Kremlin Convention
You're telling us to be civil and tone down the rhetoric? Well, excuse us, but we’re not the ones who attempted to violently overthrow our democracy! Ignoring a crisis won't solve it. Yet that's exactly what the mainstream media is doing by “both-sidesing” America’s political violence crisis driven by the far-right.
Much of the mainstream media continues to fall in line, pumping out propaganda to normalize Trump. They claim he'll change this time. But you already know that he won’t, because you listen to our show!
Meanwhile, these same media outlets continue to fawn over the MAGA fascist rally known as the Republican National Convention, featuring a who's who of Kremlin disinformation agents like Trump’s VP pick JD Vance. It’s like watching a very dark comedy where the punchline is always at the expense of democracy.
Now, for those who crave staying grounded and self-care with facts, this week's bonus show will analyze the GOP’s Kremlin Convention and prepare us for the week ahead! We’ll dive deep into questions from our Democracy Defender-level supporters ($10/month) and higher, including whether there’s a Russian version of AIPAC. To access bonus shows, get all episodes ad-free, enjoy exclusive invites, and more, subscribe at the Truth-teller level ($5/month) or higher! Annual discounts are available so subscribe today!
And finally, mark your calendars! The book launch party for the Mr. Jones graphic novel, In the Shadow of Stalin: The Making of Mr. Jones, is on September 16th at the Ukrainian Institute of America at 7 pm. It’ll be a live taping of Gaslit Nation, featuring special guests and a wine reception. Gaslit Nation Patreon supporters at the Truth-teller level and higher get in free, so sign up at Patreon.com/Gaslit to join the guest list.
Thank you to everyone who supports the show – we could not make Gaslit Nation without you!
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Save the date! Book launch party and live Gaslit Nation taping September 16 at the Ukrainian Institute of America for In the Shadow of Stalin: The Story of Mr. Jones, the graphic novel adaptation of the shooting script for the journalistic thriller, Mr. Jones. Wine reception to follow. Patreon supporters subscribed at the Truth-teller level or higher get in for free! Make sure you’re subscribed to be added to the guest list: Patreon.com/Gaslit
Show Notes:
Bernie Sanders: Joe Biden for President https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/13/opinion/joe-biden-president.html
Merrick Garland Both-Sides the Coup
https://www.gaslitnationpod.com/episodes-transcripts-20/2022/1/12/merrick-garland-both-sides
Thomas Matthew Crooks: What we know about the Trump attacker
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3gw58wv4e9o
Southern Poverty Law Center quoted on Thomas Matthew Crooks shooting https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/14/us/trump-shooting-thomas-matthew-crooks-intl-hnk/index.html
Trump Shooter Once Donated Money to a Democratic Cause? Some social media users claimed a 69-year-old man with the same name as Trump's would-be assassin actually made the donation.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-shooter-donation/
“Of the 444 people killed at the hands of extremists over the past 10 years, 335 (or 75%) were killed by right-wing extremists.” https://www.adl.org/resources/report/murder-and-extremism-united-states-2022
Report: Domestic Terrorism Is Still a Greater Threat Than Islamic Extremism
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/03/domestic-terror-still-greater-threat-than-islamic-extremism.html
White and far-right extremists kill more cops, but FBI tracks black extremists more closely, many worry Read more at: https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article196423174.html#storylink=cpy
Is white extremism the biggest domestic terror threat in the US? For years US terror warnings have focused on groups like Al Qaeda or Daesh, but the latest warnings from US law enforcement agencies point to homegrown terrorists as the most immediate danger.
https://www.trtworld.com/opinion/is-white-extremism-the-biggest-domestic-terror-threat-in-the-us-27940
The Inside Story of Sean Patrick Maloney’s Face Plant in New York
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/11/sean-patrick-maloney-new-york-red-wave-dccc-house.html
FEC Document Concludes Trump Paid Actors to Attend Event at Which He Launched 2016 Campaign
Mehdi Hasan on Twitter: “Don’t know whether to laugh or cry: apparently one of the reasons Vance radicalized and went from moderate Never Trumper to insane MAGA Trumper is because the Netflix movie of his book got panned by liberal movie critics. It was the “last straw”, according to a friend. Amazing.” https://x.com/mehdirhasan/status/1813048609035751843
Andrea Chalupa:
I'm Andrea Chalupa, a journalist and filmmaker and the writer and producer of the journalistic thriller, Mr. Jones, about Stalin's genocide, famine in Ukraine. The film the GOP backers and the Kremlin don't want you to see, so be sure to watch it.
