Hello and welcome across town where all things are considered im people about even after russia gate was debunked as a hoax this Conspiracy Theory lives on in fact it appears to become part and parcel of our political discourse if you oppose someone or an idea all you have to do is blame in russia no facts necessary slurs and in fact was claims now suffice. To discuss this and more im joined by my guest Patrick Lawrence in norfolk he is a Foreign Affairs commentator whos columns appear in Consortium News and other publications and in lake jackson we have Daniel Mcadams he is the executive director of the Ron Paul Institute for peace and prosperity all right gentlemen across the polls and i think that means you can jump in anytime you want and i was appreciated well its going to patrick in norfolk i read your article the damage russia gate has done with great pleasure because you numerate very clearly in a very well written article the damage this is done to our political discourse as i said in my introduction it seems to be part and parcel of our political discourse now because if youre angry with someone or against an idea you certainly know what to invoke the russians did it even though the hoax was shown to be actually a conspiracy to overthrow a democratically rightfully elected president but here we are here we are. We are here for peace came up when i started to. Thing about. Weve talked about russia gate in terms of the damage its done to. American russian relations dreadful danger it lands us in and so forth already. Weve talked about it in terms of. Its its use. As a hammer to attack President Trump but it started to occur to me with this new election coming this thing this this thing has poisoned our society in ways that nobodys quite reckoned up with the im a practitioner my entire professional life but that doesnt matter the to me the oem the most consequential. Outcomes of this is the self destruction of the American Press i mean its were living without a proper press except for independent media and i dont remember whether i mentioned it in the piece this is the moment for independent media great. Use of brilliant phrase how liberals have become so illiberal in the in the media hype danio let me let me go to you i mean you and i have known each other for many many years and we discuss of course regime change the United States is backed all around the world but who would have thought that they would have done try to do it in the United States and thats exactly whats happened because you have all these centers of power there in this disgraceful dangerous and brace with the Intelligence Services its quite amazing if we compare the baseless this of russia gate and the allegations surrounding the biden family which there are its theres forensic evidence to discuss ok im not making any claims here but i mean look how how different they approach one set of it independent are they would call an event a bit actually a mansion facts and then facts that are in front of you that you can actually read i mean there are polar opposites daniel. If i can start by saying ive been a lifetime journalist and i would have to say that Africa Lawrence in my opinion is the finest journalist writing today it doesnt matter if you agree with his opinion or not his writing style is brilliant its refreshing to read so i dont want to make this a love fest but its just a delight to read anything patrick writes but as a question you know and i know ive said this before but its not the ninetys trudging around central and Eastern Europe watching the pre Color Revolution at the pre cover Color Revolution slovakia 98. 00 albania 996. 00 croatia in 97. 00 over and over again with the british i think in the one thing that we always said when we watched all of the players lining up we watched the u. S. Government partnering with groups like the soros organizations in these countries in the liberal n. G. O. S in these countries we said if we dont expose this now if we dont write about whats happening now this kind of blueprint will come to our shores we always said it over and over i know it sounds like a soap congratulatory but we said it over and over if we dont write about this and expose it it will come to our shores lo and behold 20170168 has come to our shores and its either way. You know weve now got weve now got not to be missed among your among your viewers peter weve now got the cia in in contravention of its own charter operating on domestic soil we have the cia operating in in a covert alliance with a Major Political party and not to be missed with Law Enforcement and you will know about all this stuff right and it goes on and on and on i want your viewers to understand this is a country this is a country and not something close to free fall by way of our our most basic institutions this russia gate thing has really can gust to our very foundations right and on a no no i mean just this morning daniel was no. Weve got weve now got one of the people involved in the biden. In the bidens influence peddling in china. A guy named anthony but wilensky hes right there a navy veteran at center center. And the press expanding out there trying to bury a Bloody Mountain its getting to be rather too high to bury right their networks absolutely actually it will tell a lot of the story daniel and i are talking about its all coming back home just as daniel said it what it is when it says daniel is that it went with very we should even be talking about you know a free press because its no longer free i mean its all being done in broad daylight i mean you have all of these Big Tech Companies censoring or one of the most well known along igs along and thats the existing publications the New York Post and