeltsin in 1996. It drove a failed coup attempt in Venezuela in 2002. It orchestrated a successful one in Haiti in 2004, and another one in Ukraine in 2014, which paved the way for neo-Nazis to move into the political mainstream.

Nowadays, instead of having just the CIA going around behind the scenes and trying to manipulate the process secretly by inserting money here and instructions there and so forth, they have now a sidekick, which is this National Endowment for Democracy, NED. These words from Philip Agee, the late CIA whistleblower, were openly confirmed by Alan Weinstein, a founding member of the NED. Weinstein told the Washington Post in 1991, "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA."

There's a lot of reasons, I think, for Americans to promote democracy. NED funding has almost quadrupled since the group was founded. In the past four years alone, it's directed at least $4 million into parties and media outfits in Nicaragua. That prompted an NED-funded publication, The Global Americans, to boast of the role the group played in laying the groundwork for change in Nicaragua, where violent protests today threaten to topple the country's elected president, Daniel Ortega.

The article went on to say that it's becoming more and more clear that U.S. support has helped play a role in nurturing the current uprisings. So that's what the NED does, very much like USAID. So they overthrow democratically elected governments and they install right wing dictators. That's a that's a big part of what they do. So but Trump is now getting rid of the NED. Trump suspends funding for the National Endowment of Democracy.

It's frozen, the funding. A U.S.-funded organization. So according to the Free Press, an order from Elon Musk's Department of Government, DOGE, to the U.S. Treasury Department that blocked the disbursement of funds to the NED has crippled the organization's activities. I say that's great. It's been a bloodbath.

So I think a bloodbath of financial proportions at NED is much better than a bloodbath in someone else's country that we fund. Don't you think? Nobody cares about that. Whatever. Yeah, no. Warsaw. Hey, what are you going to do? Dresden. Dresden.

They can't meet payroll and they can't pay basic overhead expenses. Good. The NED, which was founded during the Cold War in 1983, received $315 million from the U.S. for the 2025 fiscal year, according to $315 million. I can find that much in George Clooney's couch. Yeah, I don't believe that's all they got. Of course, they got more. That's nothing. Because that would be a...

Boy, I might as well be in a DEI play in Ireland. Yeah. In 1991, Alan Weinstein, the co-founder of NED, acknowledged at the Washington Post that a lot of what the organization did was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA. Washington Post columnist David Ignatius listed some examples of the NED's overt action that was previously done by the CIA, including providing money and moral support for pro-democracy groups.

training oh dear god training resistive fighters and subverting communist rule the ned has been targeted by elon musk who has asked his followers in a recent post on twitter to list all the evil things that ned has done jim bovard a senior fellow at the libertarian institute replied with an article about how he has been critical of the organization for 40 years

And a 2009 article for the Future Freedom Foundation, Bovar said the NED is based on the notion that its meddling in foreign elections is automatically pro-democracy because the U.S. government is the incarnation of democracy. Yeah, right. Of course. Yeah, NED has always operated on the principle that what's good for the U.S. government is good for democracy. Really? That's like saying what's good for the bank robber is good for the police force.

In 2006, piece for the American conservative Bovar detailed any of these efforts to push for regime change in Latin America. In 2001, any quadrupled its aid to Venezuelan opponents of elected president. So that's all we're doing. That's what the United States does. We go and we foment discord riots everywhere.

Civil wars, and we overthrow democratically elected governments. That's what the NED was doing. That's what USAID does. That's what the CIA does. And none of it is there to protect democracy or freedom. None of it. It's there so Western economic hitmen could exploit. Why do you think we care about Venezuela? Because they have oil. There's more oil in Venezuela than there is in Saudi Arabia.

That's why they want to overthrow. That's why they have to tell you that Maduro is a dictator and he's bad for his people. Well, that's up for their own people to figure out. They elected Hugo Chavez. He didn't take over. That's right.

He was a real bad guy, but they elected him. They funded organizations involved in a bloody military coup that temporarily removed Chavez from power in 2002. After Chavez retook control, NED and the State Department responded by pouring even more money into groups seeking his ouster.

The International Republican Institute, one of the largest NED grant recipients, played a key role both in the Chavez coup and also in the overthrow of Haiti's elected president, Jean Bertrand Aristide. That's all we do. That's all we do. In February 2004, an array of NED-aided groups and individuals helped spur an uprising that left 100 people dead and toppled Aristide.

