hello and welcome to cross talk where all things are considered i'm peter lavelle the bipartisan senate intelligence committee shocked the liberal media when it admitted there was no evidence of so-called collusion between the trump world and russia so what have the last two years been all about and what is the damage left behind when russia gate fades from the news cycle. talking russia again i'm joined by my guest michael flanagan in washington he is

president of flanagan consulting and a former congressman in providence we have a lot of your goldstein he is an associate professor of slavic studies at brown university and in phoenix we cross to robert pilo he is a civil rights attorney at the patillo law group all right gentlemen cross type rules in fact that means you can jump in anytime you want and i always appreciate it glad i'm here let me go to you first because you've been chronicling russia gate on facebook quite vividly and i've always enjoyed it so what has the last two years really been about when the senate intelligence intelligence committee comes out and says well there's not there's no there there which i've been saying all along because there is no evidence and no evidence has been produced and probably will not be produced so what was the last two years about the investigation was the point it wasn't to find anything out it was just to have an investigation go ahead lattimer. well it's. and many many observers knew it

and called it as it is but a red herring can be always put to a very good use and i know from the perspective or i would say of the establishment of a star to score a lot of things has been achieved that is in no the president has been booed it has been you know i think the whole process can be summarized in terms of shakespeare's play called taming of the shrew so you know tromp came out with some of the ideas while some crazy some reasonable but they were definitely a challenge in the style of the score so this investigation that the bombardment constant pressure you know somehow kind of in organize him put him into a rather narrow mold where war establishment wants him to be so i think from their perspective you know had it not been there it should have been invented because it's really you know was put to good use ok michael the same question to you i mean

is it because trump as a as a candidate challenge foreign policy orthodoxies and he's just being punished to make sure he gets back into line and i would say quite unfortunately he has gotten back in line he has pompei around him has bolton he has these people around him that are very neo con ish something that he ran against but it's good to be used as a cudgel all the way through the next two years no matter what it happens because he violated the rules and he had to be put back in line go ahead michael in washington i think the rule you violated was winning the election good one he really was about its foreign policy views. trumps attorney the other day had an excellent observation about the miller commission and that was mohler is a decent guy who got trapped into doing this by a left overs from the chicago cobol d.o.j. combining with senate democrats and never. purrs to get this whole thing hyped up

to try and do their level best to move trump away and also recently rosenstein has observed that they actually had meetings on how to get rid of trump you know through legal means and the twenty fifth amendment and miller got sucked into doing this commission i don't know if more of miller was an unwitting do perry might have been very well attached to it but the whole concept was to get rid of a duly elected president and it wasn't a deep state desire to straighten out our foreign policy i really don't think so i think it was a deep state desire to overturn an election that they were invested in winning fair point robert in phoenix one of the greatest casualties and it not just because of the investigation but it put a greater focus on the failures of the legacy media because what what is rachel maddow going to do now and she could be unemployed because her favorite subject is gone up in thin air i mean the media is quoted itself very very poorly i mean in

covering this breathlessly looking for bombshell bombshell and there never have been any bombshells what kind of credibility they have now not that they had much before this go ahead robert in phoenix well they would say there's often we saw this in the last administration when conservative media. every other hillary clinton has good point and no demanded that. before that we have the liberal media who are attacking president bush over every single thing that but the as if they were going to somehow bring down the president the media all turned into this idea that they're going to be the next watergate there to be the person to break the big story and we see to hurt the media's credibility look at dan rather the swift boating. in the national. president bush in two thousand and four or this belief and as a support of a road that's what forces people to be. that's why you see the rise of things like info wars. and the blaze and the other. journalists are almost opinion

based forms of journalism because the mainstream media. opinion based journalism the reason not to go to one of these websites that conspiracy theories you know a lot of me are you know speaking of institutions the d.o.j. and the f.b.i. have acquitted themselves very very badly here and as much michael was saying i mean we we had collusion on the part of the the the power structures the deep state to get undermined and possibly even still to get rid of this president i mean how do you fix that because the confidence i mean is there going to be any really follow up on the steel dossier is there are going to be any follow up on the clinton foundation there are connections very real connections to to russia that there may not have been aboveboard i mean bill clinton came here and picked up