Everybody Knows about it and no one really says no one protests you know who doesnt protest journalists dont protest this is whats really tear. All right you know i was a little boy when i was a little boy in the trade my age right now it was journalists that told the American People about what was going on in vietnam it was journalists the talked about the corruption of the Nixon Administration but now its journalists when theyre my primary function now is to slam other journalists for getting out of line mainstream journalists doing something that the place of independent journalism in this country is growing more significant by the day and lets lets broaden the definition well i didnt collude program such as your own peter right. This is this is this is not going to work out well for the Mainstream Media there theyre continuing influence is perfectly ok well im not really sure that show him going to daniel here again will it but it works for that turn that for people that you know are you know getting paid 6 take your seat year they get the they have access to power and theyre celebrities i mean it works for them ok but it doesnt work for anyone else and it really tells us in a very dangerous way we dont need to much proceed because it could just tell us what to think anyway thats whats happening right now theyre super short circuiting the system of Representative Government and let me go to the end of it and then if you were one were conspiracy minded which of course none of us are if you look at the development of journalism in the past 10 or 15 years its pretty interesting because if you think in the quote good old days journalists were almost treated as professors the almost had tenure when they were established a newspaper you know they had the freedom the intellectual freedom to pursue stories and with the destruction of print media which i guess is inevitable because of Technology Advancing all of a sudden that rug pulled out a journalist and im not making any excuses for them but all of a sudden there patronage shifts are theres no longer a physical newspaper when to write for theres no longer a platform for them to write for. And so it seems like thats sort of undermine journalism as an institution and has left a huge gap into which special interests and things can and can jump in and i and i wish i i wish i felt more confidence about patricks view that independent media is the future and i think ultimately thats true for right now and i know that of places like Consortium News that patrick writes for and certainly for us and many many others the attempt to put the squeeze on independent media by social media which is also owned by tech news illian errors is incredible its basically they want to make sure that tree falls in the woods nobody better damn well hear it and so well. Well well said weve now gone i mean that as a measure of the heywire and thats my see this morning this country is completely lost the rails. Right we are now silicone valley cherokee Walking Around in jeans and flip flops and inching the American Press and this is with the New York Post. And in the mainstream is not saying anything about it. Theyre silent about it you know if anything theyre theyre cheering it on this is going to bite them on the backside with you weve got a bunch of know nothing peaks. Who have no notion of the 1st amendment or anything else effectively american political shit but dont you think patrick and it went bothers me is that this is ideology in service of power see i mean they need truly think theyre doing the right thing because people that think differently than them are obviously morally inferior not intellectually morally ok theyre of value judgment on our morality and they do it in the end in the service of an ideology and thats what makes it so scary because you know im always very wary of true believer is a means to any thing. Were looking at. Were to spot this 190 years ago this is soft yes because im right this is the despotism of. A privileged minority. Volume to your viewers can find it all right and i who are here for years i dont care for dollar trump in many ways although i applaud a couple of his Foreign Policy positions. Are here for years donald trump is going to come and go in a liberal liberals are here to stay and theyre the more dangerous force i wonder daniel agrees with me about the bit i absolutely have to think of the money and the power thats being spent on keeping those voices like us down but i do like my last segment with a bit of a downer well let me say that you know i believe all commonly what happens is that peoples attention allegiances shift as in as and i hate to bring we always bring this back up a bit with all the any of what happened the system collapsed the newspapers were lies or what have. We saw the rise of the psalmist dot we saw the rise of the intellectual dissidents and actually people like you mentioned earlier on like Hannah Arendt that this didnt see were going against the tyranny that was a couple things so there is a model that we can follow as well even though tech tried to strangle us you know that the truth ultimately cant be stopped by by an army we have to have that kind of optimism gentlemen were going to go to a short break and after that short break and continue here in discussion on russia gate and its everlasting effect on american political discourse state with our team. Welcome back to cross top where all things are considered im Peter Lavelle remind you were talking about a russia gate seems to never disappear. Or else go back to patrick i mean we already per brought up the gentlemans name anthony but i mean skeet it was on the show and he claims with. Evidence. Verifiable evidence that he was a go