Speaking of of counties, what what is happening?
I'm not doing anything but the FBI went in because it's been
under, under I guess review for years.
The cheating that took place in Fulton County and in that nobody
knows what's in the warrant, what you're going to find
outlook. Why would anybody be upset that
they went in and they they got the ballots, I guess, right.
Again, they did this that's been under review and under
investigation for four years and now they they got a court order.
You know, they got a court order signed by nobody knows what a
respected but liberal judge signed a court order allowing
them to go and pick them up. Well, you're going to know what
the ballot's safe because they're right now inspecting the
ballot. I'm not involved in it, but they
are inspecting and checking the ballot.
Why is Tulsi Gabbard there? I don't know, but you know.
Welcome back to posting through it.
I'm Cherid. And I'm Mike.
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Chris Mason listens to Posting Through It, but he's also the
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Describe Their sound to me as quote, jangly anti fascist
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This episode's transition music comes from the fifth track on
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camp page in the episode description.
So last month, on January 28th, the FBI conducted a raid on an
elections office in Fulton County, Georgia.
It's near Atlanta. They seized more than 700 boxes
of ballots and other election materials on site when it
happened. There's a face that seemed to
surprise a lot of people. That's Tulsi Gabbard.
She once represented Hawaii in the House of Representatives as
a Democrat before pivoting to becoming a MAGA movement
supporter and celebrity, I should say, and a leading role
as Trump's director of national intelligence.
News of the raid triggered an alarm in a lot of people,
including ourselves, who are feeling people who are feeling a
little nervous about what the Trump administration might do
when it comes to undermining the vote in the 2026 midterms and
the 2028 general election. People will likely remember that
in 2020, Trump and his political allies focused heavily on trying
to undermine the vote in Georgia, where Trump lost to Joe
Biden by about 12,000 votes. Trump famously called Georgia's
Secretary of State that year and pressured him to, quote, find
enough votes for him to win the state.
He was charged with that in 2023.
But the prosecution in that case was really miss messy, and it
got even messier after Trump won.
The case was dropped in its entirety late last year.
Georgia has been at the epicenter of all kinds of legal
efforts, partisan media propaganda, and straight up
conspiracy theories attacking the legitimacy of voting in the
southern state with the goal of finding some kind of story arc
from 2020 and after where Trump actually won the state.
Well, Jared, it's important to emphasize here at this point
that Fulton County according to 2020 census results is majority
non white. So that is a pretty big data
point. About 45% of the people who live
there are black compared to about 44% who are white.
It also has the highest population of any county in
Georgia. We've historically seen election
denialist fixate on places where large minority and immigrant
populations exist like in Detroit and Philadelphia.
And this goes back of course to the 2016 campaign and Rodger
Stone, when the first Stop the Steal campaign really took off.
So since Trump took office for a second term, we've seen the
administration to vote a lot of resources and energy toward
tracing down the boogeyman that have haunted them for the last
decade. They're supposedly investigating
Antifa. They're manifesting their most
Craven wet dreams about brutalizing immigrants.
And now, it seems they're also revisiting the 2020 election
again, in hopes that maybe this time they'll find some sort of
smoking gun. So if news of this raid in
Georgia set off the alarm bells in your head, you are not alone.
It comes at a time when Trump has openly mused about wanting
to, quote, nationalize elections, eliminating mail in
voting and ordering ICE agents to surround the polls.
Today, we're going back, going to look back on what we've
learned about that raid since it happened and try to explain what
exactly is happening in general with this threat to democracy.
This is a particularly important ahead of this year's midterms.
Today, we're joined by Hunter Walker.
He's an investigative reporter for Talking Points Memo who's
been following this story closely.
Aside from Talking Points Memo, you may have read the stories
and publications like The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, New York
Magazine, among others. We'll put some links to some of
his stories about this raid in Georgia in the description of
this episode. And with that, Hunter, what's up
man? Thanks for taking some time and
joining. Posting through it this week.
You know, I know, I know, this May or later, but let me just
say, happy Friday the 13th to you all.
As if it couldn't get any weirder.
Yeah, I mean, I didn't even realize it was Friday the 13th,
but that makes sense, yeah. It's always Friday the 13th now,
Mike. Yeah, Valentine's Day, which is
also an underrated, you know, subject matter for for horror
movies, by the way. So I guess First off, just how
are you doing, Hunter? I mean, you've been following
politics real close. I mean, he used to be a White
House correspondent and everything.
You've been with us staring into the void for a while.
Also, do you listen to Techno? That's an important question for
this podcast. So, you know, I'm doing good,
man. I'm I'm, you know, coming to you
live from from ice planet Brooklyn.
You know, that's really been quite a demoralizing slog.
And you know, I do think that like as the news and and the
political environment is so intense, you know, the, the
entire city freezing over for a month with black sludge snow was
sort of insult to injury. But you know, I'm, I'm doing
good. And, and as far as music, you
know, it's, it's interesting because I have found in the past
couple of years, I really do feel like it's sort of
influenced by how crazy things are.
I'm just like listening to stuff that's like more out there than
ever. So I feel like if you ask me
that question a couple of years ago, I was sort of a very like
hip hop and classic rock and like reggae purist.
But I'm trying to listen to like the weirdest electronic and like
metal and punk I can find these days.
I, I don't know, I'm actually not well versed in any of it
enough to know what counts as techno, but like, yeah, I'm,
I'm, I'm plugged in, man. Don't, I don't want to take this
whole thing off the rail, so I'm not going to really get into it.
I will. All I'm saying, all I'll say is
that you get as a guest, get free access to our premium and
we do album racks at the end of everyone.
So when it comes to obscure techno, that's usually my my
problem. To handle well, I'll I'll throw
a couple in there. The things that things that are
like on repeat for me, like endlessly right now.
I'm I'm, you know, I'm really trying to like support indie
artists on band camp and I'm really into like techno cumbia,
if you will. One of my big favorites is
Amante Stealth Futuro. I really people should
definitely listen to those albums.
And also there's this group I found right now called a
Mokotron and they are Myori base guys.
