Garrison Davis
Appearances
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Yes. Well, one and only that I know of, unless there's another one going around, which would be freaky. There might be.
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Welcome to What Could Happen Here, a show about things falling apart. I'm Garrison Davis, and this episode is going to be a special audio companion piece to an article published last night on Substack at Shatterzone. That's Robert's usual Substack, though last night I published an article detailing the online history and transvestigation discourse regarding a school shooting in Madison, Wisconsin.
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The article has pictures and hyperlinks which might help explain some of the stuff I'm talking about, but I'll do my best to relay it here to you on the podcast feed. Another Monday in America and another school shooting.
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On the morning of December 16th, a female student at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, shot and killed a teacher and fellow student and injured six others before killing herself. Initially, police falsely reported the shooter was 17 years old, but late Monday night, they correctly identified the deceased shooter as 15-year-old Natalie Rupnow, who went by Samantha or Sam.
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In the aftermath of this horrific event, right-wing influencers and content creators wasted no time in blaming the shooting on trans people, labeling the suspect as another in a series of alleged transgender terrorists. But what really happened here had nothing to do with trans people and is sadly ordinary for the United States.
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In August of 2024, the father of the future school shooter took his daughter to a gun range to do trap shooting. Samantha wore a shirt bearing the logo of a band, KMFDM. In another photo of the shooter, we can see the front of the shirt. The same design was famously worn by Columbine shooter Eric Harris, who was a fan of the band.
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The bulk of this new shooter's online footprint suggests a general obsession with school shooters and the TCC, or True Crime Community, a nickname used for the de facto international Columbine fandom. This sort of content dominates Samantha's Tumblr, which last posted in May of 2024. An alleged online friend of the shooter said that she, quote, Samantha is hardly alone in this.
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There have been over 100 copycats inspired by the Columbine shooting since 1999. A Twitter account believed to have belonged to the shooter posted a series of videos that teased and glorified school shootings in the days leading up to her own shooting. The account was created in December of 2024, and the profile picture featured a young man in camo pants and a tactical backpack.
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The male profile picture was used as evidence by some conservative influencers that the shooter must have transitioned, though these same influencers cannot agree on whether she was female-to-male or male-to-female. One user constructed an overlay trying to compare the photo of the shooter with her Twitter profile picture.
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This is a ridiculous diagram with about seven images overlaid at different opacities trying to layer the faces and body shapes of these two people on top of each other. This post is only proof that most of what gets passed off as quote-unquote OSINT online today is just completely incompetent rambling and propaganda.
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The main issue with this diagram is that the male profile picture is actually another Columbine copycat, a school shooter from Russia, who, similar to Samantha, was only 15 years old when he carried out his shooting.
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Hours after the shooting in Madison, Wisconsin, while right-wing accounts were still arguing about what sort of transgender the shooter had been, a neo-Nazi Twitter account named Nitro claimed to be friends with the shooter on Discord and repeatedly denied accusations that the shooter was transgender, calling her a quote-unquote biological woman.
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An early complicating factor in establishing the motive and identity of the shooter is that her alleged Twitter account posted a link to a Google Doc of her manifesto. but seemingly forgot to make the visibility setting public. So you couldn't access the Google Doc. You had to put in an email for approval, and the person who was supposed to approve your email was now dead.
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So there was no way to actually look at this person's manifesto. The shooter's alleged Discord friend, Nitro, claims to find what he believes to be a snippet of a manifesto draft shared by the shooter in a Discord group chat.
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Nitro is based out of the UK, and so if this is legitimate, and that is a big if, this message would have been sent about an hour and a half before the shooting per the Discord timestamp. I'm going to read a bit of this alleged writing from the shooter. Quote, Women are the only hope for this wretched world, but even women have been brainwashed by moids for too long.
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They've internalized the patriarchy and turned on each other, always begging for male approval and validation. It's disgusting. I realize the truth. Men are irredeemable. Radfem Hitler was, is fucking vindicated now. They can't be reformed or redeemed. They are a fucking scourge upon the earth. The only solution is to total exterminate them and every foid who worships these fucking parasites.
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Every single male must be wiped out, from babies to the elderly. Only then can women be free to create a new world. I'll be the pioneer. I'll be the first one to take the first step. I don't care if they're fathers, brothers, husbands, sons, teachers, police, and especially N-words or politicians. I've been craving to kill them all. This is my mission.
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Only when their parasitic sludge has been expunged from the earth is when then the world will be clean and women can start over. It's the only way. In approximately 10 minutes, I should be dead. It's strange, but it feels good. unquote.