And this is Gaslit Nation, a show that is going to punch the fascists in the face on November 5th, just you watch. Want to get alcohol poisoning this week? Who doesn't? Take a shot of tequila every time someone at the Republican Convention this week in Milwaukee incites violence from the stage or at some other event affiliated with the convention. The media is playing into Trump's game, as they always do. MSNBC even kept Mika and Joe off the air Monday morning afraid they might say something inflammatory during this time of forced national unity. When Mika and Joe are deemed too radical for you, then you may be on the wrong side of history.
Our opening clip was the floor of the MAGA rally in Wisconsin, also known as the Republican National Convention, yelling, fight, repeating Trump's call to action to his cult of supporters after nearly being shot in the face at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania by a young registered Republican. We're going to get into all of that on today's show.
I would like to say upfront to the ridiculous drone of bleating sheep from Animal Farm on mainstream media calling on both sides to turn the temperature down, you as always continue to fail the American public. You are some of the most dangerous people in America who continue to normalize Trump, who swear finally, finally, Trump is going to see the light of Christ or something like black Jesus is going to descend upon him and suddenly he's going to be a normal human being, a human being who actually feels things. Even when he was nearly shot in the face, the guy didn't have a normal reaction to that. We're going to get into that in a minute.
I just want to say to all of you, both sides in this, just like Merrick Garland, both sided the coup and that atrocious press conference he gave to Mark the one-year anniversary of Trump trying to violently overthrow a democracy on January 6th. Merrick Garland came out and just gave both sides bullshit, saying that both sides commit political violence, which is, it was just simply statistically not true. 75% of the cases of political violence in America in recent years have come from the far right. The FBI over a decade ago was warning us that white domestic terrorism was the greatest threat America faces, even greater than ISIS. What was going on during that time? Trump was leading the Birther movement. All right?
So I want to say to all of you who are suffering under this horrible drone from the media, I can't even listen to the mainstream media anymore, and tell all your friends and tell the media, and I want anybody who works in the media space listening to just insert this straight into your soul. Trump is an unrepentant, serial rapist and murderer. He incited a violent attempted overthrow of our democracy on January 6th that killed several people, including law enforcement. He led the Birther movement that built up his political base of white domestic terrorists, putting a target on the first black president and his family. Many of his supporters slaughtered people, targeting people from vulnerable communities, in Trump's name. And you want me to tone down the rhetoric? That's censorship and surrendering in advance to fascism. We don't surrender to fascism, we call it out by name, especially those in the mainstream media and Democratic Party establishment enabling all this by not acting with greater urgency.
I don't know what the hell is going on with all of this that's been developing since Saturday night. I've been getting a flood of questions from Gaslit Nation listeners. We're going to highlight one that is pretty representative of what people are writing to me right now. Not everybody, but some, and I want to address it so we'll get to that in a moment.
I just want to obviously call out some more big news. As I predicted Trump's Judge, Aileen Cannon, throughout the most damning case against him, which is the stolen documents case where Trump stole roomfuls of highly classified documents from the US government, including nuclear secrets, highly confidential and sensitive intel that are enemies that Trump is mobbed up with, like the Chinese and the Russians, would love to get their hands on. And this was all just casually stored at Mar-a-Lago, where he just hosted authoritarian strong man and Kremlin proxy, Viktor Orbán. And who knows what messages were delivered there by Orbán on behalf of the Kremlin and the authoritarian regime in China. Orbán was fresh off of visiting Russia and China and then he suddenly pops up at Mar-a-Lago, delivering some sort of orders, maybe also picking up a package of classified documents. None of this is normal. I'm highlighting this because this is so not normal.
