MAGA, ISIS, and the U.S. Election
If there’s one thing fascists love it’s using the threat of terrorism to rile up their base. The largest terrorist attack in Moscow in decades signals a resurgent ISIS, one that Trump and his MAGA cult will no doubt campaign off of, to “scare out” the vote. (The independent voter needed to win close states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin may not care about Netanyahu’s terrorism, only that committed by brown people). How will Trump and his longtime crime-partner Paul Manafort, rumored to officially join the campaign soon (Manafort never left!), capitalize off the growing terror threats, worsened by Trump and Putin ally Netanyahu and his genocidal war to cling to power?
In this week’s Gaslit Nation, Russian mafia expert Olga Lautman and analyst Monique Camarra of the Kremlin File podcast join Andrea to discuss the Crocus theater attack in Moscow and why Russia is a favorite target of ISIS, the latest reporting on the Kremlin's Havana Syndrome electronic warfare that has attacked around 1,500 people serving in the U.S. government and their families, and whether Trump will unleash violence if he loses, or wins.
Our bonus episode this week features a debate among Gaslit Nation and Kremlin File over MAGA Ken doll Mike Johnson. Is he actually serious about bringing Ukraine aide up for a vote, or is he stringing us along as ammunition runs dangerously low and more Russian missiles make it through? As Congress comes back into session next week, we discuss all the ways they could actually do something to stop Russia’s genocide in Ukraine–a laboratory for Russian aggression that eventually reaches us. Be sure to apply pressure by calling your representatives in Congress, and use this handy tool made by a Gaslit Nation listener to contact your rep today: https://helpukrainewin.com/
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Show Notes:
How ISIS has Europe and the US in sights after deadly Moscow attack
New in SpyWeek CIA and Moscow terror, Havana Syndrome, rogue diplomat Ric Grenell, Paul Manafort’s return, a creepy Army Psyops recruiting ad & more
https://www.spytalk.co/p/new-in-spyweek-7e9
Trump may enlist Paul Manafort, who was criticized for Russia ties The former campaign manager was pardoned by Trump for bank and tax fraud convictions and accusations he hid millions he made consulting for pro-Russian Ukrainian politicians
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/03/18/trump-manafort-2024-campaign/
Feds seek $3M from Paul Manafort over failing to disclose offshore accounts A civil lawsuit signals the Justice Department views penalties as not covered by President Donald Trump’s pardon of his former adviser.
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/04/28/paul-manafort-trump-lawsuit-00028717
What to know about Havana Syndrome after investigation links illness to Russia
https://www.axios.com/2024/04/01/havana-syndrome-russia-attacks-us-officials
How the conflict between Hamas and Israel fuels terror threats in the West
https://www.icct.nl/publication/how-conflict-between-hamas-and-israel-fuels-terror-threats-west
Andrea Chalupa (00:10.83)
Welcome to Gaslit Nation. I am your host, Andrea Chalupa, a journalist and filmmaker and the writer and producer of the journalistic thriller, Mr. Jones, about Stalin's genocide famine in Ukraine, which Putin, a genocide that Putin is now carrying out today, 90 years after Stalin's original crime. And just a reminder to our Gaslit Nation listeners, we are having the Make Art Workshop, the Business Side of Things.
April 11, 7 p .m. Eastern, only for our subscribers at the TrueTar level and higher on Patreon. That is going to be where I share my strategies, my brilliant business management skills on how I got Mr. Jones made with zero Hollywood connections and just being generally socially awkward and having a vicious, Gremlin' voice of doubt inside my head at all times.
So if you wanna learn the business side of things, of making art and getting your voice out in the world, come to that. That's April 11, 7 p .m. Eastern. And you can get your ticket for that event by signing up at the Truth -to -Level, the $5 a month level or higher on patreon .com forward slash gaslit. That's patreon .com forward slash gaslit. Thank you to everyone who supports the show. So there's a lot to talk about. Joining me are the ladies of the Kremlin File Podcast, an essential podcast.
Gaslight Nation's own audio engineer listens to it religiously. So we're all in the same family here. And this week we are going to be covering the Crocus Theater attack and what it means for US foreign policy as well as Trump's MAGA cult. Then we're going to get into the latest reporting on 60 Minutes on Havana syndrome and taking you back into that issue, which we've long covered here on Gaslight Nation.
And then where is the Ukraine aid from Congress and what is Kremlin asset Mike Judge? I was thinking of of idiocracy. What is Mike Johnson up to there? And if we have time, we may have to save it for later bonus episodes. We'll be looking at Paul Manafort being back on the Trump campaign and Macron's tough talk on Russia continued and the European response to the Kremlin's global war against all of us, no matter where we live. And all right, so Olga.
Andrea Chalupa (02:30.734)
Lotman, Russian mafia expert and Monique Camara, a brilliant analyst based in Italy. Welcome back to Gaslight Nation, the wind beneath my wings. Hello. Hi, Andrea. Thanks. All right, you two. There's lots to cover here. I'm going to just do a really quick rundown on the March 22nd terrorist attack. There was a theater in Moscow, the Crocus Theater, the classic Russian rock band, a band that means a lot to the average Russian picnic.