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Hopefully to most people, this should read like unintelligible gibberish, a reactionary, quote-unquote, feminist screed about initiating a wave of male-targeted violence to cleanse the earth with pepperings of moids and foids, which is internet incel slang for male and female, respectively. Also included are racial slurs and something called, quote-unquote, RadFemHitler,
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That last part is a reference to a Twitter influencer by the same name and the handle Hollow Earth Turf, whose content is a mix of trad-influenced right-wing feminism with anti-trans flourishes, advocating for a mass purge of moids. This includes trans women.
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This account is derided by those both on the right and left, but has a small dedicated following of conservative RadFem and anti-trans women with trad or often occult interests. The Discord Nazi, Nitro, claimed that the shooter was quote-unquote a fan of RadFemHitler and talked about the account frequently on Discord, though Nitro previously believed her interest in the account was merely ironic.
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Now, obviously, an anonymous Twitter Nazi is certainly not the most reliable source, but Nitro was the first person to correctly identify and post photos of the shooter, though they could be utilizing this newfound clout to troll a widely disliked Twitter user.
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But the fact that he's been right about all other details inclines me to not discount his claims altogether, but instead just hold them with a billion pounds of salt. Allegations that the shooter was a neo-Nazi Radfem certainly sent Radfem Hitler into a panic, who quickly deleted her account.
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Meanwhile, some of her online associates worked damage control, claiming to have contacted the alleged boyfriend that the shooter had been quote-unquote e-dating. with the apparent intention of disproving any ties the shooter had to the Twitter radfem orbit. Through this alleged online boyfriend, the right-wing TERF ecosystem claimed to have acquired a copy of the quote-unquote full manifesto,
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This purported manifesto lacks the anti-male, anti-moid ramblings of the Discord screenshot, but unsurprisingly shares its use of racial slurs and glorification of violence, at times evocative of Pekka Erikovinen's manifesto, a Finnish school shooter from 2007 who killed eight people. Ovidin considered himself a quote-unquote natural selector who had evolved beyond the classmates he gunned down.
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In Samantha's purported manifesto, he is mentioned by name as a quote-unquote true inspiration. Over the course of eight hours, a RadFem Twitter account released six pages of what they claimed to be Samantha's writing. It contains general misanthropic rambling about humanity and parents being quote-unquote scum.
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The writing describes a difficult family life, suicidal thoughts, and admiration for school shooters and white supremacists. Though it briefly references the accelerationist terror-gram saints, the whole of this piece of writing is much more reminiscent of old-school Columbiners than the modern white nationalist terror milieu.
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The alleged manifesto directly names the two Columbine shooters and includes a paragraph on Vladiskov Rozlyakov, another Columbine copycat but from Crimea, who also cosplayed as one of the Columbine shooters during his own mass shooting.
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Though the Discord Nazi and the reactionary radfems question the authenticity of the other's alleged manifesto, what both sides of the incel war do agree on is that Samantha was not transgender. We're going to go on a quick ad break and come back to discuss transvestigation and the trans terror panic. Okay, we are back.
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It seems these days the fastest way to get transvestigated is to do a school shooting. Transvestigating is the practice of trying to determine if an individual is transgender. It's often leveled against celebrities, athletes, and politicians. But in recent years, there's been a new common subject of transvestigation. Mass shooters. In particular, school shooters.
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Myself, Robert Evans, and James Stout previously reported on this trend back in 2023, right as it grew in prominence after the Nashville Covenant School shooting, which police say was committed by a trans man.
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We theorized that the online right was testing out a new strategy to attack trans people by associating them with mass shootings via the use of selective bias reporting and plain disinformation. That fear has come to pass.
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The modicum of believability provided by the Nashville shooting, as it's the only legitimate trans-related incident that meets criteria for mainstream mass shooting databases, was enough to fuel this ongoing strategy for the next two years. Since then, conservative influencers have attempted to link nearly every viral mass-slash-school shooting to trans people to create a false trend.
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The strategy operates as follows. During the first few chaotic hours after a shooting, a small group of right-wing content creators weaponized the lack of verified information to make posts framing an alleged shooter as being transgender. This can be done through the use of out-of-context social media posts, doctored photographs, photos of other people, or simply pictures of long or dyed hair.
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All they need is a collection of loose evidence to affirm on social media that a mass shooter is really transgender. For more context on this, you can listen to an episode of It Could Happen Here I wrote earlier this year covering the rise of fake trans terrorists. The goal is to get as many of their followers to see and spread these claims as fast as possible.
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Even if it's widely debunked the next day, many who heard the false claim won't be aware of the verified correction. All these anti-trans influencers need is a brief window of time to plant the idea into people's minds. And then that becomes remembered history.
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If this strategy is repeated every few months, whenever there's a new mass shooting, then it's pretty easy to create the false perception of a growing trend. Now, in reality, trans people per capita are actually way less likely to commit a shooting compared to cis people and are much more likely to be the victim of gun violence.
