Colbert's Hissy Fit Farewell Tour, Xi's Ominous Comment, and Murdaugh's New Trial, with Glenn Greenwald | Ep. 1318

23:06Glenn Greenwald:Yes. Okay. So that's the perfect setup for the soundbite I'm about to play. This is from this past week. For some reason, first I saw Julia Louis-Dreyfus go on Colbert's show and tried to do this Veep reenactment. it was so lame. It was so not funny. I, as the kids would say, it was cringe. It was very cringy. I felt uncomfortable watching the whole thing, but he's doing something where he's kissing everyone, like actually kissing male and female. It's a little weird. I'm going to show you some Vitsat 23. Because I think you've made out with guests on camera. No, I think you just wanted to make it on with me.

23:50Glenn Greenwald:This is our late night house. He's kissing Jimmy Fallon. What harm is there? None. What could possibly go wrong?

24:00Glenn Greenwald:Nice kissing Julie Davis. On the lips, people. Oh. Pedro Pascal. Tapping his lips. Oh, they're going. I'm sorry. This is gross. like who who kisses Julia Louis-Dreyfus on the mouth who like by the way no one knows where any of those mouths have been this is weird I like I don't kiss my own mother on the mouth my mom and I kiss on the cheek that's it like this is very strange behavior Glenn I I mean I totally I didn't see I didn't see that I saw the images circulating and I was actually I didn't you know I just saw them kind of crossing my feet and I was even wondering like are those real or those distorted you'd never know you have to look into it and find out I just didn't but I know I just saw the video and it is and you're welcome it's yeah thank you so much for doing that work for me i was just about to go do it because i'm so interested no but uh the what it reeks to me is of is of desperation you know like julia louise dreyfus is funny like she's a funny actress she's had great success i loved veep i thought uh seinfeld at the time was great whatever um but that's because she was being a comedian she was being like just a comic actress now like if when they're trying to become political figures when they're trying to what in their mind is like elevate whatever they do but when reality they're just kind of dragging it into the gutter because it's just so uninteresting the when they be they're not they're not interesting political thinkers that isn't why they're successful nobody has ever tuned into any of this to watch hear their political views unless you know you have a like-minded political audience in which case you're going to reduce your audience as stephen colbert has done and it just this is all but so without being able to be funny, without really having anything relevant culturally to contribute, it's, oh, let's just start kissing on the lips because that'll at least get people talking about the show.

25:49And I guess it works. It was, as I said, circulating in my feed. I wouldn't usually see the Colbert show in there. And I don't know, it's just -

25:57Glenn Greenwald:You and I can both drop trowel right now and do a big moon in front of the camera and we get lots of attention. But like most people who are doing a show, especially a political show like Stephen Colbert is doing, would like to maintain some level of dignity on camera in front of their audiences while doing the show. That's not what he's like. Why is he kissing Jimmy Fallon and on the participation of all the other late night hosts, like he's their God, like the emasculination, what's the emasculation that they're engaging in for what again? So that you can, I mean, it's not like Stephen Colbert invented the genre, Right.

26:35Glenn Greenwald:It's like when Barbara Walters retired, that that was big. I mean, that was big. She was a pioneer. It was like an institution, an institution and like something. Yes. Pioneering, as you said. Exactly. He doesn't have any of that. What are they doing? No, but he's being distorted into some kind of victim of Trump administration authoritarianism. This is the this is the subtext for everything that we live in Trump's America. And in Trump's America, if you criticize Donald Trump, you go to a gulag or you're put into prison or you're shot by masked ice agents on the street or you have your corporate bosses fire you in order to please the Trump administration.

27:16and i'm not even saying again i'm not saying there aren't actual questions there that that people like you and i and others who you know engage in politics people talk about politics but talking about it as politics would raise and debate and discuss it's worth examination but that's not what this is about this is about creating this kind of storyline where they're heroic they're these central figures who have done such important things i don't know what but important things. And at the end, they end up getting martyred. Like they are acting like they were put on the cross. And this persecution narrative does not work for extremely rich celebrities who have always gotten along very well with corporate bosses until their show started losing money.

28:05And I do think it's such an interesting thing about the economics. You know, the reason why is because technology now is such that you and I can be talking to each other. We have microphones in front of each other, cameras in front of each other, small staffs. You can have small staffs in a studio and still produce like a professional enough show. But at networks, they have hundreds of people employed, but not almost more than our people under 50 watching Stephen Colbert. Like the numbers are pretty close. Colbert had 200 staffers, Glenn.

28:35Glenn Greenwald:200 staffers. Exactly. And he's not producing 200 times better of a product than anybody. Than anybody. I'd read there's a zillion people I would rather watch just sit in front of a camera with a cheap microphone and talk than watch Stephen Colbert. And that is what the Internet has has permitted is it really has rooted out the frauds like the people who are only successful because they had a captive audience. No one's captive anymore to CBS, except still like old people who watch because it's it's their viewing habits. But other than that, young people, they're not going to watch CBS out of habit or just because they have to.

29:09They're going to only watch if there's something compelling on and there's not.

29:13Glenn Greenwald:It's so crazy. I did not make as much as Stephen Colbert is making when I was in the primetime at Fox, but my show made$100 million in ads a year. that, okay,$100 million in ads a year. And that's not including these subscription fees that Fox would get because people liked the lineup. They liked what was in the primetime. They liked up and down the dial. But that makes sense. That's why that show worked. And we did it on a shoestring budget. I only had 12 main producers, which is small for cable. You have to produce six segments a night. I mean, it's a lot. It's a labor intensive product, and it still is over there, but Fox always did it on the lean.

29:57This guy's got one hour

30:01Glenn Greenwald:of like a couple of guests. I don't know, maybe three at most. He does a standup monologue, so I guess he needs a couple of writers since he's clearly not writing his own stuff anymore. I don't even know how you get to 200 staffers. And how much was his show making, Steve? it took in 60 and lost 40. Those economics are not sustainable. So it took in 60 and it cost 100 to make. It cost$100 million to make and it took in 60. Just so people understand the economics, right? So then there's my show at Fox. I don't know what it cost, but it was some fraction of that, teeny tiny fraction of that. And we made a hundred million.

30:45Glenn Greenwald:Like that's something that's available to anybody who wants to be in the news or entertainment business. And you could easily replace Stephen Colbert with an up and coming hungry, you know, excited, young, talented guy who wouldn't require any of the star trappings or salary that he demands and probably get at least equal to, if not potentially in a year, a bigger number. Like, why don't any of these other comedians acknowledge that? Why do they all go along with this? Well, ironically, this is the part of it that, you know, you could go to YouTube and find some young comedian who doesn't have a huge name but has like a big following online, which is, you know, if they have a following online, It means their following tends to be a lot younger than the average network or cable news viewer, which is what's created by advertisers and the like, so they're more valuable.

31:39The problem is is that the reason why they don't just take somebody like that and pay them, you know, one-twentieth of what Stephen Colbert is making and give them an hour on CBS News is because they can't control those people. They don't trust them enough. They don't have enough of a proven track record that they're good, malleable people. and you know your stint at nbc was very short-lived in part because you weren't that

32:02Glenn Greenwald:malleable you know you they couldn't just mold you and into something that they wanted you to be or that the other people there wanted you to be and the fact that that you weren't is why you were gone so so soon so that's the irony is stephen colbert has lasted there so long because he's never been offensive they were willing to lose money on him because he never really did anything And, you know, basically that show is some movie star, some actor has a new show, a new book, a new whatever they want to promote. So the deal is they go, they go on those shows, they sit down for like eight minutes, talk a few minutes about some pre-planned story, and then the rest of the time promoting the project.

32:40It's like the easiest thing in the world. But that's what that show, that's what those networks want. They don't want edgy comedy or people they can't control. And that's why they've lost their audience.

32:51Glenn Greenwald:Farewell. I mean, just truly farewell. Well, it's like, I don't know. I feel like I don't know what they're going to replace him with, but who cares? The whole medium has become totally irrelevant. It should just lean into what it is, which is it's it's political hit jobs every night after night. I mean, it's interesting to me because those five late night comedians, quote unquote, just launched a podcast and it's appearing on my podcast feed under the news feed, not entertainment news. Yeah. they're actually so like they're not that they're not entertainment and they're not news i don't know what they are but also but also as you noted and i when i tell people this who aren't you know conservatives people get shocked the number one rated late night talk show host in the country is greg gutfeld his audience is not huge yeah but he is the number one rated uh late night talk show he's number one notice he's never included in their little club even though he has the bigger audience of all five of them because they're not joining on the basis of comedy they're joining on the basis of politics and greg gutfeld doesn't fit in he fits in as a late night comedy show host that's what he is but not as the the political actors they think they are that they've recast themselves as no the way they talk i'm sure the way they talk about gutfeld and fox is just like oh you know the cult over there whatever he's not real those numbers aren't real um yeah the day they announced Colbert's cancellation, his guest was Adam Schiff.

34:22Glenn Greenwald:I mean, like, no one wants to see Adam Schiff on as a late night entertainment guest. You know, it was like those shows when we were young had Tom Cruise and Julia Roberts and A-list celebrities. And like Rodney Dangerfield and like that insult comic was on Don Rickles. You know, like it was very, I'm not saying it It was never political, but it was like entertainment. People who were identified as being like entertainers. It was really a show for entertainers. And it was funny. That's what he, the guests he invited back were the ones he thought was funny. The ones that Americans liked as they went to sleep.

34:58Having Adam Schiff on, could you imagine Johnny Carson having someone like the Adam Schiff equivalent on? Especially on the night that you announced your cancellation. That already is showing the attempt to infuse it with this like political importance. But like a liberal cause.

35:12Glenn Greenwald:And Johnny Carson also was in the business of making stars. Like if you got the chance to appear on his show as a comedian, you were on your way to becoming a star. Letterman had that in the beginning too. None of these guys has that ability. They can't make stars. They don't have enough star power themselves. Speaking of star power, we've been talking this week on this show about the Michael Jackson story, the new movie, and the allegations against Tim Glenn. and we actually, I talked about the nature of this movie and the controversies around it because it stops before any of the sexual molestation scandal came out.

35:51Glenn Greenwald:And I hadn't yet seen it, but I did go to see it with my family on Wednesday night. It was amazing. I have to say I highly recommend it. It was supremely entertaining. Both actors who played the young Michael Jackson and the older Michael Jackson, the older of whom is Jafar Jackson, Jermaine Jackson's son. He's Michael Jackson's nephew. Did such a great job. But the younger kid did such a great job, too. Gosh, they were very talented. By the way, for those wondering, you can take the whole family to it. The only viewer warning is Joe Jackson was an abusive bastard, Michael's dad. And there is a scene in the beginning where he beats Michael that is very jarring, even to us old news cynical bastards.

36:33Glenn Greenwald:It was upsetting. The little boy did almost too good a job of acting hysterical and hurt. Other than that, you're good. but he's been very much in the news. And I'm not going to ask about the Michael Jackson scandal, but I am sort of, it's led to a bunch of discussions about whether we even have celebrity like that anymore. Like Michael Jackson transcended everything. Doug and I were talking about this this morning. Like he transcended race. He himself was neither black nor white, really, over the course of his life. He transcended aging, right? He never sort of grew up. He always remained a child in his, you know, what he liked, the people he wanted to hang out with.

37:11Glenn Greenwald:I understand the controversy with that, but I'm just saying, um, he, he, it was just something like he, he was for everyone. It wasn't just for women, like the way Taylor Swift is, um, or just for men, you know, the way some of these, like, I don't know, maybe hard rocker bands. I don't know, but he was for everybody. And he was universally known, universally beloved. He was just such a huge star. And I wonder whether, is it even possible to have that today? Is there anybody who we could use to help explain that level of fame and notoriety to our kids? It is something I do think is so interesting.

37:53Michael Jaskin came to Brazil once, and I think maybe more than once and to this day people in brazil talk about it it was like a huge moment in brazil he i think actually filmed a a music video in one of the rio favelas um and he had extreme global fame and like i think it very much relates to what we were just talking about which is as you said uh michael jackson didn't do anything that would alienate a particular group he wasn't trying to plant his flag and say i'm this and if you're not this I'm not for you. I remember actually Michael Jordan, who was by far the biggest athlete, certainly the biggest basketball player, but I say the biggest athlete, when we were growing up as well, was once asked, like, why don't you comment on politics?

38:39And he basically said this famous phrase, which is, well, Republicans buy shoes too, buy tennis sneakers as well. I'm not in the field of being a politician. If I run for the Senate, maybe I'll take political stands, but I'm a basketball player. I'm an entertainer. I'm in the business of selling things. I think that's a big part of what has been lost. but also uh with the internet it's it's amazing you can go online and find people who are quite famous by every metric you know people who are known by millions of people people who get stopped on the street people who have huge numbers of fans and every and a lot of people have no idea who they are it's like fame has become very diffused very kind of segmented and segregated you know and i think it reflects what we were just talking about which is that we don't anymore have this kind of common cultural gathering place, this kind of common culture even almost.

39:30Because if you're a streamer, if you're a YouTuber, if you're an entertainer, you can appeal to a niche global audience and make huge amounts of money, gather millions of fans, and also be completely unknown to huge numbers of people as well. And it's like what you were just saying. If you went on Johnny Carson, you were there. He could make a star because so many millions of Americans were watching. That doesn't exist anymore. There is no common cultural kind of gathering point that we have any longer. It's all been so segmented and segregated. And maybe you can find some benefits in that, but I also do think that there are some serious harms to that as well.

40:12We want to share things in common with one another across lines, but everything is so politicized. That's why I really love Tiger King. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It was just actually, you know, now that you mention it, you know, I've been working on this project about issues with with animals. Like you saw this thing with original farms and the horrific experiments that were being done to beagles. And, you know, I've known the activists working on this for a decade. I read about it a decade ago because of them. And yet all of a sudden, like this this very apolitical trans ideological movement formed around this issue.

40:50You had like Laura Trump and Laura Loomer and like Fox News personalities. You were doing it. Lots of Republican members of Congress, as well as liberal members of Congress and left wing activists completely aligned and assembled around this common cause that we all can relate to, which is dogs and the idea of industrially abusing dogs and torturing dogs. is something that horrifies all of us. And the reason I noticed it is because it so rarely happens. Whereas it used to happen a lot more, like with Michael Jackson. Was Michael Jackson on the left or the right? Neither, neither. He didn't have that prison at all.

41:26Glenn Greenwald:No, exactly right. And there's a line in the movie, and again, it was made by his estate and by people who love Michael and with the full cooperation of his family, I think it's executive produced by his brother, Jermaine. his mother is still alive and clearly blessed it. And the actor Jafar who plays him, who's the grandson of Michael's mother, said she approved. Like this has been blessed by the family. But there's a line in there where Michael said he wanted to avoid too much overexposure. He wanted to be like Greta Garbo, who really didn't put herself out there that much, that he He liked there being a level of mystery.

42:04Glenn Greenwald:And really, Michael Jackson did live up to that. Think of your memories of Michael Jackson. He gave a couple of massive interviews that were massive because he never did them and because he made so much news in them. Like with Martin Bashir, he gave one to Diane Sawyer and one to Oprah. I can't think of others off the top of my head. But like the fact that I can even list the ones he did tells us a lot. And he intentionally tried to keep his big performances on stage or on vinyl, you know. And it's just the opposite of the way the stars are today, where they're everywhere. They'll go to anything and they'll overshare.

42:44Glenn Greenwald:You know, like Charlize Theron, I just saw some video of her on a subway being interviewed by somebody, like giving up all these sex secrets. and she's done this before. She's talked about her sex secrets. Let me just tell you, there's one sex secret about Charlize Theron that she's obviously not giving up yet. And I don't know why, because let me tell you, Charlize, it's fine, it's fine. In 2026 America, you can declare what you actually are and everybody will still love you. That's all I'm gonna say. But in any event, it's too much, Glenn. You know, it's like Tom Cruise gets it. He keeps himself sort of not all that available.