So there you go. This is the big one. The NED is the instrument of foreign interference of the U.S. government. I genuinely cannot believe they're retiring it. And if it is indeed the case, a strong signal that we may indeed be looking at a United States that gives up its pretension of reshaping others in its image.

or otherwise subvert other countries' internal affairs. But there's a lot of dumb motherfuckers who will say, don't be stupid. You think Trump ought to do this? They're doing it. And here's someone way smarter than you who's excited about it. Do you know how big that is to get rid of the NED? I mean, that's such a massive... Like I said, I'm not upset by anything he's doing. I'm only going to be upset if he stops doing it. That's right.

So here's the caveat. The caveat is, unless, of course, this is just a change of brand and NED activities just move elsewhere, like the State Department, which could also very much be the case because that's how NED itself was created as an offshoot of the CIA after multiple scandals around its subversion activities.

It was cynically called the National Endowment for Democracy to make it sound like a democracy promotion agency when almost all they did was actually undermine the sovereignty and therefore the democratic system of countries in which they operate. Time will tell if what what what's actually time will tell. But right now, fantastic. Get rid of USAID. Get rid of any D. Fire all those MFers at the FBI. Do whatever you got to do.

If they don't get rid of it, then be real loud complaining about it. Yeah. Matt Kennard, who we've had on the show, he says, last year, the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy gave index on censorship. Britain's premier free expression group.

525 hundred thousand pounds well over half its income from its activities the US government is running large parts of media and civil society worldwide its propaganda is embedded with the free expression group was funded by the that's so that's so therefore thousand people in jail for tweets yes the free expression group is there there's exact opposite of what their name says wait I mean you can say you watch to it whatever they say it is just assume it's the opposite

And here's now some people still think Barry Weiss isn't a complete tool of the deep state. And she is. She here she is defending the NED. That's so now you need to know anything else about Barry Weiss. She's garbage.

Barry Weiss is garbage. It does tell us that the NED is deeply tied to Israel in some way. Yeah, because she's a Mossad asset. And so here she says it's hard to keep track of the upheaval in Washington since President Trump's inauguration and even harder amid the media freak out to distinguish important changes from trivial one. But what's happening at the National Endowment for Democracy is a very big deal and it's not been previously reported. NED, a key

U.S. instrument for supporting grassroots freedom movements around the world and founded under Reagan is under siege. This is Barry Weiss talking. An order from Doze to the U.S. Treasury that blocked disbursement of any defunds has crippled the organization. It's been a bloodbath.

One NED staffer said, we have not been able to meet payroll and pay basically... NED's dismantling would be far more than a cost-cutting measure. It would symbolize a major change in U.S. foreign policy, undercutting the notion that democratic ideals foster U.S. global strength and influence. Instead, the Trump administration would be signaling that it no longer believes that promoting democracy around the globe is in the national interest. Right here, Barry Weiss. You know how you promote democracy?

Don't interfere with other people's elections. That's right. Democracy. What she's saying is, God forbid, they're going to say Israel's on its own. And here is any day welcomes Victoria Newland to the board of directors. Victorian, the biggest warmonger, blood soaked maniac in the world. When it looks like Nurse Ratched from Cuckoo's Nest is going to have to head back to the mental institution again to hand out jello pills.

Yeah, it's Nurse Ratched without the cans. This is clearly a baby eating ring. Now she can spend more time giving creepy stares to her family. Maybe she can interfere in the election of her kid's school student council or something. Then hand out cookies where there's a coup at the school. So again, more good news. Now we will see what happens.

People say, do you really think Trump's going to stop interfering in the elections of other countries? Let's watch. Yeah. Let's watch. I don't think I haven't forgotten that Liz Cheney is supposed to be executed by firing squad, and I am holding Trump to that. You're fired. Get out of here. You're fired. Hey, become a premium member. Go to JimmyDoreComedy.com. Sign up. It's the most affordable premium program in the business. Freak out. Don't, don't, don't, don't, don't.

Don't freak out. Don't freak out. All the voices performed today are by the one and only, the inimitable Mike McRae. He can be found at MikeMcRae.com. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not. That's it for this week. You be the best you can be, and I'll keep being me. Don't freak out. Don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't freak out. Don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't.

Do not freak out.

Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Chicagoland area with WGU. WGU is an online accredited university that specializes in personalized learning. With courses available 24-7 and monthly start dates, you can earn your degree on your schedule. You may even be able to graduate sooner than you think by demonstrating mastery of the material you know. Make 2025 the year you focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu.