Rudy and his lawyer, Bob Costello, were desperately seeking a journalist who would take Hunter Biden's laptop. They tried a few people and they were reluctant. You know, it was too hot to handle, really. >> Also breaking tonight, the third story in a row, there are new developments in the Hunter Biden email story. >> In October of 2019, the FBI had that laptop. They knew it was real. You know, the first thing that you saw, there was a whole layer of smut and porn and filth and a lot of photos of him having sex and videos of him having sex with various hookers and girlfriends. That wasn't our focus. The focus was the corruption, which Joe Biden denied. Even if he he had a a plausible explanation for meeting with all these business partners from China, Ukraine, Russia, of his son, who was getting paid millions of dollars from these different countries that are many adversaries of America. He was up to his neck in it. What what happened really within hours of our publishing was that Twitter and Facebook basically censored the story. New York Post account was locked for over 2 weeks until just a couple of days before the election. That kind of elevated the story like it went from just a really good political corruption story on the eve of the election to OMG this is a huge censorship story. We found out later that the FBI was behind that. They had been pre-bunking our story to the big tech companies in meetings uh before the election and there's obviously a grand censorship operation that Biden campaign the Democrats have at their fingertips. They headlined it uh Russian disinformation. Among those 51 supposedly former intelligence officials were five former directors or acting directors of the CIA. They believe every word that's in there and it fuels their Trump derangement and it's really sick. I'm Dave Rubin and joining me today is a New York Post columnist and host of Pod Force One and first time Ruben Report guest, although I really cannot believe that, Miranda Divine. Welcome to the show. It's nice to see you. >> Thanks, Dave. It's great to be with you. >> I I don't know how we have not done this before. I feel like I owe you one just to start because you should have been on. You you have done such good work and you are a you are a journalist that I can say the word journalist without going like this without putting those air quotes. Uh we have met once in real life. It was a couple years ago. We'll show some B-roll here. Uh I was uh giving the Real Clear Politics Samiat award and you were one of the recipients uh for their first ever awards show and it's it's an award for free speech and you've been at the forefront of all of this for a long time. But maybe for people that don't know you. How'd you get into this crazy game of free speech and journalism and all that stuff and then we'll dive into all the specifics. >> Well, I mean from the beginning I have ink in my blood. Both of my parents um were journalists and uh and in fact my father is from New Zealand and my mother is from Australia and um I was born in New York because my father was a foreign correspondent here um and then we lived all over the world and I uh always wanted to be a journalist um because it just seemed my parents both had so much fun and it just seemed like a great way to see the world. Um, and I had a bit of a detour into a mathematics degree along the way cuz my parents did not want me to be a journalist. Said it makes women hard. Um, which I don't know if that's the case or not, but probably is. Uh, anyway, so I'm here now and, uh, I came back to New York. Uh, I was asked by my former editor in Australia, a man by the name of Cole Allen, who was then an editor and chief of the New York Post. and he said, "Come and cover the 2020 election." Uh, and you'll just be here for 18 months. It'll be a lot of fun. Um, and it was. And then, you know, co hit and Rudy Giuliani gave me the laptop from hell. And one thing led to another. We got censored. Um, and I wrote a book and then I wrote another book and I'm still here seven years later. >> You indeed you still are here. So yes, you got the Hunter Biden laptop. You wrote about it. It was your story in fact that really broke everything. There were a bunch of people sort of talking about it online for a little bit, but you wrote that story. Subsequently, old regime at Twitter decides to lock down the story altogether. You couldn't post it. They banned or at least temporarily suspend the New York Post. You quite literally couldn't even share the link to your story in private messages on Twitter. So tell me a little bit about how well Rudy just did he just call you one day? Did he show up at your door? Here is this thing. How did all that go down? >> Well, I I'd just done a story um with Rudy when I came to New York. I hadn't lived here for, you know, 20 years, 25 years. And uh so I didn't know anyone and sort of thrown in at the deep end. And I thought, well, Rudy Giuliani, I'm in New York. Rudy is a hero of 911. Um, I remember the bad old days in New York before he cleaned it up. And uh, and so I went about making friends with him. And uh, I'd just done a story. He was at that point the personal lawyer of Donald Trump. And I'd just done a story uh, where Rudy had been the first person to talk to Trump when he'd gone to hospital with CO. And uh, we immediately whacked that up online at the New York Post. And uh, apparently Donald Trump loved it. Rudy loved it. So, I was top of mind when um Rudy and his lawyer, Bob Costello, were kind of desperately seeking, we're talking about 3 weeks before the 2020 election, desperately seeking a journalist who would take the laptop because uh they'd tried a few people and they were reluctant. You know, it was too hot to handle really. And