The following is a transcript of the first segment of the Pro America Report.
Welcome, welcome, welcome. Ed Martin here on the Pro America Report. Great to be together, and so much to talk about.
I’m not sure how much you’re watching, but you boy, Oh, boy. You ought to be watching closely this Tucker Carlson situation.
And what you need to know, we’ll talk about in a moment is what it means to have a non-denial denial from the NSA, of all people.
I mean, it’s an incredible statement that was issued by the NSA, and you really have to pause and wonder. So we’ll get to that a moment.
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All right. So have you followed this story? Right.
So let’s get the context to this first. In the last decade, we have had the situation where there was, of course, the Edward Snowden leaks and also the Julian Assange and the WikiLeaks.
And we’ve also had, of course, which seems to slip by, but we had John Brennan, the director of intelligence, the intelligence agencies, is that the phrase? In front of Rand Paul, Senator Rand Paul, and the Senate saying directly, “Oh, we don’t gather any intelligence on American citizens.” And then later admitting that they do. And somehow he says he didn’t lie.
Now you can be charged with lying to the Congress. And that’s what happened to Roger Stone. He got charged with lying to Congress. You’re going to be charged with that? Of course, what is Brennan?
You know, Brennan’s got a big contract with NBC, and he appears on MSNBC and NBC, Meet the Press. And nobody ever held him accountable. And one of the things what he was talking about, actually, was the NSA.
That John Brennan story, the discussion, the lie was about what the NSA was doing. Okay, so next we have we have WikiLeaks. We have Ed Snowden. We have Brennan lying.
And we have the FISA application from the FBI, which is not the NSA directly, but it is in the secret court, right? It’s a secret court that for national security purposes, you can go before and get permission to listen to the American citizens. And now we come forward.
And we have just a couple nights ago, Tucker Carlson saying that he got a tip from an informant that said the NSA has been listening in on his electronic communications and also is getting ready to cause him trouble. So he’d go off the air.
Now, first of all, let me say this. I assume that the federal intelligence and probably foreign intelligence is listening to most of everybody’s communications, to be honest. Whether they’re doing it honestly within the law or they’re doing it for some national security, they could come up with a pretext for why they have to do it, and they’re doing it.
That’s what I believe. So that’s not a surprise. What a surprise is, the surprises that there was a link, excuse me, a leak and a whistleblower saying this to them. But here’s where it gets really wild, because if you’re a congressman, don’t you think they’re listening to you?
If you’re a major media player, don’t you think they’re listening to you? Let me be honest. I think they’re listening to me. My electronic correspondence. I assume that somebody’s looking into all that.
I just assume at this point in our history, you just can’t escape the surveillance state. That’s my instinct about it. And frankly, I operate accordingly. I have, periodically said something on the telephone with a close friend and caught myself in the middle of describing something about someone or someone’s conduct or opinion and thought to myself, I probably shouldn’t say this because it’s pretty certain that they’re listening.
And if they have it as a tape, somebody could put it out. And by the way, once that happens, don’t you think that most sort of big time people are compromised?
I don’t know Tucker Carlson. So let’s not pick Tucker Carlson. Let’s pick like, let’s pick Chuck Todd or Jake Tapper. Isn’t it possible that if you had a… Let’s say it differently.
Let’s say you have 100 of the top media professionals, don’t put names on them, the top personalities who are known to the world.
What are the chances that of the top hundred? There’s not one or two that are engaging in not illegal, so legal conduct, that would still be embarrassing. Let’s call it gambling on NBA games because their buddies do it. Let’s call it looking at naughty pictures. Let’s say that they’re talking flirting with their ex girlfriend, even though they’re married.
I just got to think of 100, some percentage, 3 or 4 or 5% are gonna do something that’s legal and embarrassing. Some percentage, by the way, is probably doing something illegal. But I don’t want to speculate on that.
I just want to say once you have that, and once you say, well, isn’t it likely that there’s been some reason to listen in on them? Isn’t that possible?
We had the Trump administration looking for some phone records, I think New York Times writers. We had the Obama administration actively investigating and prosecuting leakers and trying to seek records of a journalist.
So my point is that seems to me that that’s happening. Now, when Tucker says that the NSA has a plan to get rid of him, you say, “Wow, this is up a notch, right? This is a serious, this is up a notch. This looks like it’s more significant.”