Orbán broke very serious European Union protocol by visiting the Kremlin, by visiting Moscow in this unsanctioned, so-called peace mission that he was on, which is total gaslighting. He wasn't on a peace mission, he was there trying to help Trump. He was going to Russia to basically be a proxy for Trump, get intel from the Russians, get intel from the Chinese, and go to Mar-a-Lago. This is the equivalent of Don Jr, Kushner and Paul Manafort meeting with the Russians in Trump Tower in June of 2016, it is the equivalent, it is the equivalent. So I know there's a lot going on in the news, but I want us to stay grounded in how extraordinarily disturbing five-alarm fire that is, that Orbán just took this strange round-the-world trip under the total gaslighting, fake reasoning of a peace mission. It was not. This was all intel collection, this was all of them strategizing, this was all of them putting pieces into place during this extremely sensitive critical time and the lead-up of what very well maybe our last election in the United States if we allow it to be. And we won't allow it to be obviously because we're fighting like hell right now.
We're calling on the Democrats to fight harder, including Biden, who right now is on life support thanks to Bernie Sanders and AOC mobilizing around him and advising him. Bernie just wrote this really heartfelt op-ed in the New York Times. I want everyone to read this piece by Bernie Sanders. It absolutely calls out Biden on Gaza, rightfully so, urgently so, and lists the things that Biden should have done as president, but also lists all the things that Bernie can stand behind and what Biden needs to do now to win. It is a very heartfelt piece by Bernie Sanders, a progressive who certainly would not stand by Biden in this moment if he didn't feel that he could.
Biden is using a lot of Bernie and AOC's messaging and promises to American voters. Unfortunately, many of these promises to build a more progressive nation, to provide more support for the working class, to codify Roe v. Wade, cannot happen unless we control the Congress, and that very well likely will not happen because the map this year is very hard against Senate Democrats. We're going to fight tooth and nail regardless, but it's going to be a tough map. And of course the House is split very close, thanks to extreme gerrymandering by the GOP and just historically bad House politics by the Democrats where they like to sort of surrender in advance, as they did in 2022 where they could have won the house but the Democratic chair at the time running those house campaigns, Maloney, was pouring money into centrist campaigns and starving progressive campaigns that came close to winning but lost in the final hours.
So there's this horrible civil war between progressives and the democratic establishment that may poison some of these races that we need to win. So I'm not optimistic we'll hold Congress. We have to fight like hell to hold the White House. This is strategic voting, just like what the French did. So many people across France voted for candidates they could not stand simply to block the far right, simply to block the far right. That is what we're doing now. Whether you like Biden or not, it is French-style strategic voting. And I know some of you listening are saying, well what about French-style dropping out of the race for a greater cause? If Biden drops out, whoever the Democratic candidate is will strategically vote for them too. Okay? Nobody's rushing to vote for Biden because they love Biden right now, that's not what this is about.
Some of our listeners absolutely adore Biden and are so grateful for all the pro-labor things that he's done, are grateful for his massive historic infrastructure legislation that's helped environment and so on, we support you, if you are thrilled to vote for Biden, we support you. If you are pained to vote for Biden, you are not alone, you are not alone. Many people across France were pained to vote for people they could not stand, who they did not agree with, but they did it strategically to block the far right, and that is where we are in America today. That is where we are in America today.
We do not need to storm the beaches of Normandy into a hail of bullets to stop fascism. All we need to do is vote for someone who we're not thrilled about. That's all we have to do. And plus, this election is bigger than Biden. We have so many other candidates on the ballot. So don't listen to anyone who wants to sell you despair or sell you both sides-orism. We are literally on the front lines of stopping fascism in America and we're going to do it, we're going to do it together. And I know it's rough. I know it's rough out there. I know this is really scary times and every single week we go through right now is like an entire decade emotionally. It's not going to let up through November 5th, this is going to be the mode, the vibe from here on out, but we're going to get through it together. And I do believe, and I have so many reasons for this, if you listened to the last episode, we're ultimately going to prevail and win and we're going to fight like hell to do that together.
Gaslight Nation is doing phone banks every single Wednesday evening into a key battleground state, not for Biden, but for local state races that determine the quality of life in those states, where the Republicans have been waging war for decades and we're pushing them back now and scoring a lot of big victories that we're even expanding our efforts, our grassroots efforts into Kansas. Yes, into Kansas. So I'm telling you, we're going to get through this if we join together and fight like hell, I promise you that.