between for the biting familys Business Affairs around the world and he has been called in the Mainstream Media a sensually a traitor to his own country a man that has served in the military in a very sensitive position he is a very successful businessman thats reason why he was tapped and he. Saw things going on in the biden world that he felt very uncomfortable with and when he spoke out about it the mainstream came down viciously including congressman schiff from california us calling him a tool patrick and this is where where we have arrived is that if you disagree with the powers that be if you disagree with the status quo youre a traitor youre youre not in a treasonous way that is a very toxic place to be in Public Discourse go ahead yeah you know i mean. Carlson is there a carry on the wall there are where he comes through trying to get anyone you should particularly interesting or interested at all in matters such as left right liberal im sure which is. The important part about that carlson interviews he surfaced in it in a media context that enjoys millions of viewers ok this is not something thats bumbling around gone. On on websites that means theyre not threatening. Primacy of the Mainstream Media hes got it his punch through here and this is going to be a case that has been for some time. Where the press and the broadcasters are trying to highlight something that is simply too large to holiday lets take that phrase from home arent the immensity of factually theyre trying to throw a blanket over something out they dont make blanket snap big and this is why i think the Mainstream Media is is digging itself into a hole d theyre not you know it is out of what this does is in and i want to say with the treason issue with that daniel is that you know what this does is that people dont believe the Mainstream Media and because they dont believe the Mainstream Media there are those individuals that go into the woods see great conspiracy theories i mean this is a reaction of of a closed information sphere ok they have themselves to blame for that but i want to stay with the recent thing to say i think its really important and as americans here questioning ones patriotism is its a pretty i or thing to go to because i mean its the last straw thats a last card you can play in destroying someones character go ahead and like what patrick wrote this piece in called the gang that couldnt shoot straight the people that initiated the initial rush the gate and thats the case they cant shoot straight but when they miss shooting they basically popup the whole country so theyre getting something but theyre not shooting the right thing and thats the case with this you know they basically pissed off someone who had all the dirt on them and because of their arrogance relief that they were the masters of the universe maybe with hunter that was brought on by some narcotics but whatever the case the belief that nobody can touch them as have their the hubris their pride has caused them to perhaps have a down fall because whats in it for this bob and hes wealthy. Enough is that everything he needs hes a democrat donor hes a Democrat Voter by its own admission so here he gets slammed in slime thats putins tool by the idiot adam schiff who we know was saying one thing in public about russia gate but when he got under oath said something very very different well no i didnt have any. You know so so they they play with fire and it looks like he might be getting burned well you know its really interesting because it seems to mean that patrick that this is him in a very weird way and with the pandemic also harm top of it and the economic catastrophe for tens of millions of people is a very interesting template then in controlling messages and controlling how people think about things and i find that very very scary because people are cowed people are terrified theres a lot of scaremongering out here and you know and of course the the the the rule of russia in the American Mind you know goes back to the cold war and so its a very easy caricature for them but its also a very interesting tool because as i said many times. There are not theres not much russia or russians in russia gate itself but it is a template im controlling the public sphere and what people talk about and what people know and dont know. Why you use you you use the word scary and scared couple of times. And our moment is is is one where we were ordinary procedures institutional practices and so forth are collapsing one gets at the the degree of uncertainty which wish we had americans live unprecedented these terms journalists used to avoid because what some president if you can be careful but its truly rare. Right going back a very long way in the 1000 century. But you know. Who you know the only thing we have to fear is fear itself maybe i think theres a lot out front of us. Who are independent media but i think theres a lot for us to look forward to and you have to accept that this kind of transformation social political institutional is gradual its not its not what were not in but its just my thought yeah but it seems to me there knowing that again you know right now these people are playing for broke theyre playing for keeps ok i mean once they get all of the power then theyre going to do with they want to do because they couldnt get it. Through elections in that sense you know theyll push things to the Supreme Court now theyre going to have a barrier there will pack the court so this is about power and its not about ideas ok and thats what i worry about its about power ok danny also the issue here when i think of you know we talk about institutional degradation thats going on and i think its profound right now all of that