The REAL Story Behind The Signal Controversy
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DC Chattering Class is like, "Oh my god, this is a scandal." Yeah. Get out of here, dude. The story is, America got the job done. Bro, if the biggest scandal out of this administration is that a journalist found out in real time that we were killing terrorists, I think we're doing a pretty good job. Caroline Levitt revealed to everybody that Senator Warner himself used Signal to work with a lobbyist for a Russian oligarch to connect

with this disgraced Steele dossier author who started the Russia hoax. - Dude, that is very important to have encrypted. - So when Republicans are using Signal, they're trying to talk to each other. When Democrats use Signal, they talk to lobbyists for Russian oligarchs.

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Good Thursday to all of you and welcome to the Ruthless Variety Program. I'm Josh Holmes along with Comfortably Smug, Michael Duncan, John Ashbrook, left to right across your radio dial. A treacherous scandal is afoot.

if you listen to the punditry class here in Washington, D.C. We're going to break down all of that for you in great detail, and we're going to have some fun doing it. That's the one thing. You may have heard about some of this. We're going to start at the beginning. For those of you who haven't followed every nook and cranny of this discussion, but there is fun to be had.

involved in some hypocrisy, how media is treating it. You're going to love every second of the next hour that we spend doing this, some variety, give you an update on hack madness. Got a little Jasmine Crockett in there, the new spokesperson for the Democratic Party. We got it all, fellas. Yeah, I mean, this one's action-packed. The media has tried their best to create this fake scandal, fake narrative,

And all our listeners are lucky because we're about to give it to them straight. Actually, what's going on? It's a real embarrassment of riches. It is. It is. And we'll also have some great updates for you on the Hack Madness tournament. That's something that I am looking for. Yeah, including where we all rank in our internal bracket, us four hosts, which I think is really important.

Yeah, of course, this is the hack madness tournament that we do annually here on Ruthless to crown the worst journalist in all of Washington, D.C. Now, there has been an element of timing to this where had Jeffrey Goldberg done what he did a week earlier, no question he's in this field. He's not. But there are so many winners. We're going to break down all of that for you.

I think we should start with just setting the table. Look, if you consume mainstream media, and I'm sorry, I'm sorry if you do.

But if you do, you're inundated with this horrible thing that has happened. And what they're talking about is a breach of information, a signal chat in which all of the national security apparatus were a part of discussing the details of a plan, a U.S. strike against Houthi rebels in Yemen. Now, why does any of this sort of thing matter just to start with?

What happened was the Trump administration coming in on the heels of a Biden administration that for one calendar year allowed 175.

unanswered strikes against the u.s navy by houthi rebels in the suez canal now you might ask what are our ships doing in the suez canal well it turns out it's a point of a massive amount of commerce and if you can't go through the suez canal you have to reroute around africa

And the gas and the manpower that takes to do that costs you, the consumer, of any goods that are imported through that region an extraordinarily more amount of money. Inflation is a problem. That makes it worse. It makes it worse for us. It makes it worse for our allies across the world. And by the way, are you just letting terrorists tell you where you can and cannot go? Because that's what they are. These are terrorists.

So the Biden administration did nothing about it. I'm surprised. Absolutely nothing about it. Meanwhile, 75% of all U.S. flagged ships were forced around Africa during that. Just crazy. So the Trump administration, much like they approached the issue in Panama, which you didn't hear anything about during the Biden administration because they didn't particularly care that China had taken over our port of passage there for U.S. commerce.

decided to do something about it. Well, what did they do? They ordered airstrikes. They had an incredible plan put in place to basically dismantle the Houthi network and

So you could once again have commerce in the Suez Canal. They executed it flawlessly, flawlessly. Disabled the Houthi network, took out every target that they wanted to. It was a perfectly well-executed plan by the U.S. military, our men and women in uniform, the kind of thing that all of us Americans would be extremely proud to do. And by the way, something that

You didn't see a lot of during the Biden administration. Certainly no fault of our U.S. military. They can only do as the commander in chief orders them to do. And Biden ordered them to basically sit on their hands and take fire from Houthi rebels for a year and a half. Amazing. This president sees it differently, takes action. OK, so where this thing gets hairy is that the administration obviously has to communicate with one another.

about the strikes they want to make sure that the heads of all the various intel agencies state national security council everybody was all involved pentagon the vice president everybody and in doing so they got on this app signal now signal is used and was encouraged in use by the biden administration actually because it's one of the very few publicly available end-to-end encrypted

And what that means basically, it's sort of, at least to this point, unhackable. And there's an element of security that's provided in something that's easy to use, whereas all of the other DOD-approved sort of communications that are not used sitting in the situation room, cumbersome, hard to use, not easily accessible. So this is a workaround.

In the course of doing that, though, they got put on a chain with 19 members. And in those 19 members, this was, you know, according to The Atlantic and Jeffrey Goldberg, who was inadvertently added to the list of all of these people. Now, there's a lot of conjecture about how he got added. I always find that when it comes to government, the simplest answer is usually no.

exactly what happened. Grand conspiracies, although sometimes true, most likely it's just an error at some point. With Donald Trump back in office, one of his biggest adversaries, top Democrat Dick Durbin of Chicago, is leading the charge to derail President Trump's agenda at every turn.

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Tell Republican senators stop Dick Durbin's government takeover of your credit card before it's too late. Learn more at www.guardyourcard.com. Anyway, this group starts. It got 19 people on it and includes this journalist who's probably the foremost critic of President Donald Trump.