It goes without saying that they're banned from Ukraine because they performed in Russian occupied Crimea. They were set to play the first of two sold out shows when ISIS K terrorists opened fire on the theater, killing over 140 people. There were horrible reports of people being slaughtered in stairwells of parents vainly trying to protect their kids who were gunned down out of theseveral terrorists that were arrested. They all so far came from Tajikistan, a central Asian republic that has a strong man at the helm that's backed by Russia. Russia itself has long been a target of ISIS. Around 10 years ago, a ISIS leader declared war on Russia, really emphasized Russia as a target. Some of the motivation that ISIS has in going after Russia include
Russia's scorched earth wars against Chechnya, which had a really large Muslim population. There are two wars that Russia committed there, just really just leveling the ground. Horrible human rights, war crimes that were carried out against Chechens, which was our very first warning sign of where things were going to be headed under a post -Soviet Russia. And then of course, Russia's slaughter in Syria and it's predominantly Muslim population there, as well as ISIS seeing Russia as backing Russian puppets, Russian strongmen across Central Asian republics. And it must be noted that migrants from Central Asia that do go to Russia to work, there's harassment videos that the average Russian likes to film, harassing, beating up.
Andrea Chalupa (04:53.358)
migrants from Central Asia and those videos go viral and they're like snuff films for some Russians over there. So it's not like these migrants really enjoy a comfortable safe life in Russia. There's been this long standing tension there. What needs to be noted, of course, is that the US in its right to inform whatever you call it had notified in advance Russian authorities that ISIS was planning something for Moscow. There were specific.
details in this warning, this warning was made public. There's a public record of it. And at the time, Russian authorities dismissed it as the US just trying to spook and warmonger or whatever. And of course, these warnings came to pass. It should be noted that Russian authorities have been really busy using sort of counter -terrorism tactics on its own population, on anybody who dares to protest the war in Ukraine.
and so on, or to demand a better future in Russia. There was a heartbreaking account by one Russian dissident who's based now in Lithuania, where she runs a Russian language YouTube account to try to get news out to a Russian speaking audience back home. She had to flee Russia when she was put on parole after being arrested for organizing protests in her town, just demanding better services for her daughter who was in critical care.
and the Ministry of Health or whatever wasn't getting the medicine, wasn't getting the services that our daughter needed to stay alive. And so Russian authorities' reaction to this was to put a surveillance camera in her central air unit above her bed and send her photographs of her sleeping in bed to let them know that they're watching her. And then they of course arrested her and put her in prison and her daughter was then neglected and died.
And so when this woman was finally released from prison, she fled to Lithuania and continues her work there under great threat of the Russian regime. So all of this, the Krokosetar attack as a reminder that Putin's contract, the KGB dictatorship's contract with the people of Russia, this sort of mythology that they will keep the average Russian safe. They will protect them from the mess.
Andrea Chalupa (07:05.966)
of democracy that they experienced in the so -called 1990, car bomb 1990s in Russia, where things were so destabilized, rampant, violence across Russia and economic instability and poverty, but also a time of potential and hope for many. So that was sort of the experiment with, short -lived experiment with democracy that Russians underwent. And the social contract between the Kremlin and the average Russian,
in St. Petersburg and Moscow, not in the occupied ethnic republics, but the average white Russian is, we'll keep you safe, we'll pump you full of that easy, dirty, corrupt Russian cash, and in exchange, you just keep your head down and live your life and let us rule and enrich ourselves. But in recent years, that contract, of course, is fraying as more and more Russians are getting shoved into Putin's meat grinder in Ukraine and now this terrorist attack.
So I'm going to turn it over to Olga and Monique to give their thoughts on this and where they think things are headed. And I have more to say on the U .S. foreign policy implications as well as where it pertains to Trump's MAGA cult. First of all, the first warning sign where the FSBN, Putin and, you know, the whole Chukotky was headed was in 1999 when Putin and Petrushev participated in blowing up buildings.
to kill their own civilians. They are very well known for organizing terrorist attacks. Russians have never been spared from this. And that led to the Second Chechen War that we saw basically the carpet bombing of Grozny and everything there. So frankly, and I'm pretty sure that all Western intelligence agencies at the time knew that it was FSB and Petrushev at the helm of FSB and Putin.
who were responsible because of Novaya Gazeta, you know, who was doing amazing work documenting this. Sure. And then at the same time, Litvinenko, who had fled Russia, who was former FSB and had, you know, details on it, which eventually came out, you know, via his interviews in a book before he was poisoned with polonium in London, then we should have known. So it's not beyond Russia to commit these terrorist attacks.