So more news, more news. As I predicted, Trump's Judge, Aileen Cannon, threw out the damning documents case, just as she was installed to do. Want to know when Aileen Cannon was appointed? Days after Trump had already lost the 2020 election. In a lame duck session, she was shoved through by then Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell. That's never been done for generations. This is very weird what Trump and McConnell did. This is not normal what they did, it hadn't been done in generations. Trump had lost the election, so they shoved through a judge to make sure he couldn't be held accountable once he left office.
I want to point out this brilliant quote from the author Keith Boykin, who wrote the book, Why Does Everything Happen to be about Race? He writes on Twitter, "Trump can't be prosecuted in office. He can't be impeached because the court should decide he's immune from prosecution after office. He can't be prosecuted by Biden's DOJ because that's lawfare, and he can't be prosecuted by a special counsel. We have created a dictator." That is exactly right, and I wish we had institutional support to help us get through this. I wish we did not have Merrick Garland as Attorney General. I wish we had more support in this moment in time, but we don't, we simply don't. These are the cards we've been dealt by institutions that have been hijacked, that have been crumbling for decades, from a President Biden whose polling numbers also reflect the fact that he has clung to the status quo when the status quo was on fire and burning us. And this is where we are, it's us now. It's down to the grassroots power just like it's always been.
Gaslight Nation launched in 2018 to ring the alarm on all of this, and the Kremlin's hijacking, of helping us destroy our democracy from within and also to help build the big blue wave in 2018. And we succeeded together, and so it comes down to us, like we are a Ukraine now. Ukrainians have been fighting on their own for so long from Euromaidan, that revolution of dignity in 2013, 20 14. I watched them do this. I watched on the live stream, I went to Ukraine shortly after they were successful and making Yanukovych flee town to Russia where he remains to this day, hopefully to be joined by Trump after Trump loses the election. I've watched Ukrainians fight on their own. During large sense of abandonment, they founded parties called Self-Reliance. They created their own parties, they created their own media stations. They kept going even when their friends were killed, okay, and that's what we're doing now together and we're going to get through this.
As you've heard by now, Trump's Vice President pick is Russian disinformation agent, J.D Vance, one of the most loyal pro-Kremlin disinformation agents in Congress. And that says a lot because they keep multiplying. Here is a clip.
JD Vance:
I think it's ridiculous that we're focused on this border in Ukraine. I got to be honest with you, I don't really care what happens to Ukraine, one way or another.
Andrea Chalupa:
How did Vance get the job? Don Jr. loves him. Don Jr. who again, met with the Russians in Trump Tower in 2016. The Kremlin cheerleaders like Elon Musk, who's backing Trump, Tucker Carlson, and tech investor, David Sacks, all pushed hard for Vance. By the way, here's David Sacks speaking at the RNC yesterday.
David Sacks:
Then he provoked, yes, provoked the Russians to invade Ukraine with talk of NATO expansion. Afterward, he rejected every opportunity for peace in Ukraine, including a deal to end the war just two months after it broke out.
Andrea Chalupa:
Remember in 2016 when Paul Manafort and his associates changed the Republican Party platform to water down support for Ukraine, and everyone was shocked? Republican delegates blew the whistle on this at the time. It was that shocking, that Republican delegates were like, this isn't normal. Now that's what the Republican Party is. This whole convention is a Kremlin love fest. It's freaking Russian state TV.
I'm going to be providing a highlight of clips and analysis in this week's bonus show for our Patreon subscribers. You can sign up to hear that at patreon.com/gaslit. In the meantime, here is a helpful montage from CNN of J.D. Vance over the years, blasting Trump as a fraud.
Speaker 5:
And I cannot stand Trump because I think he's a fraud. Well, I think he's a total fraud that is exploiting these people-
JD Vance:
I do too.
Speaker 5:
... who is a total fraud.
JD Vance:
I agree with you on Trump because I don't think that he is the person. I don't think he actually cares about folks.
But I think that I'm going to vote third party, because I can't stomach Trump. I think that he's noxious and is leading the white working class to a very dark place.