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But this past Monday, conservative and anti-trans influencers tried once again to weaponize a tragedy for their own hateful agenda. Monday afternoon, Ian Miles Chung posted, Trans terrorism must end. Hours later, Laura Loomer wrote, The trans movement is really turning out to be a terrorist movement."
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Just minutes after police responded to the shooting, the conservative influencer Matt Wallace posted that an unknown, quote-unquote, witness said that the shooter, quote, looked to be transgender, unquote. Wallace, who has over 2.2 million followers on Twitter, provided no source or citation and has since deleted this post.
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But others in the online mega-orbit parroted this language before any identifying information was released, with the user JustJeffFromCalley writing, "...a trans person targeted and opened fire on students at Abundant Life Christian School in Wisconsin. 12 hit."
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The right-wing content creator Ryan Mata baselessly claimed that the shooter was on hormone replacement therapy, calling the shooter, quote, another mentally unstable psychopath who was prescribed puberty blocker and hormones, unquote. Mata hosts a show on the right-wing YouTube alternative Rumble and has over 123,000 followers on Twitter.
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His tweet claiming the shooter was on HRT racked up 1.6 million, quote-unquote, views and 17,000 likes in just 12 hours. Larger accounts like Chaya Raichak's libs of TikTok fueled undue speculation about the gender identity of the shooter, seeding confusion into the growing discourse and weaponizing a tragedy for political gain.
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Quoting the police chief saying, quote, I don't know if the shooter is male or female, unquote. A small group of conservative influencers have just so successfully created an alternate reality in which nearly every new mass shooter is transgender that they don't even have to outright say it anymore.
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Accounts like Libs of TikTok and Malaysian blogger Ian Miles Chung can merely gesture to this reality tunnel they've intentionally created. And now thousands of people will affirm this fake reality as the obvious truth. backed up by historical precedent of fabricated memory. Matt Wallace posted a photo of the shooter and the male profile picture saying, what do you notice about the shooter again?
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Ian Miles Chung posted, quote, police are unable to identify if the school shooter in Madison, Wisconsin is male or female, but they do know who did it and identified them as a student. Is anyone else thinking what I'm thinking? Unquote.
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This speculation fueled conspiracy theories, which spread, claiming that police were intentionally withholding information about the shooter's gender identity in service of some hidden agenda. And actually, they were just waiting to, like, let the family know that their daughter was dead and making sure they had the correct identification. Very basic stuff. Police always do this.
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But no, it's all part of some secret agenda and some hidden narrative. As early as 1 p.m. EST on Monday, which is just like an hour after the shooting would have taken place, the neo-Nazi Twitter account Nitro correctly identified the shooter as his online friend Sam slash Samantha.
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As this name spread online, the multi-gendered nature of the name added to the speculation that the shooter was trans. Scarlett Johnson, an activist with the ultra-conservative parents' rights group Moms for Liberty, shared self-admitted, unconfirmed reports that the shooter was quote-unquote a transgender teen who went by Sam or Samantha.
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As alleged pictures of the shooter started to spread online, courtesy of Nitro, the transvestigation of the shooter only intensified. An unfortunate coincidence is that the shooter's given name matches the ancient Sam Hyde meme. in which extremely online people try to trick journalists into believing the culprit of a new mass shooting was the American comedian Sam Hyde.
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In recent years, the meme has turned into the Samantha Hyde meme, used to falsely label mass shooters as trans women. One hide post from an unassuming boomer named Ed Massey raked up over 600,000 views, 4.5 thousand likes, and one and a half thousand retweets. Massey posted, quote, unquote.
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Now, it should go without saying, but the use of puberty suppressing medication has no link to increased violence. We're going to go on one last break and return to conclude our discussion of transvestigating school shooters. Okay, we are back. Time to talk about the potential double flipper.
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So as this transvestigation continued, the quote-unquote we-can-always-tell crowd ended up transvestigating in both directions, seemingly unsure of what assigned gender at birth the shooter must have had. Some believed the shooter was trans femme, while others concluded they were trans masc. with one reply to an end-wokeness tweet reading, quote, those do not look like female hands.
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And another transvestigation post saying, the shooter is a trans kid, a female, pretending to be a male. Exactly why we keep our Second Amendment rights to protect our children from this mental health crisis. Zoom in close on her shirt and hand gesture, unquote.
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A now-deleted post from a TERF account also attempted to pass off the shooter as a trans girl, saying, quote, "...the Wisconsin school shooter was a 17-year-old trans-identified male. It just keeps happening." Now, quote-unquote trans-identified male was usually a transphobic dog whistle to refer to a trans woman, as in a male who identifies as a trans woman.
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But sometimes transphobes get confused by words and use the phrase to refer to trans people who quote-unquote identify as men. Like this other trans investigation post saying, quote, Shooter was a 17-year-old trans but identified male. Now, one of the most widespread posts claiming the shooter was a trans guy came from an anti-Semitic doctor in Denmark with 1.4 million followers.