Olga Lautman (09:29.774)
I mean, they have done it, they're known for it, they've used terrorism domestically in the Soviet Union, they've partnered with terrorist organizations. Some of their best partners are terrorist organizations, both from Soviet days to modern Russia. And I mean, even with organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah and ISIS and, you know, terrorist organizations across Africa. I mean, they work hand in hand.
with them when the case needs to be. So with this said, the Krokus attack, interestingly, from what it looks like, Russia started laying the groundwork for it a year ago. We don't know if they did it or if they just looked the other way to allow it to happen. But at a minimum, what we do know is that one year ago in February of 23, the SVR head, Nourishkin,
came out with a very bizarre evidence that he had seen that the United States and UK are recruiting ISIS and al Qaeda members to send to Ukraine, then to push through into Russia to conduct terrorist attacks on Russian soil. So this was one year ago. And then over the past year, they kind of, you know, it came through the FSB head and continued, you know, here and there surfacing until sure enough, this is what happened.
The US did warn that there was going to be an attack and interestingly, the US provided the warning then followed by the UK and then several other countries. I believe it was March 7th, um, late afternoon. This warning came out. Interestingly, in the morning, the breaking news when I was, when I checked overnight as I was going to sleep was that Russia had arrested.
several ISIS -K members for supposedly planning to blow up a synagogue. And we've seen, you know, like over the past several months in like in Gushetia, we've seen in Dagestan and, you know, several other regions, we have seen Russia, you know, supposedly the local FSB fighting, they call it locals who allegedly are connected to ISIS -K.
Monique Camarra (11:54.158)
And even in the past week, there were two judges in Ingushetia who got arrested for allegedly being involved with or in support of ISIS -K. So I mean, this is something that's well known. So that's at a minimum Russia didn't know about this. I mean, we can go, there's not enough evidence right now to know what exactly happened. And it will take time. The evidence will come out.
But at this moment, there isn't enough evidence except to know that Russia knew the attack was coming. Russian security forces all disappeared, almost like during one Prigozhin was carrying out his mutiny. You had the police stations who were frankly not that far away within two minute car drive, nowhere to be seen. You had, you know, various agencies within the vicinity.
who just didn't appear for about an hour and you had 20 minutes of these terrorists, you know, carrying out this attack freely. And then, and they were able to get away. Now, Moscow is one of the most heavily surveilled cities there is. I mean, there literally is a camera everywhere. The fact that these people were able to go all the way to near Bryansk,
You know, Russia, of course, jumped in and said, oh, they were heading back to Ukraine. First of all, where they were stopped, it was at a crossroad where you can take one highway to Ukraine, the other highway to Belarus. And Belarusian officials came out and said, oh, we are securing our borders to stop the terrorists from coming in. So basically the whole story of what.
the FSB and what, you know, various agencies inside of Russia have been saying, the National Security Council, the Kremlin, everything has holes in it. And when there are so many holes, obviously there's something there because, you know, if you legitimately investigate something, you don't have arrest immediately. You don't have, you know, all these answers before you even, you know, when you just begin the investigation. You know what I mean?
Olga Lautman (14:08.686)
And this is what happened. It's like Russia already had a story scattered. They were testing it out via propaganda channels literally minutes after the attack that it was Ukraine and that it's America and it's the UK and NATO anyway. So they were testing different versions out. And I mean, with Russia, the reason you see so many versions is because they like to confuse the situation. I mean, this has happened, you know,
uh, with the 99 apartment building bombings with the Vezlin hostage situation, frankly with anything, they always put so many versions out that, you know, it's difficult to get to the point of what it is. And again, eventually there will be answers just right now. There's just a whole fog of confusion. Also, let me remind you that for Russia, it's advantageous to have a terrorist attack because.
Look, everyone has been talking about, oh, they could use it for mobilization. First of all, Putin can order mobilization of everyone. They don't need a terrorist attack for that. He could just sign the paper and say, you have to go. What is anyone going to do? I mean, people come out with a piece of paper blank and get arrested. So they're not going to go and fight the Kremlin. If anything, they all attempt to flee Russia or they go to the front.
But for him it's advantageous because also there's a few other things happening inside of Russia, like Russia, you know, over the past few years and now escalating an official nationalization of companies. And there are things enough to distract from what Putin's whatever fifth term is and what's coming down the pipeline. So what better way than to have people busy inside with terrorist attacks and then shortly after the Krokus attack.
You had literally days of every single shopping center in Moscow and and St. Petersburg being emptied out because people are calling in bomb threats. And there's been a lot of mining threats over the past few weeks. And just to remind you to finish off in 19, 2019, I believe it was 19 when there were actual protests building across the country.
Monique Camarra (16:33.006)
Russia, the Kremlin was getting scared. You know, they felt very uncomfortable with these protests building because it wasn't just, you know, the Moscow and St. Petersburg, but it was happening across the country, all the way to the Far East. And at that time, coincidentally, they happened to have a terrorist attack in the St. Petersburg station. I remember following it very closely. And I remember like, oh, look how convenient. Sure enough. And even writing.
and saying, oh, now comes the lockdown that people can't gather because that's, you know, the natural thing for the Kremlin to do. Sure enough, after this terrorist attack, they did, you know, enforce measures that due to the threat of terrorism, people can no longer gather in crowds over national security risks. So, I mean, it played very well into them. And again, it's playing very well on top of building, you know,
this you know attempted blame on Ukraine that Ukraine is behind it to kind of build this anger within the Russian population who frankly could care less you know either way you have a huge faction of Russians who do support the war and think Ukraine is not enough and you know they should go and take everything including Italy and France and Germany and everywhere that they can get their hands on.