And foreign policy and Trump's view of defense. And I mean, it's just like the list goes on and on. He's a purveyor of Russiagate nonsense. I mean, literally everything that you could. Yeah, I'd be like adding Sherry Jacobus to our Slack channel. It would it would not be good. Not good. It would not be good. But anyway, so this guy's on it. And because he is who he is, he says nothing.

Right. And they start going through the plans. They start talking about the one refreshing and really remarkable part of what you were reading, if you've read any of this, is it's a debate. And it's a debate that they are all having positions that are very consistent with the public comments that they've had to all of you. You would expect...

Mike Waltz to be someone who is very operationally focused. This was his job in the military. This is the approach that he took as a congressperson. There's nobody that knows more about operations and defense and that kind of thing that he does. And he's articulating exactly what needs to happen in order to execute something. Vice President Vance.

Presses pause on the whole thing and says, like, hold on. I'm not sure that we're not making a mistake here and lays out how there could be inconsistent messaging. Again, very consistent. Super smart, too. Great breakdown. With whatever he says in public, like this is the position you imagine him to take.

What was also super refreshing is how you could see these people working together in that nobody got in a dick measuring contest here. Every single person, whether it was Ratcliffe at the CIA or Tulsi or State or whomever, says...

We're all in on this. We're ready to go. If you'd like to delay, that's fine. We'll make sure that that works, too. And the conversation is like a very collaborative one, which I was like, this is pretty amazing. Yeah. You know, it the kind of thing you don't normally see. And that's, you know, the problems that they get into because you shouldn't normally see these kinds of discussions. Anyway, they go about authorizing this deal.

And then Secretary Hegseth puts in a line by line about 20 minutes before the strike was to happen about the sequence of events in order to accomplish the goal that they've all at that point mutually agreed upon, including authorized by the president of the United States. It happens exactly line by line as outlined by Hegseth. And the mission is a huge success. All we know is that there's like an A8 story going on.

In the newspaper. And in fact, Ruthless Variety Program probably wouldn't know it if it wasn't the White House's direct communication that this happened and it was a success. And because we've been following this a little bit. In fact, we talked about this on the program before about how this was a serious problem. I can't believe nobody's doing anything about it. And they finally did something. So we were sort of relieved. I think we all of us were on X.

Saying like, yeah, nice. We finally have somebody doing something about this. Anyway, days go by after that. Nobody talks about it. Relatively unreported in the media at all. And all of a sudden Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic says –

I was on the chain. I got all of this in real time. There were war plans and there were confidential information. And these guys screwed up in a huge way because it was publicly available through me as a journalist. OK, well, that's where you get into a problem. Now, there's no question in my mind that him being on that chain is a real problem.

Right. And I think if you looked at the initial response from President Trump in that meeting that he held on Tuesday, where you got the chance to hear from Mike Walsh and others about it, that

there's a collective, yeah, that's not going to happen again. And if you heard President Trump, he said, here's my preference of going forward. And he said, I'd like to be in a, you know, a room with lead, lead ceiling, lead walls and lead. I didn't know it was lead, but I assume that's what the situation room is. And he walked through a similar situation where he was like, they had lines. I cut the lines.

You know, he talked about how he's going to great lengths to make sure things are kept secret. A human Faraday box. Right. But that is so he's doing two things in that press conference. One, he was reaffirming his support because immediately the media is like, well, he's going to fire Walsh or he's going to fire Pete or he's going to fire all these people because of this gross negligence and all this stuff. He's coming in there saying not like these guys did their job. It was a successful mission going forward.

I would prefer if we did it this way. And that's in public. All you're going to get out of a president United States that has any sort of responsibility whatsoever. Bro, if the biggest scandal out of this administration is that a journalist found out in real time that we were killing terrorists, I think we're doing a pretty good job. Like the overarching of this is like,

So this problem, this group who has been shooting at U.S. warships, causing so many problems for America throughout the entire Biden administration, that the Biden administration then takes off the terror list. And then the Trump administration comes in and kicks the shit out of them. And the scandal that like all these journos and the like D.C. chattering class is like, oh, my God, this is a scandal. Yeah. Get out.

Get out of here, dude. The story is America got the job done. And some journal showed up in this chat. And it wasn't even like, journal, can you tell us if we should do this strike in real time? Are you weighing in on this? Like, why?

What is this? What a scandal. All of these people are in private exactly who they are in public. And that President Trump has hired a fantastic team of rivals that debate outcomes and then come to a conclusion that is consistent with Donald Trump's American first vision of this country. Like what he did on the campaign, what he sells in this administration is what all of these advisors are doing on a private signal channel when they think they're behind closed doors. Like, I mean, you as a taxpayer should be thrilled.

that these people operate this way. Should you be thrilled that there was a reporter who was on there who found out we were killing terrorists in real time? Yeah, probably not. But all in all, if this is the biggest scandal, I mean, I think 13 Marines getting killed at Abbey Gate, that's a fucking scandal. I think, I don't know, drone striking a cargo van of kids trying to get retribution for that murder. And it...

The Biden administration did that? That's a fucking scandal. When it comes to the scandal meter, this is pretty low. Democrats don't have much to work with. And by Democrats, I'm, of course, referring to Jeffrey Goldberg and his wife who worked for Hillary Clinton. They don't have much to go on. They've taken the 20 percent side of every 80-20 issue. We've talked about that ad nauseum on this show. And so they're grasping at straws to try to find something. And the best they've got is a process file here.

