7/1/26: Corporate Dems Defeated In CO, Justice Alito Retirement Leak, Congress MKUltra Testimony

21:37Emily Jashinsky:Although they put AOC in magazine covers and that sort of thing. Yes, but she got way, way... There was a period... They weren't doing that for Dave Brat. Right, and there was a period in... Right, but you know, Dave Brat's not his summer. He's not AOC. There was a period in 2019 where her name, AOC's name recognition, was like triple among conservatives what it was among liberals. Yep. because Fox was covering her every single day, and you rarely see her mentioned on MSNBC. Like, they just weren't interested in it. And so after the party established was given its shot, they got Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

22:16Now that there's this energy again, you're getting more attention paid in the traditional kind of Democratic press, CNN, MSNBC, New York Times, to this insurgent wing. But more importantly, there's a media apparatus like places like this and the podcast world and Midas Touch and like just all of these different, all of these ways for these candidates to reach voters that just didn't exist even in 2017, 2018. The Intercept is only reaching so many people.

22:51Emily Jashinsky:Right. Well, yeah. And this has always been part of my theory is that having some built-in sympathy from corporate media, even though, yes, it's true, corporate media is generally more pro-war than the public and more pro-tax cuts for the rich than the public, there's a cultural alignment between a lot of the corporate press and more progressive and center Democrats. Again, this is just uncultural. I'm not talking about anything else. But that often hurts Democrats because it makes you think, for example, that you can get away with running Joe Biden again until he crashes out on a debate. Or it makes you think that you can run, let's say in 20, you can get away with putting Hillary in front of Bernie and the chicanery involved in that.

23:37Emily Jashinsky:There won't be any mass fallout over the next decade that it's worth it to just like jam Clinton through and make it really hard for other people to even try to compete with her. And people won't get pissed off about it because we are in control. And it does end up, I think, backfiring. And part of what we're seeing is that. Yeah, I think there's something to that for sure. And the cultural break you're seeing between this Malak Heros wing of the party and the kind of mainstream MSNBC, CNNs is really around Israel. That they are unable to metabolize the criticism of Israel as really anything other than just anti-Semitism and derangement.

24:16Emily Jashinsky:Yeah. Whereas normal voters can't understand kind of CNN and The New York Times defense of Israel as anything other than corruption. So it is a very stark divide. And just like with Espyat last week and Reynoso also, that their unwillingness to voice real criticism of Israel became a proxy for weakness and corruption. Which is, yes, I think that's right. That's how Abdul El-Sayed has been framing it. And that's what I think a lot of people have missed. Finally, just want to point out that viral posts of Scott Wiener, the videos of Scott Wiener being shouted out of pride. That is actually interesting from the perspective he has referred to what happened in Gaza as a genocide.

25:03So did Reynoso. Right. But both of them did it after they were running for Congress.

25:08Emily Jashinsky:And that's how, I guess, powerful of a test or that's what this test means. Exactly. To democratic voters now. Okay, I'm glad you're saying it now, but we think you're saying it cynically. I'm Munga Shatikula, and I'm back with a new season of the podcast Skyline Drive. This time I'm diving into a rabbit hole of peptides, organoids, blood boys, blue zones, and brain replacement to try to understand what this longevity obsession is all about and what it really means to live forever for all of us. I learned about some rad science. I can make a brain for you, and then we can test what draw is the best for your brain, as opposed to his brain.

25:51Here are some hard truths. I would expect Indians to age faster, but I did not expect it to be almost a four to five year acceleration. And get myself into a world of trouble. I'd say probably start bone smashing. That doesn't work. Make it look more defined. They say it works. I don't know. Listen to Skyline Drive, How to Live Forever on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

26:41can tell their own stories. In the last few months alone, I've interviewed Unhoused parents, immigrants, mutual aid organizers, veterans, the LGBTQIA plus community, and the policymakers who make the laws that impact the Unhoused existence. We Do Unhoused is a two-time Webby and Signal Award winning show with many exciting guests on the horizon. Tune in this week for my interview with Dr. Jill Wittler, a street doctor turned influencer whose work with the Unhoused community has made a huge impact online and in her community. Listen to Weezy and Howl's on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

27:23This is Michael Rappaport, and my podcast, the I Am Rappaport Stereo Podcast, is unlike any one you've ever heard. We're a variety show, and if you're looking for strong opinions, funny opinions about sports, entertainment, politics, pop culture, and whatever else catches my attention, then subscribe now. This kid Jafar Jackson is as good as Rami Malek, as Freddie Mercury, and it's as good as Timothy Chamillai, as Bob Dylan. And I say that with love and respect for both of those actors. And I don't know how many Oscar nominations they give out. I don't know if it's five, six for best actor. 150 % this kid Jafar Jackson should absolutely positively get nominated for his portrayal as Michael Jackson.