uh so I was last cab off the rank and I guess I didn't know what I didn't know. uh just just saw it on first principles as an amazing story. Bob Costello rang me up late one night. Uh I know that they were it I was the last person because the next uh on Monday they were going to um give it to the Daily Mail, a British organization. So um so anyway, I I just thought it was an absolute screamer of a story. Uh rang my editor Cole Allen. Uh we've worked together for a long time, trust each other very much. Um and he's just a same thing. He's a boy from country Australia, rural Australia, and he just attacks journalism um without fear or favor on first principles. He's he loves a good story and this was the best story. So, uh, he just activated the entire newsroom and, you know, hats off to Emma Joe Morris in particular, um, and the whole team at the New York Post who just nailed this story, tracked it down, um, verified the emails that we first put up and just, uh, went and interviewed John Paul Misac in Delaware, who was the laptop repair shop guy who, uh, Hunter Biden had abandoned his laptop with and who tipped off Rudy. Um, and so the rest is history. We ran a front page having got um just lies and obfiscation from the Biden campaign. We ran a front page with emails showing that Donald um Joe Biden had met with one of his son Hunter's uh Ukrainian business partners in Washington DC when Donald Trump when sorry keep on saying Donald Trump when Joe Biden was vice president. And this went against everything that Biden had been saying during the campaign. And you know, Pitch Whites uh had written a book about um the corruption in uh the Biden orbit in vice when he was vice president. Um but none of it had really stuck to Biden and he was denying on the campaign trail that he knew anything about his Sunhunter's overseas business dealings. He was evidence that that was not true. And the other tell was that uh Joe Biden just went to ground. I mean, he was already in the basement, but he was unreachable. um and his minions were telling different stories to us than the new than the Washington Post. So they were telling us oh it's not in you know that meeting is not in his official diary of the time and uh to the Washington Post absolutely categorically did not happen. Um and then the story was sort of simmering. uh other media outlets hadn't really touched it but were interested, curious uh looking at it and then um uh what what happened really within hours of our publishing was that Twitter uh and Facebook Facebook first um basically censored the story. They blocked any ability to transmit it anywhere to share it and um they call it throttling but they really killed it stone dead and even as you said uh Kelly Mciny who was then President Trump's press secretary she tried to share it on Twitter um privately with one other person in her direct messages and she had her uh account blocked. our account, New York Post account was locked for over two weeks until just a couple of days before the election. Um, you know, this was unheard of with the fourth largest by circulation uh and uh newspaper in the country and the oldest newspaper in the country. though unprecedented uh of course I mean weeks later u these platforms these big tech uh oligarchs would uh deplatform the president the sitting President Donald Trump but we were the first uh that out of the bag and it was that kind of elevated the story like it went from just a really good um political corruption story on the eve of the election to OMG this is a huge huge censorship story and there's obviously a grand censorship operation that the Biden campaign, the Democrats have at their fingertips and we found out that was the truth later. >> Right. It it's so crazy because you thought you had a scandal with the information you found on the laptop and and in some sense that was secondary to a much larger scandal which was the government colluding with big tech to hide the story. So, there's a couple couple things I want to ask you about this, and I know you've answered some of these questions before, but I want to try from a couple different angles. So, one, when you get the laptop physically, how do you guys make sure that it's being taken care of properly or that like was he logged into all of the accounts, do you have to have lawyers standing next to you as you're opening things? Are you even privy to all of that or did you have to hand it off? How did it like at a granular level, how did it work? No, because it really we got the hard drive which was a clone of the laptop that uh Hunter Biden had brought in to um the laptop repair shop uh back in 2019. In April of 2019, coincidentally, just a couple of weeks before his father um announced that he was running for president and then never showed up again. Um, and so that that sort of April 2019 was really the last time that Hunter Biden did any anything on that laptop. So, we had this frozen uh image, gigantic image of of his hard drive um that was uh copied onto cloned onto uh from the laptop onto the hard drive as he was cloned from the laptop into the um the computer of John Paul McIac uh his his big computer there. And then he made several copies um and they were pristine, untouched. Uh and we got one of those original hard drives and he sent uh one to Rudy and um you know Bob Costello got that and uh and subsequently they made copies. But we had one of the original pristine versions and it's not it's not like you're connected to the cloud. You can't connect to anything that he had. And in fact, there were several kind of encrypted um uh sort of vaults on that hard drive of for instance his iPhone backup, his iPad backup, which had some interesting information in it, including some voicemails