We're going to get into the specifics and the hypocrisy and then have some laughs about how this whole thing has played out. But before we do, I also just think that this has a huge commentary on the state of journalism in America today because Jeffrey Goldberg, noted critic, Democrat, liberal, he's got a foreign policy, kind of a neocon foreign policy point of view.

unmitigated critic of this administration, but he's still a journalist and his beat is national security stuff, right? Think about 20, 30, 40 years ago, 50 years ago, if one of the noteworthy national security reporters was put on a chain like this, the sequence of events that would have happened immediately afterwards, what they would have done is immediately notify journalists

the Secretary of Defense or the National Security Council or somebody that they are on this and they shouldn't be. And then they would say, so here's the deal. Yeah, yeah. The deal is I'm going to report this. I will make sure that American assets are safe before I do. I will do that because I'm an American. You are going to give me the exclusive on all of it, and not just today. You're going to do that on every single mission. Right.

Or if you don't want to do that, I'll tell them how I got it. And you would be the best reporter in national security over a long period of time. That's the reporter's leverage. That's what they have done for generations of how you get a scoop. Problem is...

for Jeffrey Goldberg and for many mainstream media outlets, the news is not what sells. Yeah, that's not what their audience wants. That's ultimately the problem with the Atlantic is if he did four years of good reporting, accurate reporting,

exclusive reporting of the Trump administration, his audience wouldn't care. But like embarrassing the Trump administration one time on a process foul, they love him for that. Now he is the toast of the town. Right. He can walk into any Georgetown cocktail party and be the man of the hour. Rush Brickle, hand him a martini at the door. They're like, welcome, Jeffrey.

They have built their audiences exclusively upon people who want to hear nothing but negative shit on Donald Trump. It's proof that the incentive structure of media in this country is broken for mainstream media. Because you could very easily leverage that into an exclusive on the only news that matters to the American people when it comes to national security in perpetuity with this administration. He chose not to. He chose to run with a one-week story that embarrassed them and forever alienated him.

and probably his publication from any scoop at any point in the future. And I'm not saying that what there's no news value in what happened here. There is like, this should, this should not have happened. There should not have been a situation where anyone, let alone a reporter could,

was on a chain with all the heads of the national security apparatus of this country. That much we know, but that much they've already acknowledged. And that much Donald Trump told you was never going to happen again. Right. Every administration makes mistakes. Some kill 13 Marines.

This one killed terrorists and reopened a main center of commerce that had been closed for 15 months because of a negligence of the Biden administration. It seems to me in terms of errors, this one pales in comparison. We're going to break down exactly where this goes from here and some hilarious react that we've got out of the media that we will contextualize within the framework we've just provided right after this.

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All right, welcome back. So we laid out exactly what happened. One of the reasons why this is a quote unquote scandal is because of the value that corporate media, traditional media puts on what constitutes news. And we discussed about who their constituency is and they feed their constituency and news break. It's not you. It's not you. You may care about your members of the military.

They do not. They have made it extremely clear. The only thing they care about is anything that embarrasses Donald Trump.

So we took a look back in time to the day of all of this, where a very successful strike on the Houthis was executed by the U.S. American military with incredible precision. Again, something that was 15 months in the making that was incredibly important to U.S. national security. What did the news lead with? Clip three, please.

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Unbelievable. Okay. So the most significant military operation that we've taken in quite some time, American service members, skin in the game, flying F-18s, U.S. Navy personnel in harm's way, executed flawlessly on behalf of the world, doesn't lead the news. Right? This is a 15, 16-month problem that's been going on there, something that—

They haven't paid a lot of attention to because it didn't hurt Republicans. And again, I mean, it's like you guys, you've been saying so perfectly that the only thing that matters to corporate press right now is can we make, how does this story make Trump look bad? Or how can we attack Trump with this? And the opposite, the converse of that is,

If they talk about the problem that the Houthis have been, then they have to discuss things about how like the Biden administration took them off the terror list and let them run amok. So they are incentivized to not talk about it because they want to protect Democrats. And I truly didn't understand this phenomena until, you know, Ashbrook really explained it to me the best. It's like you think, you know, bias in media because you see the bias, the liberal bias and what they represent.

how they characterize things in their stories or in the segments. But the insidious form of bias is story selection. And that's what you're seeing there. And you get that from all three major broadcast networks who are all licensed at the pleasure of the American taxpayer. Exactly. C.C., Brendan Carr. Our spectrum. C.C.,

Yeah, our spectrum. That's exactly right. They use the American airwaves in order to promote this kind of thing. Those kind of things can go away. Yeah. You know, they could. I'm not saying they should. I'm just saying I'm making an observation about that. Anyway, so you fast forward to now you found out, holy smokes, there was a journo that was on a chat discussing the execution of this mission.

That was successful, unqualified success. No American personnel hurt. Terrorists killed. A U.S. mission accomplished. But there was a journal that was on that. Let's go to clip four.

President Trump stands by his national security team. He says no classified information was shared in the war planning chat, which inadvertently included a U.S. journalist. CBS's national security contributor Sam Vinograd is here to assess the damage.

Good evening, everyone. I'm Lindsay Davis. Thank you so much for streaming with us. We do begin with the fallout after that bombshell revelation of a major national security breach. Tonight, the Trump war cabinet under fire after that. Under fire. Detailing airstrike plans that went public. Okay, bro. Now you get it.

You would think that we CC'd some fucking Chinese spy. Yeah. Like the fallout, the devastation, the destruction. It's not devastating. Yeah.

Except for when you can embarrass the Trump administration. And it's just like, it's so dead on. They're like the bombshell revelation. They didn't talk about the actual bombshell that fell on these heads. The bombshell is when it fell on the heads of terrorists, man. Like, who are you people? You are deeply unserious. Well, recall 175 different attacks on U.S. naval personnel in the region over a 15-month period prior to taking action here.

You might sort of ask yourself, OK, so given where the media is on all of this stuff, they didn't really tell us a whole. But like you're probably many of you learning this for the first time as I'm saying it. What was the Biden administration? What were they doing? Let's put up graphic one, if you don't mind.