28:11Listen to I Am Rappaport on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I Am Rappaport Podcast.

28:24Let's talk about the Supreme Court ruling, which was paired with a very bizarre story. You can walk us through this. Nina Totenberg, who is the kind of legendary Supreme Court reporter for my entire lifetime.

28:38Emily Jashinsky:Bestie of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. And so she reports that Justice Alito is retiring, which would be tactical and smart of Alito at this point, because if Democrats take the Senate, then they are going to follow the McConnell precedent and they're not going to confirm a Trump justice. But as you'll see on the image here, editor's note. Oops. This is enormous. That's not good. The decisions that were handed down yesterday were enormous as well, obviously, upheld birthright citizenship, upheld states' abilities to ban boys from girls' sports. So West Virginia and Idaho's laws were upheld by the Supreme Court yesterday.

29:21Emily Jashinsky:A few pretty significant big decisions, but potentially overshadowed by the story from NPR where Nina Totenberg reported that Samuel Alito, who right now, I mean, he wrote the Dobbs decision. Samuel Alito was seen as like the conservative leader of the court. Obviously, Clarence Thomas is there as well. But in recent years, Alito has been seen as the kind of champion where people are nervous about Gorsuch sometimes or Kavanaugh sometimes. And certainly now Amy Coney Barrett many times. He was seen as like the stalwart who was writing these brilliant conservative opinions. And the strategy of him retiring now makes sense.

29:57Emily Jashinsky:It's been a rumor for a long time. But Totenberg posted a story to NPR that got taken down pretty quickly. And yet, interestingly enough, it said in the post, people caught this in the Wayback Machine, that on Friday, Alito announced his retirement. So what that means is possibly it was under. And yesterday was not Friday, just to be clear. Yes. Yesterday. Yeah. Thank you. Yesterday was Tuesday. So it sounds like possibly she had something that was under an embargo or she knew because she has very deep relationships on the court that something was coming down and had a pre-write ready to go. She says, let's just walk through this so that you can make your own decision about whether or not we have a Supreme Court vacancy coming up, which would be massively significant, obviously.

30:46Emily Jashinsky:So I'm going to read from Brian Stelter's rundown. NPR's eminent Supreme Court correspondent Nina Totenberg says she made a rookie mistake on Tuesday morning, and that's why she reported that Justice Samuel Alito was retiring. Totenberg's story sent other newsrooms scrambling to confirm, leading a court spokesperson to deny the reporting. Totenberg discussed the matter on all things considered Tuesday afternoon and read the text of the apology she sent to Alito. The apology didn't fully explain why NPR published the report without additional confirmation. However, the embarrassing episode, Stelter said, amplified questions about whether Alito is contemplating retirement.

31:20Emily Jashinsky:Totenberg said, quote, I scared everybody half to death for about five minutes. It's entirely on me. It's not anybody else's fault. So she read her apology to Alito, which was, dear Justice Alito, there are no words to adequately apologize for today's error in reporting your retirement. It was entirely my fault. Now, here's where she explains what happened. I rushed out of the courtroom after the opinion announcements, and when I realized that the usual rush of folks after a few minutes had not happened, I asked somebody what's going on inside, to which the answer was retirement announcements.

31:49Emily Jashinsky:I didn't hear the S on announcements, and I assumed something no reporter should ever do, that you were retiring. So just to be clear, she says this was the worst professional mistake of my more than 50 years in journalism. I don't know. I could go on, but I don't know what else to say that I am, except that I am so, so sorry. It was a classy apology, I suppose. But just to be clear, what she's, right, it looks to me trying not to do is reveal the source here because she's saying, I heard announcements and I, or I heard announcement instead of announcements, which I think the implication of that is she knew that an announcement was coming.

32:28Emily Jashinsky:Right, exactly. And she took that as license to then phone up NPR, say, run the pre-write. which they didn't change to Friday when they just ran it. So NPR then didn't do the due diligence of saying, okay, we need to even get behind this. They were just rushing, which is odd because NPR doesn't really even need to do that. They're not competing with like the wires for the most part. So they really wanted to have that story first and it ended up going out. I've never seen anything like that. It's the stuff of nightmares for a reporter who's driven by these scoops. But yes, clearly it seems like what she's trying to say is that she knew or somebody told her.