from his dad. Um but our lawyers would not allow us to access those because even though his OPSE was hopeless and he had his passwords all over the laptop, you know, his notes in his notes, etc. But um so we we could have easily opened it but we didn't. Others did and we were allowed to like Marco Polo did and so we were allowed to take the information that they had found and report it um and giving them credit for opening it. Um but the most important stuff that was on there um you know it's not a complete dossier because Hunter had gone through and deleted quite a bit. Um it was also a complete mess like a disaster. And you know, the first thing that you saw, there was a whole layer of smut and porn and filth and, you know, pictures of his penis with M&M's on it. He had like a 2-year-old um boy's fixation on his penis. So, there are a lot of nude photos. Uh a lot of photos of him having sex and videos of him having sex with various hookers and girlfriends and uh and >> and doing drugs, right? >> And doing drugs. Yeah. Um, one of the photos that we we didn't publish a lot. We certainly didn't publish any of the smutty stuff, but um, we did publish the first day one photograph just as sort of proof of lilac that this was really Hunter Biden's laptop. Um, a photograph of him uh, with a crackpipe in his mouth, seemingly asleep in bed. Um, and someone had t one of the hookers had taken a photo of him uh, with that. Actually, it was a meth pipe. We were corrected. It wasn't a crack pipe. Anyway, um so and and there were, you know, throughout the laptop, I mean there he's very proud of his drug uh cooking prowess and smoking prowess and uh finding prowess. Like he's he's really into the drug culture and uh and so that's part of his, I guess, identity. And so there's a lot of images and videos of him with plumes of smoke and uh you know, lighting up his pipe. So, okay. So, putting All right. So, there's there's two sides here. You have sort of like a political scan scandal side in that he's admitting his dad he was having discussions about some of his work with his dad which his dad was completely denying. Then there's just sort of illicit drugs and sex and prostitutes and okay, all of that. Were you worried that you personally were going to get caught up in some legal trouble around this? I mean, once once big tech stepped in and starts censoring this thing, you obviously realized how big the story was and then, you know, we know that they can go after journalists and they do go after journalists. >> Yes, that's right. I I'm I'm just lucky that I work for the the New York Post, which is part of the larger news corporation. I've worked there for a long time. I know personally with, you know, other crises in the past that, um, you know, whether you're in war zones or, you know, in in New York after 9/11, I know I trust the company to take care of me. Um, and in legal situations, they do, and we have very good legal advice, which we had every step of the way. Um, but we were very careful about how we approached the laptop because, you know, um, there's just so much information on so the decision was made early on. I mean, I made it myself with my editors as well. Um, that we weren't going to touch the sex and uh drugs, you know, so what? Like the presidential candidates's son is a crack addict and wayward like that doesn't necessarily count against him. I guess it could elicit sympathy for him. So, a lot of families are going through that. So, that wasn't our focus. The focus was the corruption which Joe Biden denied. And you know even if he he had a a plausible explanation for meeting with all these business partners from China, Ukraine, Russia of his son who was getting paid millions of dollars from uh these different countries that are many adversaries of America even if there was a plausible explanation can't can't think of one. Um you know he wasn't giving it and it was also proves that he lied in the past when he said he knew nothing about it. he was up to his neck in it and uh so that was the story like that was the scandal and um you know the the cover up made it even more um plausible that that Biden was corrupt because um you first of all had big tech stepping in. We found out later that the FBI was behind that. They had been pre-bunking our story to the big tech companies in meetings uh before the election and uh in the weeks running up to our story coming out uh the FBI had the laptop had had it since December 2019. They knew that this story would come out likely before the election. So they told uh Facebook and Twitter etc to look out for uh in probably in October um a hack and leak operation by the Russians to do with Hunter Biden. So that was our story. Nothing to do with hacking, nothing to do with the Russians, but it did scare people off. And then >> and quite literally, I'm sorry to interrupt, but quite literally Zuckerberg admitted that I mean he admitted that on Rogan that they knew about it and that it was sort of sold under that pretense. >> Yeah. and and Zuckerberg has not been at all transparent. He's had that dragged out of him, but only after Elon Musk bought Twitter, opened Twitter files, and people like Matt Taibbe and Michael Shelonburgger and Barry Weiss went in there and uncovered the the a whole cell of FBI and CIA operatives who had been hired by the big tech platforms, obviously planted there, to uh basically control information and to ensure that things they didn't want to to be s learned by the American people were censored and you know uh it wasn't for national security reasons. Maybe there were some legitimate ones but no it was to cover up uh their malfeasants and to cover up for Joe Biden the stuff I looked at to cover up for Joe Biden and ensure that he