43:25Glenn Greenwald:Some of these old school stars still get it, but most don't. And it's kind of sad. Like, I think we lost something. Yeah, it's like a mystique. You know, what makes at the end of the day, we're all human and we're all have very ordinary aspects to us, even if we excel and are exceptional in one particular or two particular areas. I think there's actually Twitter used to do this, too. You know, there'd be very, very respected people in their fields who had accomplished great things. And then they would just start, you know, getting dragged down into the Twitter mud or commenting on everything. And it would be you would look at them and you would say, wow, they're they're actually quite mediocre.

44:03They you know, it would strip them of the image. So many of those people like during covid, a lot of just certainly in the Trump era as well, because mystique and enigma is a really are really attractive traits. It kind of draws you to people you want to know more. But if they're just shoving in your face everything about their life, they have Instagram pages and they're posting everything that they're doing and thinking and saying it every second. You realize how ordinary they are. And I think you're right. Like one of the things about these big stars is you feel like, oh, they exist. They're very ethereal.

44:37You know, like the life is like only they materialize on stage, as you were saying, with Michael Jackson in front of like 300 ,000 screaming fans or 150 ,000 people in a stadium. But if you start hearing from Michael Jackson every day about his thoughts on like whatever he happened to watch on CNN or whatever, and he just like goes on TikTok or Instagram and, you know, you're going to be like, oh, that's he's zero. He's mediocre. And that is it's like this attention addiction in this attention economy. I think we all have it a little bit. You have to like fight against it and resist it. And yeah, I think I think you're exactly right.

45:10This overexposure is is has killed like any of the mystique of celebrities become almost tawdry.

45:17Glenn Greenwald:Mm-hmm. Leonardo DiCaprio, he's good that not, you know, he doesn't give many interviews. It's good, you know? Back in our day, they used to not really put themselves out there. Every once in a while, they might do a Barbara Walters sit down for one of her Most Fascinating People specials. Those were always great because they would be more profiles of the person where you really got to know them on their ranch, like with Clint Eastwood. Maybe she'd ask you if you'd been involved in a scandal, a couple of like very blunt questions. So that was always a highlight. It was a different way of getting to know them.

45:51Glenn Greenwald:And they all knew the price of admission and it worked. But today it's like sitting on the subway talking about your intimate sex preferences is just weird and it's too much. And it's the opposite of Garbo. By the way, Trump once told me that that's Melania's approach to that. She's more like a Garbo, you know, which I think is actually I think that is very true. Like we don't ever I like barely know Melania's voice, like given her stature and her platform. We barely hear much from her or about her. And that's clearly part of I think you're absolutely right. Like a deliberate, conscious effort not to kind of be this person that you want to know more about.

46:29Right. Like when someone has a like a kind of wall between you and them and hiding things, which they should be because you don't need to know everything about them. It kind of makes them more interesting. Like you want to know more. Whereas if she were just sounding off every day about everything, you'd be like, oh, just please go away. She really. I think that's a really good. Yeah. Yeah.

46:48Glenn Greenwald:After the latest assassination attempt at the Hinckley Hilton in Washington, you know, Melania was right next to Trump for that one. It wasn't like Butler where she was not even there. She was there and she would have been potentially in the line of fire. And Trump held that presser immediately after back at the White House. And she was there. And he said, do you somebody asked about Melania? And he was like, do you want to come up? And she declined. She net like it's that's why when she came out and did the little bit on Epstein and like stop the lies. We're not we weren't friends. It was so extraordinary.

47:19Glenn Greenwald:It's like, oh, my God, she's speaking. She never speaks. She never covets the camera, the microphone. She did her little documentary on her life, which was controlled, and that's what she was comfortable with. But she rarely feels the need for us to see her or to put her voice or her opinions on camera. It's a 180 from the last first lady, and it's delightful because if ever there was a woman who the camera loved, it's Melania Trump. She just doesn't feel the need for that kind of attention, which is probably good for them, because in that in that marriage, there can only be one who needs attention.

47:55Glenn Greenwald:Imagine wanting to have it compete with Trump when it comes to media attention. That would be very fatal to any kind of connection. No, exactly. You've got a seed here and back back to you. And that works for both of them. OK, wait. Speaking of loving the camera, though, Kamala Harris is back. She's gotten a little taste of it, Glenn, and she's enjoying it. She's back and she's got a lot of predictions or forecasts or pieces of advice, I guess we should say, for how the Democrats should combat what they see as the gutting of the Voting Rights Act. The reason the Voting Rights Act has over the past 70 years been rolled back bit by bit to the point where it's really no longer doing anything is because we've grown.

48:40Glenn Greenwald:We've grown as a society. We are no longer meeting blacks at the polling stations with rabid dogs and, you know, citizenship tests. And the Supreme Court has evolved on its jurisprudence around it, too. Now they're pretending that we've gone right back to Jim Crow because of the Supreme Court's latest ruling on how you can't draw these districts such that they, like, empower only black people in the state of Louisiana and, you know, not whites and so on. It's like, just draw them the way you want to draw them. Anyway, there have been a lot of extreme reactions to this decision. And Kamala Harris has decided to weigh in.

49:21She went to a group that's for black women to give them her sort of thoughts on it. the name of this group is Win With Black Women.

49:31Glenn Greenwald:It was an emergency virtual meeting. Their website describes them as a collective of intergenerational, intersectional black women leaders throughout the nation. They come together to stand united in support of black women. So here's what she said to that group in terms of how to fight this thing. I think that we need an expanded playbook. This is a moment where there are no bad ideas. A no bad idea brainstorm is what I'd like to call it. And in that no bad ideas brainstorm, we talk about what we need to do and think about doing around the electoral college. We talk about the idea of Supreme Court reform, which includes expanding the Supreme Court.

50:16We invite a conversation about multi-members districts. We talk about, look, that if we win the Senate, which we should and we will, then the Senate Judiciary Committee should have rules that they put in place. So when these people come before as nominees to the Supreme Court and lie, that they are held to account and consequence. Let's talk about statehood for Puerto Rico and D.C. These are the things I think that we've got to do. We've got to neutralize these red states from cheating, including blue states expanding their maps. Look, we got to fight fire with fire. These folks are playing to win.

51:00We got to play to win, too.

51:03Glenn Greenwald:She slips into her little accent there at the end. I think she means it. What's scary to me is she means it. And a lot of the stuff she wants to do there that's extremely radical can be done with Democrat control of the White House and a simple majority in both bodies of Congress. i don't know that she means anything that's the thing about come there are people who mean that like everything about her is such a fraud and we're talking before about like the lack of mystique you know she's was the vice president united states there comes like a certain grandeur of that that office and when she's just there on a zoom with her like background blurred and saying this stuff in this fake accent that she's not hers trying to put on a persona that's clearly not hers, trying to blackify herself because in the last election, a lot of black people even said, I don't even think she's black.

51:48You just realize the fraud of her. But yeah, I mean, the Democratic Party believes like the Republican Party believes, by the way, that the other side cheats and goes to any lane and that they have to, too. She's just echo. She's the last thing she is is a radical. She's like a very like kind of like a Colbert, like pretending to be this anti-system radical. but in reality, she's a byproduct of the system and the establishment. This is just kind of a blackface, if you will, in order to create a new personality.

52:18Glenn Greenwald:It is an interesting preview, though, because we've heard James Carville say this. We've heard her say this. Most Dems are saying this behind the scenes. When we come back, I'm just going to lay out for the audience exactly how all that could in fact happen if everything goes blue next election cycle. Stand by. Glenn's with us for the show. When there are supply constraints on commodities, prices surge. You see it with the fuel prices happening right now, right? As a result of what's going on in the Strait of Hormuz. And you know what else is a limited commodity? Gold. They mine it out of the ground, and when it's gone, it's gone.