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She falsely claimed, with no evidence, that the shooter was taking testosterone, writing, quote, unquote. As of Tuesday morning, this post has over 3 million views, 22,000 likes, and 8.3 thousand retweets. In a following post, this doctor blamed quote-unquote the Jews for inventing transgenderism.
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As a note, extremism researchers have argued that transphobia is structurally similar to antisemitism. Now, a common piece of anti-trans memetic propaganda deployed in the wake of mass shootings is the Trans Shooter Collage. This format spread after the Nashville school shooting in 2023, and this week, Matt Wallace provided us with a brand new version.
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This post is an ugly mishmash of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 people's faces with a variety of backgrounds, a purposeless red circle in the middle of the image, and text that reads, quote, "...almost every child killed in a mass shooting in the last few years was killed by a transgender shooter."
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Now, out of all those pictures in this collage, only one person in this collage is actually reported to be transgender, the Nashville shooter in the upper left. The rest of the people pictured are not trans and have never claimed to be trans.
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The person with long hair in the lower half of the image is Colt Gray, who is falsely labeled as trans by far-right influencers like End Wokeness and Mike Cernovich. Colt Gray's Discord posts reveal he actually held transphobic beliefs.
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A more classic version of the trans shooter collage format is just five pictures with text next to each of them reading the ex-shooter identified as trans, the ex-shooter identified as trans, right? Just a big list of five of these names saying that they all identified as trans. The version I'm using here is courtesy of Libs of TikTok admin Chaya Raichek, who posted this earlier this year.
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But just as before, the majority of the subjects in this meme aren't actually trans, and it's just full of disinformation. The Colorado Springs shooter who targeted a queer club is not actually non-binary and simply tried to weaponize a false identity to get out of hate crime charges. The person labeled as the Denver shooter is not trans, has never claimed to be trans. He just has dyed hair.
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This individual pictured did plan the shooting with a transgender male who is not pictured. Now lastly, though the person pictured as the Uvalde shooter is trans, this is not the actual Uvalde shooter. It's a random trans girl who was one of two trans women whose photos were used to falsely label the shooter as transgender.
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The other two people in this image is the Nashville shooter, who does appear to be trans, and the perpetrator of the Aberdeen workplace shooting. But back to Madison, Wisconsin. So after all of that transvestigating, what do we have? Just another Columbiner with neo-Nazi ties. The right has gotten so good at deploying the trans shooter as a smoke bomb.
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It obscures the reality of the over-availability of firearms, the dynamics of online radicalization, and the social issues that fuel alienation and anger in youth. Instead of focusing on all that, on the victims of this epidemic of white supremacist violence, we instead have to spend a whole day debunking the late shooter's pronouns. And that's the point. That's what they want us talking about.
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Those who delete their quote-unquote trans terrorist posts after being conclusively proven wrong will try the exact same shtick in a few months after the next mass shooting goes viral. Others won't even care that much. They'll just leave up their post, secure in the stability of the reality tunnel they helped to create. I'm going to close with a quote from Sartre.
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Never believe that fascists are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge, but they are amusing themselves. For it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. This post has been deleted.
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This guy who lied about prosecuting the Benghazi attackers and almost got SEAL Team 6 killed?
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Well, I mean, hopefully, allegedly, these products and services would never wish harm upon SEAL Team 6.
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Alright, we are back. I'd like to talk a little bit now about Patel's actual plans for the FBI. Now, this job does require a Senate confirmation. So we will see, you know, if he gets past that process or if he's going to get pushed in through recess appointments, which we still don't really know if Trump will be able to pull off.
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But in terms of the FBI, we do have some idea about what Cash has in mind because he spent the past two years just talking about it nonstop in books and interviews. Yeah, because he, like all these guys, cannot shut up. Can't stop talking.
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In an appearance on The Sean Ryan Show this past September, Patel said, quote, I'd shut down the FBI Hoover Building on day one and reopen it the next day as a museum of the deep state, unquote. Okay.
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Yeah, I don't think they can make a whole museum turn around in one day.
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No, like Patel does talk about like trying to like clear out like the bureaucracy and red tape of the FBI. And and though he has criticized the wide footprint of the FBI and its surveillance operations, though really only the ones targeted against Trump and his campaign.
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Cash's ideal FBI would not, in fact, have like a more limited presence out in the world, saying that after closing the Hoover building, quote, then I'd take the 7000 employees that work in that building and send them across America to chase down criminals. Go be cops. You're cops. Go be cops. Unquote. So this is what you give like a seven year old the keys to the FBI.
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And this is this is this is the kind of stuff he's talking about. Yeah, it's like I'm going to send all these administrative employees out into the world to chase down criminals.
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You know, if we said it a little bit further, we could have like Will Wheaton as like the villain. Yeah, Will Wheaton as the evil kid heading the CIA.