beat Donald Trump in 2020. And and then of course after that uh we had uh a few days after our story, first story came out um we had the dirty 51 letter which was um the letter by uh instigated by Anthony Blinken who was uh then a senior campaign adviser to Joe Biden became Secretary of State. uh he uh coerced this letter out of Mike Morurell um who was a former acting director of the CIA who thought he was going to be Biden's CIA director. Haha. He wasn't. He was double double tricked. But uh he he got 50 of his colleagues to sign on to this very dishonest letter that said that um that the Hunter Biden's laptop and therefore our reporting was a Russian disinformation operation. And they used slightly different language. They said um had all the earmarks of a Russian information operation. But you know that was what they meant. Politico broke the story was given at the story. Natasha Bertrand uh who's plugged into the deep state. Um and they headlined it uh Russian disinformation. So, and and among those 51 um supposedly former intelligence officials were five former directors or acting directors of the CIA, including um John Brennan, Leon Panetta, uh and so on. And um these people uh I think have sullied their reputations forever and I can't believe that they still uh John Brennan you you're seeing constantly on MSNBC, CNN are pining on the Iran war. Um he was also kneedeep in the uh Russia uh Russia hoax um you know on behalf of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. So um he's I mean he's under investigation by the DOJ. Not sure if they're going to be able to pin conspiracy charges on him. But um you know it's just incredible that those 51 have gotten away with it and still have jobs. Many of them were contractors for the CIA. And what makes that letter even more alarming is we found out much later on only just a year or two ago um thanks to the Republican investigations in the House um that uh that letter had to be vetted by the CIA before it was allowed to be published. They have a classifier uh classified review um board that make sure that you're not letting out any secrets. and uh th the people on that review board or panel decided that it was way too high above their pay level. So they kicked it upstairs. It came to the CIA's number three at the time, a man by the name of Andrew McCrus who was the COO and he looked at it and thought, "Uh-uh, above my pay grade." He has testified that he walked across the corridor at CIA headquarters at Langley and gave it to Gina Haspel who was then Trump's CIA director and she gave that letter the green light even though it had been deemed to be way too political uh you know less than 3 weeks before the 2020 election uh by the rest of the CIA buffins. They thought it was too political. She didn't. She thought it was great. And one little side note about Gina Haspel is that she was the head of the uh CIA's uh London mission um when uh the Russia gate hoax first kicked off in London with that meeting between a low-level Trump campaign operative George Papadopoulos and an Australian uh diplomat um or former diplomat Alexander Downer. >> There there's so much here. So, but but maybe we'll pause on that for a moment and let me let's fast forward to where we're at now. But but connected to this which is so when you mention all of these names and you can walking across the hall and we can connect all of these things. When you look at the Trump administration now which is you know basically not even a year and a half into this second presidency. Do you think they have done an effective job at cleaning the agencies out? Are you able to ascertain how many of these people still exist? Are the systems still in place? How many people are undermining the very things that Trump was voted in on? I I don't get a sense that there has been a wholesale cleanout. Um, you know, I I'm told that there are people in the CIA and the FBI who are just fair weather friends. You know, they will go uh w with whichever way the wind is blowing. Um, and that, you know, some of the worst actors, the the real political deep status um have been eliminated. Um, I'm I I I have no I I mean I I just have to take that on what they tell me. I don't necessarily believe it. Um, I think John Ratcliffe's doing a good job at the CIA with um exposing some of the malfeasants in the past. for instance, he uh got a review of that initial um CIA um sort of advice that kicked off the Russia gate hoax that um pretended that Russia was wanted uh Donald Trump to win the 2020 election. That was not true. John Brennan uh massaged that through and John Ratcliffe showed how John Brennan did that by bullying analysts by uh saying, "Oh, well, it doesn't matter if it's not true, it sounds good, doesn't it?" So, um, so that's been good. And, um, but you know, these agency's done a great job with declassifying a lot of information and really, uh, pushing the envelope on that. And um I know that uh in um Florida they they are a grand jury is um supposed to be looking at um sort of conspiracy charges against uh people like John Brennan, James Comey. Let's see what happens with that. I mean the DOJ has not had a lot of luck uh with trying to write wrongs from the past and time's running out, you know, especially if the rep if the Republicans lose the House in 20 in the end of this year. Yeah, that's exactly what I was going to say. It's like you don't really have two and a half years to deal with this. You may only have now eight months to deal with it, which is which is very very different. Um, what do you make of the general state of journalism at the moment? You know, I spent most of my formative years in New York City and one of my great joys was for a quarter you could buy the New York Post