So it's like coming out of New Zealand and it's like really
hardcore base with like dope tribal influences.
I'm I'm. I'm digging that quite a bit.
I like that idea. So, Hunter, what were your just
kind of first thoughts when you saw the news about this raid in
Fulton County? Because I know when I saw it, it
took me a minute to process it of just like, you know, because
I've heard people in the elections, nihilist space
fantasizing about doing this kind of shit for so long.
And there it is. It's happening.
And Tulsi Gabbard is there for some reason.
Yeah, I mean, I I would say my reaction was exactly what you
just said. Like not to not to speak in
millennial, but y'all know the the Ron Paul GIF right?
It's happening. It's happening right?
Like, like they have been telling us they are going to do
something like this for, you know, as I think you guys were
alluding to earlier, really, really 10 years now.
You know, I think people forget that Stop the Steal, actually
something that began with Roger Stone in 2015, OK?
He set up the website for it. He was preparing this strategy
in the event Trump lost, right? You know, in that golden
escalator era, right? And they ultimately mothballed
it because they didn't lose in 2016.
And part of the whole thing is to to not complain about the
elections where they lose. That's that's where they really
start to give up the game a little bit.
But, you know, this movement to essentially fight any Trump or
Republican loss is, is a decade old now.
And it's only been growing. And what we've seen in this
current iteration of it is that through the last presidential
campaign and into the Trump administration, they really got
an official arm to the election denialism movement with people
specifically in Georgia taking over state election boards.
And now, of course, with, you know, the conspiracy theorists,
the call moving inside the White House, if you will, you know,
with these folks taking power in government.
So, you know, I don't want to say I fully predicted this
because it was it was, it was very outlandish and excessive.
But but, you know, I personally have been covering this movement
in all its many facets for a while, and I've been expecting
attacks on our elections. This whole back and forth that
is going on since the very beginnings of Trump's political
career, which has been like, sort of like where people like,
this is this looks like fascism, this is fascism.
And then people be like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's not
what it is. And then, you know, just you got
to use the right terms and you got to, you know, you have to
lay back. And then and then they'll be
like, oh, I'm going to do this thing.
And then you'll be like, Oh my God, they're, you know, they're
just an authoritarian takeover. And then if you're, you're stop
screeching, this is so hyperbolic, then the Trump
administration will do the thing, right?
Like quite literally in front of you, right.
And it feels like it's just been that going further and further
until this moment that we're in now where they do actually have
a considerable amount of power over elections, partly because
of changeover that existed from the first time they were in
power. And also just radicalization of
rubble, Republican officials, right, who have just sort of
been in this shit, you know, ingesting this stuff for a
while. If you could give us some, some
just some background on Georgia. Why did this become the
epicenter? Because like for me, for me,
like just just not digging into it as deeply as you.
For me, I think it was just they were so pissed off and so
shocked that Biden won in 2020. And I remember the other side of
that where people were sharing these memes of like, you know,
like leftists were sharing these memes of like Pepe the frog over
the Georgia thing, except it's blue.
Like doing the chin stroking thing.
Like like, oh, looks like he didn't count on this type thing.
It was it, Was it just shock or is there something else?
There's a lot to unpack there and I actually before we get
into Georgia and how it has been a focus of the election
denialism, stop the steel movement, I want to really hone
in on home in on something you said there because I think it's
really important. You know, you were essentially
touching on this, I would say almost institutional
conventional wisdom, disbelief around Trump, right, where he
says what he's going to do. He does the thing and, and very
smart, powerful people in politics and media sort of
continually are surprised by it, right?
And, you know, I would go back to 2015.
I, you know, I, I talked to Trump a lot during that, during
that campaign. And one of the moments where I
spoke to him, I went up to the Trump Tower and interviewed him
and it was clear to me what he was signaling towards, right?
And so I focused in on immigration and focused in on
treatment of minorities at the time.
I sort of looked at Muslims. I mean, I mean, I think, you
know, Latinos have have obviously become the the main
target of the president's ire. But I said, you know, would you
consider registering people or putting them in a database?
And he said absolutely. He said we have to go beyond
databases. And I printed it this and it was
it was a firestorm. And it was a firestorm in part
because what he said sounded extreme.
You know, we were clearly talking about sort of ethnic
detention and profiling, right? But it was also a firestorm
because people were like, oh, did he really say that to the
point that like Rush Limbaugh did a whole segment saying that
I made the thing up. Rachel Maddow had to put my
audio on air because, yeah, he actually said it, right.
And then ultimately he did indeed go, as he said, beyond
databases. You know, in turn one, we saw
the Muslim ban, which which was, you know, a very specific list
of, of Muslim countries on his, his ICE policies at this point
have gone so far beyond registries and databases.
I mean, we're we're we're deep into facial recognition and and
mass camp infrastructure, right? So, you know, Trump has
continually said what he is going to do, and that included
all of these efforts to target the elections.
You know, back in 20/15/16, he, he, he was not committing to
accepting a loss. Again, we didn't have to see
what Stop the Steal would have looked like in early 2017, but
we did see it four years later. And he, you know, said we're
going to fight. And then he sent those people to
fight. You know, I was standing there
as it happened and, you know, personally, I'm very adamant
right now. And I, and I do try to be, you
know, TPM is obviously a progressive site, but I try to
really take an objective focus in parks.
I feel like a lot of people are having a problem being objective
right now. And what I mean is, you know,
fascism, authoritarianism, these are technical academic terms,
and that's what we're dealing with now, right?
And, and one of the characteristics of that is a
lack of free and fair elections or efforts by the leader to
challenge those. So I think that's really
important that I'm sorry to sort of begin with a tangent, but I
think that's the context we're operating in.
Yeah, I, I, I often say this sometimes to, to my peers and
colleagues when, you know, when they pick up a story and things
like that, I always say like whatever it is.
I mean, I, I understand that substax.
We're, we, we've all been, you know, a lot of people are
getting kind of siloed into opinion writing with journalism
because of the nature of what's happened to our field.
But I said, when in doubt, you know, do it the old way, right?
