Trump “bans the free press” in gross announcement

0:13Brian Tyler Cohen:Here's one of the latest edicts from our free speech president. Quote,

0:30Brian Tyler Cohen:record directly from the US government under crooked Joe Biden in order to keep them alive. Seems like corruption to me from the White House as a result of their constant reporting fake news. Media outlets shouldn't be able to constantly write or report fiction and lies when they're covering the President of the United States, the Trump administration, or the United States of America. Other fake media news outlets to follow. Thank you for your attention to this matter, President Donald J. Trump. Trump was asked about this. Here's what he said. Oh, the ban on the free press, right? A very simple ban.

1:01I don't want him in my office. I don't want him here. I would say the ban would go as far as you can.

1:07Brian Tyler Cohen:Quote, oh, the ban on the free press. Not even trying to hide the fact that he is violating the First Amendment by banning the press from entering the White House for the crime of reporting critically on what he's doing. Fox's Jackie Heinrich, the president of the White House Correspondents Association, wrote, quote,

1:53Brian Tyler Cohen:defense of our colleagues at CNN, MSNOW, and Politico who are being singled out for doing their jobs. Now, a few points here. Obviously, first and foremost, it is not lost on anyone how aggressively anti-free speech this president is and how overtly illegal this move is. He will be sued and this will be overturned in a hot minute. I have zero doubt about that. I rarely make predictions. I will make that prediction and I'll say it is 100 % going to happen. Mark my words. But I hope all of these purported free speech champions, people like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, take note that the figure they helped give rise to because they claim to be against censorship is the principal purveyor of exactly that.

2:34Brian Tyler Cohen:And this isn't even the first time. He's sicked his FCC on comedians for the crime of telling jokes. He's already tried and failed to ban the AP from the White House for accurately describing the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of Mexico. And the list goes on and on. But here's my second point. We can all hear all the strongly worded letters in the world from people like Jackie Heinrich at Fox News. But her news outlet runs cover for this guy on a daily basis. They paid$787 million to perpetuate his election lies. So when ABC covers this and complains, remember that they paid him$16 million to settle with him.

3:10Brian Tyler Cohen:Same with CBS. Trump doesn't care about your strongly worded letters because he already knows that he owns these legacy media outlets. They've already shown him how weak they are. They fell over themselves, settling every bullshit lawsuit that he brought forward. And so now when you wag your finger at him for these overt attacks on the free press, you think he cares about that? He's not afraid of you because you already proved to him how weak you are by heaping millions of dollars into his pockets to try and buy goodwill. And what did that get you? Nothing. That's why when Trump put my name on his enemies list, instead of quieting down, I talked about it every day.

3:45Brian Tyler Cohen:I wore it as a badge of honor and I dared him to add more names in the independent media space to that list. I didn't cower. I leaned in. And guess what? He never added a single additional name. You don't beat a bully by cowering to him. You beat a bully by punching back. That's a lesson that legacy media could learn but refuses to. This is what it looks like when you prioritize access above your actual function. And the natural conclusion of that is that Donald Trump's announcement here, shamelessly proclaiming his intention to ban the free press from the people's house is exactly what he's moving forward with.

4:17Brian Tyler Cohen:So again, Trump will be sued and he'll lose. But maybe our free press might learn a lesson from all of this, that if it wants to remain a free press, sometimes that actually requires having a backbone, something they've failed to learn or show thus far. Next up is my interview with David Korn. No Lie is brought to you by ShipStation. So I am a procrastinator and nowhere is that more apparent than right before the holidays where I haven't bought any gifts and I have to cram that all in before I go home empty-handed. I'm sure millions of people are in the same boat as me. Now imagine being the retailer having to deal with that mad rush and get all of those orders out on time.

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5:36Brian Tyler Cohen:And look, you don't need to run your own business to understand how stressful peak season shipping can be, which underscores just how helpful something like syncing orders across all your online stores or keeping track of inventory can be. Peak season doesn't wait, and neither should you. Get ahead of it today with ShipStation and get 60 days free at ShipStation.com with code BTC. That's ShipStation.com, code BTC. Taxes and fees apply. Just in time for the upcoming midterms, we have a brand new cataclysmic story that involves the Russians and Don Jr. I'm joined now by David Korn, author of the new book, How Russia Won.