and you know, you could flip through it pretty quickly and at that time, you know, I'm talking, you know, early 2000s. It was sort of tabloidy, but but but I always thought it was pretty good where now the New York Post, I think, has has really shown itself to be a great place of journalism. And that's in stark contrast to New York Times, Washington Post, etc., etc. What what do you make of the state of sort of mainstream media? Yeah. And then we'll then we'll do the online thing. >> I mean, I think the New York Post is still what it's always been. I mean, it's a very proud to be a tabloid. Um, we're the, you know, voice of New York and there's a lot of, you know, showbiz and all the things that make up New York. Um, theater and gossip. Um, but also we're pretty conservative and always have had opinion side and the news has always been like straight down the middle usually. Um and uh you know like I write I write news stories and they are scrupulously um fact-based and then when I'm writing opinion they appear in the opinion pages. So um I I I mean the New York Times like all journalism has just totally lost its way. I think like all elite journalism maybe, you know, tabloids have been left alone because um we weren't deemed important enough uh to to mess with because there's been a lot of infiltration um for I mean for forever. I think intelligence um spies have uh gone and worked in news rooms. Um my father was a a journal a foreign correspondent in Tokyo in the 1960s and um he said there were spies everywhere. that was kind of one of the the sort of key places for the cold war and um spies in every newsroom. So um I and I I think that we saw the spies in u big tech is just an offshoot of that. So I think that the fact that you do have spies does skew the the coverage. Um and then the fact that those spies no longer the CIA and the FBI and so on. Um just I think in the past they were America first. uh whether you you disagreed with their tactics or not um they wanted America to prevail around the world. Uh and then the end of the cold war uh those agencies seem to have themselves gone woke or gone lost their way. Um and so I think that's reflected in the certainly the international coverage of uh the elite um newspap news agencies uh or institutions like the New York Times. Um but then you also have the change in journalism school. I went to Northwestern University's uh Medil School of Journalism um back in the 80s which was uh just you know a a fantastic place to learn the nuts and bolts of journalism. How to do it properly, how to write a story, um how to gather information, how to make that last call, persevere, don't you know don't listen to lies, etc. It was just straight. it wasn't didn't have a left-wing bias. You just went into the world as a fully equipped journalist and reporter. Um but now journalism schools even I think Northwestern's sad to say but certainly Colombia um are are teaching journalists to be activists telling them that's their role and uh and you're getting all these young woke people in newsrooms and the New York Times just got completely eaten up by identity politics and I think destroyed itself you know and and it's the news section of the paper people don't understand does not make money for them they're making money out of Wordle and cooking and crosswords stuff that is not journalism. Washington Post has just you know almost on its last legs um losing money and Jeff Bezos is sick of it. Um you know that's a story all over the country and uh the Wall Street Journal which has a conservative opinion side and news factual news slightly leftleaning but center left um is is just doing very very well. Uh and it also has all the business stuff that people are willing to pay for. Um and that's a subscription base. We're free. Uh and the the fact that we are doing so well and are profitable for the first time in you know almost since the beginning of post history um has has messed that Robert Murdoch is now confident enough to open a actual newspaper like a print version of the New York Post in California that Post. >> Yeah. There there's so much it's so interesting. Let let me ask you something that I've gotten some push back on over the years. You know, I've not only personally been lied about so many in the so many times in the New York Times, but then also covered stories where they lie about virtually everything. So, one of the things that I always say is if you're reading a New York Times story and they're quoting anonymous sources, it's likely made up. Now, I do get some push back on that from my friends in the more mainstream journalist world, but at this point, if you're reading one of the papers that we've discussed here or or even in your personal view, how do you decide what when to use an anonymous source or not? Because usually, I can say it at least from the New York Times side, it's just to craft a story. And I just don't think they deserve the credit to that we should believe that this anonymous source is real or when they say it's a source on Capitol Hill that it's not the janitor on Capitol Hill who's probably a far better person than most of the people working on Capitol Hill. But you get the point >> or Adam Schiff, you know. >> Well, it's always Adam Schiff. It's always Adam Schiff. >> If if if you know that your source is a proven liar, that's when you stop using them. But it seems like with the New York Times, they're quite happy to have lies laundered as long as they're laundered through someone plausible. Um because, you know, when you're a reporter and you're doing a highstakes story, your editor asks you who is your source and you have to tell your editor and I mean that goes to their grave. Um I I have used anonymous sources, of course. I