Michael Moynihan
speaker
842 appearances
21 recordings
2 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard May 2025
Michael Moynihan’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
It's so dangerous. It's not safe for the girls. People are going to die if you don't do what we say. Yeah. Safe for who? Not that girl who got the volleyball slammed into her face.
But if he's talking about the suffering of El Salvadorian gang members, he's ranking something there because I think about the suffering of Kate Steinle's family. I think about the suffering of Lake and Riley's family. These are people who are hurt by these policies. So there are a whole lot more people affected than just one group.
What we do in this is we talk about the responsibility of journalists to hold truth to power, right? That's our goal. And so if you're doing that, and we don't tell people what to think when we show that montage at the end, for instance. You see Megyn Kelly, she's who's come out and said, you know, I'm not a journalist. I didn't say I was a journalist.
You know, but I'm not quite sure what she's done. I've at least been to... you know, Darfur and Sudan and the Congo and been shot at to try to get stories out. And I'm not quite sure what she's done to be a journalist. Having said that, we only show her words in this play. We don't tell people what to think. It's not out of context. We don't manipulate it.
We literally just go, these are your words.
Yeah, and I worry that there's no core of real conviction with George Clooney. I mean, his first major kind of political statement as an artist was a movie Three Kings that criticized George H.W. Bush for not finishing the job in Iraq and carrying on an invasion all the way to Baghdad.
Years later, of course, when it was no longer in Democrats' partisan interest to make an argument like that, he abandoned it like a cheap date. So, again, there has just been a theme of raw partisanship, but dressed up as higher principle. And it just doesn't stand up to any scrutiny. And why would it? Again, we shouldn't necessarily be looking to Hollywood for
for any kind of guidance in politics.
Right. And remember, this is a guy who jumped on the story because he's from Kentucky. When was the last time he was in Kentucky? This is a man who spends his time on Lake Como and in Los Angeles. And while he was in Lake Como, Los Angeles, there was a huge news story that he could have shown some light on about Harvey Weinstein. Where was George?
Well, he says, oh, well, we knew Harvey liked girls, but we didn't know anything wrong was happening. What? What was that? I mean, at least, you know, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck made like a penitent film, you know, set in the Middle Ages about sexual assault. George Clooney just sidestepped the whole thing as if he didn't know anything.
anything about Harvey Weinstein or about the casting couch culture in Hollywood. And that's a story he actually could have shown some light on. And yet he goes on, you know, the Academy Awards and congratulates himself and Hollywood for, quote, being out of touch with the rest of the country and being ahead of things like, you know, civil rights or gay rights, et cetera. It just...
you know, there's no real record of substance there from him where it would have counted. Again, it's just, he, he has, you know, he is a filmmaker. He has a taste for story. And so the, the narrative of what, you know, he thinks should have happened in Kentucky fills his mind. And then he knows better than the cops, what the standard operating procedure should be. I mean, it's a joke. Yeah.
Well, I mean, I'll be totally frank. I actually know one of the fired people involved, Dan Caldwell, the one who was on, Tucker Carlson. I've known him for about six or seven years. I find the idea that he would leak to liberal press... absolutely preposterous. And I would stake quite a bet that he did not leak to NBC at all. And certainly that he didn't leak classified information.
And I believe him when he says he didn't. There are reports today in Politico, there was a long report saying that there was actually less ideology than meets the eye in this uh internal knife fight um that in fact it was fueled by jealousy from another uh hegseth uh chief of staff joe casper who has been moved out of that post Right.
He was the one who supposedly initiated the investigation that led to the firing of those three staffers. And then he is now being pushed into a new role. Why hasn't been, I think.
Right. Well, of course, he shouldn't. The buck stops with Hegseth. So Hegseth was obviously convinced that these three people did something wrong. I know Dan Caldwell to be a very loyal person who believes he becomes more effective by serving his boss well and then being handed more responsibility. And that's kind of marked his career. And I would stand by his reputation. I don't know.
Colin was another one of these people fired. I don't know him well. And another one, Selnick, doesn't seem to have politics at all. As far as I can tell, no political record. He just has a record of reform in veterans affairs. that I think was very strong during the first Trump administration.
Right. I mean, these three have definitely been in same networks together and networks together with veterans networks together that Pete Hegseth was a part of before he became head of the DOD. So people who are not... privileged in that way. They have been jealous of their influence, even if there was no political content to that jealousy.
At the same time, there are politics to this, and it is interesting to see that there are people now rallying to Pete's side This week, who three or four weeks ago were saying that what he did on the signal chat was worth resigning over. Let me ask you that.
Well, I think there's fear that if Pete Hegseth goes, who replaces him? You know, it could be someone already in the Department of Defense, someone like Elbridge Colby, who has said like, oh, we can contain Iran. Ukraine is a tertiary issue. We need to focus on China. You know, that would be seen as a bigger threat. And Colby is an established kind of old school Republican leader.
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