Michael Simon Johnson

I'd shut down the FBI Hoover building on day one and reopening the next day as a museum of the deep state.

I remember when it was announced publicly that Kash Patel was going to be the nominee.

And I remember first thinking, who is Kash Patel?

That being said, I still held out a little bit of hope that an educated individual who has a law degree and understands the criminal justice system to some extent would understand what we were faced with.

I was more cautiously optimistic in the idea of perhaps this will be okay.

With Dan Bongino's selection to be his deputy director, I realized in that moment that it was not going to be okay.

Dan Bongino struck me as somebody who had really lost his way.

You know, you would see clips of his podcast and some of his streaming things, particularly some of the most alarming things he would say would get clicks and kind of work their way into algorithms.

there was from what i learned on a senior conference was that the president had seen video footage or pictures of the raids that were being conducted around the united states and was angry that he'd not see the well-known fbi flak jackets with the yellow fbi on the back

At the same time, Kash Patel was putting out videos of him at Quantico.

kind of cosplaying as Rambo, being around explosions and people repelling from helicopters, all to kind of give this idea of the FBI is tough and he is tough.

Which then takes away resources and time and money and energy from those teams so he can film something at a training ground or at a Quantico.

And to many people, those videos, myself included, looked completely childish.

The director, the leader of the FBI, is representing the organization in a juvenile manner.

And the work that we do and did was supremely serious.

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I'm Michael Simon Johnson.

I'm one of the producers that makes The Daily.