And here’s where it gets incredible, because let me explain. I’ve told my children this, if you do something wrong and you get caught, the best avenue is to tell the truth. Right?
Just to say, “Oh, Yeah, dad, you know, I was watching a movie last night. I told you that I went to bed. I stayed up and watched a movie.” I think that happened with my daughter a few months ago. A specific instance, and she didn’t… I said, Well, what movie? And she said I was watching this and that. And I said, you know, I’m pretty sure I can figure out what movie it was. Better just to tell me.
Right? Just come clean and tell me.
So there’s something about, by the way, if you do something wrong and you’re just better off to admit it, and especially here’s where it’s important. If you didn’t do it, then you need to say, I didn’t do it.
In other words, don’t say kind of “Well, people watch movies, but I didn’t do it.” No, just say I didn’t do it. I never did it. I mean, this is a little bit of advice for people if you want to actually live with other human beings and especially if you want to not be suspect all the time.
Someone says, “Did you murder that person?” You don’t say, “Well, people get murdered all the time. I don’t know why people would get murdered. You know why people get murdered? I just don’t believe people should get murdered.”
No, you say “Me? Murder? No way. I didn’t do anything.”
The NSA’s statement after they were confronted, I think they were confronted by the attention of the Tucker Carlson report. Was that something like, “Tucker Carlson has made an allegation that we had a listen to his electronic correspondence and had a plan to to take him off the air. And we deny all of that.”
What’s that? That basically, they denied the broad concept of all this other stuff. They didn’t say they weren’t listening to them. And they want us to understand…
By the way, I’m slightly mischaracterizing it. I’m not saying it well enough. They went on to say something like, “We only look at things when we have a court order anyway.”
But that doesn’t mean they don’t have a court order in this case because it will be secret. So their denial was an explanation, not a denial. Their denial included this sort of reference to the fact that “he said that we were looking at listening to his electronic correspondence in the hopes of taking him off the air. We didn’t do that.”
Wait a second. Are you just listening to his electronic correspondence? Are you just in on them? And then they said we gotta get a order.
They didn’t say “didn’t do it.” They did not come out and say, “didn’t do it.” And if they couldn’t say “didn’t do it,” they should have never said anything.
They should have just not bothered to say anything. It would be better to say “we don’t comment on accusations about people, people saying this for that. We have no comment,” because their explanation was a half measure that sounded like they were actually doing something.
And here’s the thing: In what kind of world are we living where the media doesn’t see that response and immediately say that was a non-denial denial. That was a qualified denial that says something else is going on. Let’s get to the bottom of it.
And the reason why is because the viewpoint of Tucker is the one that the mainstream media, the fake news, the Big Tech — they want to shut that down. And they’re desperately looking for a reason to shut it down. And had Tucker taken it on incorrectly. Or frankly, if Tucker… the other thing is, if Tucker lied about it and the NSA could say we deny it, we never did it.
It’s never happened. He’s lying. The informers lying. Then I would say there’s a real dispute to say, “Oh, if Tucker said that, then why is Tucker not on, Tucker should be off the air.
He’s saying things that aren’t true. But the NSA didn’t say that, and they should have said nothing. And we’re in a spot where we’re getting more and more confusion among our agencies.
Christopher Wray was before, I told you this a few days ago. Christopher Wray last week, I think it was maybe a Thursday ago, maybe five or six days ago. I think it was he was in testimony and he said, well, January 6th, there was no insurrection. That wasn’t insurrection.
Well, wait, that’s the FBI. But Meanwhile, the FBI is arresting people. They arrested another grandma two days ago for they think that she said, I’m reporting on what the characterization of the arrest was.
She said she went past the barriers, and therefore they said she knew their barriers were there for a reason and that she was trespassing. And so she had to be arrested.
This is insanity. This is insanity. And what you need to know is when the NSA and the CIA and others aren’t shooting straight, when the top level people from those places – Clapper and Brennan and the FBI, you’ve got that deputy director Figliuzzi or whatever, when they all leave government service and go spout out opinions…
And you saw the worst with the Russia gate. Russia, Russia, Russia. You just can’t trust them. It’s a terrible thing.
We’ve got to take a break. We’ll be right back. It’s Ed Martin here in the Pro America Report, back in a moment.