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54:54Glenn Greenwald:Glenn Greenwald, host of System Update, is back with me now. Go and subscribe to his Substack. It's greenwald.substack.com. So just a moment more on the Kamala Harris comments. She seems to want to talk about getting rid of the Electoral College, something that has been tried 700 times before, literally, and would require a constitutional amendment, which is not going to happen. So that's pie in the sky bullshit. Packing the court, she doesn't say packing the court there. She says, let's try to hold the Supreme Court justices who make us promises during their confirmation hearings to account if they don't live up to their promises later.

55:31Glenn Greenwald:That's never going to fly. That will be a separation of powers violation. There's been fierce legal debates over this for many, many years. And those who believe Congress cannot control the Supreme Court, a co-equal branch of government in this way, will win that. So that's another pie in the sky. However, and I don't know what she means about multi-members districts. We're going to look at multi-members districts. I have no idea what she's talking about. Is that redistricting? They're doing that now. The Democrats are on the losing end of that effort, thanks to the court rulings across the nation.

56:03Glenn Greenwald:But when she talks about statehood for Puerto Rico and D.C. and when other Democrats talk about packing the court, adding additional justices, all of that can be done if the Democrats simply win control of the White House, win control of the House and win control of the Senate. They actually can do that. And this is what many people fear, is that they will get rid of the filibuster, because you would need a filibuster-proof majority in order to get a vote on these things. But if you get rid of the filibuster in the Senate, you can do that. And all you need is a simple majority. I mean, I think a lot of people don't realize that.

56:36Glenn Greenwald:If you want to make Washington, D.C. a state, or Puerto Rico a state, or even Trump right now is casually referencing Venezuela becoming a state, which we don't want, All it requires is a majority vote in the House, Senate, and for the president to sign it into law. Same for adding seats to the U.S. Supreme Court. So we truly could be one election away, not the midterms, but the one after, from having the kind of rule that truly could radicalize the country, Glenn. And more and more Democrats are speaking openly about wanting to do it. But would they? Here's the thing. I think a lot of this is about the political realities, which is I'm not endorsing this or defending it in any way.

57:20I'm simply describing that there is this widespread view among Democratic voters, the kind of party base, that the Republican Party basically treats politics as a war, is willing to do anything and anything to gain power. and the Democratic Party is always this meek little ethical club that feels compelled to abide by the rules. Now, I know Republicans think the same thing, that their party is always abiding by the rules and Democrats are these power hungry monsters who will do anything. Probably some truth to each of those things. But because Democrats perceive that and then also perceive that Trump is this historical evil, this existential threat to American democracy we've never confronted before.

58:06Because they think those things, they've lost patience with any politician who seems to be too constrained by conventions or the Constitution or the law or tradition.

58:21Glenn Greenwald:The pesky matter of the U.S. Constitution. These little annoying technicalities like the Constitution and separation of powers. And that's why Chuck Schumer, for example, has become so extremely unpopular among Democratic voters because there's a perception that he sticks to these old rules. And this is one of the reasons why AOC has become so popular. It's not really an ideological shift at all. Like maybe on Israel, there's an ideological shift, maybe on foreign policy a little bit. It's not really about that. It's about this idea that you're supposed to be combative. You're supposed to get down in the dirt with the Republicans and show the Republicans that the Democratic Party will cross lines too, like the Republicans are doing.

58:57That was the whole thing with the Virginia redistricting battle was to prove that the Democrats are going to steal through redistricting as well. And all of this stuff is necessary. No, it did not. It's necessary for Kamala Harris to have some kind of credibility because she wants to run for president again in 2028 among Democratic Party voters. She's now trying to show, hey, I'm out here with my black accent that I never had before. And I'm going to speak in that because that's really combative. It's very, very condescending. But also these ideas, is Kamala Harris is an institutionalist. She's worked her way up the political system by being as far from a radical as you can be.

59:36She was a prosecutor is how she started. It's always been at the center of the party, but now they feel like they can't have viability. You're going to get depicted as being Chuck Schumer or Hakeem Jeffries, who they also hate if you're too wedded to traditional rules. So this idea of expanding the court, statehood for DC and Puerto Rico, obviously would become two extremely democratic states. This is stuff that I don't believe Kamala Harris believes. But if we've seen this before, when you have politicians kind of pandering to voters with ideas that they have, even though the D.C. class doesn't have them, you can push the Overton window far enough that it does become the position of the Democratic Party.

1:00:14And I do think it becomes something that's, of course, not going to happen to something that will actually if they get enough political power, which they might. Trump is unpopular. The war has made him unpopular. gas prices, economy, Epstein stuff, that has given not the Democratic Party a popularity boost, but the Republicans a big albatross, certainly in 2026 and maybe into 2028, then it is possible. And I do think that kind of talk warrants attention.

1:00:41Glenn Greenwald:Yeah, it's scary to me because you hate I mean, you genuinely hate to see Trump's approval ratings where they are, because that's that's how we get to Democrats controlling both houses of Congress and God forbid the White House, too. I mean, to me, that's genuinely scary. The problem is the numbers are going in one direction and it's not great. This is the latest from Harry Enten, who took a look at Trump's approval ratings this morning. Trump's net approval rating hits a new low. You can see it right here, 20 points underwater. And what you just see on your screen right here is it's been a steady climb downward.

1:01:21You know, you go back to January of 2025. At the beginning it was plus 6, then minus 6. By May 2025, minus 9, minus 14, minus 15. But over the last few months, as the Iran war has taken shape, as those gas prices have jumped through the roof, Trump has hit a new low. He's at minus 20 points, which is the lowest point of his second term. Have there been any polls recently in which Trump has not had a negative net approval rating? Every poll since March 29, 2025, that is over a year ago, you can't find a single poll in which he has anything but a net negative approval rating. And you just look right at this and you say the net effect on your personal finances.

1:02:01The best of the group is the tax law, right? That's 16 points underwater. How about tariffs? 49 points underwater. How about the Iran war? That effect on your finances. Sixty seven points underwater. No wonder Trump is underwater in every single poll. No wonder he's hitting new lows in the aggregate.

1:02:19Glenn Greenwald:Oh, that is depressing stuff. But we're six months out from the midterms and maybe there's some some time to stop the bleeding. the problem is he doesn't really seem to recognize those numbers as real Glenn because when given the chance to show even fake empathy for people's economic situation at home he doesn't it's I mean to his credit it's really not on brand for Trump to do so and he's sticking with his authentic self but it's like as a supporter of generally more Republicans than Democrats I'd certainly like to see at least an attempt at it because people are hurting and clearly they're angry.

1:03:02Yeah. I mean, I think the only thing I like on CNN, by the way, is Harry Edmond, because it's kind of like pulling data in the form of like Catskill or the Borch Belt comedian kind of delivery. It's like very weird mix. It actually makes it interesting. Yes, like a dancing.

1:03:16Glenn Greenwald:Yeah. Yeah. It's bizarre. Nothing is interesting to see him except that. And also, by the way, he's pretty straightforward about things like he's talked before about the Democrats difficulty about Trump's popularity. He's not really a partisan hack. He tries to really stick to shows. Yeah. I think on the one hand, Trump's insularity on this question is understandable because both times that he ran when he won, the poll showed him losing by a significant margin and it damaged the credibility of polling. There was that poll, ridiculous poll from Anseltzer in Iowa, the gold standard that made everyone think Trump was not going to just lose, but lose big.

1:03:55And then he, of course, won Iowa easily. So I understand that on the one hand. But on the other, I think a lot of this is that Trump is so surrounded by sycophants. It really has become the culture of the White House that they constantly are just showing him anything positive. Like he constantly goes back to this one MAGA poll that for self identified MAGA people at the beginning of the Iran war that he's like, I'm at 100 percent. It's become like I'm at 100 percent with everybody. And you see there the unpopularity of the Iran War, which of course is going to be unpopular. He ran on a promise not to engage the country in these kind of wars.