33:02Emily Jashinsky:yeah an announcement maybe alito probably not alito maybe he sort of famously doesn't talk to anybody not even nina tonenberg definitely not nina tonenberg he just somebody somebody told her that hey alito's retired this is my guess yeah that alito's retiring yep she then hears oh announcement retirement announcement yep she's like oh shoot like run my story quick without checking like what announcement now in her defense is like she thought retirement announcement there's only nine justices right like what are the chances that somebody else retiring but what was it a secretary or something without her knowing yeah yeah um and so they run the story and so yes so the substantial point here would be it's likely that he is yes retiring yes but now does he stay on another year honestly does he stay on another amazing if if he stays He's on another year just to spite Nina Totenberg.

34:00And then Democrats win the Senate. Well, what he would do is retire the day after the election.

34:06Emily Jashinsky:Yeah. And then they would use the lame duck in one week and just ram somebody through. Yeah. So we'll see what happens. But it looks like we're about to have a Supreme Court vacancy and another fight over that. Now, conservatives are, we covered this a bit yesterday, but that was before the birthright citizenship opinion came out. conservatives were already frustrated with Amy Coney Barrett's mail-in ballot decision in the Mississippi case. But yesterday, there were actually calls after the birthright citizenship case went 5-4 with Coney Barrett, siding with Ketanji Brown-Jackson, John Roberts, and Sotomayor and Kagan.

34:41Emily Jashinsky:There were calls for her to just resign. Here is B3, Mike Davis of the Article 3 Project. There he says, Amy Coney Barrett lied during her confirmation hearing, and he's demanding, this is Benny Had Mike on his show, that she resign. Quote, I think it was the biggest mistake imaginable supporting Amy Coney Barrett. She is a disaster for the Supreme Court. She is a rattled law professor with her head up her ass and thinks she's the smartest person in the room. She's not. She is a junior varsity justice. She auditioned as a constitutional conservative. She is a fraud. She lied. She should resign.

35:12Emily Jashinsky:She is not up to the job. That just honestly gives you a little flavor of what seems like we're poised for with a Supreme Court vacancy coming up because Trump famously won the conservative coalition over by agreeing to choose in 2016 from the Federalist Society, Leonard Leo handpicked list of potential Supreme Court justices, which included Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. And now, yes, there have been contentious back and forth over Gorsuch, some over Kavanaugh, but she has just become the source of the ire. And that's going to upend the process for Donald Trump actually picking a Supreme Court justice.

35:49Emily Jashinsky:You could see, honestly, it go to like a Mike Lee or somebody that's totally left field because he's so exhausted with the Federal Society kind of con ink conservative establishment. Meanwhile, you have Mike Davis, by the way, the guy who's client ticket master who yes, he worked for ticket master and persuaded the Trump administration to give them a completely corrupt settlement. Almost single handedly. Asperis, Mike Davis. Almost single-handedly, yes. So let's put up actually Graham Plattner. This is a taste of what you might see from the new Democratic Senate. If they take the upper chamber, Plattner says not a single Democrat or self-proclaimed moderate should vote to confirm anybody in the Supreme Court over the next two years.

36:32Emily Jashinsky:And if you have a problem with that, blame Mitch McConnell, famous callback to the one and only Merrick Garland. Now, Stephen Miller said this was, quote, one of the most destructive and outrageous decisions in the long history of the Supreme Court. American citizenship is not the birthright of the world. It belongs only and solely to Americans. No provision of the Constitution can be read to require our national self-obliteration. Donald Trump, we can move on to his reaction. This was a truth social B6. The Supreme Court upheld birthright citizenship, which is too bad for our country, but we can easily make it up in Congress through legislation with the support of the president that has now been determined during this process.

37:11Emily Jashinsky:No long and wieldy constitutional amendment is necessary. Congress should start today to work on ending expensive and unfair to our country birthright citizenship. So a call from Donald Trump to then move on a major piece of legislation, what would obviously be a significant piece of legislation, overturning birthright citizenship through Congress. Now, whether you can do that, that would actually itself probably end up back to the court. Right. Because Kavanaugh, I guess the legal take is Kavanaugh's opinion left a little wiggle room. But he was the sixth vote. Yes. Yeah. So, yeah. So Kavanaugh said that according to federal statute, birthright citizenship is legal.