mean, they're crucial um particularly during the um Hunter Biden investigation because um there were many friends and former business partners of um Hunter Biden that could not risk um their I mean safety uh their financial security um could not risk being locked up. up. I mean, Deon Archer um almost went to jail. Uh lost all his money fighting legal, you know, spirious legal uh cases because um he was uh deemed by Hunter not to be sufficiently loyal. Um, so they they couldn't risk speaking on the record, but they had lots of evidence that I mean they were on the laptop, so I knew that they knew what they were talking about and they were able to confirm that those emails were real. So they were crucially important. And as time went on, uh, and I gained their trust, um, you know, I mean, I had at at my I don't mind saying it because I won't say who they are, but at my second book book launch for the big guy, uh, for the second book, um, I had five, uh, whistleblowers, uh, in the audience. So, and and some of whom, you know, no one will ever know their names, but um, so they're important. those anonymous sources are crucial and I don't think you can really like hold truth to power or whatever it is if if you don't use them. Um but obviously you should always try to get people on the record. Um, and I I just think with the New York Times, they have such a reputation, uh, and the Washington Post, they have such a aust reputation that people will believe if it's in the New York Times or Washington Post comes across, you know, the the breakfast table of these old CIA uh, and, you know, grizzled intelligence types who still get newspapers on their front porch in Washington or in wherever they live, Maryland and Virginia. They believe every word that's in there and it fuels their Trump derangement. Um, and it's really sick. But, >> you know, we are so siloed now. I saw a um a poll, Quinnipic poll, uh, today that said that, um, you know, do you think Trump is explaining himself well enough on the Iran war? Um, I think something like 80% of Republicans said yes. Um, like 5% of Democrats said yes. So, it's because we're siloed in our news centers. And I believe that conservatives are more realistic because we're forced to consume left-wing news, uh, even if we choose to watch Fox News or read the New York Post and nothing else. Um and also um I would argue maybe I'm talking my own book but you get both sides in those two organizations whereas MSNBC uh will especially MSNBC will just give you one side and it's all the Trump derange side and if that's all you're watching or CNN you are woefully ignorant about half of what's going on in the world. So, putting aside the mainstream portion of this, you know, obviously over the last 15 years, we've developed this this alt media thing. I'm very proud to say I was one of the early ins on this thing. Um, what do you make of the state of alt journalism in a in a time when there are now no guard rails and there's really there's really no rules. No one's looking at the old, you know, journalist's handbook from 1964 or whatever and doing anything. We're all, you know, you can just put on a, as I say all the time, and I mean it with all due irony, you can put on a jacket and sit at a desk and look like, you know, you're doing something true and honest, and now there's a gajillion of us. I mean, what what do you make of the state of that? >> Yeah, I mean, if alt journalism is um, you know, what you're doing, podcasting, what I've just started doing with Pod Force One, um, I I think alt journalism is morphing into real journalism. you know po uh I think the last election 24 presidential election was really the podcast election. You could see that with uh Donald Trump fanning out to Joe Rogan and all sorts of obscure um podcasts that his son Baron had suggested. Um so that's now a way uh to transmit information across to the public. I think it's in some ways for politicians a more real way because in in an hour-ong interview with say Donald Trump or any of his cabinet members and you get a feel for the real person beyond the spin that you don't get in a a short sound bite or a short you know grab or press conference. Um although press conferences are good because they do put these people under pressure. So I wouldn't want a podcast to um replace that. But um so I think that you now have this strange situation where you've got podcast hosts uh getting enormous um millions of viewers bigger than um you know Fox News or CNN sometimes um and and and yet there is no checks or balances. you know, at a at a news organization like Fox, you have editors and producers and, you know, ultimately Suzanne Scott and ultimately, you know, the the head of the company and uh lawyers and uh everybody is making sure that you are within the bounds of normality and truth. Um, with podcasts, it's really you and your microphone. And unless you, you know, I I'm obviously it's a New York Post podcast, so all those limits apply to to me, but um for you, you're your own your own oneman band. Um, and many podcasters are and the most talented are like the most I think the the real the the people who have made it big are the ones who have some innate broadcasting talent, some deep uh integrity that they project and a charisma that comes across on the screen that makes people trust them. Um, and that can be dangerous because sometimes appearances are deceiving. >> Ah, you gave me the perfect segue. You know, it's interesting. One of the things that I'm most proud of on this show is that I love correcting myself. I don't love making mistakes, but if I correct myself and my guys flag me in the middle of a live show, I will always stop and do it or if we realize it after the show. To me, it's it's