In foreign policy shift, Biden lifts terrorist designation for Houthis in Yemen. Whoa. They're not terrorists. They're just having fun firing weapons at, you know, U.S. service. Yeah, what's a rocket or two into a U.S. Navy ship, you know? That's not terrorism. It's just, you know, clean fun for Biden's friends. Now, just remember, because we've been talking an awful lot about Israel...

Palestinians, we've been talking an awful lot about all the terrorism involved with that and the fact that Iran independently funds these operations. Well, they also fund the Houthis. It's just a different area. They got a little something. It's like we got a little army everywhere that we can sort of disconnect, but we give them the weaponry. And so you can understand...

in addition to the Suez Canal, why this has some global significance, why this is important. That's critical to bring up because when you talk about how Iran has all these proxies, like the Houthis, like Hamas, that they're able to fund, in the first Trump administration,

They put these sanctions on Iran. They basically bankrupted that country, the leadership of that country, these people who hate America, to the point that they couldn't afford to do any of this shit. They couldn't afford to do these attacks on Americans. It's crazy. It's crazy because Iran is like the shark tank for terrorists. It's like...

It's like they're a VC firm and they're like, all right, well, we'll give you some seed money. You Houthis, you Hezbollah, you Hamas. And we're going to let a thousand flowers bloom and we'll see who does the most terror. But wait, there's more. We've had Senator Hagerty on because when he was ambassador to Japan during President Trump's first administration, they worked on this plan to just like.

cut off Iran's oil from the world and bankrupt them. And like, that was such effective foreign policy that you have the Biden administration take the opposite tack, take the Houthis off the terrorist, let Iran have like, they brought back the Brigham pallets of cash playbook that the Obama administration had, let Iran run amok. And now President Trump is left having to clean up all these messes that the Biden administration left behind.

But you don't hear that from the journals. They're like, bombshell news. There was a chat about the successful strike on Houthis that you didn't hear about because we didn't talk about it. They were using Signal. How dare they use Signal? You know what was interesting? I don't know if you guys caught this, but in Caroline Levitt's press briefing, she brought receipts on this, and she often does. And let me just read you one of the things that she raised, which was very, very interesting.

Very, very good. It was about Mark Warner. He's the co-chairman of the Senate Intel Committee. And he's a Democrat. And Carol Ann Leavitt revealed to everybody that Senator Warner himself used Signal to work with a lobbyist for a Russian oligarch to connect with this disgraced Steele dossier author who started the Russia hoax. Wow.

Dude, that is very important to have encrypted. So when Republicans are using Signal, they're trying to talk to each other. When Democrats use Signal, they talk to lobbyists for Russian oligarchs. She's so good at it. She's so good. I love her. They're like, oh, how about a ride in that impounded yacht that you've got down in St. Martin? Yeah. Can we do that? Yeah.

Can we do that? All right. So, look, I'm going to invert these two spaghets. So I'm going to I'm going to actually call for three first. But what I'm going to do to set this up is how are the Democrats reacting to this? And in elevations of scandal, in elevations, you may ask yourself, dear listener, is it a bigger scandal when you lose 13 service members over a botched withdrawal in Afghanistan or whether you add a journalist to a list that he shouldn't be on?

OK, well, here's what Chuck Schumer had to say about that. Graphic three, please. What I'm talking about is initially his reaction to this scandal. Right. And you'll note at the end, he says every single senator must demand accountability. The Senate must investigate. He's very says every single American is at risk.

Every single American. This is an operation that happened 10 days ago, by the way. It's already done. It's already done. Every single American is at risk. We're at risk. At risk. From this successful operation. From this successful operation. But, you know, you go back in time and Senator Schumer was the majority leader at the time.

He could actually control investigations. Now he can call for things, but he has no real power to do anything. So he's just calling away. Call, call, call. But he has to. But when he was in charge and he could actually do the investigations, Afghanistan happened. The withdrawal happened. We lost 13 Marines. There was chaos everywhere. Remember people hanging off airplanes? The images were just absolutely horrific. What did he have to say about that? Let's put up graphic two. Well, it condemns the terrorism.

Yeah. Condemns the terror terrorism. Dude, more than condemning the terrorism. And this is a classic giveaway in politics. And I love doing this for our listeners and viewers. Whenever a politician has to put up a tweet, they don't want to have to put up. They always do a screenshot of a statement. Yeah. And that statement will always include these words.

I will continue to monitor the situation. As if the people of Afghanistan or our troops in the field are at all satisfied or comforted. Chuck's monitoring it. Oh, Chuck's on it? He's monitoring it. Oh, I didn't know that Chuck was on it. It's being monitored. And notice, zero call for him for any investigation. Zero. When there's zero. The majority leader in a position to actually execute that. Zero call for it.

So we thought, like, okay, maybe that was just day one. He wanted to find out more facts about it. Do you realize in his entire X timeline, this is the one and only time that he has ever addressed Afghanistan? Are you serious? So maybe he didn't continue monitoring. For you—

There was no monitoring. Yeah. But think about that. You lost 13 American service people. You can make a strong argument, as we have on the Variety program, that the void of leadership internationally was created that day and that the invasion of Russia into Ukraine, the Chinese alliance with Russia, the threat to Taiwan, the Iranian invasion.

emboldened pressure on the region that funded Hezbollah and Hamas. All of that was related to that day. Yes. How many times did he ask to investigate that? Zippo, folks. Zippo. So ask yourself,

Is he concerned about the safety of the American people or is this all politics? Yep. I think it's just him getting out from under the fact that he did that whole Schumer shutdown bullshit and the whole left hates him now. And this is his way of getting back with them. I don't think you're wrong, dude. It's as simple as that. And they don't know what to do because Trump's right track number is higher today than it's ever been in 20 years.