6:12Brian Tyler Cohen:David, I want to get into your book in just a moment. But first, on this breaking news, as it relates to Putin linked oligarchs in Russia, apparently financing Don Jr.'s wedding. Is this happening as he would claim in a vacuum that he's just dear friends with these people? Or do you think there's some broader story that involves national security and his father that might come into play in this, in all of this? This is a big piece of a narrative that's been smothered for years. Donald Trump and his close relationship with the Russians, business-wise, and also denying the Russian attacks on the various elections.

6:48He has looked to basically forge a bond with Vladimir Putin. It goes back over 12, 13 years now. And the Russians have clearly, clearly tried to court him and have interfered in our elections, not just in 2016, but in 2020 and 2024 for his benefit. So anything happening now, a Russian oligarch close to Putin, financing Trump's son's wedding to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars, it's all part of this larger picture of Trump and Russia. And you know, Brian, if Hunter Biden had gotten his wedding paid for by a Russian oligarch or Ukrainian oligarch, it would make heads explode throughout MAGA world and Fox Media.

7:33So this is a big, big deal. It's part of a larger story that Trump has tried really hard over the last 10 years to smother and dismiss.

7:44Brian Tyler Cohen:Well, when Don Jr. comes out and justifies all of this by saying that the Putin ally was just our dear friend, that was his quote, our dear friend, Is it possible that he might think this person is their dear friend, but in fact, he might be the victim of a campaign where the Kremlin expressly needs to find ways to get ingratiated with the Trump family? And so he might be, you know, Don Jr. might be thinking this person is their real friend or not. But the reality is, like, if the campaign is aimed at ingratiating themselves into the Trump administration, isn't this exactly that? And you might have Don Jr., who's just an unwitting or witting participant in all of this, but whose naivety just might be so obvious that it's allowing the Kremlin to gain a foothold in U.S.

8:32Brian Tyler Cohen:politics. You know, there are 50 people at this wedding. He says he met this oligarch just within the last couple of years. Is anyone that you've met in the last few years, Brian, who would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on your wedding? If so, you're probably a much better friend than I am. I mean, this clearly has the outlines of a Russian effort to get even closer and deeper into the Trump family than already exists. We know that Trump made money off a Russian oligarch when he held the Miss Universe contest there in 2013. Both Don Jr. and Eric have talked about Russian money coming in and supporting their properties.

9:09There's clearly been an effort on the part of the Russians to do two things, to get into the Trump clan through money. They offered Trump a deal while he was campaigning for president in 2016, a tower deal in Moscow, and to affect American elections with influence operations and all sorts of things that I outline in the book, disinformation campaigns, to affect politics here for Trump's benefit. This is clearly all part of the same thing. And I mean, Donald Trump Jr. and senior and everyone else, they try to sell the public on a lot of bullshit. It's really hard believing that this just happened because this Russian oligarch is a pal.

9:50Brian Tyler Cohen:One more question on Russia and our elections. You know, it's it's widely known at this point, not only because of U.S. intelligence agencies, but also guilty pleas that Russia had interfered in the in the 2016 election. In previous elections, we've had U.S. officials who've pleaded guilty to participating in that whole effort. Is there any evidence that Russia is continuing to meddle in our elections modern day, like 2026 and likely beyond? Yes. This was part of the reason I did this book, because we've been stuck in this argument over 2016, whether there was collusion, the Steele dossier and all this stuff.

10:33And Trump has been able to basically escape accountability for being complicit in the 2016 attack by denying it was happening and helping to cover up what Vladimir Putin did. But then in 2020 and 2024, there were other Russian intelligence operations aimed at helping Trump. And they did so in the midterm elections between those presidential elections. So they've been doing this nonstop for over 10 years now. And we just started seeing the beginnings of this happening again in this election. MSNOW a couple of days ago reported that a Russian intelligence network called Matrioshka, which I write about in my book, was starting to put out disinformation, fake videos of celebrities that are slamming and dismissing and saying terrible things about Democrats and urging people to vote Republican.