Andrea Chalupa:
So what happened in all that time that J.D. Vance changed his mind? Follow the money, follow the money. It's as Joy Reid pointed out on MSNBC last night, when they provided some fresh air, open up a window by having her on, Trump is being bankrolled by two South Africans that have so much resentment over apartheid being dismantled and disrupting their white, deeply privileged childhoods and whatever. And so now this is their grievance. Just like Vladimir Putin is carrying out his grievance of losing the Cold War and losing his precious Soviet Union and that empire. This is all white grievance politics that... The white people are hijacking our courts, turning the Supreme Court into a Trump rubber stamp for him. Why? Because they fear the coming browning of America that's going to happen in our lifetimes. And so they want to turn America into the caged bars of dictatorship to control all these non-white people and mouthy women that are coming in and going to be the dominant force. And so what we're up against are like hardcore grievance politics by white people.
So what changed? J.D. Vance was a easy candidate, an easy mark, and this whole movement bought him off, paid him to become a MAGA attack dog, a Russian disinformation agent. The money is so good, he's like Scrooge McDuck now with the money and power that's coming with this. There's also some reporting that he's trying to own the Libs for making fun of his movie, Hillbilly Elegy, when it came out. And it's like, I believe that too.
And if you need a place to release your fury as we get through this horrific week together, come join me and our friends at Indivisible, at July's phone banking party this Thursday at 7:00 PM Eastern. We're calling into Republican hostage states in the Midwest, planting seeds a change, and refusing to leave any American behind in the barbed wire of Republican dictatorships. We're going to give away fun prizes at that phone bank and I'll share some exclusive Andrea Chalupa kompromat. Come hear a really ridiculous story that I recently went through and more, and connect with fellow citizens who need to hear that we care and that wherever we live in America, surrender is not an option. We must always keep fighting and put the fascists on the ropes. If you want to sign up, join us for that. Look for the RSVP link in the show notes for this week's episode.
Finally, a date change. The book launch party for the Mr. Jones graphic novel In the Shadow of Stalin, The Making of Mr. Jones, is now September 16th at the beautiful Ukrainian Institute of America. That's 7:00 P.M. Monday, September 16th. Will be also doing a live taping of Gaslit Nation, followed by a wine reception. Gaslit Nation, Patreon supporters at the truth teller level and higher get in free. So make sure you're signed up at patreon.com/gaslit.
All right everyone, I've been getting a lot of messages from Gaslit Nation listeners these past days, like this one from Karen, a supporter at our Patreon community who writes, "I'm very concerned about the theatrical aspects of this assassination attempt, that Trump's shoes were off and Secret Service let him put on his shoes before going to the car. In photos as he's raising his fist, his body is exposed. Like what the fuck? There's not a lot of info, but at this point I don't trust my eyes to know what's happening. Trump from the beginning has used theater. My understanding is that his descent down the escalator in 2016 was contrived and actors were used. Is that true? It bothers me that mainstream media takes everything at face value. I'm not suggesting any concept of what happened, but the complete haste to tap down the narrative bugs me."
Completely agree, and yes, Trump used actors in that 2016 coming down the escalator in Trump Tower campaign announcement. My first thought when this happened, I'll get into all of this, but my first thought was, we need to be open-minded here because none of what has transpired under Trump has been normal. And he is working with some of the best PSYOPS people, including the Russians that are out there today, including the PayPal Mafia, Peter Thiel, David Sacks, Elon Musk, who are controlling it and pushing all sorts of white radical Nazi narratives, and Alex Jones and all of it. We're going to get into that in this. We're going to break it all down in this episode because there's a lot to process.
Yes, Karen, I agree with you, open mind. We're all morally obligated, especially law enforcement to have an open mind, especially the FBI, to how this all went down and what we need to pay attention to and be aware of and how to track the narratives that they are seeding to sort of set up whatever they do coming down the pipe or what they have planned. Pay attention to what they say, pay attention to what they're seeding. What are they saying? Why are they pushing certain things and why? Track the narratives, so just track the narratives that they are seeding.