Do it, do it the old way with the three sides and everything
else, right? To, to do it because it will
ultimately hit them a lot harder.
And it's a lot you're you're you're you're skimming a lot
closer to the truth that way. Yeah.
And and and the and the truth is a lot where, you know, a lot
hits a lot harder. I think that just saying like
pointing and saying fascist. We're we're, we're also
operating in a world where I know you guys have dealt very
deeply into this, where where folks like Barry Weiss are
saying, you know, I'm the only honest, objective one while
obviously peddling ideology. Honestly podcast.
Right. Like like literally declaring
herself as the only quote UN quote Free Press, right, while
she's basically very much, you know, having a clear bias and,
and those are the people who would say it's unacceptable to
call this authoritarian. And, and I I just will not play
that game. You know, one thing that I love
about being a Talking Points Memo is I think Josh Marshall in
our site has for years been early in covering the
radicalization of the GOP because this didn't just begin
with Trump. He was operating in an
ecosystem, you know, where there were militias, there was racism
that was like really allowed to take root.
And he's just taking advantage of these existing structures.
So, So the bottom line is, you know, what we are seeing is an
authoritarian push to keep the party in power.
That's what this is. And and it is focused intently
on Georgia. But I think I want to be clear
that it it, it's not just about Georgia.
This is very much sort of the Steve Bannon throw shit at the
wall type model, right? And, and essentially, you know,
I, I think I began this by saying we've, we've been living
and stopped the steel for 10 years now.
And, and what stopped the steel has been, is a movement with
propaganda components, you know, media arm, a paramilitary
component. Your groups like the Oath
Keepers, the, the Proud Boys, you know, have been involved in
this. Now there is there's always been
a political arm with, you know, the 147 Republicans who, who,
who tried to overturn the 2020 election.
And now you're seeing this sort of official arm that they, you
know, have the reins of government once again.
And they've always had these multiple units kind of working
multiple strategies at once just to see what would work with
January 6th, we saw the alternate electors going at the
same time. We saw the crowd going into the
capital. We saw the 147 Republicans on
the House floor. So Georgia is just one component
of this, but it's always been a really key 1.
And I think part of that is because they have people in the
legislature and, and in the election boards were willing to
work with them. And another part of that is
there's a little bit of a psychological thing.
There were, of course, Georgia was the final call in 2021.
So that's always sort of stuck in in in Donald Trump's craw.
Let's take a closer look at this rate in Fulton County,
specifically as a way of understanding maybe sort of the
bigger picture. You've done some reporting about
how this raid came into existence to begin with.
What are the stories you have? A Talking Points Memo points to
a report that a group called the Election Oversight Group put out
on January 6th this year. Great choice of date.
Tell us about that group and and what what was up with that
report? Yeah.
So you know, essentially this report came out and and you
know, you had the raid on Fulton County about 3 weeks later.
And the title of this report was Fulton County Report of
Investigation of the 2020 General election.
And what you have is a 263 page document that largely just
rehashed various debunked, irrelevant allegations about how
how the vote was collected in Fulton County.
But yet this group, you know, the report clearly preceded the
raid. And this group was referenced in
the FBI affidavit that was used to obtain the search warrant.
So it was clearly influential and and what I would say before
we even dig more into what happened in Fulton County, you
know, election oversight group 2 key executives in it are these
guys David Cross and Kevin Monclaw.
I think Monclaw is largely being credited as the key author of
this report. But they previously worked on
this document that that Trump allies were calling the nuclear
doc that Trump's legal team brought up where they were
trying to sort of make their beefs about Georgia part of his
defense in the indictment against him in that state.
So their work has clearly reached Trump's desk.
It has been used by his team. Another key figure in that was
Liz Harrington. She was the spokeswoman for his
campaign in 2024 who, you know, even the the major papers were
reporting was a controversial figure in his orbit for kind of
bringing these conspiracies onto his desk.
And we've seen a social media back loop, including just before
this raid where Trump was on Truth Social blasting out
Harrington, referring to stuff from this report, which wasn't
even public at the time. So it's really clear that this
report made its way to Trump's team and it ultimately basically
turned into a search warrant. And Moncla has admitted he
wouldn't talk to me. He's not responded to any of my
requests for comment. But but he did admit that he has
communicated with, he said AUS attorney prior to the raid
happening. So, so you have this group of
election denialists who were directly influencing and and
almost directing the FBI in this matter.
Yeah, the affidavit for the raid was unsealed last week and it
had, like you said, a bunch of claims in it that including a
lot that had been investigated and law enforcement was like
nothing there and kind of left it alone, right.
It's it truly is just like a rehash.
It's like a now that's what I call the election was fake album
volume. Whatever we're on now, they seem
to hand most of the credit to this guy named Kurt Olson, who's
identified an affidavit as the presidentially appointed
director of election security and integrity.
What can you tell us about this guy?
Because he's kind of a character, right?
You know, so Kurt Olson is now identified as a special
government employee. That's the same designation that
it had Elon Musk had and it allows you to to work in the
executive branch for it's 130 days.
I think he his term has concluded.
But but he's the one who clearly made the referral or the Fulton
County raid. And, and Kurt Olson is an
attorney who's been a long time figure in this stop the steal
election denial universe. He, he, he represented Carrie
Lake, the, the candidate Arizona as she sought to challenge her
own losses in that state. It was, it was a total failure.
I mean it, I think, you know, one thing to mention is that all
of these allegations, whether it be Carrie Lake's, whether it be
Trump's, you know, they have been so thoroughly litigated
and, and, and their record of losses as I think you know,
nearly nearly 100%. So, you know, he's, he's been in
this universe and, and so has the election oversight group.
I mean, there's, there's a byline, you know, in addition to
Kevin Monclaw and and David Cross, folks like Joseph Rossi,
Garland Favarito, you know, these people have been working
together for a long time. And, and if you as, as I know
you guys always do kind of dive into the social media pages and
what have you. These guys are all on streams
together with folks like Mike Lindell to my Pillow Guy and
David Clements. And then there's there's various
organizations and crowdfunding campaigns backing their work.
