Matt Welch
speaker
460 appearances
11 recordings
2 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard May 2025
Matt Welch’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Flynn talking to the Russian ambassador, to the alleged contact between Donald Trump and members of Russian intelligence, to the figures connected to Trump or known and suspected Russian agents, to the Alexander Downer stuff. I mean, I did a story about this once and made a list, and I had like 14 or 15 different illegal leaks that came out. All reporters knew what was going on during that time.
There were tons and tons of material that were being discussed in skiffs. And what would happen would be like some kind of aid from Congress would call you and would essentially confirm the details of a classified story and then would put you on the phone with somebody else who would be the second person to confirm the story. This was going on constantly.
It drove most of the major Russiagate stories during the Trump period.
Right. Yeah. I mean, this is what journalism was for years and years and years and politics for that matter. Right. And none of that stuff was ever investigated or punished, even though it went on in the open. So I'm a little bit amazed that this not not illegal trend situation is being investigated so vehemently.
I think the administration comes out looking not so bad. I mean, the security leak is obviously not great. I mean, and it's going to invite criticisms that these people are inexperienced. They don't know what they're doing, right? They're already saying that in droves. But as to the actual discussions, it's not like you had a bunch of people saying, wait, where's Yemen again?
Is that next to Panama? I mean, they... They seem to know what they were doing.
Also, I have to say that just quickly, I think it makes Vance look good. It shows that he's willing to stand up for what he thinks and give his opinion. And that's what we want a vice president to do. If there is any disagreement or if he is challenging the idea, isn't that what we want from these people? We want them to discuss it.
I'm not really sure I understand what the controversy is apart from the security leak.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you.
Yeah, I mean, possession is nine-tenths of the law, right? And, I mean, it reminds me of an old story about Joseph Stalin, who apparently he was criticized by the Pope for something. And he essentially said, well, screw the Pope. How many divisions does he have? And, you know... That comes into play here.
That came into play when there was a famous case involving Abraham Lincoln in the beginning of the Civil War, where it also came into play. The courts in these kinds of showdowns tend not to have the upper hand, and that might play out that way.
I mean, it's ridiculous. First of all, how many times are these people going to invoke Jim Crow? You know, everything is either Jim Crow or Hitler, basically, since Trump arrived on the political scene. The other thing I'll say is, you know, I was a foreigner for... 12 years. I lived in the former Soviet Union.
I lived in a number of different countries, principally Russia, but also Uzbekistan, Mongolia, some other places. And you never have a sense that you have rights to a place as a foreigner. You always think of yourself as a guest. You always want to be on your best behavior. And you always want to respect the culture, to try to learn the language, do all those things. And the idea...
that you can be thrown out of the country at any moment is present in your mind at all times i mean i was thrown out of uzbekistan and they had every right to what'd you do Uh, I was there in the wrong kind of visa and, um, yeah, I was actually playing for the, for an Uzbek baseball team at the time and they threw me out after practice.
Um, but look, the, the, the idea that, that all these people, you know, as much as a civil libertarian as I am, the idea that foreigners or their people who are here illegally have the same rights as Americans, this isn't true. They, they may have, uh, by law, they may have the same speech rights once they get here, but there are,
The notion that the president doesn't have the ability to throw these people out of the country doesn't hold up, I don't think.
Yeah. And just to go to go back to you're absolutely right. And to go back to the John Harwood thing, the reason that comparison is so obscene is because, you know, the young black men who were rounded up during the Jim Crow period, they were citizens. They had rights. that were ignored and abused during that time.
They should have shared full equal rights because they were Americans just like us. It's an apples to oranges thing to compare these two situations to claim that these suspected gang members are like abused American citizens just isn't true. And you're right, they've lost all standing to complain about this like they have on speech issues.
What? Just as like a horror movie exercise. But anyway.
Showing 161–180 of 460 · page 9 of 23
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