37:51Therefore, you can change federal statute and make it illegal. The other five said that it was a constitutional right. And if it's a constitutional right, you can't go in to the House and the Senate and change it.

38:04Emily Jashinsky:And this is why people are so angry at Amy Coney Barrett, basically, because they believe the opinion actually went way further than it had to. And she co-signed the opinion that it's a right, not just that it's upheld, but that it's actually a constitutional right because of the amendment. Now, what they could do, and I've seen them start to float this, maybe you have some more details on this, is try to tighten visa restrictions. Like, I don't even know if you can say, like, hey, if you're, like, demonstrably pregnant or something, then you can't have a visa to come here or something like that.

38:40because they're what's interesting to me though is that how they're Stephen Miller saying we're just going to lose our country and people cite that there is this like Chinese tourism where you like somebody will come here.

38:55Emily Jashinsky:The New Yorker just had a great article about this. But think about what we're concerned about if that's the case. So we're worried that somebody, a mom from China will fly to the United States have a baby The baby's an American citizen. They will fly back to China. They clearly have a decent amount of resources to be able to pull all of this off and to think about it even. They will then raise their kid in China, getting a very good socialist education. They will obviously teach them English because they care a lot about the United States. China will spend an enormous amount of money educating and training this kid.

39:36the kid will be bathed in the American hegemonic cultural stuff he'll he or she will know our hip hop artists know our know our movies and then the fear is that when this person turns 18 they will then go to college in the United States and then after that maybe start a company or go work for an American company as an American citizen and that that is going to destroy our country. I just don't see that. Like in a world of absolutely plummeting birth rates, the country that can attract that driven person who obviously likes the United States because that they want to be there and they will speak English, they'll do all these things.

40:26Like, we win there. Also, the hardest thing about training a labor force is the parenting and the immense cost that goes into raising a baby from zero to 18, zero to 22.

40:39Emily Jashinsky:I actually think that's probably, if Stephen Miller were here, I think that would probably be his rebuttal to you that the bigger problem is not like Chinese birth tourism, but the bigger problem is that when you have people who are, for example, given asylum or if you have Democrats with laxer border policies that look more like the Biden administrations and they are not in detention while they wait asylum hearings or make different claims, then they have children here. Because some of those like TPS claims are like two years, the court date would be two years in the future. They have American kids and that basically makes it impossible unless you're the Trump administration to deport people who came here and then had kids.

41:16Emily Jashinsky:And it's like the quote unquote anchor baby theory. I think that's probably what he would say is the bigger concern when he says it's going to destroy the country. Like a Honduran mom? Yeah. Okay, well, I don't know. But yeah, the Chinese birth tourism stuff is wild, but I agree. I mean, it's not on like a massive scale. Like it's not at all on a massive scale. Yeah, and if you're born here, like this is, I was kind of surprised at the outrage from conservatives because like you're raised in the U.S. being taught, if you're born here, you're American. it's a fundamental thing and you saw in I think it was Alito's dissent saying other western societies don't do it's like yeah like the whole I keep being told that we're exceptional that we're special like American exceptionalism like we're the greatest country in the world and then you get somebody like Alito saying well Europe does it differently like that's the whole point isn't it like are we exceptional or not or are we just another Denmark or something What are we here?

42:18I was always told if you're born in America, you're American. And that's what makes us great.

42:22Emily Jashinsky:And there's been a lot of backlash to that sentiment in the sort of like intellectual right over the last 10 years. So that's probably what you saw flaring at. It's un-American. Those are un-American weirdos. Here's Matt Walsh calling Amy Coney Barrett a DEI hire B9. He says it turns out that Amy Coney Barrett is a DEI hire a little better than Ketanji Jackson. Terrible pick. When's the last time we had a Republican president who didn't put a liberal justice on the court? So actually taking it out on Trump a bit there. He did get, I guess, a win in or the administration got a win in the form of B7.

42:55Emily Jashinsky:So this was a decision rendered yesterday that upheld state laws in Idaho and West Virginia, banning boys from competing on girls sports teams. But that also didn't go as far as some conservatives would have liked. They would have liked actually the court to have overturned any state that is allowing it to happen on a federalist basis. But the court didn't. The court upheld just the ability of the states to make their own laws on this, which means that the blue states that have their own laws on this are safe going forward. Democrats might have preferred that, too. Yeah. And they'd be like, well, we'd love to keep fighting on this 90-10 issue.