the easiest thing to do. I'm not perfect and I'm going to make mistakes and I do think it shows integrity and honesty. So, I see all these people that now are more ideological and are just sort of laundering lies that are doing this. So, so how do you think if the world continues to go in this direction where we're just going to all get news catered to us and now you see, you know, I I'll just say names. I don't know if you want to reference them, but say Tucker Carlson and Megan Kelly who came from mainstream media. So, they had some of those barriers. Now they're in the other thing. And I would say particularly in the Tucker case, it's just sort of an endless conspiracy crazy town episode every day. Do you think certain people just need some of that stuff, some of those boundaries because they can't exist in the other world? >> Well, I mean, Tucker, um, who I, you know, was very friendly with when he was at Fox, I was on his show all the time. I actually, he asked me to write this biography. Uh, I was halfway through it when he left Fox, uh, in, you know, mysterious circumstances, let's say. Um and um and so I I I was close to him, but I don't recognize um what's happened with his his, you know, podcast now because um I think, you know, he comes from a good place, which is he genuinely is anti-war to a point that I don't think people really understand. He um was kind of in the neocon world when he first, you know, started out in journalism. um and he was working for um what's in Bill Crystal and he felt betrayed and used by Bill Crystal because as I said like he's incredibly charismatic and uh great on on on air. Um and so he felt and he's a great writer. So he felt Bill Crystal used him to prosecute the Iraq war which he now realized afterwards was a huge mistake. I had a friend die there and um and he just beats himself up about it all the time. Um but I mean he's not alone. I I I feel exactly the same way. I think a lot of us were hoodwinkedked uh into that and therefore are you know there's a whole generation of people Pete Hath talks about it um who are very leerary of war very different from uh the people who tricked us into the Iraq war. So, um, so I think Tucker comes from a good place, an honest place. But what's happened, uh, I think was at Fox, he had an incredible crew around him. Like he had Justin Wells, who was just, you know, first among equals in terms of Fox talent, behind the scenes talent, could have run the place. Um, he was his his executive producer. Yeah. >> Um he had people like Charlie Cougar and um a whole retinue of real geniuses. And you don't get to be number one in cable for so many years without a good team. Um and that was leveraging Tucker's immense talent and turning it into gold. And I think Tucker suffers from having lost those people. Obviously when he left Fox he uh couldn't keep them on and he's pretty isolated. And um and then I think he he he's you know he's someone who's a very independent person. He doesn't like being co-opted by politicians or being seen as being co-opted by a politician. So I think he was always very uneasy with his sort of closeness to Trump. I think we all are. you know, Trump is a very engaging, welcoming, hospitable person to people he wants to be that way to. And it's very hard to resist uh especially when he's president, you know, to be around that aura. Um and yet if you have any semblance of independence as a journalist, you find that uncomfortable. And so maybe um maybe Tucker also felt that because he had that proximity, I think he fell into a trap. This is my personal view. Maybe maybe Americans don't think that. I I think I come from a more of an Australian sensibility, but I think it's hubristic and arrogant to think that as a journalist, you have close relationships with politicians by the nature of your job. But that does not mean you're an advisor. Does not mean that you're on the same level as a Marco Rubio, you know, or or the buffins who advise the president. You are just the voice of the people. You are there to listen and transmit what you've learned to the people. You should not make yourself more important than that because you really are just a journalist. And I always try and keep myself humble like that. And unfortunately I think television and podcasting more than that even um gives people massive egos. even humble people uh become really egotistical. It's just the nature of the beast. And maybe, and I hope Tucker doesn't hate me for saying this, but maybe he thought he was more important than he was. And then when Trump didn't pay any attention to him when he advised him not to go into Iran, um he uh he sort of went ballistic. Um and you know, he may turn out to be right. I mean, he may turn out to be Nostradamus, but there's no excuse for his uh playing with these anti-semitic tropes and for interviewing people who are obviously um just uh lying about Israel and its role. And I'm talking about, you know, historians that are saying that Winston Churchill was the worst than Hitler and uh etc. And you know, okay, you can interview Nick Fuentes, but don't interview him like he's a legitimate guy. I mean, you can let him have his say, but you know, he's a fool. Um, so I don't know. I just I just think Tucker is so talented and such a good guy. Um, I I find it really sad that he's um just doubling down and doubling down when he does podcasts that are not on these topics, like on privacy or something. He he's so brilliant, but he doesn't get as many views. And you know, he gets millions of views and is making like Candace Owens, who is completely batshit. Um, she gets millions of views. He's making a lot of money out of um just tormenting uh the widow of Charlie Kirk. I think that's unforgivable. Erica