They don't know what to do. And the left solution to this is to, like, fund the Houthis. You know what I mean? His base wants that. They're like, Houthis firing rockets at us? Good. We shouldn't be there ever. We shouldn't do commerce in the world. They had an Iranian operative working in the Biden State Department. Yes, exactly. One of the sharks themselves. Oh, wait. Did they call for an investigation of that? Nope. Nope.

No, I don't remember them doing that. I don't recall. They actually had a Republican guard in the White House, and they're like, no, that's a... But you put somebody on the wrong tax chain, holy shit. Every American's at risk. It's unreal. Every American's at risk. Do you think it's...

For a second, a little bit more dangerous for the American people to have a Republican guard guy that's sitting in the middle of an administration or somebody on the run text message chain of an operation that happened 10 days ago, which, by the way, was a total success.

I mean, it's just it blows the mind. I can't even believe we're having this conversation. So but maybe Chuck Schumer, everybody knows that Chuck Schumer is a total hack. Even the left at this point knows that he's a total. He's like just wears the blue jersey and he's just going to he doesn't believe anything. He's just going to do it. They know it. We know it. Everyone knows. It's why the guy's garbage approval rating is just like it couldn't. I don't know what the floor is, but we're going to find it. We're going to find it shortly. Maybe the other Democrats have a more resolute.

How would somebody like served in Afghanistan, albeit not in a combat role, but they serve. Let's put up Pete Buttigieg. Let's go graphic for first. This is what he has to say about the scandal, quote unquote, that he's talking about now from an operational security perspective. This is the highest level fuck up imaginable. OK. Oh, thanks, Pete. He's very serious. These people cannot keep Americans safe.

Okay, well, that's one perspective. He obviously has a national security background. Somebody who actually served in Afghanistan, believe it or not. It's hard to believe that Pete was ever in Afghanistan. I'm sure he was cloistered. Never went outside the wire. Yeah. Wore a lot of equipment to take pictures in. Never went outside the wire. Yeah, he documented his service very well. Yeah. No question about that. Almost like all of that was really calculated. Yeah. Yeah. This is a guy who, by the way, said he's going to forego a run for the United States Senator for Governor because he's going to run for President in

28. So just keep that in mind. This is the kind of, this is the kind of delusional. This is the kind of like judgment that we're dealing with. So, but he served in Afghanistan. So what did he have to say about that? Let's get graphic five. Not a goddamn thing. Nothing about zero 13 service. His entire X account does not include the word Afghanistan. Yeah.

Think about that. Are you concerned with keeping the American people safe? He says it's the highest fuck up imaginable. You know what I think is a little bit more fucked up? Losing 13 Marines. I think it's a little bit more fucked up, again, than a text scandal of an operation that was entirely successful 10 days ago. That's the thing. You have a successful operation and then you have the administration that he was a part of.

that their absolute horrific mismanagement of a situation led to over a dozen Americans losing their lives. And he thinks that a text is a fuck up.

He should be ashamed of himself. That's just unbelievable. This is all a commentary on, for those of you who have joined us over the last couple of years, the case that we have made to you, which is you've got one party in Washington, D.C., where their entirety of their constituency is the punditry class and the kind of fat cattery around the coasts of both sides of this country.

country, where they sip champagne, they talk about norms, but they could give two shits about anything working class, military, whatever. It doesn't matter to them at all, but they want to make sure that those people are pleased. So their case is entirely made to them. That's what's happening right now, right? You would think...

You would put out a statement on the successful mission in Yemen of a problem that has plagued this country for 15 months. Nope. They didn't say a fucking word about it. Nothing. But when there's a tech scandal, holy crap, the entirety of the American people is in jeopardy, grave jeopardy, and it's happening today.

It is so pundit brain. They're stuck in their own world of what they value and what's important. And it's just like gossipy bullshit. I love doing this show twice a week with you guys. I think I love it the most.

on stuff like this. Me too. I love laughing. I love having fun. We have so much fun on this show, and it's great for you, the listener and the viewer. But I think the most value we add to the discourse when it comes to politics, for you guys, everybody watching, everybody listening...

is help you sift through the bullshit on a story like this and help you understand that the establishment media gets it wrong, and there's too many people in our line of work who feed into that. And you can take it apart very easily. Just like that. Totally. That's exactly right. And you get a little bit of vegetables before you get the dessert. That's sort of like what we've had in the last two administrations. We had a vegetable, and now we have a dessert.

Yes. Yes. Ashbrook. So it leads to our question of the day. By the way, if you like the breakdown here, and this happens to coincide with the question of the day, like and subscribe what you hear. Make sure you send this along to your friends. That's how we can communicate to more people. Otherwise, people are going to watch that evening news shit that you just saw. And the more people that see that, you can see how much brain damage that could cause. Yuck. I mean, holy smokes. You could literally just live in another planet watching that.

When the Yemen strike happened and they're like, judges, judges have ordered Venezuela gang members. And they don't say that. Migrants back to, they say migrants back to California. Just people moving around. It's just, yeah. There's just people moving around. Do we think that people are actively watching broadcast news at 6 and 630 these days? Shockingly. Is it just on at nursing homes where people have no ability to change the channel?

I mean, like... That's the saddest thing I've heard. People are just sitting there like, I really wish I could stand up. I really wish I could change this channel. It's like the only place outside of an airport that people are forced to watch something. Jesus, you just depressed the shit out of me. I know, that is sad. But anyway, our question of the day, if you like and subscribe, feel free to opine. Our question of the day today is...