1:04:28And if there weren't any implications at home, there aren't, thankfully, huge numbers of troops being killed, but there already are disruptions at the gas price. And I think a big part of that is this message that has been conveyed from D.C. for so long, we don't really care about your suffering. We're interested in these fun little adventures over here, these wars over here, these big meetings over here. And, you know, Trump ran on a basic promise to represent what he called the forgotten men and women, the working class of the United States, the deindustrialized Rust Belt. And the focus of the administration has been not on that, has been in many ways the opposite.

1:05:05This war is extremely unpopular. And I think the problem is with this war is that there's really no way out for Trump. I can't, you know, it's kind of like the war in Ukraine and Russia. I always from the beginning said if NATO defines victory as every Russian troop out of every inch of Ukrainian soil, including Crimea, that is never going to happen. And since NATO defined it that way, there could never be an end to the war because that was never going to happen. And either they would accept an ending of the war that wasn't that admit defeat to Russia, which they couldn't do, or the war would just go on forever, which it seems like it is.

1:05:39Same with this war. The Iranians aren't going to give Trump the things he said he needs because they don't feel threatened enough. They feel like they're in a good position. And the longer it goes on, even though it's not active combat, prices are going to rise. Oil is going to rise. There's huge disruptions in the energy market globally, but all sorts of other secondary implications as well. People are feeling it where they care most, which is at the pocketbook. Already midterms are hard for an incumbent president. When you add on economic difficulties, a very unpopular war that's hung around Trump's neck that he talks about all the time because he has to, I think it's very, very grim.

1:06:15Glenn Greenwald:I mean, the best thing the Republicans have going for them is the Democrats. They've got that. That's a that's and that is not nothing. You know, like you look at your crazy ass opponent, it's like you're still in it no matter how low Trump's approval ratings are. He did speak with Sean Hannity over in Beijing, where he's been for a couple of days this week in this bilateral summit with Xi Jinping. Some interesting things happened before I get to the soundbite. This This one jumped out at me, and I'll explain why. Late Thursday—okay, let me jump back a little earlier. She gave a speech. It was his opening remarks at the bilateral meeting.

1:06:56Glenn Greenwald:And in it, in those remarks, he questioned if the two nations could overcome the—now forgive me because this is tough for me, but it's the Thucydides trap, the Thucydides. Thucydides trap. And that's a theory suggesting that when a rising power threatens to displace an established one, a war could result. So the Chinese president raised that in his opening remarks, addressing the American president, which is extremely provocative. I mean, that is not diplomacy. That is, we're the rising power. They've been open about their plan to be the world's greatest superpower by 2050. And they can wait. And the reason it jumped out at me is because I actually happen to be reading this book right here that my husband recommended to me called Destined for War by Graham Allison.

1:07:52Glenn Greenwald:And the subtitle is, Can America and China Escape Thucydides Trap? And it's all about that exact thing. It's a very interesting book and it's not that dense. You can read it even though it has the word Thucydides in the front. And it's all about how China is well positioned to win this conflict between the two countries because it has never ending patience. And it is the rising power and that we are the declining power, at least we're behaving like it. We have active decisions that project that and that it's Sparta and Athens and the declining power eventually will lash out and that there will be armed conflict between the two.

1:08:37Glenn Greenwald:So he gets up there, the Chinese president, and raises this question right in front of us. Rude. And Trump decides to pretend that it was all about Joe Biden. He came out with this long, true social post and invoked Joe Biden suggesting, oh, that was all about crazy Joe and how he really did have our nation in decline. But he praised several things that I've done to bring the country back. That's not how she worded it at all. He did not limit it to Joe Biden. This was an insult. And, you know, Trump, who was behaving more diplomatically, chose to ignore it and deftly put it on an earlier president so they could still get along, which I have to say was a good move by Trump.

1:09:20Glenn Greenwald:But one has to hope that Trump recognizes, in fact, what it was and behaves accordingly because he doesn't sound like he's getting ready to do that, Glenn. Instead, he said the following. Let me start with Sot 5, which seems to be making excuses for some rather offensive intrusions the Chinese are about to make into our country, which will only accelerate their rise. And you could argue accelerate our decline. Here it is. Sot 5. I would assume I'm in Beijing if I wanted to buy property near one of their military installations. I don't think President Xi. Look, it's not that I love it. You want to see farm prices drop?

1:10:03You want to see farmers lose a lot of money? Just take that out of the market. But they've had a lot of land for a long time. Obama did nothing about it. They bought a lot of it during the Obama administration. He did nothing about it. As far as the students, it's 500 ,000 students that come, good students. Wow. I could tell them I don't want any students is a very insulting thing to say to a country. They would then immediately go out and start building universities all over China. I frankly think that it's good that people come from other countries and they learn our culture and many of them want to stay here.

1:10:48Oh, Glenn, who wants that?

1:10:52Glenn Greenwald:Literally what American wants? it was 300 ,000 Chinese students like two months ago. Now it's 500 ,000. And he goes on to say, and many of them will stay here. We don't want that either. We don't want them taking up our university slots at our most prestigious universities. And we definitely don't want them staying, nor do we want them buying up American farmland. Well, there are some Americans who actually do want that, particularly Wall Street and the corporate community. They love They're in bed with the Chinese and always have been. I think if you look at this kind of theory about declining and rising powers that you were mentioning, the Chinese president raised that that book addresses.

1:11:33I read parts of that book, I think, I don't know, a couple of years ago. and the big difference to me in terms of the U.S.-China relationship, aside from the fact that both sides have nuclear weapons and so a war could mean instantaneous extinction of the planet and the species, which I think adds a pretty big component, is that generally when the United States goes to war with a country, Iran or Iraq or Afghanistan or Vietnam or whatever, all the power centers are united in the idea that that's an enemy country. The business community has always depended on China. Look at how many American firms, crucial American firms, Tesla and Apple and on and on, use China and related markets for very cheap labor, for very cheap production costs, and then ship those products back to the United States in order to be priced competitively.

1:12:24And there's all, I mean, Elon Musk and all those CEOs went to China because China is crucial to their business model. and trump is very much of this class he you know he's a nativist he's anti-immigrant on the one hand but if you look at how china had the how trump has talked about china and especially president xi president trump has this admiration for people he thinks are like strong tough leaders even if they're dictatorial even if they're he this is something that he respects on a personal level people are like tough and strong and have an iron grip on power and President Xi and the Chinese merit respect in that, if that's your worldview.

1:13:03And he's always talked about Xi in very respectable terms and he wants a friendship with Xi. And - But he's not getting it.

1:13:10Glenn Greenwald:That's one of the interesting things. Sorry to interrupt you, but just quickly. He kept complimenting Xi. He kept over and over, he kept complimenting him. And the compliments were not returned. That's not how the Chinese behave. It was not great, that piece of the dynamic. Keep going. I know, but I think that, you know, we grew up with this framework that the Republicans are really strong on foreign policy. The Democrats are weak. It's kind of something that you like just wind people up and everybody thinks. But if you look, for example, you know, like when President Obama was in office, John McCain said Lindsey Graham used to attack him for being too soft on Russia.

1:13:42And then Trump comes in and it's the Democrats who demand more involvement of the war in Ukraine, more confrontation with Russia in Syria. That was a big Hillary Clinton thing. Nancy Pelosi flew to Taiwan and treated the Taiwanese like they were their own separate sovereign state, a very anti-China provocative move. And Trump has always been very kind of talked about China the way Wall Street does, like in these very respectful terms, like we need China, we can't separate from China. Even this thing like, yeah, I want Chinese students there. They're great people. They contribute a lot to society.

1:14:15And I think you see these conflicting impulses. And look, on the one hand, I don't think we should want people pursuing a war with China and the United States. But on the other hand, they are definitely a competitor. And you could even say an adversary that wants to supplant the United States and influence all throughout the world and people responsible for the United States and for its government should think about China in that way. And I think on some level, Trump doesn't. He looks at President Xi, sees like a strong, equal businessman and wants to do deals with him and has a respect for him that, as you say, I don't think the Chinese return for Trump or the United States.