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No. Sorry, President Williams. Goddamn. Oh, dear. Nightmare. Nightmare fuel. Now, it's really unclear if, like, Cash's plans here are, like, rhetoric, right? Like, you know, more vibes than, like, actual plan. You know, like, expressing some kind of sentiment rather than, like, an actual practical, like, plan. But last year, Patel published a book called
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titled Government Gangsters, The Deep State, The Truth, and The Battle for Our Democracy, where he also proposed relocating the FBI headquarters out of Washington, D.C. to, quote, prevent institutional capture and curb FBI leadership from engaging in political gamesmanship, unquote.
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Though the bulk of this book also details like why we must root out politicians, journalists, big tech and quote unquote members of the unelected bureaucracy that operate the deep state. So, you know, like the FBI engaging in a little bit of political gamesmanship is OK.
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In the appendix of this book, it contains the names of 60 alleged members of the deep state, most of them either like former Trump cabinet people who like turned on Trump or just like current Biden admin people. It's all pretty silly, but it's not like he actually plans to take out political prosecutions away from like the FBI's operational structure.
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Like, come on, buddy, this is like your entire plan. In an interview with Steve Bannon last year, Patel reiterated the goal of targeted prosecutions against political enemies, saying, quote, Yes, we're going to come after people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We're going to come after you, unquote. So that's cool.
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Again, this is, this is the basic stuff that Trump's been promising since like, you know, the past four years going after journalists, going after politicians.
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This quote specifically also just like reminded me that like, there's like a real possibility that like the head of the FBI legitimately thinks the 2020 election was stolen. And like, Then I got to thinking like how many of like the people operating the highest levels of government now genuinely believe the election was stolen in 2020, which is like kind of kind of threw me for a loop.
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I like didn't really like process that like concept of like how just broken the reality structure will be with something like so like clear. Yep. That's his FBI plans.
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Patel is really bad. And we're going to get into some more of his kind of crank beliefs. But there is a level of base incompetence. The fact that Tulsi has been able to get into this position despite... very clearly having like deep sympathetic ties to Assad and Russia is like super frightening.
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Yeah, yes. Now, since 2020, Kash Patel has served on the board of directors for the parent company of Truth Social called Trump Media Technology Group. So he's been part of the team operating, you know, Trump's version of Twitter.
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And back in 2022, Patel was openly talking about how like the Truth Social staff were trying to, quote unquote, incorporate QAnon into our overall messaging scheme to capture audiences. So this is the section where we're going to really get into Patel's super, super heavy Q ties, which is kind of like a throwback, right? We don't really talk about QAnon as much anymore.
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And I don't think Patel's interest in this is genuine. I think it is just to like grow both his own brand and help boost the stock of Truth Social. It's still like the closest that anyone in Trump's team has gotten to like openly endorsing QAnon and like repeatedly, right?
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True social staff operate an account at Q, formed to piggyback off of QAnon's popularity and draw in popular QAnon influencers. In February 2022, Patel posted a photo of a beer pint and the arm of someone wearing a flannel shirt with text saying he was, quote, having a beer with Q right now, unquote.
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Patel continued to frequently interact with the Q account, make QAnon-related posts, and do reoccurring appearances on QAnon-linked podcasts. Most notably, the X-22 Report, the Matrix XXX Grove Show, and Red Pill 78. It's been a while since I've listened to these types of shows, and it was like a huge throwback. Oh, man. And they're like all chugging along.
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And now they're like chugging along better than ever, which is, you know, not ideal for me. On these shows, Cash has praised the QAnon fandom researchers, saying both he and the president have been impressed. It's all like very pandering, but it really works for these people.
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Later in that interview, Patel openly said that he publishes government documents on his website, fightwithcash.com, specifically so that QAnon researchers will dig through them to make QAnon content. He openly said that's why he posts these documents.
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You know, Patel also has books just like you, although he's been signing copies of his with the QAnon phrase, where we go one, we go all. I mean, I do that too. And he has defended his use of the slogan on these QAnon podcasts, like in this clip from the Matrix XX Groove Show.
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I'm going to quote now from an article in Media Matters by Alex Kaplan, who's been reporting on Patel and his ties to QAnon since 2022.
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Quote, on yet another show in June of 2022, Patel went even further, saying of QAnon, quote, we try to incorporate it into our overall messaging scheme to capture audiences because whoever that person is has certainly captured a widespread breadth of the mega and America first movement.
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And so what I try to do is, what I try to do with anything, Q or otherwise, is you can't ignore that group of people that has such a strong dominant following, unquote. In that interview, Patel also said of QAnon, there's a lot of good to a lot of it. And he agreed with the co-host who said, Q has been so right on so many things, saying, quote, I agree with you.