a half a million dollars for a speech there is ukranian one still out there but it seems like no one in the liberal media is interested in that whatsoever do you think that trump's new agey will investigate these things or is it worth even just a geisha go ahead lot of here. i think it is a very interesting issue but you know using the term ones used by hillary clinton there is a definite a vast range in kind of a liberal conspiracy the question is that i want to get involved in it because it is so deep that is you know in democratic party they're all talking about the charter that is there for the collusion there but they're not basically investigating the whole thing it will paralyze the whole country so i think if the president really wants to go ahead he should proceed and you know somehow kind of you know may be too is that he should be just you know forced to resign from their positions because they shouldn't have you shouldn't abuse their position the way. people in. you know all our brands are in the cia and you know the sort of people

who are strong and so on. here yeah yeah absolutely absolutely they shouldn't be tolerated but basically i think it's just a look ahead and all these agencies have you know work on their hands so just pull it down by you know whatever it is to gays and it's not productive that's something for democrats who want sort of who don't want to face that reality and that's what they want to get in the gate but even dede has this kind of you know mandate from american people to give the concert going he should she should be very deeply involved in that ok well michael i mean has a precedent been said here is they did the deed state doesn't like you you're going to have to be worried about it are and mean you did the the this is not the way the checks and balances were designed and if you can do it to donald trump will what's a stopped him from doing it in the future this is a very dangerous precedent and reflecting a lot of law to me or said there i mean if we just let it go by then it actually.

makes it acceptable for the state this state to get involved in the the democratic political process go ahead michael in washington i can't say you're wrong the was out for a lawyer really and the. the the problem i think is is as it always is lies with congress article one of our constitution says the congress has all legislative power congress is the article one branch it's the number one branch of it and congress has ceded so much of its power to the executive not just this executive series of executives over the last fifty years or so that it's not in control anymore than the executive lives in secrecy and the wielding of power and now basically controls the money as well i mean if they're willing to follow the rules as trump is they have to find money to do things occasionally but if they're not willing to follow the rules as president obama and president bush did. you know

to find money to give to iran or whatever they don't have to follow the rules they just have it printed or borrow it from here from there and nobody says anything congress if congress is willing to put up with this sort of behavior by government the deep state that the secretive portions of government is the portions that the public have no control over and the portions that the government people do have control over congress continues to be impotent and make itself impotent as it worries soli about getting itself reelected the this will grow and continue to be a problem in the presidency will continue to grow and preeminence in importance and this is not good for the republic and we need to really start asking these very hard questions of ourselves is how much power do we want a president to have and it's not a partisan thing it's a government thing and why are we going to start holding our legislators to account not for producing crazy pieces of legislation or marvelously fantastically interesting tweets but to actually do the hard work of running the government and

this is this is a question we haven't asked our legislators in a long time and we need to start having that discussion and let me go to robert before we go to the brain can robert is the legacy liberal media going to apologize for its appalling behavior over the last two years. i don't think you're going to get a policy but i do think that it is crucial that we understand that we do have to be the best to gays and we need to investigate any sense of impropriety with the only thing to hold their constitutional republic together is the confidence of the american people and they do not believe that everything is happening above board if they do not believe that independent investigators independent prosecutors they can bring people to tell them that you rosie believe the american people have that their boat actually controls the nation and let's understand that to your lips investigation has rooted out a lot of right that our government everybody from an effort to call went to public health was only. going to get to that i mean it's gentlemen i'm going to go to a short break here and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on russia get state without any.