And then you have another faction who's just a political and they just don't want to know nothing. They don't care. They stick their head in the sand, you know, go to work, try to like whatever, feed their families. They don't want to know nothing. And here is, you know, an attempt also to build that outrage and the anger. And we've seen Russia use these tactics in the West because every time they want to confuse, you know, situation or.
or create more tensions within a country, they resort to disinformation operations and other types of operations within these countries in order to stoke hatred and fear and anger and, you know, all the worst qualities to get people occupied. So we will see what the final outcome of this when the evidence comes out. And again, it will come out because FSB.
Like everything else, you know, they will sell this information to someone, to somebody really happened. And we'll see where it goes from there. But as far as the read now, this is basically it.
Andrea Chalupa
I want to make the point that so ISIS K ISIS is a real threat. It's a resilient terrorist organization. France, which is hosting the Olympics this summer is on high alert. You've soldiers now.
with the rifles out patrolling tourist hotspots in France now. And obviously the Olympics are going to be a big target this summer as well as other targets across Europe. There was, for instance, a ISIS attack planned against the Swedish parliament that was stopped, prevented, and arrests were made there. It's not just Europe that they have their eyes on in their growing global terrorist war. It's also Iran. There was a big
ISIS attack in Iran in January of this year where 90 or so people were killed and 100 plus more were injured. So ISIS has regrouped their back. They are growing their numbers in places like Afghanistan. U .S. national security warned when Netanyahu and his band of terrorists that have hijacked Israel's government and the Netanyahu is
clinging to his forever war and his latest coup to stay in power, US national security analysts were warning that having this forever war in Gaza against Palestinians was going to be a international security threat and lead to further radicalization. So ISIS can really recruit off of this and so on. And so my big concern, one of the first things that came to mind after this attack, ISIS attack, was how
Russia in recent history has very much used ISIS opportunistically to try to force alliance, an easy alliance, but an alliance with the West to together fight ISIS. And what I could see Donald Trump doing, especially if there's more ISIS attacks, including in European capitals, I could see Trump campaigning off of this. I could see,
Andrea Chalupa (21:20.27)
I could see Trump saying that, you know, like, we need to be allies with Russia. We need to join with Russia to fight ISIS, fight this global threat. Because one thing that Americans, especially the voters that are needed, these independent voters in these very close swing states, one thing that really gets to them are brown people. And so when you have brown terrorists as opposed to white terrorists like Netanyahu, that when you're a brown terrorist, that will really drive out that vote that's needed.
Right? And so Trump's going to be the tough on terror guy. That's what worries me is that his Maga colt is going to get really riled up this election over a strong resurgent ISIS threat. We saw this happening in Obama's foreign policy where the Obama team made the argument that they had to work side by side with Russia on the Iran deal to negotiate that because Russia was a close ally of Iran and also in Syria and Iraq and combating ISIS together. And as a result,
You had Russia, the knifing the US in the chest with its attack on our democracy in 2016 to bring their long time asset, Donald Trump, to power with the help of their long time operative, Paul Manafort. So my worry is that Trump's going to use this opportunistically and some of the doves or some of the shit for brain folks inside the US foreign policy establishment are going to use this to give Russia way
too much leeway in working with the West on combating ISIS when Russia cannot be trusted. What are your thoughts on that? I thought when you said they were using them advantageously, I thought you meant like during the 16, 17 elections in Europe where there were terrorist attacks as, as, hey, calling, you know, they were propping up the far right movements. We are going to have the same exact repeat.
And again, as I said before, Russia is one of the biggest supporters of terrorist organizations. They are a terrorist state. They fund terrorist organizations. And here I would, you know, they I mean, I don't think I could be wrong. I don't think Europe and US will fall for working with Russia as they are committing a genocide and as NATO is on high alert of Russia attacking a NATO country.
Olga Lautman (23:45.358)
So I don't see this happening. Um, you know, as far as what Trump, I mean, has 30 % of the base, you know, they believe whatever he sells them for other people, I mean, they will look at the fact like, why would we partner with Russia to combat ISIS when Russia is committing a genocide in Ukraine? I mean, Russia is striking Ukrainian infrastructure. Russia is, you know,
massacring Ukrainians in occupied health territory. I mean, we hear so many atrocities coming out. So I don't see this. I see Trump doing this. I warned last year that Trump may even use coordinate, well, not coordinate directly, but that Russia will push through terrorists through our border because they have operations on the Mexican border and you know, and they're very.
have a lot of influence in Nicaragua and Ecuador and Argentina and Venezuela, which Maduro is allegedly going there soon to Russia to sit down with Putin. I did warn that Russia can take advantage of what's happening in the border, weaponize it and push the real terrorists here to potentially set off a series of attacks on US soil.