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He should get credit for all the things he has accomplished because it's hard to establish a movement. Let's call it that because that's what it is, unquote. Oh, boy. Do you know what's also hard to establish, Robert? An alibi? An alibi. And, you know, some people's alibis could be reading ads like the one that we're about to do right now. That's right. That's always my alibi.
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All right. We are we are back. Now, in these podcast guest appearances, he would often plug his book and advocate that listeners just join Truth Social. And engagement with these more niche online streaming shows and podcasts fortifies the right-wing online media ecosystem and draws people away from mainstream news. This is why he was going on those shows so much back in 2022.
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Patel basically says as much on this episode of the X-22 report.
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And I think part of why he's doing this and whether he was told to do it or whether he just did it on his own volition is that like having someone who's seen as being close to Trump, especially with national security experience, it helps keep Trump supporters politically engaged by making them feel like they are getting special access to like exclusive information.
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It's all a part of keeping the mega movement alive when their side is not in power, while also building up a ground base of support in preparation for them to take power back. And that's what he did like a lot in 2022. Most of those podcasts were leading up to the midterms as well. So it is part of this general political strategy to engage with these like
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much more niche, kind of smaller QAnon shows, which not only does grow their audience over time as well, it does help their audience grow. It also just establishes a completely siloed media ecosystem away from mainstream news. That is part of what they're doing. That's why Trump made Truth Social, is to create more of these reality tunnels, more of these information silos.
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Now, Patel kept busy in between 2020 and 2024 with a variety of kind of grifty ventures. I'm going to quote from the New York Times here, quote, Mr. Patel's company, Trishel, collects consulting fees, including $130,000 last year from Mr. Trump's Truth Social site. He also made $325,000 over two years for strategy consulting for the pro-Trump Save America PAC.
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and $145,000 in 2021 for fundraising consulting from friends of Matt Gaetz, the campaign committee for the now former House Republican from Florida, unquote. Now, last year, Patel's nonprofit charity, The Cash Foundation, received $1.3 million in revenue, mostly from donations, though its reported expenses totaled $674,000. Wow.
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Which is the majority of the money, and nearly half of that was spent on promotion and advertising. According to the New York Times, the charity spent more on ads than they actually gave away. Which is fantastic charity work. Oh, fuck. Good work. Through this foundation, he also sells cash merchandise, which is spelled K money sign H. Yeah, that guy's going to really FBI well.
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Including six packs of wine for $240 and $50 golf polo shirts. Part of these polo shirts have this like, you know, like pro-America branding. I want to read the description of one of them. Tired of seeing your money go overseas? Support your fellow Americans by purchasing our t-shirt. Where do you think this t-shirt's made, Robert? China? Well, it's made in Haiti. Oh, Haiti. Oh, okay.
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The America of the ocean. And South America. So, you know, you're still supporting Americans. Just South Americans.
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Oh, my God. Now, this foundation has also funded defamation lawsuits for a Stop the Steal activist and his friend and former boss at National Intelligence. But Patel's grifting does go beyond his foundation. Just earlier this year, Patel was hawking anti-vaccine supplement pills from the company Warrior Essentials. Wow.
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Specifically, the pills that claim to reverse the effects of the COVID-19 vaccine. I love that. What if these pills just give you COVID? They're just COVID pills?
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That's impossible. So this product that Patel was selling is called No-COVID-Em. And it's allegedly formulated to, quote, destroy the toxic spike, unquote, caused by the mRNA vaccine.
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Novid's good. Yeah. According to journalist James Little, these no-COVID pills just contain basic supplement ingredients like turmeric extract, green tea extract, and vitamin D. Great. Yeah. A subscription for a 30-day supply is for $49.98. Jesus Christ. And a single order of pills is $59.98.
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They're really pushing the subscription because you got to keep doing more pills every 30 days in order to really keep the vax suppressed. In a post this past February on True Social, Patel truthed, spike the vax, order this home run kit to rid your body of the harms of the vax, unquote. My God. I just can't believe that a guy like this could be FBI director. It's just, it makes me.
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I would love to believe that a guy like this will lead to just general incompetence, but I just can't let myself believe that. Like, I think it's just going to become more and more targeted against like people who are good.
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And specifically, like, you know, Patel has also been a recurring gray zone guest and is pretty close with that whole crew. That's, you know, not great for certain people. But he really is the gift that keeps on giving in terms of like odd anecdotes. including his trilogy of books, which will be kind of the last thing I talk about here.
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So over the course of the past three years, Patel has written and published a children's book trilogy titled The Plot Against the King, where Patel himself appears as a wizard to defend King Donald from enemy plots. Oh, God. Uh...
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No, but now we have the FBI director who fancies himself the wizard to protect the king. I am going to read the description from the first book here. Quote, a fantastical retelling of the terrible true story. Hillary Quinton and her shifty knight had spread lies that King Donald had cheated to become king. They claimed he was working with the Rushionians, but how could that be? Rushionians?