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welcome back across talk we're all things are considered i'm peter lavelle to remind you we're discussing russia. ok but i want to stay with the the theme of the media here i mean after one bombshell after another has been shown to be fake news. and is has there been any lessons learned here because again i worry about precedence being set in institutions being destroyed i've said that maybe a couple dozen times on this program over the last two years and the media itself has to be held responsible but can they even come to terms with this if they're

ideologically so ideologically absorbed and possessed with their their prejudices and their hatreds because we hear that twenty four seven go ahead lattimer. yeah would media does is producing some kind of a scapegoat scapegoats we're just supposed to in it you know the situation sort of to distract people from real problems you know what they will wanted or not but united states raises very serious problems both domestically in terms of economics growing in economic inequality middle class solution is grounds you know more and more you know younger people of the middle class cannot afford to live like their parents and this is seen as a taste that they see is that asian you know on the international you know for and with china on the sentences so these are the issues richard be addressed but why should media spend time on that and you know trying to reform like mike said you

know it's time for congress to get yourself it's time for the country to look at the selves i'm for the democrats will with themselves but it's much easier to find some bogeyman some scapegoat at a good job at that you know they didn't manage to sort of to distract the contour for a very long time they managed to struggle to shield democrats from looking very deep at sort of the concerns of american people working people they do in a very good job of that so i think what will they change unless there is a tremendous pressure from the audience from the leadership please report to us the news we want to know what's going on in our country want to know what's going on outside the walls why can't we compete with china why sort of you know what's going on out there until they call for that they will continue to create you know the book but the amount of the scapegoating and that's brought us unfortunately the united states is not the first to be engaged in this and not the us but there's not another position to be and also another thing which media tries to do is to to sort of by every creek every kind of dissident every independent political to russia

they try to suppress the dissent and this is also not very good for the public at all basically society which going to deal with its critics is in all its bonds indicate lawyer you should. no because you immigrated from the soviet union so i take that to heart ok michael if i can i get suppose very clear i suppose the at the end of the day the media will say ok we didn't exactly get it right and i'm being generous here we didn't exactly get it right but we're morally right this is what they can't get over going back to what you said at the very start of this program is that drugs trumps cardinal mistake was not collusion his mistake that he is that he got elected in the first place and this is something the liberal media will never that they're propagating to because that's exactly what it is propaganda go ahead michael. you are correct here you and your excellent production staff on the show also come from a point of view of producing news of producing useful valuable opinion related to

news that's not what they produce in the legacy media and the right and the left they produce entertainment they produce something that is designed around making a buck and so they have some award show where they all tell each other how the news worthy and how insular a are and they serve their consciences that way great they are sure and then they go back to the bottom line and awards and bonuses and salaries and everything else is based upon how much they have made what's the bottom line and i am sure that everyone at every one of those channels with all of this hyped up news about russia gate has made bazillions of dollars and considers it a wild success not a failure in any way and that is the rog and that's what's sad about this even when you have commentators on these channels they're in you know you see some crazy person waving their arms and saying something absolutely nuts but you keep seeing them and you want to how could this person again television the answer is they

focus they focus group very well they have high energy they're they're attractive people they have strong opinions and people's tune in to listen to what this person says it's not about what they're saying it's about how i can keep eyeballs fixated on the boob tube and that's what's driving it today and that's what's incredibly broken about all of this and as long as that continues to be true the more extreme and crazy the opinion is the more you are likely to see it because it will bring people to the viewership yet robert i'm michael is absolutely let's take the example of a max boot i mean i my name for him is always wrong max boot i mean from two thousand and three all the way to the present eve never got anything right but he goes on there is if he's the crown prince of truth ok. and they look at elliot abrams ok you know here's a guy convicted by. convicted for lying to congress about iran contra had to be

pardoned and when he's challenged by a congresswoman about his past why should anyone believe him now i take away was oh but the story about the congresswoman is her anti-semitism alleged ok and hardly anyone said a word about it and echoing what michael said about congress clawing back some of its responsibilities not to speak of power to hold those accountable to a to account ok the media doesn't like that because the media loves itself and the media is the message not news go ahead robert well you're completely correct on that because in large part what the cable news has copied the model of e.s.p.n. and other sports show yes which is instead of just reporting what happened about the selection of what happened there doesn't tell you what happened it bears no resemblance to what actually happened it is ample to say to be the state of the union address or a people want. to preserve the people there was