You know, is this a real story? Is this something that digs in deeper than a D.C. palace intrigue story? You've heard our contention that these guys are all talking to themselves about my norms. And I'm like, look, I don't want to downplay the national security. You don't want to communicate anything that's even close to sensitive.

let alone classified. And I think that's an entirely separate issue, but, but you don't want to do that. I mean, it's always a mistake and they know that. And they've said, they have said as much, the press is all waiting for them to be like, Oh my God, we fucked up so bad. And like here we're throwing ourselves on top of a flaming, you know, bunch of spikes. Like that's what they want, but they've already said as much. And,

And they did basically with President Trump saying, here's the way we're going to work going forward. It's not going to be that. Yeah. Right. So it actually settled the question that they're all worried about. But yet the whole thing continues. And our contention, it looks a lot like palace intrigue, where there's a whole bunch of people in Washington, D.C. and in Manhattan and in the outskirts of L.A. that give them an argument to solidify their view that none of these people are qualified for what they do.

Right. Because they're out there outside the norms. We didn't they didn't work for a 501 C for fail son funded thing by George Soros. So therefore, we don't know. Yeah. I mean, like, look.

I think the most important thing of our show is that we don't do this show just for people who care about DC or the media. Like we do it for our buddies back home. Yeah. Like when, when I think of whether a story is real or whether it's palace intrigue, I'm like, do my buddies back in Indiana care about this? Or like, is my wife going to text me about this?

And they're not. No. They're just not. No. They're just fucking not. Oh, the Signal Channel? No, I don't care. We killed terrorists? Great. Great. Okay. End of story. That's the thing. You know what I did get text messages on?

When we lost 13 Marines in Afghanistan. Yeah. Bingo. And that wasn't worth the time of day for any Democrats or anybody in the media to critically discuss whether that should be investigated. It took until the House Republicans literally took over the chamber for anybody to ask the question of anybody in charge. Nobody got fired. They're talking about a text message chain and they're demanding heads. Yes. Think about the discrepancy in that. Right? I mean, what a disaster. Yeah.

Anyway, when we come back, we're going to get to your comments from last week or from Tuesday, I guess, which is a good one about the activist judges right after this.

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So your comments from Tuesday's episode, recall that that was an episode about the activist judges, the decision making that these guys had made in radical fashion to try to eliminate this administration's ability to deport a Venezuelan gang from the United States. Right. I mean, the initiation of this outfit is murdering somebody on the street. And we're like, no, but did they get due process? Right.

Turn the plane around. We need him back. Are we sure?

that they didn't have... Were they afforded a court-appointed attorney? How many teardrop tattoos do they have? Do they have a legitimate asylum claim? Yeah. Because if they are under duress in any way, turn that plane around and get them back here immediately. Anyway, we asked you what should be done about all of that. You had some great answers. To do that, we always start with a voice. First comment comes from Frank Petit, and Frank writes, among many fundamental problems, this is partly addressed to Andy McCarthy.

is how does one address the condition which the normal process is inadequate? For instance, assume that post 9/11 protections are enforced for Tren de Aragua individuals

A couple years person removal procedure, we can't get rid of them at that pace. Ignoring MS-13, suspicious Chinese, Middle Eastern, et cetera, nationals. This is cloward piven on steroids. Yes. Some smart stuff right there. American society needs to develop a theory of the case that allows us to protect ourselves. Recognize that CP stated that they wanted to destroy the existing society by using its process against itself.

As dangerous as rules for radicals, I saw these MFs on campus in the late 60s, early 70s. They're not necessarily communists. They're totalitarian progressives. Dude, our listeners are the smartest. The intelligence of that comment is so good. By the way, I saw Smug look up when you got to the Cloward-Piven thing. He was like, what's flower penis? Ha ha ha!

Well, if you have flowered penis, you got to go to a doctor. Just put it between two boards. Everything should work out. Sorry. Sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Mom. I'm really sorry. Mrs. Duncan, our profuse apologies. I probably started that. Comment two, Dunks or Unks? This is from John Lucas. Trump should keep doing exactly what he has been doing.

Following the letter of the ruling while avoiding the obvious goal, the judges, a little known fact of the airplane ruling was that the order to turn around was verbal and not in the written decision. That gave Trump some wiggle room and he took it.

Don't break the rules, but don't give an inch. Only Trump can do that effectively. Another insightful comment. Insightful. Thank you, John. All right, Smuggles, what do we got? Comment three comes from Patrick Van Tassel. Patrick writes, here's what we need to do. We need to take a page from the Lust Playbook. Just keep doing the same thing, but call it something kind and marginally related. Yeah.

I love that. And marginally related. That's so good. Like nothing really to have to do with anything, just marginally related. Marginally related. God, great comments today. Good stuff. Remember, you got to like and subscribe. But when you do that, we read all of your stuff and you get a chance. We do read it all. And I would note in the last episode, a lot of people were really mad at Smug for the dog segment. Yeah. Well, I think they don't get us.

Yeah. Like, I welcome you and feel free to like blow us up on the comments. Be mad at us. I actually love when people are mad at us. I think it's hilarious because then there's a debate in the comments about like whatever. But like, just know...

It doesn't matter how dark the topic. We will find a way to laugh at it. We will. It's part of our charm. You either love it or you hate it, but that's us. Okay, I'm going to get right into it. The self-elected, self-appointed new spokesperson for the Democratic Party. She says so herself. Jasmine Crockett. Probably...

