Transcription
I had sadly a putitive conservative journalist today from the Daily Caller ask me an asinine question. He said, um, h how is the operation against Iran not another forever war?
I'm not sure that Nick Fuentes or Tucker Carlson are conservatives. If if you are lording a Sharia law, even the left, I'm shocked. They are so on their heels. I I did I did a a kind of press call when we released the strategy. 50 articles were written that day about the press call. Only one of them from those putters at Politico was even slightly negative.
>> Sebastian Gorka, who sadly is Trump's counterterrorism ZAR, is basically on a mission to label anyone who criticizes Trump, Israel, or the war on Iran as a domestic terrorist. And as you just heard from that video, he is questioning the conservative, you know, credibility of people like Tucker Carlson, who would ban abortion, period. Uh, or Nick Fentes, who I don't pay attention to, and I don't know how conservative he really is. However, we do know, thanks to incredible reporting by Ken Clippenstein, that there is this effort to essentially slap that label onto Americans, and we should be concerned about it.
So the piece is titled New Counterterrorist Strategy Eyes Tucker Carlson. You can read it over at Substack Administration deems anti-Trump right-wingers terrorists. In it, Clippenstein writes that Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes have been named by the White House as possible domestic terrorists, according to the Trump administration's top counterterrorism official, Sebastian Gorka. Gorka, by the way, is a former right-wing influencer who somehow made his way to an official position with the Trump administration. But between grandiose monologues about his vision of a crusade to save Western civilization from anti-American and anti-Christian extremism, Gorka let slip that the administration's war on domestic terrorism isn't just aimed at the left, which by the way would be bad enough. It targets anyone who isn't in line with the broader MAGA agenda. While Trump's national security directive, NPM7, explicitly singles out the left with its list of so-called terrorism indicators, many of them could describe people on the right as well.
Well, luckily here to answer some questions about this and give us some more insight, we have friend of the show, Ken Clippenstein with us right now. Ken, thank you for first of all doing this report, but also for joining us.
>> Hey Anna, great to be back with you.
>> Awesome. So, let's just do a real quick refresher, right? Because we have covered the NSPM7 uh story that you did earlier, but for those who might have missed it, tell us a little more about that.
>> Yeah, so NSPM7 stands for National Security Presidential Memorandum 7. It was uh signed into law by President Trump and it is a directive that long story short um defines a number of so-called indicators of future acts of terrorism. And those indicators include extremely broad categories like anti-Christian sentiment, anti-traditional family values sentiment and uh extreme views on immigration. I mean these are huge uh categories. What it does, it tells the entire federal government, hey guys, we're going to prioritize this for the rest of the administration. make your FBI make cases around this. Treasury, go through their tax returns, see if you can find um evidence of illegality. We're going after these uh guys. And so what happened this month um was uh Gorka, who runs the entire counterterrorism portfolio under the Trump administration, he's in the White House National Security Council. He put out what's called the national counterterrorism strategy which is the high level uh kind of governing document for the entirety of the national security state saying here's here's our priorities going forward specific to counterterrorism and it echoed a lot of NSPM7 a lot of those indicators of future acts of terrorism that I was describing before but what's extraordinary about this document is it's the first one ever I mean every administration has um a national counterterrorism strategy this is the first one that articulates American citizens as targets. And if you look at the section that lists its three main priorities, it is um narco groups, Islamist terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS. And the third one is the radical left. And the reason I did this story was cuz I wanted to stress to people particularly on the right or people who maybe are independents don't consider themselves on the left that they are not exempt from this because the admin can just go around and redefine arbitrarily what they consider to be the right. And that's what he did when he was asked about um by editor-inchief of Breitbart, what are some are there any right-wing people that uh are represent terrorist or extremist threats? And Gorka said, well, people like Tucker Carlson, we don't even really consider them, right? So, I don't think it's fair to put them in that. And then he cited his example. He says he is pro um uh pro- Islamic law. Yeah. Sharia law. And I went and looked at the example cuz anyone who knows anything about Tucker is kind of like what? I don't think unless he's radically changed in the last several months. I don't think he is. So I looked it up and he was making some comment about visiting Saudi Arabia and how people seemed more welcoming andospitable there than he thought that they would be. And he said it was a Sharia law state and despite that they were seemed open to his Christianity. That is not pro-Sharia law.
>> Wait, I'm I'm sorry. Saudi Arabia, the country that we're kind of aligned with and do business deals with and sell weapons to. So, is the entirety of the federal government um basically a group of terrorists because they're selling weapons, agreeing to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia.
>> Yeah. What people aligned with Trump have been saying about Carlson. Um you know, one commentator, Laura Loomer, she's been saying he's uh what is it? backed byQatar and you know how can he be critical of this uh war in Gaza unless he's on the take or something and there's no evidence for any of that. It could just be he thinks these things and I wish that as a country um we could appreciate that more cuz I so often it's not just Gorka I see so often people are like oh you're clearly getting paid by this or you got tricked by bots here. It's like maybe people just think things. Whatever happened to people just and they can even be wrong, but maybe they're wrong because they came to their own conclusions that were wrong. Can't that be a possibility? But that's the backdrop of all of this terror obsession is that everyone is an actor on behalf of something else and it's just so out of control.