So, so, you know, I think Kurt Olson is one of two examples we
have in this report of someone who has kind of come out of that
web of grassroots organizations and legal disputes and has now
actually been brought into the government and we are seeing
whatever shadowy work product he's producing turn into FBI law
enforcement action. You also did some reporting on a
guy named Clay Parikh. Is that how you say it?
I don't think many of our listeners will know that name.
I know I certainly didn't. But Hugh actually spoke to him.
I love your story where he's like I, I have no comments on
the matter. And then proceeds to talk to you
for two hours. People need to read Hunter's
reporting for multiple reasons. He's a pro for one reason.
Another thing is he's introducing characters now that
you'll be talking about in like a year or so.
It's like, remember when the when the Kraken was like
everybody's talking about the Kraken?
You can get introduced to some of these type of characters
before they become memes. Yeah.
So this guy, this guy, this guy Clay, what, what's his role in
this and, and what can you tell us about him?
This guy, Clay man, he's a guy also.
Let's start there. He, he, he is a very specific
type of guy. And he is the second person who
who was identified in this affidavit as a special
government employee in the executive branch.
And, you know, I should say I've reached out to the White House
to ask about that. As of right now, they have not
responded at all. And tell me about Clay Parique
or his work. But what we see in the affidavit
is that basically someone from the election oversight group, an
unnamed witness, it it certainly sounds a lot like Kevin
Montclass, someone who helped author this report, asked Clay
Parique to look at what they call the tabulator images, which
are a really big fixation for the Fulton County.
And Clay Parikh looked at them and he was he was disturbed and
he relayed those concerns to the FBI.
And and you know, that was part of what what inspired this raid.
And and before we dig into Clay Parikh, and that's going to take
a second, let me just let me just preface this whole
discussion with the report and the allegations around Fulton
County with like just a couple of key details.
Because I, you know, we don't need to get bogged down in it
because this stuff has been litigated.
It has been debunked. But essentially, you know, what
you've had happened in Georgia is because Trump and his allies
have been fixated on it. You've seen multiple recounts
and audits. The result has been affirmed by
members of Trump's own party. If anything, he's gained votes
when they, when they looked at it very closely.
But because of the level of scrutiny, there have been at
points a couple of small errors with the process that were
found, which, you know, frankly, I think if, if, if most
statewide elections were subjected to, to, you know, 3
recounts in an audit, like you'd probably find a, a fuck up or
two, right? So for example, like one
incident where, you know, 3000 ballots were counted twice and,
and by the way, we know that because they caught it, right?
And they addressed that these ballot images that the
denialists are fixated on, you know, it seems like at points
some of the ballot images, so basically a ballot is submitted.
It is theoretically there's a visual copy made of it seems
like for some of them, you know, they either didn't make a visual
copy or or accidentally made a visual copy of of 2, right?
These tabulators, these are tabulated images.
These are records of individual counts on individual machines.
So these are the fixations of of these groups.
What I love about the FBI affidavit is that even as they
say, we found evidence of possible criminal activity to
the point that we're going to raid the county election hub and
take 600 plus boxes of voting records and just seize this
stuff. Even if they say all this, the
affidavit includes all of the probably innocuous explanations
for the various obsessions of the election denialists without
litigating this and going down the rabbit hole with them very
broadly. You know, they're they're
worried about intermediary steps in the process without being
worried about the final count. And one of my favorite lines in
the affidavit is actually related to Clay Pariks fixation
with these tabulator images. And and an unnamed witness who
you know has been involved in in in investigating this stuff said
the tabulator tapes from the I'm quoting now the tabulator tapes
from the original count are not compared to the reports from the
recount witness 6 stated that the ballots are what mattered.
So again, the actual votes and the proper counting of those
votes is all that mattered, not an individual record on a
machine or some image someone may have copied wrong.
At one point was the count OK. And and continually every
investigator and state official has said yes, right.
So anyway, you've got Clay Parikh.
He's a special government employee.
He's obsessed with the ballot images.
And he comes out of also the stop the Steel election denial
universe. He'd actually appeared as a
quote UN quote, expert witness for Carrie Lake in in in that
trial where Kurt Olson was representing her.
So he's an associate of all these people.
He's been, you know, at events with Mike Lindell and David
Clements, this other guy coming out of New Mexico who's a
thoroughly debunked conspiracy theorist.
But what's interesting about play is, you know, he purports
to be a Marine veteran, a a former defense contractor and
just like a real cybersecurity expert.
So I called him to get a flavor of his concerns and expertise.
And and as you were saying before Jared, he he begins the
call by saying I'm not going to comment on anything.
He confirmed he was a special government employee in the
executive branch, but he said he couldn't talk about it.
He couldn't talk about if his work got to the president.
And you know he wasn't going to comment because he doesn't like
the media. Hold on a second, Was it that he
is, I don't want to say too stupid or just too ignorant to
understand that I don't want to comment was not an agreement to
go off the record. Is that like, is it just I don't
want to comment and now I'm going to keep talking because
that's what it sounds like. It sounds like he was like
thinking he was coming to an agreement to go off the record
but said the wrong. No, no, no, we did not go off
record at any point in this conversation.
It wasn't even close to that. This is this is the ideal.
This is the ideal guide to interview.
Continue. It was, it was absolutely a
reporter's dream because because he said I'm not going to
comment. And then he proceeded to hold
forth for two hours, literally almost two hours, going up until
almost midnight New York time the other night.
I'm still kind of fried this week over it.
So good. Yeah, I spent, I spent a long
dark night of the soul with Clay Parique.
And, and, you know, he didn't want to comment about, you know,
specifically what might come next, what his work is that he's
doing in the White House. But he did want to comment on
everything else, including, you know, his belief that there may
be poisons in the food supply and sodas, that there's a quote
UN quote cabal of quote UN quote pure evil that may be running
things in the world. That evil includes, quote, UN
quote, gay pride. He suggested at one point that
it might be demonic in nature. He claimed that during his
military career, he he had been experimented on.
I mean, this was this was the conspiracy.