1:14:52Glenn Greenwald:No, no, they did not return it. And I don't think they'd return it for any American leader. It was to me offensive that he raised that in his opening remarks. And it's just the hassle they gave to our Secret Service and having guns and entering rooms that came out reportedly that they were very confrontational with Secret Service because they were armed. Yes. Hello. So they're with a president who they've tried to assassinate four times here in the country. Yeah, they're going to have their armed weapons. Like, stop harassing us. And apparently somebody from the admin made the point to them, we would never do this to you in our country.

1:15:25Glenn Greenwald:Like, knock it off. So it was annoying. They're annoying. And we don't need 500 ,000 of them in our universities, never mind staying here and buying up our farmland. And Trump's only excuse on the farmland was like, oh, the prices of farms are going to go down, suggesting the competition for them is going to go away. Well, how do we know that? There actually might be American buyers for these farms. But why do we want the Chinese to own all our farmland? They already are. They already owned some significant portion of it. Like Smithfield. They have Smithfield farms. Yeah. I mean, I was just going to say, ask any beef or pork producer.

1:16:01Yeah. And I think like we've seen this conflict before in Trump, you know, that whole controversy, remember, with the H-1Bs, with the Vakramaswamy and Elon Musk saying, you guys are insane if you don't want more people here on H-1Bs. because obviously Silicon Valley and Wall Street love H-1Bs because these people come and they work for less than Americans do. And they're basically indentured servants because their ability to stay in the United States depends on their keeping their job. Employers love that kind of dependency, that kind of power and leverage they have over. But the anti-immigrant wing of Trump's movement, the American first wing is like, wait, now we're trying to bring more foreigners into the United States.

1:16:34I thought the idea was we wanted to get rid of them. And you've seen this, you know, in other immigration contexts as well, like these mass immigrations, when Trump started, when I started, you know, trying to deport farm workers or hotel workers, you know, big corporate chains of hotel owners and big farming interests went to the White House and said, you can't, these are our workers. Yeah, they're undocumented, they're illegal, but they work for less, we need them. And that's when you saw Trump say, we're not gonna necessarily, Trump has hotels too. And he said, yeah, we're not gonna necessarily target illegals who are working in these industries because we don't wanna harm our industries.

1:17:09This conflict is very real. Trump is not really Papu Cannon. He's not a nativist in this pure sense. It's a strain of his politics that he picked up on that he knew could be beneficial. I think Trump's idea is basically, let's keep out the bad ones, like the ones from the bad countries, the ones whose culture, they just come and stay on welfare or whatever. But the good ones, like the Indians, the Chinese, that we want them working for Silicon Valley. That's, I think, Trump's mindset. It's very much the Wall Street, Silicon Valley mindset. And of course, Trump is very tied to both sectors.

1:17:39Glenn Greenwald:hmm well they'll be the only asians who get into harvard uh given the way they do their admissions now notwithstanding the supreme court decision so good luck with that um welcome to our world um one other thing on trump i mean i think i think in the president's defense i think he's thinking it would be very nice to get along with china right like we do not want a world war with china we don't i agree we are dependent on them buying some of our materials too it's not just one way like he's he said soybeans he mentioned he said they're going to buy 200 boeing jets which is very good for Boeing.

1:18:09Glenn Greenwald:So he's trying to sort of, okay, these are areas we can cooperate on. We can be friends. And Trump, he does have a sense of optimism, which is to his credit, but not always valid in the political context, right? In dealing with China, I think we need a hefty dose of cynicism and suspicion. So I don't know, you know, the president, I do think he understands that there are risks and he's trying to play the long game, but it's frustrating to hear talk of half a million Chinese students coming and staying to America. No, thank you. Okay, one more. There was an admission on the Iran war, which jumped out at me and it might to you too.

1:18:48Glenn Greenwald:Here it is in Sot 7. We're doing it to help Israel and to help Saudi Arabia and to help Qatar and UAE and, you know, Kuwait and other countries, Bahrain? It also helps China. I told him today, I said, you know, we're helping you. And we're helping you in another way because I don't think China wants Iran to have a nuclear weapon either. I said, just don't go crazy. You don't need them having a nuclear weapon either. What did he say? Well, he's not going to respond too much. He's a pretty cool guy. He's not going to say, oh, gee, that's a good point. What's he going to do? What a wonderful point.

1:19:29You think he agreed? Yeah, I think that was the impression. I don't think he wants him to. No, he would like to see it end. But he's been good about it, you know.

1:19:41Glenn Greenwald:So there it is. I mean, lest there was any doubt, it's the first thing in the answer. We did it to help Israel. We're doing it to help Israel. He named other countries. He has said the world can't have Iran having a nuclear weapon. But just to say that is so controversial that we're doing it to help Israel. We know. We know that. We've said that many times. and then you get called an anti-Semite. But that's not anti-Semitic. It is a fact. You heard it from the president of the United States himself. He thinks it's also helping some of the Gulf Arab states. Fine, that's not controversial. You can say that.

1:20:10Glenn Greenwald:But prior to the president saying it himself explicitly, you weren't allowed to say that other piece of it or you were called an anti-Semite. I thought this was a movement that was calling itself America First. And then you have Trump saying, oh yeah, this war, yeah, it's kind of helping us. We don't want them to have a nuclear weapon. But, you know, yeah, we're helping Israel get rid of their big enemy. And also, when we talk about these Persian Gulf states, what we mean are Persian Gulf dictatorships, Arab dictatorships that have extreme levels of human rights abuses that we claim to be so offended when they appear in Iran.

1:20:46You think protesters fare any better in Dubai or in Riyadh or in Doha or in Bahrain or Kuwait? No, they or then Iran. No, they don't. and this idea you know we're and also the straight of her moves trump himself said at the beginning out of frustration look if you're not willing to go to a war with iran to open the straight of her moves we don't have to do it we don't need the straight of her moves which is true we don't get oil from the straight of her moves china does and the gulf states need the straight of her moves to sell oil but that it trump is in bed with these persian gulf dictators he loves them too they're extremely rich.

1:21:23They have a kind of shared aesthetic with this very ostentatious, gold-laden kind of wealth expression. He loves them. His family's in bed with the Persian Gulf states, and he's very close to them. He listens to them and obviously to Israel. And I don't think these are good things for our country. Why are we prosecuting a war that's harming Americans for the benefits of Israel or these Persian Gulf dictators? And on the question of China, yeah, I mean, opening up the Strait of Hormuz is far more in China's interest than ours. The problem is, is that the only reason the Strait of Hormuz is closed is because Israel is because the United States joined Israel and attacking Iran.

1:22:02It was perfectly open. The Strait of Hormuz was prior to this war for forever. It's only closed now because it was a response to the attack on Iran. And I think the rest of the world is like, you caused this problem. It's your responsibility to fix it. And I think it's a reasonable view for most countries to have.

1:22:17Glenn Greenwald:It does make you wonder, though, if we did just pack up and go home. would China swoop in and just make them open it? You know, like, what if we really did just say, yeah, sorry, but we're out. We did break the thing at Pottery Barn and we're not going to pay for it. We're just going to walk out of the store. Like, good luck getting us. I mean, it would be kind of interesting. And I'm so in favor of just wrapping it up for so many reasons. That's very tempting to me. Probably the Chinese are much better positioned to make the Iranians open it than we are since they're a big customer. I don't know.

1:22:48Glenn Greenwald:It seems like something we should have on the table. Well, I think what would happen is Iran would just say China is more than welcome to use the Strait of Hormuz because of the power relationship, because they buy so much oil from Iran from that area. And the Chinese do have a lot of power and leverage with Iran, but they could charge for pretty much everybody else. And they could do it on a country by country basis. Remember, Iran is not closing the Strait of Hormuz. Iran is closing the Strait of Hormuz for the United States, for people they don't want using the Strait of Hormuz and charging for the rest.