To start this breakdown, let's look at what we know about the shooter. Thomas Matthew Crooks, he was an honor student, he won a prize for math and science in high school. He was an honor student at his community college. He was accepted as a transfer student into a top school, the University of Pittsburgh, and didn't go, maybe he couldn't afford it. That's a question that should be asked, and did some grievance come from lost opportunity? This guy obviously had a lot of promise. Some classmates remember him being very passionate about history. Yes, classmates talked about him being bullied. I was bullied in high school. I didn't shoot up anybody. So a lot of people were bullied in high school and didn't shoot up a place. He also failed to make the rifle shooting team in high school twice, then stopped trying. Some remembered him as quiet, a good kid who kept to himself, and some remembered him as not being bullied, just a regular kid out and about. And one thing that was very clear to some of his classmates was that he was incredibly passionate about conservative ideals and was staunchly conservative.
It was confirmed by fact-checkers that Crooks donated $15 to the Progressive Turnout Project in January, 2021. Shortly around the time of Biden's inauguration. What else happened in January, 2021? Trump tried to violently overthrow our democracy. Maybe that's what inspired the donation to a democratic voter outreach group. It's an odd time to donate specifically to the Progressive Turnout Project because there weren't any elections coming up, we had just wrapped up the elections. So what an odd time to give money to one to get out the vote when the next big election was two years away. So, that's odd. I'm just saying, that's not a strategic use of money at that time. But obviously I encourage early grassroots, get out the vote efforts anytime of year, but I'm just saying, odd choice at that time. Later, Crooks would register as a Republican during the Biden Administration, and his parents were identified by the Trump campaign back in 2016 as being likely gun owners who they could target to vote for Trump.
Law enforcement are very clear that this was a politically motivated assassination attempt, that's in the reporting. And recent reporting has come out that law enforcement are leaning towards possibly Trump not being conservative enough for Crooks. But, who knows? I mean, this is very complicated, we're still in early days. We need transparency from the FBI, which we're not going to get because that's not their strong suit.
One thing that should be considered by law enforcement is this clip from Alex Jones six months ago, calling on Trump to be assassinated because it would speed things up, ushering in a far right takeover of our democracy through violence.
Ivan Raiklin:
This is a message directly to every single person on the deep state target list. My assessment, Ivan Raiklin's assessment, that if you assassinate any political presidential candidate, whether it's RFK, whether it's Trump, guess what? America will do the following, immediately. They will respond in kind and they know who you are because we've created the list. So if you [inaudible 00:23:54]-
Alex Jones:
And that's a major Rubicon, they should know that.
Ivan Raiklin:
Immediately, you're going to see immediate response, and there are only a few buildings in Washington DC that they will probably do that.
Alex Jones:
Well, I hope that's not the case, but these people are crazy.
Ivan Raiklin:
And having said that, if they do that, option two behind Trump is going to be so much better for us and so much worse for them.
Alex Jones:
Well, I was about to say, if they kill him, that's best case scenario, from a sick level, from a sick level beating him. Oh, please, kill him, which I don't... I mean, but it's so good after that.
Ivan Raiklin:
It's going to be the best cleansing and the fastest cleansing that we've ever seen in my lifetime. I assess with almost certainty, with the highest level of confidence, that if they assassinate Trump, it is so game over for them and it's going to be so bad.
Andrea Chalupa:
So that's worthy to look into as a potential motive here, obviously.
So back to the listener's question of the weird theatrics of this assassination. Trump was ushered off the stage dramatically in 2016 during a campaign rally in Nevada. So this is the second time this has happened to him during a tight election. It is quite theatrical. I mean, my instinct when I was nearly shot in the head is not to stand up there on stage and rally a crowd. I think fight or flight would kick in and maybe you'd want to dive to the ground and just listen to Secret Service until everything is clear. I mean, it was a very strange reaction by Trump. Absolutely strange. And the New York Times quickly described it as Trump's master of media. What a maestro he is, seizing the moment. My first reaction was going back to the Victor Orbán meeting that just happened in Mar-a-Lago. Russia is known for these PSYOPS. Putin and the KGB dictatorship that rules Russia orchestrated the Moscow apartment bombings, blaming them on Chechens to justify their brutal scorched earth war against Chechnya, and ramping up Russia, turning Russia into a dictatorship.