Well, one of the more offensive people that I've heard speak in a long time. I mean, everything that she says is just off the freaking wall. Makes AOC look like Mike Mansfield. You know what I mean? Like this is somebody who is just truly off the reservation in every way. Well, she was at one of those, you know, gatherings of high minded folks. I think it was like the equal pride thing or what. I don't know. High minded?

I'm being facetious. But, you know, I mean, it was, you know, whatever the thing with the equal sign is. Oh, human rights campaign. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, that's right. That's where she was speaking. Anyway, she had some thoughts on the governor of her state in clip five. Because we in these hot ass Texas streets, honey. Y'all know we got Governor Hot Wheels down there. Come on now. About his mask, honey. So, so.

Human rights campaign. Human rights campaign. Even the audience will be like, wow, what an idiot. The human rights, so it's human rights, right? That includes disabled people. Yeah, the guy in the wheelchair. Yeah, so what they're talking about is Governor Abbott. And Governor Abbott, as you well know, was paralyzed in a tragic accident and has been in a wheelchair. She calls him Hot Wheels.

obviously that provoked some kind of a response, including from her congressional colleagues who wanted to censure her basically for it. But people across Texas were just like completely pissed. Remember this guy's super popular in Texas. He's a great governor and everybody knows he's a great governor. So this like met some resistance. Well, she was concerned about that. I get, even for Jasmine Crockett, this reached a level of which you have to kind of like distance yourself. Her apology is one of the funniest things you will read in a long time.

Put up graphic six, please. I wasn't thinking about the governor's condition. Come on. Condition. Condition. I was thinking about the planes, trains, and automobiles he used to transfer migrants into communities led by black mayors. Here we go. Here we go. Deliberately stoking tension and fear among the most vulnerable. There we go.

Literally, the next line I said was a hot-ass mess referencing his terrible policies. I could read the rest of it, but it would be a waste of your time and mine. You got the gist of it. Okay, so nobody colloquially calls somebody in a wheelchair hot-wheelsome.

Hot Wheels, without knowing exactly what it is that they're doing. She's like, no, I was talking about planes. You know, the ones that just fly on wheels. Like, you know, Hot Wheels. Her excuse is such garbage and an obvious lie. An obvious lie. So some good people. I think the people at Free Beacon did a little digging on the old social medias about her and Hot Wheels and all these things. So Graphic Six we have here.

This is on her Facebook page. Yes. And a reply, a reply to one of the things that she said about Abbott years ago, years ago in 2021. So this is four years ago. Somebody called him Hot Wheels is something else. Who liked it?

Jasmine Crockett. One like. So it can't be about... One like! One like, it was from her. It can't be about Abbott and her excuse of, you know, sending migrants...

Her lie is now completely apparent. Right. And she is, you know, I'm guessing too much to Schumer's chagrin, probably AOC's because AOC misses the spotlight. She's the head of the Dems. Right. It's just like her preamble where she's like, I'm out in these streets at a thousand dollar a plate dinner at the Human Rights Convention. Yeah. I mean, get out of here. She's just phony and a horrible person. I, for one, encourage it. I think this is terrific.

I think she should be the voice of the Democratic Party. At very least, she is speaking horribly offensive things in totally authentic terms where the American people, whether you're in Texas or the Midwest or everything else, know exactly what it is that she thinks of you.

She says it. Right? She doesn't think that you deserve to keep any of your own money. She thinks that you ought to have DEI policies through the moon that have no merit-based hiring or academics or anything else. Like, she just tells you. She's trying to drive that, like...

You know, 80 percent higher and higher for Republicans. So, yeah. But like, to be honest with you, there's not a dime's worth of difference between her view and Chuck Schumer's. He just won't tell you. Yeah. Right. Until he has to get boxed in. And then he's like, I don't believe in all that stuff. And then the left's like, oh, my God, you told us you did believe in all that stuff.

And like she just says it. Transparent. I kind of like it. I do too. I mean, I like that she embraces that she's a bad person. You know what I mean? Yeah. And like I like that her apology, fake apology, I know I'm lying apology, is I'm going to use this fake apology, I know I'm lying apology to also get a lot more messaging points in about Greg Abbott. I'm going to expound upon my thoughts. I'm going to expound upon it. Yeah.

I'm a liar. I'm a terrible person, but also. You know what I mean? It's like you are such a piece of shit. Oh, it's so good. Keep it coming, Jasmine. You're doing a hell of a job. Yeah. Hack madness.

Yeah, there we are. Yeah, great music. Yeah, that's a good mood. I love it. Yeah. We're through round one of the most esteemed tournament in all of journalism to crown the biggest hack in all of politics. Well, it's not been a terrible surprise. The one seed's doing extremely well. A lot of margins there. First round blowouts, you know, much like the NCAA first round blowout. Couple of really intriguing matchups there.

Some of which we talked about on the show. But Smug, what do we got here? What's happening? So first off, folks, Hack Madness, if you are new here, it's our annual tournament of who's the worst hack in journalism. Go to my ex-account at ComfortablySmug to vote. I have it pinned right at the top. And we appreciate the hundreds of thousands of votes that have already come through in the first round. But one of the more notable ones, can I get graphic eight?

This was a matchup between married couple Susan Glasser and Peter Baker of the New York Times. 49.5%, 50.5%. Peter Baker took that one. The house divided. The house divided. You can only imagine what the dinner table looks like with a neck and neck battle like that. Now, so Baker ultimately took the deal, huh? Yeah.

By a hair, but it's amazing. Maybe it's because his daily byline. It's amazing. I think he demonstrated that he's the head of that marriage. Oh, my God, Jared. You are creating a problem, sir. Once again, he's a winner. You are creating a huge problem.