1:23:20The United States is the one that has a blockade on any ships going to or from Iran. So it's the United States that's blockading the Strait of Hormuz from the Chinese perspective, not the Iranians. So if the Americans went home tomorrow, like you said, which I think we should do because there's no benefit in continuing this war or anything else. It's only harming Americans. The Chinese would be fine. They do a lot of business with Iran. Iran would perfectly allow them to use the Strait of Hormuz under whatever commercial terms the Chinese are comfortable with. this war is serving nobody's interest other than israel's and yes there's animosity now in saudi arabia and and and the emirate and the emirates and and and the the the uh in bahrain and and with the with the qataris because iran attacked those countries and they attacked those countries because the u.s used military bases in them to attack iran they would work that out they would they they don't want regional conflict they don't want to go to war with iran iran's a huge country so everybody would be fine if he left tomorrow except one country and that country's name is israel that's the reason why trump can't get out yes correct and that's the reason why trump got in

1:24:25Glenn Greenwald:and it's the reason why he can't get out and it's one of the reasons why americans are more disapproving of israel now than ever uh and that's not anti-semitism that's something called policy Benjamin Netanyahu, and time after time in which they've pulled us into their fight. I mean, just the most recently, twice in the last year, June, and now again with this war. Okay, we have to take a break. We're going to be right back. Glenn stays with us to the end. Do not go away. You might already own a firearm, but what if you could start with less lethal methods to avoid the financial and mental repercussions of pulling the trigger.

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1:28:29I'm Cindy Lauper with fellow Cosentics advocate, Chef Michelle Bernstein. We'll share our experiences with plaque psoriasis, with psoriatic arthritis, and Dr. Panico will talk about the possible connection. Cosentix secukinumab is prescribed for adults with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis 300 milligram dose and adults with active psoriatic arthritis 150 milligram dose. Don't use if you're allergic to Cosentix. Before starting, get checked for tuberculosis. An increased risk of infections and lowered ability to fight them may occur, like tuberculosis or other serious bacterial, fungal, or viral infections.

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1:29:29Glenn Greenwald:Hey everyone, it's me, Megan Kelly. I've got some exciting news. I now have my very own channel on Sirius XM. It's called the Megyn Kelly Channel, and it is where you will hear the truth, unfiltered, with no agenda, and no apologies. Along with the Megyn Kelly Show, you're going to hear from people like Mark Halperin, Link Lauren, Maureen Callahan, Emily Drushinsky, Jesse Kelly, Real Clear Politics, and many more. It's bold, no BS news. Only on the Megyn Kelly Channel, Sirius XM 111, and on the Sirius XM app.

1:30:04Glenn Greenwald:Glenn Greenwald is back with me now. So, Glenn, this week it came out that the Alec Murdaugh conviction for killing his wife and son, Paul, had been overturned and he's been granted a new trial by the Supreme Court of South Carolina. Very interesting case. I think they 100 % made the right decision, even though I think he's guilty, because there was a clerk of court named Becky Hill who clearly interfered with the jury, who there was testimony. She was explicitly telling them, watch his body language when he was taking the stand. Another juror who would ultimately be dismissed, the so-called egg juror, because she left her eggs in the jury room.

1:30:45Glenn Greenwald:woman when she got dismissed said, can I go get my eggs, my dozen eggs in the jury room, testified that Becky Hill explicitly said to her, you know, he's basically he's guilty. I mean, really just explicit manipulation. This woman was very manipulative and Alec Murdoch, just like the rest of us, deserves a trial free from interference by the court clerk. Now, one of the jurors, And now keep in mind, only three of the jurors said they even had any interaction with Becky Hill in which she said anything to them beyond there's the bathroom and here's your lunch. And so NBC appears to have booked one of the ones who had nothing to do with Becky Hill.

1:31:25Glenn Greenwald:And that person is named Amy Williams. And this is what she had to say in Sat 25. Some jurors tonight in disbelief at the court's decision undoing their verdict. And I was like, what? Why? The evidence was overwhelming. He was guilty. Now we also get Alec Murdoch's reaction to the news breaking in The New York Times. He reportedly said, quote, I still don't believe it. I don't believe it. Per his lawyers, they say he told he told them that in prison. He did not believe that they they've denied so many of his emotions. He just didn't think he'd get one. They are going to move for a change of venue if and when the new prosecution is filed, either by the current AG or when his term ends, all those running for the AG spot have all said they want to retry him too.

1:32:17Glenn Greenwald:And we debated on this show the other day about whether they'd move for a change of venue, which is his hometown, and he might like it there. And they are saying, indeed, they will try to seek a change of venue for this case. The jurors, let's see, the state Supreme Court said the judge who oversaw the first trial had allowed prosecutors to go too far, too long, and far too deep into his financial wrongdoings. So if and when they do retry him, they will not be able to go deep on what a financial crook he was, which was the motive for the crimes. That's why he killed them. He wanted sympathy as both his law firm and the plaintiffs in this other case were zeroing in on his finances.

1:32:58Glenn Greenwald:And that's why he murdered his own family. Now, meantime, he's already been convicted for the financial crimes in a separate proceeding and sentenced to a 27-year state prison sentence and a 40-year federal sentence. They're running concurrently. And even if he receives credit for good behavior, the most likely outcome is that he'll be in prison until his late 80s. So what's the point of all this, Glenn? And what is the point, while I have you, of potentially retrying Harvey Weinstein because the jury in his latest New York City criminal trial just returned, hopelessly deadlocked, and a mistrial was declared there, too.

1:33:40Glenn Greenwald:After he was found guilty, that case went up, and it was argued to the New York State Highest Court by our friend Arthur Idalla, who convinced that court they had let in a bunch of female testimonials against him that had nothing to do with the charges, and it was too much undue prejudice. They agreed. They sent it back down. This was the retrial, which has now ended in ruination because they couldn't convince a jury to convict him. So is he headed for a third trial when he's going to be in jail pretty much forever on the L.A. conviction? Is Alec Murdoch, even though he's going to be in jail pretty much forever based on the financial convictions?

1:34:13I think both cases, but especially this Murdoch case, is so interesting in so many ways, has a lot of really important lessons about how we think of the justice system. I mean I can understand why Even if you're going to spend the rest of your life in jail You would prefer not to have It reflected that you Murdered your own wife and son For the most sociopathic of reasons So I can understand why he would pursue That even If he were going to remain in jail no matter what On these financial claims which as you say he would That makes sense to me But you know I'll just There's always been this Idea that has been part of our political discourse for so long about our criminal justice system that if somebody's guilty they shouldn't be let off on what people often refer to as a technicality like oh this woman made a few comments she shouldn't have made but everyone knows he's guilty why should we undo his conviction when as that juror said it's so clear that he's guilty and i remember in my first in my first year of law school i had this british professor who taught criminal procedure and he was very british but he lived in the united states for 30 years he was an american citizen and he was he He once said that he remembers when he came to the United States and he started hearing, it was very common in the 80s and 90s when people would say, why did they let this person off on a technicality?

1:35:28And he said, I've never heard of a country that refers to its own constitution as a technicality before. Like, it matters. Like, you need a fair trial. Putting someone in prison, you know, like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson said it's better to let, you know, 10 guilty people go than to punish one innocent person. Like, these rules really matter. putting people in a cage for life. You want to make sure the rules are really abided by before we let the state do that. And even if he is undoubtedly guilty, and I haven't studied the case in depth, but from what I've seen, I think the evidence is overwhelming.

1:36:03I think a retrial is appropriate when you have an officer of the court influencing the jury, even if she didn't influence it, tried to in ways that clearly if you were a defendant or if it was your family member who was the defendant facing many years in prison on a horrible crime, you would feel like that was totally a contaminated procedure. And I think it's an important thing because also what you're talking about here is, you know, he comes, as I'm sure you've talked about many times covering the story from like one of the most powerful families in South Carolina, you know, generations of prosecutors and, you know, lead law enforcement officers, very wealthy, very politically powerful, kind of an aristocratic South Carolina family.