Hold on, I got to. I got to correct your passive
voice. Here had been experiment who
experimented on him? Who?
Who is the person who did the experimenting?
That's the part I want to know. Who experimented on him?
Well, so this is the amazing thing.
And I kept trying to push him on this, right.
But here you have a guy who is a special government employee in
the executive branch, right, working on an investigation.
We haven't even touched on this, but but but the entire election
inquiry is being directed by Tulsi Gabbard, the director of
National Intelligence, the president's top spy master, and
FBI Director Cash Patel. A regular fixture on this show,
by the way. Cash.
So I don't. Know, I don't know if you've
seen it. I, I feel like we should have
this handy Jared just to just to play the audio for everybody.
But when he was interviewed with like Katie Miller, he did a
thing with with Katie Miller. We we love the Katie Miller
podcast. Yeah, the big fans of it.
And he, you know, proceeded to talk about his Uber Eats orders
at length. And then he was saying that they
asked him what he likes to do. And he's like, I don't like to
do anything, man. And then he proceeded to talk
about his favorite shows on Paramount Plus and how he's
watching Land man. And it just really, it's very
weird because because it almost feels like he does nothing, but
yet he's he's somehow tagged in everything that happens.
I mean, you know, not to go off an attention here, but I I I
love Katie Millers podcast. It is some of the most
unintentionally funny. It is so haunting man.
It's just like stays with you. The self-awareness is not strong
with that one. But but you know, so you've got
Clay Parique and he's literally working for the White House and
some of the government's top spies.
These are normally the people that, you know, your traditional
X-Files are a conspiracy theorist were fixated on, right?
And yet Clay Parique is alleging there's a conspiracy inside the
government. It's like, bro, you're inside
the government, the calls coming from inside the White House.
You know, he, he really didn't seem able to grapple with it.
You know, he, he kept saying there was a deep state.
And it's like, then why are you working for the administration,
right? Like.
You, bro, that's you. And, and you know what, he he
basically framed it, you know, despite literally working for
the president and the director of the FBI and what have you,
as, you know, this small group of people fighting against this
pure evil cabal. And you know, when he cited the
oligarchs and at one point I was like, you know, I asked him
because, because I think the first quote UN quote special
government employee we all met in this brave new world we're
living in was Elon Musk, right? And I'm like, well, if you're
worried about oligarchs, like, what about Elon, right?
And he just said, you know, that it was like somehow a powerful
signal to have Elon take a role in the administration.
He didn't really elaborate on that.
And I will say that, you know, one feature of talking to Clay
Tariq was that as much as he went off for two hours, I didn't
get a word in edgewise. This was virtually listening to
a paranoid monologue. And I also just want to go back
to the fact that presumably he's in DC.
This is, you know, 10:00 PM to midnight.
You're you're getting the night shift.
I believe, I believe. He's presumably he's just like
chilling at his house and just letting it RIP.
I believe he may have been in Alabama.
So. So we'll give him an hour.
This was probably more up to 11:00 PM his time.
But yeah, it was a late night phone call.
And I have to tell you, you know, and typically as a
reporter, I mean, again, I said this is a reporter's name,
right? When you have someone inside the
executive branch, just like letting loose inside your phone,
you don't want to stop them. Except that with Clay, it got so
incoherent. And, and I was honestly tired
that, that by the end of this call, I was able to get him off
the phone. And it came after I tried to say
goodbye about 5 or 6 times because the, the substance, as
it were, of our call, you know, had long since passed.
And again, I wasn't getting answers to these these
fundamental, like, questions about like what kind of work
he's doing now and also, you know, these tensions about like
being against the deep state while working for the state.
He just was not giving a coherent answer on that.
But I do think it was revelatory in a sense of showing the
Christian nationalism and extreme conspiracy theory
ideology that has now under Trump been brought inside the
government literally. And that is through figures like
Kurt Olson and Clay Parikh in the Election Oversight Group now
directing law enforcement actions and directing the stop
to Steal assault on our election infrastructure.
I just want to ask this question and I don't know if this is out
of order, Jared, but I, I, I, it fits sequentially for me here.
So we've got this rogues gallery of brain poison freaks.
I am not at not that's not your reporting.
That's my personal opinion. If you know, just to keep you
objective, how about Trump Derangement Syndrome, right?
Like they're like, oh, his brothers got Trump arrangement.
I mean, the people who have Trumped arrangements syndrome
are these mother fuckers. Quite frankly.
It's keep part of my French. Their brains are like cooked on
this material. You have that you would mention
previously that they had their own paramilitary stuff with the
Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. That's been institutionalized.
A lot of those people, a lot of the people who would be joining
those groups are now in groups like ICE and and CPB, right, or
CBP. CPB is dead.
That's the Corporation for Public Broadcasting that has not
been. That's right.
OK. There is no more CPB.
The point is that they have a tremendous amount of power, they
have a lot of money. They have now an
institutionalized paramilitary and I think it's I, I feel very
comfortable calling ICE a paramilitary organization.
I don't think it's like, I don't think that's off base.
OK. As opposed to my my other
nicknames here. You got these together.
Their, their brains are cooked. They have these resources that I
just described. How concerned should we be that
they can overturn, you know, this, this still young project
of American democracy? You know, people I when
Democrats are always like, we need to save the democracy.
I was like, no, that's the wrong thing, because democracy is
always flow. We need to make it better.
We need to, you know, make this more democratic than it than it
is. Look at how screwed up our
system really is actually. But are they able to are, are, I
mean, are they are able to stifle this democracy in the
crib, this this particular group?
Because it does seem like a bunch of fools are involved
here. I know Tulsi from back of her
Modi support and all that stuff. She's got a lot.
I mean, she's you know, I've seen her workout regimen.
She's very serious person in that regard.
But these are not, this is not the best that, you know, these
are not the best of the brightest America has to offer
trying to do this. Are they capable of doing?
I mean, is this, are we really the place where we're so weak
that this, that this crew can actually put democracy to death
in this country? I don't know how to look at I
don't want we need to take it seriously, you know, I mean, I'm
certainly worried about it, but it also at the at the other
hand, it just seems like a, you know, a gallery of fools here.