So also, I would say that this bracket was pretty chalk. It was pretty chalk. Yeah, it was pretty, you know, pretty chalk. I mean, Katie Turr had an upset. Yeah. Which was nice to see. Well, the TV people always have a net advantage, but sometimes they're a lower profile like Katie Turr. You heard a lot about her last year. You heard a ton about her the year before that. Not a lot this year. So she was seated a lot lower, but she still has a profile that the people don't forget. But.

Jonathan Capehart had some issues with his seed at number two. It was actually a closer battle than I thought, but I thought the one that was really interesting, and we actually previewed this a little bit in our Hack Madness announcement show. Eugene Daniels, he has some issues too. Can we put up graphic number nine, please? Yeah, 64%.

For a number one seed? That's the lowest number one seed performance. Yeah, yeah. For sure. In that round, you would expect a number one seed to just blow it out, right? Like all of our other number one seeds,

blew it out and and he he might be a little weak it might be weak you know i mean look he's the number one c because he richly earned it this year he was the head of the white house correspondence association he uh is a laughable uh communicator on msnbc where he now owns his own show uh because as mug said he attacked him for joy and read and then he took a show on the night like this guy

I mean, he's got all the qualifications to be a number one seed, but he's not a household name. I think that's exactly right here. You have some contestants who come in and they're so focused on their inside game, they lose sight of everything else. And that's why somebody like Margaret Brennan, who is just rocked,

running away with it and I think will be a tough competitor down to the end. I think that's why she's in a different place than Eugene. The network anchors are having a moment. Usually they get a little soft in the first and second round. First round, we're talking like 90s. Whether you're talking about Noro, Donald, you know, Stephanopoulos, just he had a big upset.

I mean, there's a lot going on here. I also got to call out graphic number 10. This is Crystal and Joy Behar. This is the one we knew was going to be a huge battle. Yeah. I mean, you don't really... I thought Behar at 10...

Yeah.

Yeah. And Crystal's the other guy who got through. But like Tim Miller went down. These guys, a lot of these other guys just went down. And I think it's great for you to bring that up because I think it speaks to the whole like never Trump thing. Yeah. Now they are basically just trying to claw for any sort of relevance.

For the most part, a lot of them have gone. Yeah, people don't know who they are. Yeah, they're gone. People don't know who they are. But they don't always play with the same enthusiasm that Crystal plays with. I mean, he's quote tweeting Bernie Sanders rallies saying, yes, this is what our country needs. And this is a guy who is ostensibly a conservative magazine publisher. Yeah.

And now he's a Bernie Sanders tweeter. Incredible. But listen, we had thousands of you submit brackets. We have hundreds of thousands of you who have voted in this tournament. Do not stop now. Don't stop. It gets more intriguing as we go. These matchups are getting tighter. I got a call out who is currently leading our public bracket for Hack Madness. Oh, yeah. We have two people here. Curious25019122.

And Blair Lizer, yeah, 64 points. That's not my wife. No. I just wanted to clarify. 64, wow. 64. Wait, so that's a perfect one? Yeah, so they have perfect brackets. Cool. Wow. We have an internal bracket amongst us four. What are the results? I'm in first place at 59. Okay. Okay.

What? Why, he's the guy that reports results. He's like, oh, and I'm winning. Just because. Thankless job of putting in all the fucking results for this whole fucking bracket.

Do you know this bullshit is hard? He did it all while sewing your merchandise. Unbelievable. I'm sorry, Michael. Put a quarter in his back. I'm sorry, Michael. It's just unbelievable. I didn't mean to wind you up. I'm in the back end of Common Ninja putting in the winner of all of these matchups.

And you're attacking me. With his thimble on. With my thimble on. Is that why these merch deliveries aren't going out on time? Okay, so I'm in at 59. Ashbrook and Smug both have 55. Oh, I'm dragging? You're at 51, yeah. Oh, wow, that's a big difference. It always, you know...

It always flips and changes. Yeah. Well, when you get to the lead eight and the final four, if you get that part right, you really are... Yeah, because the playing game was worth one point. The first round was worth two. The next round's worth four, then six. It's the compounding effect. Right. I have a problem with this that I don't have with the March Madness bracket. In March Madness, I try to go total dispassionate, right? There's a team I like or whatever. I'm like, nah, they're probably going to lose.

You know, and I don't root with my heart. I have a problem with that in Hack Madness. You know what I mean? Like, I really wanted S.V. Date to advance. Yeah. Guys, it's just like a little engine that could down there. Yeah. You know, he was facing off a big matchup, but he richly earned the right to get to the second round. No, didn't get there. Yeah. That's why I don't do as well. He's your Drake. Yeah.

Yeah. You know? Yeah. He's your Crichton. Yeah. It's like, these boys can play. Yeah. A Loyola Marymount. Yeah.

You know, I just wanted a little something to root for. UMBC. Nope, nope. The big steamrolling Margaret Brennan comes on through. Crushes. Dude, she is. She looks very tough. And remember, it all comes down to you folks voting. Round two is going to be up soon. By the time you're hearing this, it'll be up. So go to my profile on X and vote. Do it and do it now. Remember, like and subscribe. And while you're there, leave a comment to today's question of the day.

which is, is this whole thing with Signal and the attack on the Houthis, is that a real story that you think people actually care about, or is that DC Palace intrigue? You tell us. We'll read all of what you have to say on next Tuesday.

And with that, fellas, I think we did it. I think so. Absolute banger of an episode. Gentlemen, again, thank you so much to the Minions. Remember, like and subscribe and share the show. We love seeing our numbers go up. So until next time, Minions, keep the faith, hold the line, and own the libs. We'll see you Tuesday. Stay ruthless.

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