I also thought it was weird in the days leading up to the assassination attempt, that Republicans were seeding the narrative that Trump is Teddy Roosevelt. I mean, he's not. Teddy Roosevelt was a staunch environmentalist, conservationist, Trump could care less about the environment. He will exploit whoever, whatever, take bribes from whoever, if it means making him more money in power, and he's also the big oil and coal candidate here. They made that comparison, and right before the shooting, and Teddy Roosevelt famously survived an assassination attempt. So obviously if there were some larger plot here, they would be using this, theatrics of a staged assassination attempt to try to steal the spotlight for Trump, to make him seem a larger than life strong man that's invincible, that has... The chosen one by God. If you go back to the Bad faith interview on that documentary, looking at the rise of Christian nationalism, where they really do believe, and that's Trump's space, they really do believe that he is an imperfect vessel of a perfect God. That he is the Bible come to life. He is a king Cyrus and he's God's chosen one. They really do believe that. So all of this would play into that in a very dramatic way and just really make him seem like this invincible, strong man, that he's always wanting to be that.
And it's also a reminder of Trump's trial. My friend who lived in that courtroom in Lower Manhattan, described how every morning the scrum of photographers would come out and take their photo, their morning photo of Trump, and he would puff up his shoulders, pierce his lips and look tough and threatening for the cameras. And as soon as the cameras left, he would go back to being a Joe Schmo, regular human being, mortal, sitting at that table all day in the courtroom. He's a theatrical guy that knows how to manipulate and he's in the fight for his life right now. He needs to become president to make all the court cases go away.
Yes, the Supreme Court ruled that Trump's a dictator. Yes, they had that horrible ruling, but Trump can depend on prosecutors, big civil cases, women, all sorts of dirt coming out. We're just getting started on the whole Epstein crime, right? We're just at the beginning of that, how sweeping that was and how Trump was wrapped up in it. If you look at the recently released Epstein docs out of Florida that confirmed that. So we're just getting started on Epstein. So Trump can count on being held up in these court cases for the rest of his life, so he needs to become president to ensure they all go away. And plus, he's got his grievance politics. He's petty as hell, he wants to crush his enemies, and a dictatorship will give him the perfect power to do all that. That's what he wants. He wants to be the man, wants to be a dictator, wants to be a dictator. That is his dream, and that's what he's gunning for.
And so I would not put it past him to have some theatrical assassination attempt and they recruited some bullied kid, some loner, some incel who believes that he's living history along with Trump by sacrificing himself to be a lone gunman here that tries to shoot the president and misses. Maybe he came closer than they had hoped he did, and he may have given his life. And if you think that sounds insane, there's over 1,000 people that are now rotting in prison after being forced to spend tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars defending themselves against the US government for being part of Trump's violent mob to overthrow our democracy on January 6th. They're now rotting away in prison and all the financial stress they've been under and their families, for all those court cases that they had to go through, and ending up in prison, right? So over 1,000 people have already given their lives for Trump. So what's one more willing to do it, getting shot killed by the Secret Service, that's also on Trump's side according to reporting and all the really obvious mistakes Secret Service made.
So yeah, there's a lot to sort of speculate on here, but I think I want to be absolutely clear here. This is all speculation, but I do think given how abnormal these times are, law enforcement is morally obligated to have an open mind on all of this because we're not up against good faith actors here, and we're up against some of the world's most devious PSYOPS agents who make a lot of money on this stuff, on these dark arts. My belief here, what I'm leaning towards given all the reporting available, and this is we're recording this on July 16th, given all the reporting available, I do think that most likely, that Matthew Thomas Crooks, or I do think Crooks is more of a symptom of a larger disease in America, and he's just the latest young white man inflicting violence in a highly violent and polarized society. And unfortunately, there's just so many of them out there.
I'll link to an interview recently with the Southern Poverty Law Center, which documents guys like Crooks and they say yeah, unfortunately he's the norm now, and this crisis has been growing for so long and unabated by law enforcement. They know, the FBI knows that white terrorists, the far right are the leading causes of political violence in the United States, and yet they continue to both sides it. They continue to look the other way while Trump and his allies are opening plotting, a violent coup against our democracy leading up to January 6th, and they continue to stay in power. Like Christopher Wray is still a Director of the FBI after January 6th happening on his watch.