You know, I'm so glad you asked me that question and I'm so glad
you you framed it exactly as you did.
I think you know what we're dealing with and it's kind of
hard to process this because it's almost 2 contradictory
impulses. It's ridiculous and incredibly
serious at the same time. You know when this guy is on the
phone with me saying he thinks soda might be poisoned so he
always sanitizes it with alcohol?
I'm sorry, I'm sorry. That's absurd.
It's absurd. In my house that's called a Jack
and Coke. Yeah, maybe some Jack Daniels.
What it sounds like to me it's. Absurd, but, but it's incredibly
serious when it's coming from a special government employee
whose words are being used to send armed men into an election
hub where they are stealing people's ballots with their
private information on them. And and, you know, somehow
incorporating that into, you know, an effort to challenge
elections, right? Tulsi Gabbard, as you were
saying, you know, I've done a lot of reporting at TPM how she
has these ties to an alleged religious cult in Hawaii.
She's, she's an extremely, let's say unique individual.
Absolutely. Yeah, theoretically she has no
mandate as the director of national intelligence to be
involved in domestic elections in this manner.
But here she is. And this is really happening,
right? And it's like Donald Trump,
like, you know, and I think it's it's a big part of how his rise
happened. I mean, he was basically doing
like Don Rickles stand up comedy with the 2016 GOP field during
the primary. And it was ridiculous and funny
until all of a sudden, you know, police officers were having, you
know, what they've described as medieval style fighting on the
steps of the Capitol. And are, are are literally, you
know, most sacred institutions were being smashed and broken
into. So this is really, really
serious. And I think, you know,
societally, we're sort of still grappling with that, right?
There was this whole strain of discourse on blue sky.
And it really started around this writers interview that
Trump did was like, well, maybe we shouldn't even have elections
at all, right? And and you know, a lot of very
knowing, very important conventional wisdom types, you
know, very quickly said, well, good thing the president doesn't
control elections, which are run by the states.
And you know he can't do that. Dude, it's the the, you know all
time banger tweet of like the Democrats saying dogs can't play
basketball that's against the rules while like Airpod does a
backflip dunk behind. Them right now, you know, the
golden retriever of authoritarianism is just, you
know, dunking in our faces, right?
And some people are unable to call it that.
And, you know, they would still like to pretend the rules are
are are holding harder than they are.
You know, I think one of the best examples of this is what's
going on with the shutdown in ICE, where Democrats are trying
to sort of slap ICE on the wrist and quote UN quote reformat.
And one of their quote UN quote reform demands is for ICE not to
seize people without a judicial warrant.
Well, guess what? That's already the law, right?
So we are struggling to enforce the rules, right?
We're struggling to enforce things like, hey, the director
of National intelligence shouldn't be conducting a raid.
The same thing is true, of course, of the, the, the filmed
executions of Renee Goode and Alex Petty, which the the issue
is like, can we get, can we get an investigation into this?
It's like they're, they're, I mean, they're anybody who is
shot on tape, where are the what they did beforehand.
There's an investigation into it and, and what is being
normalized with that as, you know, feedback off what you're
saying is, is this nonsense about like, Oh, well, maybe we
if we're lucky, we can, maybe we can get an investigation into it
as if that's is it, if that's something that that would be a
win. You know, I mean, that's the
that that is the Ground Zero of the way our society is supposed
to function. And, and, you know, when it
comes to this election challenge, you know, and when I
say election challenge, I mean this really major challenge to
our free and fair election process.
When it comes to that, you're seeing people say basically,
don't worry about it. Trump doesn't have magic powers.
And, you know, calling anyone who has real concerns about this
a quote UN quote doomer, right. And I'm actually glad to do this
in the podcast format because like people can hear me like,
you know, I'm I'm going out to a lovely dinner with my wife
tomorrow. I'm listening to Maori drum and
bass and technical be like I'm having fun in my life, But I'm
also really freaked out about, you know, where we're headed
societally. And I think we are deep down the
road of authoritarianism and I, I, I see people covering the
2026 midterms in the 2028 campaign as though it's going to
be a conventional race. And it's like, no, it is already
not conventional. The boxes have been seized in
Fulton County. And I think to put a bow on the
whole thing here, what I will say is that basically what
Fulton County shows us is that the most extreme conspiracy
minded people have now gotten inside of the government.
They are being empowered by Trump, who has been fostering
and and asking for this movement for 10 years now.
They are trying multiple things at once.
You know, I think it's important to mention that while
Minneapolis was sort of being held hostage by the armed ICE
occupation, Pam Bondi was demanding their voter rolls,
right? So, so that gets back to what I
was saying earlier. It's not just Georgia right as
this is going on. Trump saying is, as you said
earlier, Mike, he wants to nationalize elections.
He said to Reuters he doesn't want to have elections at all.
Steve Bannon is saying maybe we'll have ICE at the polls.
You know, there was this incredible, incredible exchange
in the Senate where Democrats were asking one of the one of
the the administrators about this and, and he's like, no,
we're not going to have ICE at the polls And, and the Democrats
apply. Sure hope not.
You know, it's like we're we're really deep down this road.
And, you know, it's not just ice.
It's not just the National Guard getting called into the cities.
You know, we're seeing Trump, you know, such as the situation
with Mark Kelly, such as ice going into Minnesota, where Tim
Walls was governor, such as ice going into Illinois, where where
Pritzker's governor. We're seeing Trump target his
potential 2828 rivals. We're seeing them take hold of
state election boards. So in Georgia, one of the things
that's scary now is if there is some kind of criminal complaint
cooked up with this half baked evidence, the the Republican
legislature has ensured there's enough mega allies, including
this lapsed obstetrician on the board there where potentially
they could take over election administration in four different
counties, right? And I think all of the
dismissiveness about this misses what Trump has done, misses what
he's saying he wants to do, which includes running for a
third term, by the way, right? And also misses the boat in
that, you know, we don't need elections to turn off, like, a
light switch for it to be a problem.