1:36:39I think it was so important to demonstrate that even somebody like that in South Carolina is going to be held accountable under the law. And they really have done a very good job of doing so. So I think it's also appropriate to retry him. But also, like the Harvey Weinstein case, I think, also has such an important lesson about our criminal justice system. I'll just tell you quickly. In Brazil, there was this case where there was this dog that got murdered and it was like a beloved community dog. He lived on the street but the whole community took care of the dog it was like their dog even though he was technically homeless and the story was that four teenage boys came and just tortured this dog beat it and then killed it can't hear it yeah no but anyway as it turned out like that because they were teenagers no media outlet would report their their identity and so the internet found out their identities put their home addresses all over the internet and actually sort of column saying this kind of mob justice is very disturbing because people can seem guilty based on what you know, but the trial is a really important thing to actually determine guilt or innocence.

1:37:45They've exhumed the body of the dog. Turns out they can't really find any signs that they were tortured. The kids have always denied it, but their lives are ruined because of this internet mob justice. I think in the Harvey Weinstein case, I'm not going to compare him to them and suggest that he's not guilty. He's a horrible person. But I do think the Me Too excesses produced a lot of hysteria where they changed laws about how long you have to bring cases. That's why E.G. Carroll was able to sue Donald Trump. And I think it's so important that we not let the media, social media, political impulses dictate outcomes of who we decide are guilty and innocent.

1:38:27The laws and the rules that we have, even though they seem legalistic, have been developed over centuries. They're going back to British law and European enlightenment concepts. These were designed by our founders and shrined in the constitution. These are really important. And I think it's very good to have these kinds of cases that illustrate even though it seems like it's an annoying bureaucratic process that often impedes justice. At the end of the day, it is the system that has the highest potential of producing justice.

1:38:56Glenn Greenwald:Yes, I totally agree. I would agree with everything you said. And that was one of the big things we weren't getting was trial by jury when we had our revolution and demanded a new way. And that's why it's in the Constitution as a right. We all have a trial by jury of our peers. And that jury must be impartial or as practically impartial as we can get in today's day and age. And he did not have that because of Becky Hill. So we got to do it. All right. This is a left field story, but I love these stories. So I've decided to bring this to you, Glenn. We have another pretendian in the news. What is a pretendian, you ask?

1:39:31Glenn Greenwald:It is someone pretending to be an Indian for cultural status, fake degrees, you know, honorary degrees. Of course, we must pay homage to the original pretendian, and that would be Elizabeth Warren, who, for our younger viewers who don't remember this, she pretended to be an Indian for many years, was listed on the Harvard law school faculty roster as a Native American, tried to write a cookbook based on her Native American heritage, which was fake. She has no Native American heritage whatsoever, but she got away for years by claiming she was. And this is how she explained her lies when it came out that she wasn't.

1:40:12Glenn Greenwald:Sot 32B. I still have a picture on my mantle at home, and it's a picture my mother had before that a picture of my grandfather and my aunt bee has walked by that picture at least a thousand times remarked that he that her father my papa had high cheekbones like all of the Indians do because that's how she saw it and she said and your mother got those same great cheekbones and I didn't she thought this was the bad deal she had gotten in life. Being Native American has been part of my story, I guess, since the day I was born. Okay. It was part of her story, all right. It was a fake part of her story.

1:40:59Glenn Greenwald:It was totally made up. These are lies she was telling. Yeah, she was advertised as Harvard's first Native American law professor. In any event, we like the stories about the pretendians. And here is another one. She has just, her name is Buffy St. Marie. She was awarded an honorary doctorate of law degree from the University of Toronto in 2019. At the time, they said she was being recognized for her work in music and the arts, as well as for her advocacy for the rights and dignity of all people. But on Wednesday, the university voted to rescind her honorary degree because she was lying about her identity.

1:41:41Glenn Greenwald:She is not an Indian. She pretended that she was, Glenn, and it came out in 2023 per the CBC, that's the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, that even though Buffy St. Marie had appeared on Sesame Street in the 1970s, she'd won numerous awards, including an Oscar in 1983 for co-writing the song Up Where We Belong. She became considered the first indigenous person to ever win the award. She appeared on a Canadian stamp, But it turned out that she faked her indigenous ancestry. And here is how the CBC reported that in 23. Her niece, Heidi St. Marie, says her aunt's ancestry story is an elaborate fabrication.

1:42:24Glenn Greenwald:I mean, she's clearly born in the United States. She's clearly not indigenous or Native American. The fifth estate obtained St. Marie's birth certificate, which indicates she was born in Stonem, Massachusetts, to white parents, Albert and Winifred Santa Maria, the very people St. Marie claims adopted her. Her lawyer says that document may not be authentic, but the Stonem town clerk says that's not possible. I can say absolutely with 100 % certainty that this is the original birth certificate. She was not born in Canada. So we're thrilled. We are thrilled that yet another pretend Indian pretendian is outed and is losing the fake honors she obtained through lying.

1:43:16Glenn Greenwald:I mean, this must happen and then they must be shamed in order to stop this from continuing. Glenn, there are always really hilarious aspects to each one of these incidents and then also some interesting and important lessons. But just on Elizabeth Warren, I once read a law review article when this all emerged and I was looking into it. That was about the failure of Harvard or Ivy League schools to hire professors, women of color as professors. And then there was a footnote saying there are some exceptions. Like this woman got hired at Yale. This black woman is at Princeton. And then Elizabeth Warren was hired.

1:43:54Harvard hired the first Native American. And Elizabeth Warren was a woman of color. And all those years she knew this. I mean, she, of course, understood that that's how she is. She's like the whitest woman on the planet. And also, I always just thought, like, Trump, as we know, is actually funny. And the media gets confused by that. And he would this was always such an inversion of the truth. He would refer to Elizabeth Warren as Pocahontas. He even did it once when he was meeting Native American tribe leaders in the White House. And the media was always like, that's racist against Native Americans.

1:44:25He was never mocking Native Americans. He was mocking Elizabeth Warren, who is not Native American, for pretending to be Native American. And they just still to this day insist that the Pocahontas nickname for Elizabeth Warren, which is perfect, is somehow racist against Native Americans. And I do think the interesting thing in the story is like we're constantly told that white people have all the advantages, that marginalized groups are treated so poorly, are excluded and denied opportunities. these. Why is it that there are so many of these stories like Rachel Dozeal, who is that white woman who worked for the NAACP and pretended to be black, braided her hair?

1:44:59Yeah, Dozeal. Why are there so many of these stories where white people are pretending to be members of marginalized groups? Like you would think of marginalized groups were treated so terribly. Nobody, you would have it in the other direction. Like, oh, I'm going to pretend to be white because that's the way you get treated well in society. That's the way you get. No, but it's always these reverse stories. And look at how many honors she got. Look at how respectfully she was treated almost worshipped as this like indigenous woman when and she lied about her own parents like because of course she has the whitest name ever and those parents have the whitest names ever and you see that all this she didn't do anything other than identify falsely as an indigenous woman and all these honors and liberal culture is so effed up when it comes to what it values and what it prioritizes little i didn't even know this um maybe i knew it i forgot it

1:45:49Glenn Greenwald:But that Sachin Littlefeather, who accepted Marlon Brando's Oscar for The Godfather, but she showed up at the Oscar and she delivered a speech. And it was about the treatment of Native Americans and how bad it is. She was a pretendian. She was not actually Native American. Yeah. Because they put feathers in their hair. They put feathers in their hair. Like, again, it's always so condescending. It's like, yeah, I remember that she showed up. been marlon brando rejected his oscar to protest the treatment of native americans is that her as his symbol of the the mistreatment of and she was fake she was just a white girl yes her family after she died in 2022 came forward and said she'd been lying about her background this is in the san francisco chronicle uh they said their sisters claimed to have apache and yakui antris ancestry through her father was quote a lie and a fantasy it's you gotta love it accountability glenn appreciate it thank you for helping walk me through it and have a wonderful weekend always great to see you Megan talk to you soon you too you too thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show no BS no agenda and no fear

1:47:06the wrongs we must right the fights we must win the future we must secure together for our nation. This is what's in front of us. This determines what's next for all of us. We are Marines.

1:47:28Glenn Greenwald:We were made for this.

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