disintegration is because freedom of speech is compromised and controlled with out freedom of speech we are all of our institutions start to crumble because its creepy speech is the cement that keeps it all together and this is what scares me im scared about this ok because let me let me be no because you cant have a decent conversation anymore i mean id love to disagree with people i learn from it but now even disagreeing that youre beyond the pale youre let mike this anthony guy i mean it seems like a pretty good guy to me and hes destroying i mean plummeted in public well you know the 1st thing a fear fear is like its like a powerful stimulant or tearing. The reaction to the corona virus in the United States is something that ive written and talked about for a long time and you can see it now very very clearly defined a long flight of colline you saw the blue states where the blue said governors were the most tyrannical and treated the people the most in the most horrible manner and now you see very clearly the political lines are drawn to joe biden saying on the candidate of last down and force mass and President Trump saying im the candidate of freedom reopening so youre seeing the fear motivates people to give up their liberties and it has worked very well in the u. S. So without this fear im not denying a virus but i am definitely sansa reaction to the virus has led to fear which is undercut people who would normally think for themselves you know and i think thats very important in the other point i would make your 2nd point is about tribalism in tribalism is so important it trumps truth at this point in our society if you present someone like with the bubble linsky interview with the or like with the texts from the from the laptop or even the photos and ive talked to somebody recently who is a Mainstream Media addict and i said hey but look what about this laptop and what about all of this stuff and the only response would be but what about that giuliani that is a bad guy you know i dont trust him so is this sort of tribalism you know in the 3 of us a very skeptical about a lot that trump has has to offer and is and the way hes governed in the past 3 years however we i think are almost unique it seems to me at least in that weve been able to step back from tribalism in jumping into a camp and jumping on a theme and that is whats rare in the United States. You know it presented one of the in daniel brings up such a good point you know this is almost an interesting repeat of the protest the emails and the d. N. C. Emails and everybody was talking about how they got to meet the leagues but nobody in the mainstream want to talk about whats in the email. I mean i dont care about the laptop i couldnt download something with. But i can read Text Messages and i can read documents to see if they did this based treatment yeah ok they think they know what were all theyre worried more about. Custody of ownership than they are about possible wrongdoing in il and galaxy by a very prominent or someone of very close to a very prominent politician who may be president of the United States in january i mean they you know that one of the things that really it really bothers me is that i sense when you mention tocqueville i see a return to serfdom because and this is when its in the because we have this professional manager ariel klaus that has no use of the plaids from working people and this resent this must be procession shows that theyre getting richer and more powerful and the poor are getting more and they dont care thats why there wasnt a stimulus and im blaming both parties and the president on that last 20 seconds go to you have. You know are just are are you reminded me of something sartre said late in his life in the interview if you dont understand the world in terms of class warfare you dont understand the world the Democratic Party had abandoned the d american war in may and a long long time ago or were were were a universal way from the from the thirtys and f. D. R. Right right in this invoking f. D. R. What nonsense. We. Will have to wait and see what the significance of this email thing with the hunters messages and so forth right is that anything is inconvenient drop the russians theme in there and it will be all right i worry that. I worry that this is there is no end to this conclude was one little remark way truck with the way the Democrats Use rough. To hammer on the last 3 years d i think im sure business ukraine china and so on. The republicans if they have any brains will use it to hammer by when you know at this point its going to be progressive that will hammer biden with this debate and get what they want arcade gentlemen thats all the time we have here i want to thank my guest now for and late jackson and i want to thank our viewers for watching us your r. P. C. Next time remember this. Is an amazing country with so many friends in russia and im very excited to be here. I love that idea i think i can do that. Every night and make a lot of money with. Millions and hundreds of me. Here is a nice one. A great wall and nobody feels a lot better than me believe me and ill build a very inexpensive like a great great wall. Just in case youre worried about whos going to pay for it mexico will pay for. It well see what happens. Jose who knows what well see on the field it will be a success. I say with great clarity once again today we will not give it to the french. Says the country stands defiant in the face of terrorism after. Leaving 3 dead and several. Muslim countries over among your defense of the right to religion and his previous remarks on islam. Prophet muhammad under the pretext of democracy is not considered democracy yet. The debate on the freedom of expression