That's probably something Trump can't do.
But can he make it crazy or make it hard to certify the results
in a key swing state or swing district or swing county?
Yes. Could that create constitutional
crisis in chaos? Yes.
And we need to be prepared for that.
We need to address that reality because again, he's saying he
wants to do it and he's well down the road.
And and also just the threat of putting people at the polls,
which didn't just come from Steve Bannon.
I know there was this debate about whether it should be take
it seriously. Steve Bannon says all kinds of
things. I think Steve Bannon is actually
pretty well clued into like, what's?
Going on. And and and likes, yeah, he
absolutely said it as a flex, right?
To try to think he, he knows he can get, he can get a little bit
of juice out of a comment like that, but I think he also knows
there's some truth behind it. And it's something quite
frankly, they've been talking about in different ways for a
long time. That goes back to 2020 when they
were like, well, should we, I mean, things are so crazy with
Black Lives Matter. Should we put people at the
polls, you know, etcetera. I don't think people are
prepared for what, you know, that kind of fear tactic.
But you know, psychologically what that might be if they're,
if all of a sudden there's a close race in whatever, it
doesn't matter which state because it's midterms.
And then all of a sudden there's just like a swarm of ICE agents,
you know, around that area under the Oh well, we don't know.
We might have a, you know, a legal using their term, you
know, illegal immigrant, right or something.
They're looking for one. There's going to try to vote and
in reality, what what you're going to get it.
People going to have make a mental connection with, hey,
they, you know, they've shot multiple people, they've shot
white people, they've shot, you know, anybody could be scared of
that image and seeing that image on the news.
Yeah, I'm also glad you said what you did about the election
board in Georgia, because this is the same story across so many
states, including some pretty key ones.
Like in Michigan, Republicans hold the House.
They have an election committee that's headed up by a woman who
to this day thinks that the election was stolen in Michigan.
She's like a former clerk. The election denialist movement
got a lot of attention after the 2020 election, of course, and
around the 2024 election, of course, people were watching
that. But this movement has really
been making a lot of headway and getting their people into
positions of authority where they can act on these theories.
They've spent years harassing election officials.
There's been an unprecedented purge of people quitting being
like, I'm not making, you know, 50 grand a year, whatever it may
be, to like, get death threats all the time.
And they filled it up with people who have their brains
cook. So it's it, I, I, I, I think
what you said is right. It doesn't look like a light
switch going on and off. It just looks like a bunch of
tears happen. It's like a spider web crack on
your windshield like once the a Pebble hits.
But I have a question for you. Just to play devil's advocate
here. Do you think it could be
accurate to say that Tulsi Gabbard is gesture maxing on the
foids? And a follow up to that, do you
think there's any risk of Tulsi getting brutally frame mogged by
a Democrat Maxine Giga Chad? Or might her own loyal Maxine
aura be enough to protect her cortisol levels from reaching
non optimal levels? Jared, you're taking full
responsibility for these questions.
So, you know, Jared, I'm not sure I have as a 41 year old
man, sufficient risk to, to understand what the Sigma is
going on here. But you know, I, I, I think one
thing you're alluding to here is people's brains being cooked
right. And and you know.
That was smooth, man. That was smooth.
Well, there's there, there's a there is a brain rot epidemic,
right? And, and and Gen.
Z maybe or Gen. alpha, maybe the most blatant, you know, victims
of it with your, your Tung Tung. So horrors and ballerina
cappuccinos and whatever, but but boomers are are victims of
it, too. And one of the striking things
as I talked to Clay Parikh is he said, you know, I get all my
news from podcasts. I don't trust anything else.
And he was talking about starting his day with Badlands,
which I'm sure you guys are familiar with.
It's just this, this Q Anon thing.
And he was like, I watch that every day and like, yeah, bro, I
can tell when you're, you know, going on and on about the cabal
and the the you know what? Demonic gay pride poison.
The director of the FBI, in addition to being a big fan of
Paramount Plus, Uber Eats, and the New York Islanders, was a
fucking pod. He's AQ Anon podcaster.
Well, I OK, by by the way, let's go Islanders.
I'm really excited about matching.
Me too. You're an Islander fan too.
I am too. I'm, you know, but I, I went to
one game this year and it was the game where the Utah Mammoths
or whatever they are this new team beat beat us 7:00 to 1:00
because everybody on the Islanders just hungover from New
Year's and. Well, I I got to see the.
Horrible waste of 200 and whatever dollars I spent to
bring my family to that. I got to see them beat the pens
in overtime earlier this month, so we're going to have to go out
to UBS together because I'm I'm, I got a good record so.
Hit me up. Hit me up.
Let's go. Yeah.
But but you know, what I will say is, you know, Clay Parikh is
cooked on these podcasts. And by the way, he's also
watching your streaming services and he's taking it as reality.
One of the crazier things he said to me was that, you know,
he felt NBC's The Blacklist was a quote UN quote documentary
about the future. And that was that was something
he threw out there as he was trying to explain to me what the
cabal is. You know, and again, it's like
if you think the CIA is corrupt, Tulsi Gabbards their boss, bro,
you're working for her. But you know, he was also saying
that one of his idols is Ron Swanson because he's working in
government while he hates it. And he also loves.
Me. And it's like, dude, like Ron
Swanson wasn't aspirational, right?
Like you're not getting the joke, but but I think that's.
This guy, this guy is very Jared coded like this is the type of
guy that Jared is very interested in.
He likes no. I think I began the
conversation, you know, saying this is a type of guy and, and,
and I think, you know, what Georgia is right now is it's a
window into this larger election challenge.
And, and it is a state that, as we've said, has been a key focus
for them. It's it's one where, you know,
due to the power they've obtained on the board and they
they are in a position to do some real damage, But it's not
the only one. And, you know, I think my
conversation with Clay Parikh, which I really would encourage
people to read on TPM is a window into just how deranged
and dangerous this all is. But let's also keep in mind that
he didn't comment on a lot. He didn't comment on what else
might be next and what else he's working on.