And I want to also just point to who's ultimately to blame here for Trump's assassination. In large part Trump, he's embraced the NRA. He came to power with the gun lobby's help in 2016. If you look at the Mueller report, they talk about... The whole Mueller investigation uncovered how the Kremlin, one of the nodes they used to deeply infiltrate the Republican Party was the NRA. They poured so much dark money into the NRA. There was confirmed Russian spy, Maria Butina, pretended to be a gun loving icon of gun rights from Russia, in a country where guns are banned, and that's how she circulated this little honeypot butterfly all over the Republican Party. Dating one of the most disgusting Republican operatives ever and singing Disney songs with him and karaoke, lovingly looking at his eyes like she was trained to do by the Kremlin, right? So the NRA was instrumental in helping bring Trump to power in 2016, in the gun lobby. He's all about the NRA, and then this gun-nut kid nearly shoots him in the face. So who's responsible for Trump's assassination attempt? We know this for a fact, in large part Trump, we know that for a fact. Believe your eyes and ears on that.
I've been covering this, documenting this historical record of the times we live in for six years now, and this is one of those in the last couple of days where I'm just, I almost wanted to just do this show saying, you know what, I'm just going to sit here and you're just going to hear me for an hour straight staring at the wall. This was one of those weeks, but we got through this episode and I'm always here to answer all your questions. Write to me, I read everything that comes in and I'm just grateful to all of you out there who are with me in this fight because I could not get through all of this without you. It's very hard, it's very hard. It's very scary, and I do worry about my kids' future in America, and I do worry about the future of the United States because there's nowhere to go if America falls, there's nowhere to go.
And that is why, to the progressives that are rallying around Biden right now, trying to resuscitate his campaign. AOC did that for my Governor, Kathy Hochul, here in New York State. Kathy Hochul had the most abysmal polling numbers. You had Lee Zeldin, a MAGA attack dog who was running against her, and you had this insurgent far right all across New York state because of our history of having Nazi youth camps on Long Island, and because of our history of Trump coming from New York state and having his movement here. His dad was at a KKK rally in New York City, got arrested there. Every blue state has so many deep red pockets in it.
Lee Zeldin was building, building, building off of this history, and Trump and the Republicans were funneling so much dark money into New York State because they had to take over New York state. Why? Because some of the most damning cases, as we saw, came out of New York state, the Manhattan DA's office. So they're trying to really build their power here in this state and attacking the governor's office.
Who saved Hochul's campaign in the final hours? AOC and all the progressives that were firing up the grassroots for her because they had no choice. They had to strategically vote to fight fascism. And they're doing it again now for Biden, and they need to be very clear on what they get in return, and what they get in return is we need to get not just legislation passed in Congress, because it's not realistic. The promises Biden is making now is not realistic saying, I'll give you this, I'll give you that. Yeah. It's all dependent on you controlling Congress and having a filibuster approved majority, not going to happen. Not going to happen.
Instead, tell us what you're going to do with executive orders. Tell us what you're going to do about political appointments. Tell us what you're going to do about Merrick Garland. Are you seriously going to keep him for another four years? You cannot. We cannot survive another four years of Merrick Garland. That is why in part, your polling numbers suck and I've been saying that for years. Okay, I've been saying that for years. And this is not to bash Biden and add to the mainstream media becoming a propaganda for Trump. Okay, I'm not doing that. I'm really speaking in this hour of urgent need right now to the progressives that are going to ultimately save Biden like they saved our governor here in New York state. Get something very clear and definitive and substantial and realistic and doable in return, and get that communicated to the American people now. How will you, realistically, secure our democracy from fascism today? What executive orders can you pass now, this limited amount of time you have left in the White House? Okay, so that we can have another election, because just think, eight years ago, it was shocking when the Republican Party platform watered down support for Ukraine as a deliberate campaign promise to the Kremlin in exchange for their support and their illegal help in the 2016 election. Imagine where we'll be in another eight years if we don't stop them.