43:35Emily Jashinsky:Hands are tied. But hands are tied. Supreme Court says we can't. Right. Right. Right. It's sort of like Republicans after Obergefell. Now, let's put up this other major decision. This is B8. The Supreme Court, as this Politico headline says, loosens campaign finance laws opening up a flood of midterm cash. So this was actually with the it was a case involving the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the NRSC. And as Politico says, it struck down limits on coordinated spending between candidates and political parties, a win for Republicans that will fundamentally change how tens of millions of dollars are spent in congressional elections.

44:14Emily Jashinsky:The decision, Politico writes, is a blow to Democrats who argued that eliminating the limit on coordination would put more power into the hands of large donors who can cut bigger checks to party committees than to candidates. Republicans tend to get more money from large donors, while Democrats have been more reliant on small dollar donors. And that is particularly in reference to these party committees. So as Politico says, the NRSC brought this case seeking to overturn the limits in 2022 alongside now VP J.D. Vance's Senate campaign. Trump's Justice Department declined to defend the law in court while Democratic groups intervened to oppose the lawsuit.

44:49Emily Jashinsky:And while we're talking about this, let's put B10 up on the screen. This is a new report from Public Citizen that found corporate political spending has surged to a record shattering level. Corporations have spent one point five eight billion dollars on federal elections since Citizens United in 2010. in the 2026 election cycle alone. They have spent$517 million already, half a billion dollars already, and it is July, Ryan. Yeah, it's an absolute flood of money. And what this ruling does is right now you're limited. You can give$3 ,500 to a candidate for the general election,$3 ,500 for the primary.

45:32That's the maximum you're allowed to donate. What this would allow you to do is give$3 ,500 to the candidate and then give a million to the NRSC or the DCCC, the party itself, and basically tell them with a wink and a nod, spend it on my guy, which you currently can't do. So you can't coordinate now because they're trying to keep the limits on the spending. But the party communities have said, well, you have super PACs now that aren't exactly coordinating, but they basically are coordinating and you can give the super PAC a million dollars to spend on this candidate. So that has empowered super PACs and hurt parties.

46:15What they're going to do eventually is say that, you know what, actually then it's not fair. So super PACs can also coordinate with campaigns. And then you will have any limits totally in name only. And coordination will be legal. And then when they get angry at DropSite for naming like who the donors are and the donors like, you know, get yelled at on social media, they'll say, well, that's not fair either. And you really can't participate in the democratic process without anonymity. So let's let people give millions of dollars in secret directly to candidates and that'll be fine. And the joke that's embedded in their ruling is they say there are already prophylactic measures in place to prevent quid pro quo corruption.

47:06Huge. So they're like, we've already, they use the word prophylactic. It's so funny. So we're already, we've already taken care of corruption. There is no corruption. So we can let a little extra money and coordination into the system. And the joke is the Supreme Court, every time they get a corruption case, they overturn it. They overturn the conviction.

47:28Emily Jashinsky:The prophylactic. Yeah, they'll say, oh, yes, okay, money exchanged hands for a public favor, but the money came after the favor. And so you really can't say that the favor was done for the money. Maybe it was, but maybe it wasn't. Maybe it's free speech. And yeah, so like they, like Minnettas, Republicans like McDonald or Democrats like Minnettas, like they just keep eroding what counts as bribery. down to you would need to be on video saying, I am giving you this cash for your personal use in exchange for you performing an official act on my behalf today. Like, not tomorrow, because that would be okay.

48:14But I need it right now. Then maybe the Supreme Court would find that to be illegal.

48:20Emily Jashinsky:And they're all getting away with it anyway. So at this point, it's just... That's the Supreme Court's argument. Yeah, well... They're like, F it. My argument, too, but not for the particular decision, just in general. I think we all understand how pathetic it is. They're basically doing whatever they want, so that's exciting. I'm Munga Shatikula, and I'm back with a new season of the podcast Skyline Drive. This time I'm diving into a rabbit hole of peptides, organoids, blood boys, blue zones, and brain replacement to try to understand what this longevity obsession is all about, and what it really means to live forever for all of us.