And I think when you see these people and I'm tracking all of
them, you know, you're you're you're Cleta Mitchell's, you're
Liz Harrington's, you're Kevin Montclass.
They are very excited right now. They see a fellow traveler in
Tulsi Gabbard. I was watching Infowars where
where Stuart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers.
And you know, who was the time for seditious conspiracies for
leading those guys to the Capitol on January 6th?
You know, he was, he was referring to Tulsi Gabbard as
you know, quote, UN quote, black belt and the only person he
trusts in government. These people are rejoicing and
they are telling us more is coming and they have obtained
real power. In in mentioning the boomers and
and that and and that their brains are also cooked and blah
blah blah. It is probably a tragedy that
there were many people in this country who are going to die of
old age believing stuff that is completely not true and
completely insane. That's sad, right?
But that's been, that's happened in different ways throughout
American history. I guess what I see here and,
and, and correct me if I'm wrong, they have this through
this, you know, for lack of a better word, disinfo.
They have this like a square peg that they're trying to shove
into a circular hole, right? In which they're like, this is
the reality that I see and America is a different reality
that we live through and they're just trying to like just jam
cram it in. And it seems like a race to kind
of prevent prevent that from having because it won't actually
even fit when they get it through.
They'll just it'll just be some kind of more freakish version of
America with authoritarianism and, and and basically trying to
just just stop them. Are you aware of the various
different methods in which people are trying to stop this?
You, you have, you have folks like Raskin who make a lot of
noise about elections and, and about this stuff.
What are we? Because I remember after January
6th, there was a January 6th committee.
I and many of my colleagues wrote various things for them or
were interviewed by them, you know, and ultimately there was
this theatrical show that went on.
There were a few people who were held in contempt and there were
some charges around that. And but ultimately what we got
was was 2024 and Trump, you know, are there any, what you
know, what are the the tools to kind of stop this effort to jam
the fake reality into America as it exists?
One of the things I've just been obsessed with over the past
couple of years is again, that there is this authoritarian
movement to, to essentially, you know, take democracy out of the
picture. It does have these militant
arms, these propaganda arms, these these legal arms and
political arms. You know, and I think a big
problem after January 6th was you saw consequences for the
rioters. You saw consequences for people
like Stewart Rhodes. But we did not address the
higher level organized elements of, of, of the push that brought
people into the capital that day.
Yeah. You know, particularly the
political arm. You know, at TPM, we published
Mark Meadows's text messages and they showed how members of
Congress were involved in these efforts to to overturn the
elections, including particularly in Georgia.
We have literally an entire story on that.
And there was no consequence for any of them.
And so I think we're living in the world where something
extreme happens or something like that, something that
extreme happens and there are no consequences.
And I would contrast that maybe to Brazil and South Korea, where
just recently you saw sort of attempts to throw out an
election and attempts to seize power from the capital.
And there was a real robust legal and political response
ensuring that those people were were removed from politics,
right? And we're seeing what happens
when you don't deal with the problem, right?
That being said, you know, I'm not a Duber, right?
I'm going to hockey game. Yeah.
I'm like, I'm having fun in my life.
And I don't know, right, That this is going to succeed.
Ultimately, I think we need to to be honest and real about the
fact that we're far down a dark Rd.
I think we need to be honest and real that the intent is
potentially for Trump to stay a third term or to disrupt
elections so that one of his allies is able to win no matter
what, right? And I say, you know, no matter
what. But the reality is his numbers
are pretty bad. And I think that's part of why
they're flailing so much right now.
But I don't know that it's going to succeed.
I think First off, I would almost go into the language of,
of recovery, right? The first step to the first step
to dealing with your problem is admitting you have a problem,
right? And, and, and, and right now as
a country, like we're addicted to brain drugs and we need to
admit that we have a problem. But also, you know what I will
say, while maybe I haven't been impressed with the Democrats and
the political response to Trump, I think people are really rising
up. Right.
And, and, and, you know, at the tail end of last year, I wrote a
series on TPM about what we called the undocumented
underground. And as much as Trump has this
authoritarian movement, what I started to see was that there's
this movement confronting Trump and mass deportation that
includes a political arm that includes a legal arm and court
observers and people, you know, getting these court orders,
pulling people out of ICE detention, right?
We may have these, everyone talks about the masked folks in
the streets, but but the reality is sometimes when they take
people, those people get free because, you know, there are
regular people, you know, filing paperwork and going to court on
their behalf. And then, you know, this
resistance also includes the protest component and activist
component with people observing them in the street, which is,
you know, part of the only reason we really know and
understand how folks like Alex Pretty and Renee Good died.
So people are standing up, you know, and we've seen this
rebuffed to some degree in, in Massachusetts, I'm sorry,
Massachusetts, we've seen this rebuffed to some degree in, in,
in Minneapolis. You know, we're also seeing, I
think folks like Mark Elias and people who are really preparing
for the legal fights that we're going to need to have around,
around the next elections. So, so I think people are
standing up. I think there is opposition, but
that's got to begin with folks realizing just how dangerous
it's getting. So we've been talking to Hunter
Walker, investigative reporter for Talking Points Memo.
I'll put links to his social profile, some of the stories
he's written. Hunter, before we let you go,
I've got one more question. I know it's hard to choose, but
what's your favorite Kid Rock song?
Oh my, I would say my favorite Kid Rock song is is a live cut,
a deep cut. And it's his performance at the
TPUSA where where he struggled to lip sync because.
Yeah, a lot of not a lot of people know about that one.
Yeah. I mean, you know, I really did
enjoy watching that. And, and, you know, I think as
we we have this debate of sort of dumorism versus optimism, I
think TPUSA's effort to have a halftime show because they were
angry about people speaking Spanish is a pretty good thing
to point to when it comes to the limits of the rights, cultural
and actual power, right? That did not have the juice.
It didn't even function well. And the reality is, you know,
there is an authoritarian movement that is trying to
change life as we know it. But sometimes, to paraphrase
Donald Trump, they're not sending their best.
They're sending Kid Rock. I like that Nick Fuentes called
the White Coke show. At least I had a good laugh at
that.