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Cash, the distinguished discoverer, join him as he uncovers the plot against the king and who was really behind all the lies, unquote. Now, Patel referred to this as, quote, the first ever children's Russiagate book, unquote, which I got to give him to him. That's probably true. That's almost.
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It's going to be amazing. Unfortunately, there's two other books in this series. Part two, quote, tells the fantastical story of how two inquisitive minds, Dinesh and Debbie, search for the truth to uncover evidence of a terrible scheme.
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part two is titled 2000 mules it is no longer available on amazon due to like all the lawsuits around this just being fake because they broke a bunch of laws because it was criminal and lies yes search for the truth to uncover evidence of a terrible scheme to elect sleepy joe instead of king donald on a choosing day unquote choosing day just called it election man no because it's a king it's when they choose their king
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There are kings that are elected anyway. The back of the book reads, come join Dinesh and Debbie as they try to answer some troubling questions. Why did the counting stop in the middle of the night? Why were there more votes than people in the kingdom? What is up with all the glowing poo? Unquote. That is what it actually says. Now, why? I'm not. What is the glowing poo supposed to be?
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I don't know because I can't scam Amazon to buy the book and return it because it's no longer available on Amazon. I don't know what the glowing poo is. Sorry. Listeners, if one of you has a copy of this book. Oh my God. Then part three is titled Return of the King. Okay.
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Quote, it continues the silly yet important journey of the Maga King as he returns to take down Kamalala and reclaim his throne. Unquote. Okay. So yeah, that's Kash Patel, possible new FBI director. Oh, who also produced a song titled Justice for All, which is a version of the national anthem, but sung by all J6 defendants in prison with proceeds going to the Kash Foundation.
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So he also released a song, which was not on my wrapped this year, unfortunately.
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I mean, it's just, it's so odd to have the FBI director making a song with imprisoned J6 defendants. You know, it really does just throw my head into a little bit of a spin.
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Any closing thoughts here on Mr. Patel now that we've done a very brief overview of his life story ending with this children's book? He seems like he's qualified to do something. That's what everyone's saying. That's what everyone's saying.
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Every single person who's announced, you get a wave of headlines from people who work in government being like, this is the most unqualified person ever nominated for this position. It just keeps happening. I don't even feel obligated to quote or say any of these things because we all know what's happening. We all know why this is going on. That doesn't matter.
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And he hires guys like Patel to clean up his messes and do all his dirty work. And if they do it, they can slowly rise to the ranks and become director of the FBI. Yeah. And that's the political strategy that they are all working with and have run to success yet again in 2024. Well, I guess stay tuned for more happenings here as they continue for the rest of this week and for the next four years.
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I'm pretty used to it by now, honestly. Yeah. Yeah. We've been doing this whole thing for quite a while. You sure have. Have you noticed that some of these cabinet picks are a little funny? They're a little bit odd. Have you noticed that yet? I don't know. I get kind of a funny feeling about some of these guys. Have you heard about this? Are you hearing about this? Yeah.
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I don't love it either, Gare. They don't seem cool and good. I mean, not all of them are sticking around, I guess. Matt Gaetz is now out of the job. Tragic. Kind of like Icarus. He flew too close to an elementary school. Yeah.
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It was a really fast turnaround for Gates, too. Yeah. And now we're all watching Pete to see if he secures the top job at the Pentagon. But today we're talking about this other guy named Kash Patel. How do you feel about Kash Patel, Robert?
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Yeah, or at least like, I don't know, Cash is different in a few ways. Like he does a lot more kind of dirty work because he's not like important as a person. He just wants to like be seen by Daddy Trump.
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And this episode, we're going to get into a little bit of Cash's backstory, what his plans are for the FBI, as he is now nominated for the position of being director of the FBI, as well as kind of what Cash has been up to in the four years since Trump's been out of office. So let's just start all the way back to the beginning for background on Mr. Patel here. Okay.
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So Kash Patel was born in New York, but after graduating law school in 2005, he worked as a public defender in Florida for nine years before becoming a federal prosecutor in the National Security Division of the DOJ.
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He didn't really want to be a public defender. It's that he really couldn't get any other jobs because he wasn't, like, that skilled. So he ended up just working as a public defender, even though it wasn't really what he wanted to do out of law. But once he got to the DOJ, he worked as a terrorism prosecutor.
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According to a DOD profile, Patel, quote, "...led investigations spanning multiple theaters of conflict and oversaw the successful prosecution of criminals aligned with al-Qaeda, ISIS, and other terror groups," unquote. Patel also worked with, quote, counterterrorism units to conduct collaborative global targeting operations against high-value terrorism targets, unquote.
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No, no. I say that just for kind of his like more like surveillance background. But we will certainly get to his ability to complete these jobs on a reliable basis.