48:56I learned about some rad science. I can make a brain for you, and then we can test what draw is the best for your brain, as opposed to his brain. Here are some hard truths. I would expect Indians to age faster, but I did not expect it to be almost a four to five year acceleration. And get myself into a world of trouble. I'd say probably start bone smashing. That doesn't work. Make it look more defined. They say it works. I don't know. Listen to Skyline Drive, How to Live Forever on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

49:38Mainstream media is full of cruel depictions of the unhoused. Stories that shame and blame and paint the unhoused as a monolith. We the Unhoused is the podcast that's changing that. I'm Theo Henderson, creator and host. And for years, I've created a space where the unhoused and their advocates can tell their own stories. In the last few months alone, I've interviewed unhoused parents, immigrants, mutual aid organizers, veterans, the LGBTQIA plus community and the policymakers who make the laws that impact the unhoused existence. We do Unhoused as a two time Webby and Signal Award winning show with many exciting guests on the horizon.

50:21Tune in this week for my interview with Dr. Jill Wittler, a street doctor turned influencer whose work with the Unhoused community has made a huge impact online and in her community. Listen to We The Unhoused on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Michael Rappaport, and my podcast, the I Am Rappaport Stereo Podcast, is unlike any one you've ever heard. We're a variety show, and if you're looking for strong opinions funny opinions about sports, entertainment, politics, pop culture, and whatever else catches my attention, then subscribe now. This kid Jafar Jackson is as good as Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury, and it's as good as Timothy Chamillai as Bob Dylan, and I say that with love and respect for both of those actors, and I don't know how many Oscar nominations they give out, I don't know if It's five six for best actor.

51:19One hundred and fifty percent. This kid Jafar Jackson should absolutely positively get nominated for his portrayal as Michael Jackson. Listen to I am Rappaport on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. I am Rappaport podcast.

51:40Emily Jashinsky:Let's talk about the MKUltra hearing that Anna Paulina Luna, Republican congresswoman, obviously, held yesterday. Actually, just a stunning kind of story politically, on a partisan basis. So if you're not familiar with the authors Stephen Kinzer and Tom O 'Neill, you haven't been reading enough books. They're, I think, two of the most important authors, honestly, in the history of American 20th century politics. books that have come out just in the last decade. I actually went back and checked. Kinzer's books have totally changed the way that we see our own government. And if you haven't read them, you're missing out on that.

52:15Emily Jashinsky:But they're fairly recent. Like his books have been like last 10, 15 years have totally changed the way. For example, he does have probably the most complete book on MKUltra. Which I think was 2019 or something. Right, 2019. I went back and checked. That's why I was in the index because Ryan has cited in the index. It was published in 2019. it's called Poisoner in Chief on Sidney Gottlieb. And so Anna Paulina Luna basically convened this hearing. And a lot of this is, you know, there's discussion about having a new church committee after the Republican Party became opposed to the deep state and got very skeptical of the CIA and FBI for a brief moment in time.

52:51Emily Jashinsky:And now there's like remnants of that still happening. But convene this hearing to put focus on MK Altro. She's been doing other things as well along these lines. She's, for example, hired Jeff Morley to help her look into the JFK file releases, which is also very interesting. But this was focused on MKUltra, but also what happened in the past, what the CIA still hasn't told us about MKUltra. Kinzer got into that in particular. But whether or not mind control is happening right now. And Kinzern and O 'Neill, both foremost experts on this, basically said they don't have evidence of it, but they would be shocked if it weren't continuing to happen today.

53:32Emily Jashinsky:There were questions specifically about Butler and the Charlie Kirk assassination, as people can imagine. So why don't we go ahead and just run a couple of sots here? Almost 50 years ago, the last congressional hearings into MKUltra took place just a short walk from here in the Dirkskin Senate office building. At those hearings convened in August and September of 1977, representatives of the CIA told Congress and the American people that its 25-year effort to control human behavior had been a colossal failure. Because I believe Congress was never told the truth about what this program actually achieved.

54:14In fact, I believe the agency misled Congress in 1977 when it characterized MKUltra as a failure. Is it in your expert opinion that Jack Ruby and Manson were assets of the intelligence agency specifically pertaining to MKUltra? Were they MKUltra? Yeah, theoretically, Manson, I've never been able to prove absolutely. Jack Ruby, I believe, this is something else. The Warren Commission investigation on the Warren Commission was Alan Dulles, the former CIA director, who authorized and ran MKUltra until he was fired by President Kennedy. The liaison to the committee for the CIA, who handled the information coming from the CIA back and forth to the Warren Commission, was Richard Helms, who was a direct supervisor of Jolly West.