Frighteningly enough a few months ago Trump repeated the same exact thing that I he is confident that we're gonna have one major terrorist attack in the US or a series of them So there is I don't think they're directly coordinating this but I do think Russia would take advantage and we have seen Russia doing this with the weaponization in
with the Belarusian border and with the weaponization with the Finland border. The Finns closed the border off, you know, instantly. They weren't having any of that. Whereas in Belarus, it became, you know, quite a bigger thing. And they were flying, you know, hey, call it people from the Middle East, from Africa, flooding Belarus's border to try to push them through Poland. And at the same time, there were people within the Belarusian opposition.
Olga Lautman (26:04.366)
who said that Russia was training terrorists to push through in this wave of migrants so they can be planted in European capitals to set off terrorist attacks at Russia's choosing. So, I mean, again, like I said, when it comes to Russia and terrorism, it's hand in hand. Yeah. Well, the thing that I'm listening to, now, Andrea and Olga, all your comments, and the one thing that has...
that really, like I underlined as I'm sitting here listening, I'm taking little notes and it's the atmosphere of fear that is being built and stoked and nurtured in Europe just before elections in June in the United States. I mean, you have Trump who publishes a photograph of Biden gagged and bound. I mean, what is that? That's terror, if you ask me. I can't believe, you know, that, uh,
I mean, I can believe it. Let's just put it that way. But the use of immigrants, the promise of violence, these are things that fall right into all of the narratives that are here that are being really, really beefed up. Like you take the two big ones, especially after all of the disinformation that came out about the Crocus City Hall massacre.
that it was the CIA, the CIA and Ukraine and UK, okay, that kind of thing. Basically, right away what I saw is all of the narratives going towards, okay, so it's the US and NATO that won a third world war. I mean, they automatically, it was just absolutely insane to see that kind of connection in less than an hour.
Okay. As Olga had pointed out with that crazy, insane Medvedev and Bondarev that came out just a few minutes afterwards, but it is this atmosphere of fear that will be, you know, and it'll go to a very, very high degree. I think we're just starting, which is kind of scary. That's really, really, really, really scary. Russia is, looks to be preparing more terrorist attacks because now you have the Patrushev, the king of, you know,
Olga Lautman (28:24.782)
carrying out terrorist attacks on Russian citizens when he was head of FSB and blew up the apartment buildings. Now you have him warning that NATO is training mercenaries to send into Russia to carry out more terrorist attacks. Frankly, to me, this is all the same shit that they've been repeating since the Soviet Union. They always created this bogeyman West, you know, and NATO and whatnot in order to try to, you know,
convince their people, but frankly, the interesting part is that their people, whatever Russia says, their people are really not going to care. I mean, you have, like I said, a huge part of Russia who are imperialist and, you know, want to go back to the great Russian empire. And then you have a percentage of people who just are like, they don't care. Yeah. I call them sheep. Oh, you know, in Russian off.
because they just are led to wherever and just, you know, kind of mind their business and don't get involved in our a political and don't want to know what's happening anywhere. And that's it. And that's that. So it's interesting. They're selling this inside again to create this fear. But the thing is that I don't know how much of a difference it's going to make because what is it going to convince Russians with that? The Kremlin needs to.
start a war in Ukraine as, you know, as as revenge. I mean, they're doing that to eliminate infrastructure across the whole country and leave all Ukrainian cities in the dark. They are doing that to what cut out tongues of Ukrainians who refuse to show loyalty to Russia to rape women and children. They did all of that. So I don't see where the only thing I will say that I've been monitoring. And again, this could be.
something to keep an eye on is there's been more chatter over the past two weeks of the use of biological chemical weapons. Difficult, you're not going to have a mass effect. You can cause terrorist from terrorism, the fear of an attack like this. But as far as a localized effect, I mean, as far as a far wide effect across Ukraine to murder every Ukrainian, it's difficult using a biological weapon. But there has been more.
Olga Lautman (30:46.702)
a sharp turn towards Russia's propagandists and politicians talking about using chemical weapons, using biological weapons, even tactical nuclear weapons, because they feel they need to preserve all the landmarks in Ukraine, but they need to eliminate, as they call Ukrainians, biological matter, which is now what Ukrainians are.
No, not the sanitary. That's different. They're now talking about all key of hierarchy of everywhere that they just need to eliminate Ukrainians as biological matter. They're referring. I know I meant I meant all over Ukraine. I meant all over you. Yeah. So that's the only I didn't mean just the eastern part. I meant all over. Yeah. So that's the only chatter I've seen is, you know, a more sharp move towards that towards just like.
basically committing a mass mass genocide. Again, Russia has been trying to do this. They haven't been successful. Ukrainians are resilient. They will fight and fight and fight to protect the country and to protect their future. But it's just, you know, more so that we need weapons like now, yesterday, before yesterday. So I want to touch on Monique's point about this climate of violence.