>> I mean, I I'm going to throw egg on my own face right now because uh years ago I made that terrible mistake. You know, there was something that Aaron Mate, who's a great reporter, uh, had reported that I disagreed with, and I let people get into my head and make me think that he's like some sort of Russian agent. And I made a accusation against him that he could have easily sued me for, by the way. Uh, that was totally unfounded. Totally unfounded. So, like, for anyone who's watching this, please don't fall prey to those ridiculous claims, right? and I apologized to him years later, which is embarrassing, but just when people tell you that they believe something, okay, engage with the substance of their argument as opposed to dismissing them as someone who's being paid to say X, Y, or Z. In the case of Tucker Carlson, he hasn't gone through some extreme, you know, evolution or change. The one area where I think he has grown a little bit is he went from saying pretty hideous things about Muslims back in the day to I think understanding now that a lot of that propaganda was meant to you know manufacture consent for Israel's wars in the Middle East. And so he's been speaking out against that on his show quite regularly. Candace Owens is doing the same. And I think that's part of the reason why they're drawing the eye of people they used to be fully aligned with.
Okay. So what exactly are the so-called terror indicators outside of what you've described? Is there anything else that they're looking at?
>> Yeah. So the way that the document and I would encourage everyone to go read it. It's up on the White House page. There's been pitifully little uh media reporting just independent shows like yours having me on talk about it and Gorka at the top the clip you played. They're spiking the football. They they're slapping each other on the back thrilled at how little critical reporting they're getting for this. And he's publicly bragging about it. I couldn't believe that. He's right. He's right.
>> He's so right. No, I I thank you for sharing this video, Ken, because I think our audience needs to see it. Here's Sebastian Gorka confessing that our media does not work for us, the American people, at all. They provide cover. Let's take a look at the uh let's go to C2.
>> Even the left, I'm shocked. They are so on their heels. I I did I did a a kind of press call when we released the strategy. 50 articles were written that day about the press call. Only one of them from those puts at political was even slightly negative. The rest was pretty accurate reporting. So we are we are moving so fast they just can't keep up with us which is delicious. It's wonderful.
>> And of course by accurate reporting he means reporting that's favorable propaganda that supports what I'm doing.
>> It's unbelievable. Ken, I mean what do you think is the reason for that? Do you think it's because legacy media outlets like this and they don't want to draw any negative attention to it?
>> Well, on the topic of national security, which is what I tend to focus on in the newsletter that I run, the reason I do that is cuz it's so arcane. It's a little bit complicated. You have to have a bit of a background in it to understand how to decode the, you know, terminology that they use. But to the to answer the question you posed before, some of this stuff is just like on its face. I don't know what other word to use for it. So, if you read that national uh counterterrorism strategy, it defines left-wing radical terrorism, it says um transgender extremism uh and it lists I mean it's like and there's no evidence. There's no like here's why we think this or why that constitutes a threat. So, they very clearly are going through and just looking at like cultural markers uh that they can then define. And it's not it goes beyond even that cuz they included those two conservative figures we mentioned before. So, and that's the point I'm trying to stress to people is it's like it is pointed at the left, but not just the left because I think that's the message that's getting lo to the extent that there was any discussion of this at all. There was a little bit of like, oh, it mentions the domestic American left and that is a unprecedented. You don't do that. You're supposed to target groups overseas and um because the whole point is terrorism as an approach is essentially pre-rime. you can open an investigation to someone without a crime having been committed because the idea is that 9/11 or something like it, a nuclear attack or something, a suitcase bomb is so dangerous that we're going to suspend the usual fourth amendment protections we have where you bring before a judge evidence of something having been committed and you can actually uh preempt the crimes. Uh well, how do you do that? You monitor speech and that is what those indicators are for. and and so they're going to be looking at people that match whatever their definition of gender extremism or extreme views on immigration or uh whatever it is. And it's that's really dangerous.
>> Yeah. You know, it's it's interesting because right now, this might be the first time in my adult life where I'm I'm noticing that ordinary voters both on the left and the right are finding common ground on some pretty big issues. whether it's the war in Iran, whether it's our alliance with Israel, and they're becoming increasingly vocal about it and actually flirting with the idea of working together to kind of change our system and go in a different direction. And so, I think the biggest mistake Americans can make is seeing everything through a partisan lens where they think like, "Oh, it's my guy doing this to punish the other side. I'm going to be safe. It's going to be fine." But no, when you uh are willing to turn a blind eye to abuses of power, especially when the government is carrying it out, they're going to come for you, too. Trust me. And that's what we're we're seeing here right now. I want to go to one other video that you shared that I thought was telling. So, um, Gorka says, "Anyone asking how the Iran war is going is just a and no, like this is going well and anyone questioning it as another forever war is a essentially." Let's take a look at what he had to say.