11:21People like Julia Roberts and Jessica Sarah Parker. So, again, they're starting to amp up on this. They've been nonstop in terms of disinformation to discredit Volodymyr Zelensky and U.S. support for Ukraine. You know, this same outfit, Matrioshka, in 2024 put out videos that they branded as Washington Post, CNN, Bellingcat videos. They have the little logos in them. They put them out and they claim that Kamala Harris had an abortion, that she was tied in with Big Pharma. They put out things of denigrating Tim Walsh, her running mate. So they were very active in 2024. And now as we get close to the midterm elections, we see them again.

12:02And the key thing to remember here, Brian, is that in the last two elections, we had government agencies and offices that were countering and tracking what Russian disinformation operatives were doing. And they were sometimes letting the public know this was the office of the director of national intelligence. It was a foreign influence task force at the FBI. It was a foreign malign center at the ODNI and a unit at the State Department. They all were actively tracking and doing something. Well, guess what? Since Trump has come into office, he has basically decimated and in some instances just ended these organizations and these outfits.

12:38So we don't know. And Trump doesn't want us to know. So in my book, I chronicle how this has been going on for 10 years and how Trump has been doing everything possible to keep it from becoming a big story. And now, since he controls the U.S. government, he's making sure that we, the public, won't really know what Russia is doing.

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14:10Brian Tyler Cohen:Don't forget, there's no safe like simply safe. You know, the book is titled How Russia Won. And I think a lot of people are going to be watching the coverage over the last several years and watch the extent to which Ukraine has fended off total annihilation in what was supposed to be, you know, I think Putin called it like a five day war. He thought it was going to take, you know, five, three, whatever it was, days to take over Kiev. And so what do you mean when you say how Russia won as it relates to both Ukraine and the United States? Well, Russia clearly has not won the war in Ukraine. But what it has clearly done is help put into place in the White House an agent of chaos and authoritarianism who has weakened the Western alliance, who has made it even more difficult for Ukraine to resist the brutal illegal invasion of Vladimir Putin, and who has weakened the U.S.

15:05standing in the world and who has exacerbated political discord and divisions within the United States. Vladimir Putin is fighting a twilight war against the West. You can hear officials in France, in Germany and England say this time and time again. Trump administration won't recognize this. This twilight war is really aimed at fracturing the West and NATO and convincing his own people that democracies are messy and they don't work, which is why you need a strongman like Vladimir Putin in charge. And if you look at what's happened in the United States in the last year and a half and what happened under the first Trump administration, he has clearly created a lot of chaos here.

15:45And that has made it harder for the U.S. to stand up against Russia. In fact, now we see in the war in Ukraine that Trump, in the last couple of days, we have Jared Kushner saying what really counts here is Ukraine has to give up land to end this war. So they are siding. They are siding with Vladimir Putin. They let him send his finance minister to the G20 meeting that was recently held, where Russia had been previously ostracized. So while Putin has not won the war in Ukraine, he has achieved a lot in weakening the U.S. internally and in its relationships abroad, creating discord between the United States and Canada, its most important trading partner, most important ally.

16:30So in that sense, this twilight war that Putin has been waging, which Trump doesn't recognize, Republicans don't recognize, he's succeeding there. He's not using military power. He's using disinformation and now in Europe sabotage campaigns to destabilize or try to destabilize the nations that he sees as his geostrategic foes. So in that instance, he's won several battles so far. The war's not over. American politics, as you know, swings back and forth, happens the same thing on the geopolitical stage. But his his his operation to weaken the West and weaken the United States, I think, in some ways, has been perhaps the most successful covert operation in modern history.

17:17Brian Tyler Cohen:You know, I think people are going to hear about covert disinformation campaigns and cyber war that's being waged on behalf of the Russians. And it feels distant to normal people. In what ways has this presented itself for regular folks, folks who are scrolling online, for example? Are there are there ways in which this is touching regular Americans to the point that we don't even realize that that we are the unwitting victims of this very campaign? That's a good question. And a lot of this can sound abstract and distant, and a lot of it happens in the shadows. I mean, I wrote a long book about this, but I'm sure there's a lot going on that I could not uncover.