If Donald Trump wins the 2024 election, there's going to be violence. If Donald Trump loses the 2024 election, there's going to be violence. And it's coming from his cult of violence, MAGA. It was Trump supporters that wanted to kidnap and hogtie and rape and assault and torture Gretchen Whitmer, the popular Democratic governor of Michigan.
And then they repeated this imagery again, Trump did with the president of the United States hogtied in the back of a pickup truck. That is a trombone dog whistle to his Maga cult of violence to inflict assassination attempts on public officials, large and small. Because if his Maga cult members can't get to Biden, maybe they can get to their governor.
Andrea Chalupa (33:10.766)
Maybe they can get to their state representative in their capital. They could drive down to their capital. And you have a state official walking up the capital steps heading into work, and they can try something there. If you look back on the same sort of atmosphere of violence, we had it going into the Brexit vote where a popular female MP, Jo Cox, was murdered by a far -right white terrorist. And that was another heightened atmosphere of violence inflamed.
by Russian disinformation. You had a massive troll bar operation, not to mention a lot of Russian dirty money flowing into that Brexit vote, which was primarily driven by Nigel Farage, who was an open and proud fanboy of Putin. And now we're having a repeat of all this here in the United States. And we're just in early days of this election. So much can happen between now and then. And I do worry about white domestic terrorism here and how, and I do worry about ISIS quite frankly. I have family and friends in Paris, my husband's from Paris, so I worry about the target on their heads with the Olympics coming up there. And I worry about ISIS escalating their attacks. I worry about the Maga cult jumping on that to further their activity, their terrorism against us and really sort of getting inflamed over that and driving out the independent voters that are needed to win and what's going to be an extremely nail -biter close election in this electoral college.
Monique Camarra
Especially in the last, I don't know how long, because I don't really follow all of Trump's rallies. But what I do see and have seen in the past few months, almost a religious quality about, you know, his followers, the MAGA cult has really taken on a religious spin. And that's extremely
extremely dangerous because if you think that you're doing this for God, you will commit violence under that excuse, with that justification. I saw a reportage not long ago. I mean, if we remember that first time, I mean, besides all of those prayer meetings with all those people around him, and that's been amplified now, that's been extended even more. And then you had the whole Bible, right, in front of
Monique Cam (35:32.942)
He was holding up a Bible. I remember that. So this is really, really, really concerning when you see this kind of thing. Because once you get religious, OK, and I'm talking about not even religious is not even the right word. Once you start weaponizing religion for this kind of violence, it's very difficult. We see it right in radical and radical religions all over the world. OK, not just Islam, but their Islamist, their other.
Okay, as well that take on all right, the the religious mental to kill people. So that's that's very concerning. Very, very concerning. Yeah, I mean, they're authoritarians, strong men want to be strong men, famously, of course, use violence to come to power and stay in power. And that's what Trump is doing about that religious symbolism. And it's it's in the larger far right movement. I mean, out of Texas, a far right hostage state, a Republican hostage state, they're sending a red heifer.
to Israel to be paraded at a famous mosque there to try to claim that it's some long -held doomsday prophecy. And of course you have the American far right playing into this because Trump's core base, white evangelicals, believe in the destruction of Israel as part of their own doomsday prophecy. Globally, we're living in this time of heightened violence driven by these strong men and wannabe strong men.
And it reminds me so much of Orwell's 1984, where Winston Smith is going about his business. He's walking around and there's bombs blowing up around him. And that's just part of the atmosphere of a dystopia is just this casual violence living in this state of violence. And it just becomes so normalized. I agree that we have to be worried. I agree that we obviously every agency is on heightened alert. I will say I am less worried.
now for a mass attack by domestic terrorists than in 2020. Because and a good indicator was because in 2020 everything was under Trump's control, all the agencies. So there, you know, we saw January 6th and how everyone just kind of disappeared, slinked away and the Capitol police were being, you know, left to handle this.
Olga Lautman (37:58.702)
violent terrorists who were beating them, you know, senselessly killed several and whatnot. But a good indicator was when Trump tried to rile his base up for the FBI searches and, you know, everyone was kind of holding their breath to see if the FBI crosses the line and does carries out the searches, you know, in his residence and residences, whether his movement will just like.
go full force. Interestingly enough, what happened is that they started planning. They were planning to attack FBI headquarters across the country. And in the planning, they got so paranoid within their own chats that they thought that, oh yes, this is an FBI setup. That is an FBI setup. And what we got was one sociopath who frankly didn't get the memo and decided to a lone wolf.
decided to go attack an FBI shoot at an FBI station and then ended up getting killed by the National State Police. So I worry more about these loan attacks than more of an organized because I think after January 6th, what the US did very well was to make sure that every single insurrectionist was held accountable, minus Trump. We're still waiting for that. But...