>> I had sadly a putitive conservative journalist today from the Daily Caller ask me an asinine question. and he said, um, h how is the operation against Iran not another forever war? The idea, I mean, you just have to be either low tea or you have to be mentally challenged to compare decades of forever wars with thousands of American casualties to the pinpoint accuracy of what we're doing in Operation Epic Fury with no boots on the ground. So, the Daily Caller, for anyone who might not be familiar, is a conservative outlet. So, a conservative journalist asked him that question, which is a perfectly valid question to ask, and that was his reaction. So, my question to you, Ken, is could being vocal and incredibly critical against the war be one of the markers that Gorka uses to label you a domestic terrorist?
>> Absolutely. because that is what describes those two figures we were talking about before, Nick Fuentes and uh Tucker Carlson. They broke with Trump very bitterly over the Iran war in particular and that is why they're on the outs. Before that, Tucker was close with Trump and you know endorsed him, has since apologized for his endorsement. So there was a relationship there which no longer exists because of exactly the issue that Gorka here in the video you just played is saying not only as ridiculous and idiotic to ask, but he's questioning the uh conservative bonafites of the journalist asking him it. He's doing the exact same thing as he is to the other two. And so what this provides us is a hint about how the administration see the sees these terms when they're going around saying, "Oh, we only focus on the left." Well, but you just moved the goalposts around to redefine that as being whoever it is that you're uh in conflict with.
>> Yeah. You know, I'm also wondering how this would work, right? So, let's say Gorka decides to label certain people in this country falsely label them as domestic terrorists. What happens then?
>> So, I think when people look at something like that, they they tend to go to the extreme and say, "Oh, is it going to be like extraordinary rendition and someone shot?" That's like the extreme end that we really don't want to get towards. But at the um beginning of the spectrum, we're already seeing things happening which is having a chilling effect on speech. I have interviewed protesters that have been visited by the FBI over what is clearly NSPM7 related um pretexts and then tell me, well, no crime was alleged, nothing happened. I'm fine, but I'm a little bit scared and maybe I won't go to the next protest. That's what we're seeing at um cities across the country. We've seen that in Portland as well in Chicago and I'm sure countless examples that um haven't even been reported because a lot of these people are just, you know, young people, ordinary people going to a protest and they don't necessarily have the microphone of being able to go on a national news outlet or they're just scared and don't want to talk. I've had several cases like that where people don't want to go public. Um so, so we're already seeing the chilling effect. The other part that we're not seeing is what intelligence work they're doing. By the time they end up filing charges, that is a late stage in the game. The FBI frequently will spend years investigating something before they feel they have something strong enough to take to court or they just want to gather intel and they don't want to make it public because when you go to court then some of the information gets out there. So the answer is intelligence stuff and what that is specifically we don't know because that's how intelligence stuff works and that's what I would be worried about right now.
>> And if you don't know it's hard to challenge what uh you know the federal government is doing in court, right? I mean, how how are you going to know they're doing this? How are you going to know they're collecting or surveilling you and collecting information about you and your whereabouts, what you're doing, who you're messaging? I mean, this is this is crazy stuff. And, you know, to your point about the failure in our media, that makes it more difficult for some of the possible good actors in our government to potentially sue the Trump administration over this, to prevent it from happening, or to fight back in any way. So, it's it's not good. And I'm I'm grateful that you're reporting on it at least. Has anyone shown you any interest in this reporting from Legacy Media?
>> No. No. And it's kind of funny because the picture is so distinct. Legacy Media almost zero interest in it. As Gorka said, like what was it? One out of 16 or even slightly negative. But on the part of independent media has been overwhelming, including conservative media. Um, you know, I watched Alex Jones had a segment on it and it was actually pretty good. And it makes me think
>> I saw it. Yeah.
>> Yeah. And it makes me think like, man, maybe if there could just be more reporting of the sort, we have some infrastructure to be able to get stuff out there, even if it doesn't reach the kind of big corporate outlets cuz cuz yeah, the independent media, they were insensed about this. And not just the left, there were some really big conservative commentators I saw uh talking critically about this, which I hadn't expected. So that says to me I I need to stress more the stakes that people who are not just on the left uh have uh in regards to this stuff because there's a lot.
>> Absolutely. So for everyone who's watching this right now uh when we upload this video, please share it and uh share it with anyone. You can share it on your socials because we want to build a critical mass that pushes back against this. It's wrong to see someone like Gorka brag about how he's getting away with it and he's getting away with it due to the failures of our legacy media. So again, Ken, thank you for your reporting. Everyone, go check out his work over at Substack. It's an incredible news. I don't even like calling it a newsletter. I feel like that minimizes what you do to be honest with you. But excellent reporting as always. Thank you so much, Ken.
>> Thanks so much, Anna. Good seeing you again.
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