Kirk has been so brave and tried to rise above this, but it's so dirty. I just feel disgusted. Yeah, you know, fame. Well, I don't have to tell you. I mean, fame is a weird drug, and and clicks are, I suppose, the uh the lighter for for the drug. Let me ask you just one other thing here, and I'd love to have you back and just maybe we could do this every few months to just recap what's going on as more of a a look at the media. Uh which is what I'm usually more interested in. It is the narrative than than the specific stories. Um, but as we're in the midst of this war, and I I should say we're posting this on Saturday. You and I are taping this on Tuesday, so obviously a few things could change. I personally have been very impressed by the transparency of the administration, whether it's Trump, whether it's Rubio, Heg, JD's been a little bit less out there, but when he's been out there, I think he's backing the president. And then you see Trump still doing some of his side remarks and oh, we may have to do a little more here and there. I don't know that they could be doing the PR side of this much better. you sort of referenced before no matter what they're going to do, the Democrats are going to say they're not being honest or whatever. Do you think there is more they could do in wartime right now cuz I if there is, I haven't seen it, but I'm but I'm open to it. I really don't other than um Larry Cuddlo was on his show uh this week and um he's very hot and has been you know since last week on um uh opening up the straight of Hormuse because um you know the price of oil obviously is critical to how Americans think about the war. Um and you know Donald Trump came out yesterday and he said look it's not going to go on for very long. Um I I think he never intended it to go on for very long, but he didn't want to signal that to the Iranians, right? So it seemed obvious to me why he wasn't saying that. But he was getting a lot of pressure from the base and from people saying, "Oh, you know, he has to he has to say there's an end or we're going to go into a forever war." Like there's no way Donald Trump is going in a forever war. But anyway, he came out and he said what he said yesterday. I guess he had to. It's it quiet in the markets. Um and uh and he cares deeply about the markets obviously and the price of oil is going to be important. Uh it feeds into the cost of living for the midterms which is all important. Um so I think getting the straits of Hormuse he's now said that that you know they're they're and they're doing the insurance so the ships are feel okay about going through and uh and helping them with their own warship our own warships to to get through. Um, so, uh, I think that's really crucial and once you do that and the oil price settles down, um, I think the American people will be content that, um, this is, you know, and tr those who trust Donald Trump trust him. Right. >> Right. Those who don't will just use anything, no matter how detrimental to the national interest, to come after him. So, you know, um I I I mean, if you read the left-wing media, none of the successes of this war and the degradation of the Iranian um military and and nuclear capability has been mentioned. Uh it's all that everything's going terribly and you know, Iran's just elected the the you know, Ayatollah's son and he's going to be worse than his father. Yeah. I mean, it's not it's not easy, but Trump at the very least, if he stopped today, as in Tuesday, um has has set the Iranians back um you know, a long time, many years in their nuclear ambitions. And I I think the terrorist threat is something we need to keep an eye on. And of course, we've seen uh the ISIS uh threat in New York already with those two, thank goodness, unexloded bombs. Uh but that would have killed and maimed many people. And the ISIS sympathizers, the two uh Muslim guys who uh threw the bombs. They um they said they wanted it to be bigger than the Boston Marathon bombing. So, you know, we don't know how many sleeper cells there are in this country, how many terrorists were let in over the open border for 4 years by Joe Biden. Um, we know many have been arrested. Uh, we know there was a an Iranian, it was a actually a Pakistani guy who was just uh convicted on Friday uh last Friday for um plotting to kill President Trump and he said he was uh asked to do it by the Iranians. So, the Iranian government has been at least two foiled plots to assassinate Donald Trump. Uh, and they will do whatever they can, uh, even if they're degraded to destroy us with terrorism at home. And I think that will be a real political concern going into the midterms, >> right? And meanwhile, the Democrats are defunding or temporarily have a partial shutdown for DHS amidst all this because of ICE, even though it's funded through 29. And you didn't even mention that we had a less was it less than a month ago 16 people were shot by a jihadist in Austin te Texas and two were killed. So it's just it's endless. I I completely agree by the way with your point that he deserves a little bit of our trust here. He's been directionally right about so many of these things that even someone like you who comes from journalism so you would be skeptical. Yeah, you you have to trust a little bit here. Miranda, it's been an absolute pleasure pleasure. We're going to link to the podcast down below. It was good to see you. >> Thanks Dave. If you're tired of the media circus and want more honest conversations about the media itself, check out our media playlist. And if you want to watch full interviews on a wide variety of topics, watch our full episode playlist, all right over here. And to get notified of all future videos, be sure to subscribe and click the notification bell.