that they were held accountable because guess what? Trump literally, they were his sacrificial lambs. They're all sitting in prison or unemployed with a criminal record. Their life has been completely, you know, upended. And Trump is still carrying on and making money off of this after their lives got in their eyes destroyed because of what they did on January 6th. They're paying the price. So now I think there's more caution with the
causing a big movement only because of that because they do worry about, hey, call it this being a setup and the movement in a place like Texas would have no effect. I mean, if they want to create a big movement, it would have to be in DC or New York or a blue state. There is absolutely no agency in any blue state that's going to tolerate that shit. We need to be on high alert, but at the same time, I am a drop more confident that
Monique Camarra (40:22.67)
You know, it's not going to be like January 6th if Trump loses, only because of that, because our agencies know everything. They have people embedded in all these organizations across the country. And I think, you know, that will kind of save us a drop. Well, there's always those lone wolves. They're there. There's consistent terrorist attack. Yesterday, I don't know, actually, I haven't followed the news.
And I might absolutely be completely unrelated by yesterday. I mean, there was breaking news that somebody, you know, rammed, decided to ram their car into the FBI. I think they were trying to get into the FBI property in Georgia. And then the ramp came up and they ended up ramming their car in the ramp. I don't know what the circumstances are behind it, whether it's related to this or not.
I do think that Trump slightly is weakened from there. Yes, online it seems like hell because we're being fed this hell by platforms, especially Twitter, where they want us to see all this violence and threats and chaos. But then, in the real life, it's not... I mean, there is something to be worried about. I mean, and every law enforcement agency between Department of Justice and Homeland Security,
They are monitoring everything and, you know, and they have everyone on heightened alert this year. But I still feel a little more confident because our agencies are under American officials, not under Trump and his cronies when he controlled everything in 2020, where we saw the result of that. I will add before switching topics, I want to believe that Washington Post reporter Kara Lessig wrote a great book.
on how the Secret Service is infiltrated by the cult of MAGA. So let's hope in the months ahead that the people we need are under real protection. Look, it's gonna be what it's gonna be, and we're gonna be there to respond to it with all the powers that we have, and people shouldn't be in a fetal position at all, because we need people to stay engaged and active and make phone calls and get out the vote and know that we're...
Andrea Chalupa (42:44.526)
ultimately going to overwhelm them at the ballot box because there's more of us than there are of them. And so along this whole thread of violence, I want to bring up, of course, Havana syndrome. 60 Minutes had this big segment that was helped with reporting from the insider, a Russian dissident news outlet on a direct link between an FBI agent, who was working specifically on a Russian spy case in Florida who was attacked twice by an electronic weapon that has left her with permanent brain damage where she has issues still. And she's just, she experienced in the period after the attack what felt like Alzheimer's. And I want to read now from Axios, just giving the scope.
of this electronic weapon. Overall, US officials estimate that some 1 ,500 cases of Havana syndrome among US government personnel have been reported across 96 countries. These include suspected cases in China, India, Austria, and Vietnam. And I'll link to this in the show notes. And it's called Havana syndrome because the...
earliest known cases or the cases that got the most attention initially came out of the American Embassy in Havana when President Obama opened up relations with Cuba, Cuba being a dictatorship that is largely financially subsidized by Russia and has been used to create terror against historically against the US throughout the Cold War. A lot of Russian spies are there coming through there.
There's been a lot of known cases, of course, in countries like Ukraine. There was concern that Vice President Kamala Harris may have been impacted and certainly members of her team around people around her had been impacted, had been attacked. And then on top of that, it points to this larger history, this fascination that Kremlin has with electronic weapons. During the Cold War in the 1950s and 1960s, the Russians bombarded electronic waves.
Andrea Chalupa (45:05.39)
at the American embassy in Moscow. And there were several cases of cancers that came out of that personnel that served in that outpost. We've been saying for a very long time on Gaslit Nation that the Russians were very clearly behind Havana syndrome. Many of these cases targeted people that were directly working to confront Russia, to stop Russia, to also stand up to Donald Trump and to hold Trump accountable.
These are cases that are meant to not only take people, the men and women we need out in the field to protect us, out of service. These are cases also to threaten, to intimidate, to demoralize, and to crush recruitment, to sabotage recruitment efforts by the United States government to get more talent into these important roles of the CIA and the FBI to protect our national security. So...
It really covers a lot of bases of advantages for Russia and its war against us. It's an extraordinarily effective weapon. And I'm glad that it's finally after so many idiots across the media tried to downplay it, laugh it off. You had Glenn Greenwald blaming, saying that it was a bunch of hysteria, that it was a bunch, that the cause were crickets. You know, you don't get this with 1500 cases.
This isn't hysteria. The men and women across the FBI and the CIA, they are trained and they are recruited out of toughness. These are tough individuals and they're physically tough. They're trained to be mentally, emotionally tough. These are not people that would easily succumb to hysteria. So when you have this extraordinary number of cases across the world in 96 countries, it's very clear that there's a there there. And the scientists, the researchers who are tasked with working on this,
have very much said that yes, there is permanent brain damage here with many of the victims. Now, the US intelligence agencies came out with a report a few years ago under the Biden administration saying that no Havana syndrome is not credible. And then you had Anthony Blinken's State Department hiring someone to basically be the point person for dealing with Havana syndrome cases. And they came out saying, well, we can't really confirm one way or the other.