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And like, although that info is directly from the DOD's website, Patel himself has exaggerated his career record, claiming in a YouTube podcast to have been the quote unquote lead prosecutor in the case against the 2012 Benghazi attackers.
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Patel actually was not even part of the trial team, was only a junior staff member at the DOJ at the time, and he was removed from this case for clashing with the U.S. Attorney's Office. But this incident kind of marks the start of a few unfortunate events in his career that really started to kind of turn Patel against the justice system.
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According to the New York Times, in 2016, Patel was thrown out of a courtroom for wearing, quote, rumpled khakis, boat shoes, and a too small borrowed jacket, unquote. Sigh.
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No, he was just kicked out of the courtroom with the judge saying, quote, if you want to be a lawyer, dress like a lawyer, unquote. Now, this judge was also like a racist asshole. Yeah. Not defending the judge here.
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But this incident is like an important part of his career trajectory. A profile in The Atlantic details Patel as growing increasingly frustrated and disillusioned by his failure to navigate and rise up in the justice system.
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Just collecting more and more personal grievances that fuel an animosity towards the bureaucracy of the legal system based on people's apparent unwillingness to like help him excel in his own career.
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But in 2018, Patel got his really first big break with Republican Representative Devin Nunes hiring Patel to be the House Intelligence Committee's lead investigator to disrupt the special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
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Trump was impressed enough with Patel's work under Nunes that he gave Patel a job on the National Security Council and later served as chief of staff to acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller. Trump mused about having Patel as deputy director of the FBI or director of the CIA in late 2020 after the election.
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But this led to harsh resistance from within his own administration with AG Bill Barr saying that Patel would only become FBI director, quote, over my dead body, unquote. So I don't know if we'll have any updates on that. Yeah, we'll see. But instead, back in 2020, Trump just put Patel on the Pentagon transition team.
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Trump basically tasked Patel with doing dirty work and awarded him with promotions for following orders. Patel advised on the Ukraine impeachment, spread conspiracy theories that Ukraine, not Russia, meddled in the 2016 election, created a list of intelligence agency officials to fire in February of 2020, and helped manage the now dismissed classified documents case against Trump.
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The former deputy national advisor to Trump, Charles Kupperman, said in an interview, quote, Trump wanted to make cash a political executioner to root out and fire individuals on the White House staff who weren't being as loyal as he thought they should be, unquote. So that's kind of a good look at him as a person and like what Cash's role is, like specifically for Trump.
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And with the possibility of the justice system becoming just more and more of like a tool to target Trump's political rivals, Cash is the exact guy that you would pick, especially for a job that has like an investigative focus like the FBI. But Cash isn't always good at his job necessarily. Well, who amongst us? We're going to talk about one specific incident here.
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That's one of the wildest stories in national security that I've ever read. In October of 2020, four days before the election, the Pentagon was planning an operation for SEAL Team 6 to rescue an American citizen, Philip Walton, who was kidnapped in Niger and being held in Nigeria.
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As the State Department was working to communicate with officials in Nigeria to clear airspace for the operation, Patel, who was not part of this operation, just called the Pentagon, saying that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had gotten approval from Nigeria and the airspace was de-conflicted.
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So, as the SEALs were about to land in Nigeria, defense officials couldn't verify that the flight actually had clearance, leaving the aircraft to circle over the target for hours as they scrambled to get approval from Nigeria.
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According to former Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Patel was never in communication with Mike Pompeo about this mission, and defense officials concluded that Patel, quote, made the approval story up, unquote.
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cool guy this is wild you almost got seal team six like shot out of the air because you made up a story about having a flight clearance it's like it's crazy yeah I mean this is exactly the guy you want running the FBI for sure A Pentagon official yelled at Cash, quote, you could have gotten those guys killed. What the fuck were you thinking?
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To which Cash replied, if nobody got hurt, who the fuck cares? Amazing stuff.
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So like people like interviewed in The Atlantic and I think the author of The Profile on Cash kind of muses that like maybe Cash just wanted this operation done before the election to give Trump like an extra win leading up to the polls. I don't know. It's certainly odd. But like Cash has a very like inflated sense of like personal worth.
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In an interview with Glenn Beck, he talked about how people should trust his expertise because, quote, I've read the entire JFK file. Well, I mean, geez, you and Oliver Stone. He makes comments like that. It's like, no, no, no. Like, trust me, I know everything. I've read all the classified stuff that you're not allowed to. I'm like the smartest guy in the room. I've read everything. Right.
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Like he's he uses this as like a as a way to like inflate his own personal worth. And like flex to weird right wing online podcast grifters.
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Yeah, because you have guys like Kash Patel reading these files. There is nothing in there.
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He's not smart enough to put any pieces together. Or maybe they're just even still redacted and the versions that he's reading don't really have any pertinent info.