55:04They knew who West was. they knew that what West was capable of and what they had paid him to do and what he had reported to them that he could do, including inducing mental disorders in people, that was never disclosed to the commission as far as anyone knows. So I believe that West was put in there to keep Jack Ruby from telling his story.

55:26Emily Jashinsky:So it was Tom O 'Neill and Anna Paulina Luna going back and forth on Manson and Jack Ruby, connections that are Jolly West Ryan, which are, I mean, damning in a million different ways. Chaos, as he just said, doesn't really ever, you're never able to really establish, and this is by design, of course, in the CIA, the definitive link, but you have everything you need to know, basically. Also, whether or not it was intentional or not, what the CIA ended up doing was seeding an entire counterculture. Yes. Ken Kesey famously participated in an MKUltra kind of CIA-led acid experiment when he was in the army.

56:09Or people can Google the exact details of that. And, you know, he goes on to

56:16Emily Jashinsky:the Merry Pranksters and Grateful Dead and the Hell's Angels get looped in with that and it produces the Northern California kind of counterculture as a result of that. Like he's driving around the further buses around and that then takes, there's a lot more to what kind of drove the left kind of away from class politics and into whatever it became, But that played a significant role in it, creating that detour. And so that's why you have some people saying, well, this was intentional on the part of the government to disrupt a class politics that was beginning to form in the 1950s between labor unions and civil rights groups and anti-war groups.

57:12the March on Washington by Martin Luther King was funded by the UAW and that to and black people who had moved from the south amid the great migration were increasingly moving into union jobs and there was a real threat that this kind of new deal coalition was adding this element to it that was then going to be hegemonic and then be a real challenge to to capital and that the counterculture kind of helped unravel that so there's an argument that that was intentional i don't know there's never been any memos or anything that have emerged but systems are what they do and that's it's what it is what actually happened so while they didn't get mind control uh they did reshape the country and you know there's a good point because this is where

58:04Emily Jashinsky:kinzer started saying basically like we don't know they burned all of the files like the mk ultra were like famously... Richard Helms. ...completely burned. And they were talking at the time about not putting a lot of things in writing. Here's Kinzer. This is C2. There have been enormous advances in cyber technology, in artificial intelligence, in neuroscience. Covert agencies may have access now to tools for mind control that Sidney Gottlieb could not even have imagined. It may well have been true in 1963 that mind control is a myth. or whether it's still true is uncertain. And that question of whether mind control might now be possible under our new circumstances is something that has presumably occurred to scientists who work for secret services, including our own.

59:02This task force has a chance to connect the past to the future. A renewed effort to find MKUltra documents from the 1950s and to fill out the redactions of those that have been released might shed new light on how the CIA operated during that period. It could also inform a new inquiry into whether any mind-control projects are now underway inside the U.S. security apparatus. That might help prevent the emergence of a 21st century MKUltra that could be even more destructive than the original.

59:36Emily Jashinsky:Prevent the emergence of a 21st century MKUltra. That's what you just heard from perhaps the foremost expert on MKUltra in the world saying that there is a legitimate need to potentially prevent a 21st century MKUltra. Another little newsy bit out of this is Anna Paulina Luna was talking about Operation Paperclip. This is a wild hearing. I watched all of it. and saying actually she's going to the German parliament to start trying and finding, to try and find the victims of MKUltra buried in Germany. Kinzer's book does a lot on this. C3. Kurt Bloma, who was the chief of biological weapons development for the Nazi government, came to work for the CIA.

1:00:16So did Walter Schreiber, who was the surgeon general of the Nazi army. I can just tell a brief story. When I was researching my book, I found what I think might be the first secret CIA prison or black site. It's a nice chalet in Germany. And the guy who now owns it took me into the basement. He said these were the cells where the MKUltra officers, working side by side with Nazis, carried out those gruesome experiments, which were actually just continuations of the experiments that those Nazis had been conducting just a few years earlier right down the road. Just for timeline and clarification, these experiments were happening after the Nuremberg trials, correct?

1:01:01So the CIA would have known that these were crimes against humanity. I looked for an episode in which the Nuremberg doctrines were posted on the wall in some MKUltra or CIA office, And I was never able to find any indication that those Nuremberg principles ever were even consulted, much less obeyed.