Andrea Chalupa (47:27.438)
And that really outraged the victims and their families. At the time when this reporting was coming out, I pointed out that the coverup by the Biden administration was likely being done to try to push back against this because they were probably worried about their recruitment ability to try to get people to sign up for these much needed outposts in our ongoing war against Russia.
What happens when you are forced to be at war with the Russians? They're waging war against you. They're committing all sorts of successful operations like SolarWinds, which was a cyber war per harbor during the height of the pandemic in 2020 that disrupted a lot of sensitive infrastructure for the US, like businesses and hospitals and so on. When you are forced to defend yourself against the Russians, you need...
good men and women out in the field. You need people to fill these jobs, meaning relocating and moving and taking their families with them. How can you possibly get that to happen with all of these reports with Havana syndrome? So that was my theory on why the Biden admin would have led essentially what was a cover up because Havana syndrome is credible. It is happening. The three of us are aware of somebody in our network who has suffered permanent brain damage.
because of it and dealing with ongoing physical therapy for that. So I just want to tell all of our listeners, Havana syndrome is real, it's always been real. And anybody in the media that tries to downplay this threat is showing their own ignorance, especially when it comes to foreign policy, especially when it comes to Kremlin terrorist tactics, and especially when it comes to the global war that we're up against and the ways the US is struggling to deal with it. So what are your thoughts on this?
Monique Camarra
I'd wanted to talk about this for quite a while. Finally, they're getting this visibility, all of the people that have suffered through this. Because let's remind everybody, it's not just this, they have a daily, these diplomats and all of the consular staffs that are located in missions all over the world are daily harassed on a daily basis. And they do all sorts of tricks and terrible things to make their life a real hell.
Andrea Chalupa (49:45.102)
Oh, they'll break into someone's home and rearrange their furniture just to mindfuck them.
Monique Camarra
Oh, no, they do a whole bunch of stuff. OK, I mean, it's just absolutely incredible. But I'm glad that they got the visibility because this is extremely important. There were some articles that had come out maybe about three years ago, but even before that most likely. But they never got the traction that was necessary. So I'm glad that it was, I think, insider, Der Spiegel and also
uh, 60 minutes that they all teamed up and brought this out into the public. And I don't know about the technical side, what the U S would have to do in their embassies and in their consular mission, the missions, wherever they are, what they would have to do to protect against this thing. I have absolutely no idea because there's, it's a technical thing that, you know, um, I would maybe, maybe a follow up story on people who deal with this kind of stuff.
the Chinese, do they protect themselves knowing that the Russians are going to do this to them? And how do they protect themselves? Or is it the Chinese that actually do this as well? Well, from what it seems, this seems to be that you have to be at a closer frequency, like a closer distance. So I'm sure that the Russians aren't crawling up that close to Chinese because they're not the targets. So I think, you know, as far as with protection, I it's pretty hard because one of the.
Counterintelligence FBI agents was in her frickin home. I mean, what are you gonna protect your home? Like what do you know? Look, we've been following this for quite a while I remember being completely outraged and infuriated that this was happening in DC I mean you had Americans being attacked in DC on US soil and you had the government covering this up and I personally think
The sole reason for the cover -up is because no one wants to escalate with Russia. Everything goes back to if we admit this is happening, if we admit Russia is attacking American citizens, now physically attacking American citizens, we need a response. And the Russians have done, you know, similar with other countries.
Monique Camarra (51:59.822)
you know, where like when Turkey shot down their plane, you know, they kind of looked the other way because they did not want to go out into a full -fledged war with Turkey. And this is the same here. It's just that we see it every single day in Ukraine. I mean, everything, Ukrainians are sitting there with no ammo, no weapons that should have been delivered, you know, forget even the package from Congress, but actual like where are the F -16s? Where are all the planes? Where's the air cover?
Why is Ukraine? Yeah, but why is Ukraine one of the biggest countries? I believe the second largest country in Europe. Why is Ukraine not have an airport? What other country does not have an airport open functioning because of a war? I mean, this is absurd. What other European and and, you know, US cities are sitting without electric?
And we're not giving Ukrainians everything they need. And it is because of this escalation. Everybody's so worried about one escalating with Russia and having a direct confrontation and two, Russia collapsing and then, you know, them not knowing what comes forward. First of all, newsflash Russia is going to collapse. So they better start preparing for that. And as far as escalation, you cannot worry what Russia is going to do because they...
capitalized off of our worries. And this is the only thing I'll say with this electric attack or Havana syndrome is that if we admit it, that means we need to have a response. And that means we have to directly have a response to Russia. And no one is prepared to do that.
Andrea Chalupa (54:00)
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