18:02Right. It's kept secret for a purpose. But what we see here is a subversion of American democracy in which in 2016 and 2020 and 2024, Russia came in and tried to put its thumb on the scale. And I'm not saying they alone got Donald Trump elected. But in these close elections in 2016 and 2024, their intervention, their subterfuge was one of several factors that landed Donald Trump in the White House. And then you have to say, OK, what does it mean to you that we now have Donald Trump in the White House? He's launched this war in Iran that has raised prices for gasoline. He has launched these erratic tariff wars, these trade wars that have not succeeded.

18:51And they have, again, caused inflation. So there's some direct impacts that way. What has he done in terms of health care? What has he done in terms of, you know, Medicare, Medicaid? These are all things that have impacts on people. And I would argue that the overall consequences have been negative for America. They've weakened the country and they've actually created more internal distress and discord. And so to the degree that any of that affects you, whether it's shopping at a grocery store or whether it's what your kids see at school, however that affects you, the Russians, Vladimir Putin, had a hand in it.

19:34And I mean, if we're going to make mistakes in this country, we should make them on our own. I think it's a good principle to have. And if we care about American democracy, about getting the best people elected with the best debates and the best discourse we can have here, we don't want this diversion. And we don't want it coming with an administration or a presidential candidate helping it happen, which is what Trump has done again and again. And, you know, people talk about whether there was collusion with Trump and Russia in 2016. But to me, the key thing was Russia attacked and he denied these attacks.

20:09He was aiding and embedding after the fact. He was echoing what Putin said. He was siding with Putin in order to benefit himself politically. That is a profound act of betrayal. And someone who engages in such action is not going to be working for the public good.

20:28Brian Tyler Cohen:I want to work backwards on that point a little bit. We're talking about the consequences that regular Americans have to shoulder. Why is that important to the Kremlin? What are the Kremlin's objectives here that would lead them to want to engage in these covert influence campaigns expressly to weaken American democracy? What is their goal in this? Vladimir Putin has a geostrategic mission. He wants to restore the Soviet empire, call it the Russian empire. And whether that means taking over countries next door to him or just expanding Russian influence throughout the world, the biggest roadblock to that is the West.

21:11It's NATO. It's United States. It's the idea of democracy, freedom, free markets. That is the antithesis to what he wants to see for Russia and for himself. So he has been looking for years to weaken not just the United States, but the West overall. He's interfered in elections in France and Poland and Moldova. He was interfering in the Brexit decision and more recently, and it failed, in the election in Hungary. So he wants to expand Russian influence and weaken the West and recreate all this conflict within the West. And if people are fighting more against each other here in the United States, the U.S.

21:50is going to be less able to lead the world and to put up any counter resistance to his imperial ambitions. And, you know, Ukraine just encapsulates that, but it goes beyond that. Joe Biden, you know, people can say what they want to say about Joe Biden, but he did lead a coalition that was essential in helping Ukraine resist Vladimir Putin's invasion. Now, Donald Trump promised Patriot missiles to Vladimir Zelensky, but they're not coming. And we have Jared Kushner taking the side of Putin in the ongoing negotiations because Putin doesn't want these negotiations to succeed. So Putin has these ambitions.

22:32The U.S. and the West are standing in his way. If he weakens the coalition and if he weakens the United States, I mean, look what's happening to our global standing in the world of finance. You have countries dumping dollars, taking their gold out of the United States. The U.S. is becoming weaker in terms of its influence around the world. The war on Iran has put us in a weaker position. This is all to Putin's advantage.

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24:05Brian Tyler Cohen:So let's eat real. Head to Factormeals.com slash BTC50OFF and use code BTC50OFF to get 50 % off and one free breakfast item per box for one year while supplies last until 10-31-26. That's code BTC50OFF at Factormeals.com. BTC50OFF at Factormeals.com. When a country like Russia, who has a vested interest in dismantling the West so that they can be ascendant, as you said, so that the Russian Empire can be reconstituted, what do you presume they think when they see a party where the leader of that party is effectively a useful idiot for them and will be perfectly content to, you know, allow himself to be manipulated by the Russians because all he cares about is his own self-enrichment and the Russians are perfectly content to enrich him.