1:01:19Emily Jashinsky:Wren, I'm the last person that needs to explain this to you, but this has been the domain of the left for decades. And instead of actually taking this hearing seriously, Democrats sent a former NIH director to talk about Trump's politicization of science. Not a non-issue, but still just. What does that have to do with? Nothing. Literally nothing. What more politicization of science could there be than teaming up with Nazis to extend their human experimentation? Right. Which we did, to be clear. Right. And so let's roll the witness that Democrats choose to bring in for no reason. Absolutely no relationship to MKUltra was very much just making that clear.

1:02:04Emily Jashinsky:And it was an attempt to get soundbites into the hearing about Trump. So this is C3. And right now we're ceding our leadership in biomedical research to China. That's what's happening right now. What about covering up harmful side effects of vaccines and the role that the NIH has played in that? What do you have to say about that, ma 'am? The U.S. history of human subject protection has evolved greatly. Numerous research improprieties from the 50s to the 70s in the United States, including the Tuskegee syphilis study, forced Congress to establish formally federal mandated rules. I'm not asking you about that.

1:02:44You know what I'm asking you about? I'm asking you about how NIH handled COVID. Obviously, this is supposed to be a hearing about MKUltra, but when you gave your opening statement, and I don't even know why you were called to this hearing because you didn't offer anything about MKUltra, but since you are here and you're going to defend NIH, I'm going to call you out on it.

1:03:03Emily Jashinsky:Try not to sound naive, Ryan, but like there's no reason for Democrats not to take an MKUltra hearing seriously and to send somebody who's not just like an anti-Trump witness to divert the conversation and try to kind of troll. There was an opportunity probably to do something slightly more interesting. Right. And the politicization of medicine and science maybe the kind of worst argument to make in a hearing like this when it is literally politically driven as being deployed on defenseless people that the CIA determined were expendable. They went around the world trying to find people that if they died in these experiments in which they were being tortured, that nobody would miss them.

1:03:49It reminded me of Cherno Ba's book. We've had him on a couple of times. It's about the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, but the subtitle is Corporate Gangsters, Multinationals, and Rogue Politicians. And there's a chapter in it that goes through the history of medical research in Africa, which was pioneered by Germans amid their genocide, which became the model for the genocide that they carried out later in Germany. And a lot of the kind of discoveries and people involved in this human research in the early 1900s in Africa on Africans evolved into the Nazi research, which then evolves into the American research with literally with the Nazis and also taking place heavily in Africa on subjects who had no idea what they were signing up for.

1:04:47And then when we're when when there's an Ebola outbreak, which is going on now, and you find people suspicious of Western interventions, we're like, oh, look at those dumb tribal people who don't understand the genius of modern medicine when a significant amount of the history of their interaction with Western medicine was them being the unwitting subjects of medical torture.

1:05:16Emily Jashinsky:O 'Neill testified yesterday that USAID was, quote, very likely used as a front for MKUltra. And the breathless defenses that we've seen from Dems who are just trying to anti-Trump posture about USAID contrasts starkly with some anti-colonial activists in Africa who would tell you something very different about USAID. And I guess, Ryan, just to round up the segment, I'm hopeful in some way that maybe the DSA aligned candidates who come into Congress would be able to do a little bit of at least what Matt Gaetz and AOC did on some of these topics. Like, for example, AUMF use in Libya, I think they worked together on.

1:05:52Emily Jashinsky:Maybe you would see something that isn't just such a dumb anti-Trump stunt like that in the future. Yeah, let's get some of these new DSA people on those committees. I think they'll have a much different understanding of the history. Yeah. Well, I would hope so, because Dems should not be seeding these issues. They're ripe for the picking. Yeah, absolutely.

1:06:34biopunks, curmudgeons, blues owners, super seniors, and Goa's top cryotherapy lab to try to understand this obsession with living forever and what it means for all of us. And I get into a bit of trouble along the way. I'd say probably start bone smashing. That doesn't work. Make it look more defined. They say it works. I don't know. Listen to Skyline Drive, How to Live Forever on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Michael Rappaport, and my podcast, the I Am Rappaport Stereo Podcast, is unlike anyone you've ever heard. If you're looking for strong opinions about sports, entertainment, politics, pop culture, and whatever else catches my attention, then subscribe now.

1:07:15This kid, Jafar Jackson, should absolutely, positively get nominated for his portrayal as Michael Jackson. Listen to I Am Rappaport on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Your husband is not who you think he is. Your body is not what you thought it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Dani Shapiro, and these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of Family Secrets. He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move. And he went out the front door, and he jumped in a car and drove off, and that was the last time I saw him.

1:07:52Listen to season 14 of Family Secrets on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.