a great speech but by the time the mainstream media got a hold of it you of thought it was the worst address in the history united states or converts one of the other saw that it was another gettysburg address for people on the right what we have to get back to simply reporting the facts and allowing the people to make decisions for themselves any time that we stray from that same time that we get away from that fundamental principle is no longer reporting the news what you're doing is where as we used to have our people just saying what happened that we have the opinions we break free of that we're not going to be able to get back to having an actual truthful and fruitful conversation you know. you mentioned crushing dissent and i think you know when i was thinking i'm envisioning this program and i send out the question to these guys you know what is the lasting impact of it and i think at the end of the do. it is the crushing of dissent a new mccarthyism because if you don't toe the line you will be punished and with the invention of twitter which sometimes i regret you have this mob mentality and

where people pile on pile lawn and essentially want to create a. a killing effect where if you don't toe the line you will be severely punished and we see this and again i'm speaking to my international audience right now the issue of racism as they say when new term for me a trigger and what that does is that it shuts out reasonable debate and discussion even in disagreement because the mob decides and that's what russia gate is been all about it's been a mob effort to silence anyone that would question because i have said for the last two years i know you have also is that what i'm interested in this discussion can you show me some evidence i don't care what you think i don't your opinion doesn't mean anything i need facts to make a decision here and this is where this is the greatest tragedy of this whole russia

gate thing that is it's acceptable to have a mob mentality go ahead lot of other. well they use it's a double a way one is to try to give police. some activists were to go lie and martyr them in a sort of russian connection very recently they say or other independent police. who sort of your neurons are going to run for president right their way there is an article in the navy seal something that the russians like are too much yeah so they try to sort of in our target and sort of attack that but it was my to us i think is the use of this russian gate fornier our sygate you know for new is to stifle dissent on internet they now came up with this sort of you know facebook or other media google they now rink the news which are more reliable and the source they labeled dissidents or the friend or source of information is not reliable as the fake and they'd sort of don't promote them so they were have legitimate sources of

information are being sort of you know pushed aside silence and so the use of russia gave in terms of you know kind of stifling free exchange of ideas on the internet is very disturbing and i think it's a great concerns all of us you know we talk about the media not only media is doing wrong but they want to make sure that it would it would challenge of i'm not there and this is very disturbing you know michael a you know it's news guard now i think you know and then when they spoke as the atlantic council doing their fact checking that's quite laughable it's not even that. and if you look at buzz feed the kids a green check or a green shield it's a you know seal of approval you know after their latest fiasco in a series of the asco i mean they're the ones that released the the steel dossier and they're still on a roll here but they still get a green check here what how is this affected freedom of speech because a lot of mirrors pointed out you know now they're trying to censor the internet and

it's very real i see it with my own eyes go ahead michael you're right. lattimer's ray roberts right to the problem is we're where we have so confused facts and information with hope in the end that we're trying to decide whose opinion is right yeah and therefore we have to settle out you know are you right with your interpretation or am i right with my interpretation well who cares just give me the facts give me the information i'll make my own opinion and if i say it out loud and i'm wrong but doesn't mean i'm wrong it just means my opinion is doesn't agree with yours you know it with the old saying you know you're entitled to your own thoughts on the matter but you're not entitled to your own facts we have so few facts i'm reminded of the covington kids in the recent past you know it was. bad information because we had incomplete information but you never really had information what you had were people commenting on opinions offered right people reacting and what they saw i know pinions i look at all the opinion over when you know i have been out of

time is insane we've run out of time gentlemen and. come up with the new standards you know it's better if you're morally right you facts are nasty necessary many thanks to my guests and watch it in phoenix and in providence and thanks to our viewers for watching us here at r.t.c. next time and remember. i need another one and i was going to sway those. that you could still move to see if i. was asleep got set up for nothing in the distance and the moment the one i think i want and i know just how much anything. this is the only thing that we do is the music because everybody finds a. way to. the

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much of those who heard it's a preview or. soon will. we will. move . move. move show you the snoopy do a little. good looking good. move slow most of these girls will give you films for good good goof. to go to shows or look why do you do some you want me to show the story of two of you should go. to starbucks to. get to me to do it with the little one wished they'd say look it is it's. just testing understand just need to mesh told. to stop the president and please introduce more of them to.

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