SIO90: Uranium and #DARVO: An Epistemological Crisis

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:29 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode 90. I'm your host, Thomas Smith. And yes, this episode is about a day late. And if you are a patron or if you're friends with me or follow me on facebook.com slash thomaspodcast, you will have known the reason why, unless you missed it. So that's incentive to either pledge or, you know, friend me on Facebook, one or the other. But the reason is a very impromptu trip with my brother to attempt to witness some history. And I'm going to be and just a little hint, he's the biggest Dodger fan in the world, so that was what that was related to. I guess you guys know by now that that didn't turn out how we were hoping. Not only that, I lost an incredible amount of time and sleep and wound up sick, so, that was about as bad as it gets, but, hey, you know what?

0:01:19 Thomas: We were chasing the dream. We were trying to have a once-in-a-lifetime experience with a Game 7, potentially, so. That is why this is late, and I thank my patrons for for understanding. I do consider them to be my employers, and they seemed very happy to accept the 24-hour delay in the episode. Another good reason to be on patreon.com slash seriouspod, I did a poll to try to help determine what I would be talking about today, and it was like as 50-50 as it gets. I mean, it was right down the line. My two options were to follow up on the red pill, look at some more of those arguments, the child custody. There's some other red pill arguments I wanted to look into, or to talk about this whole uranium business with the Clintons and not just that, but how that is part of a coordinated counterattack by Trump and Trump friendly mouthpieces.

0:02:12 Thomas: And that was as 50-50 as it gets. I think both options kind of led at different times, but I decided the tie should go to the more time sensitive thing because I can can always take up the red pill later. So I want to talk about this uranium business. And this actually, it's going to tie in perfectly because a listener sent me an email about a concept called DARVO. It's an acronym, D-A-R-V-O. And what it stands for is Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender. This acronym seems to have been created by someone named Jennifer Freyd, who's at at an Oregon university. And I'm going to try to get an interview with her. I have no idea if she does interviews, but I would really love to speak to her about this. I think it would be fascinating. So I'm not going to go too much into like the technical specifics of what DARVO entails and all of that.

0:03:03 Thomas: I'll save that for a later date, but just at a very basic level, I think it provides actually a really excellent framework for looking at what's happening. The acronym was actually created in the context of abusers, whether it's, you know, sexual abusers, harassers, people, people who abuse other people. It's been noticed, I'm sure, by Jennifer Freyd and other people, that this is kind of a pattern that abusers fit into. And what I think is so fascinating about this is this far predates the 2016 election, so we know it wasn't created like specifically to apply to Trump.

Trump retroactively, it wasn't as though someone was looking at Trump's behavior and then saying, oh yeah, this is what an abuser would do, which I mean is probably true, but I think this is even more powerful because here is a solid body of evidence of, like, here's what abusers do. They deny, they attack, and then they reverse a victim and offender. And here's this pattern, here's what it involves. And then you look at what Trump is doing when his conduct is being called into to question, and it absolutely lines up perfectly. It's really frightening how well it lines up.

And Jennifer herself has noticed this, and I think has tweeted about it a little bit, from what I'm seeing on her Twitter. I can't wait to talk to her more about that if that happens. But knowing just that rudimentary bit about DARVO, deny, attack, reverse victim, and offender, I want to look at Trump's Twitter account around the time that these indictments were being announced.

0:04:35 Thomas: On October 29th, "Never seen such Republican anger and unity," in all caps, "as I have concerning the lack of investigation on Clinton made fake dossier, now $12 million, the uranium to Russia deal, the 33,000 deleted emails, the Comey fix, and so much more. Instead, they look at phony Trump Russia collusion, which doesn't exist. The Dems are using this terrible and bad for our country witch hunt for evil politics, but the R's are now fighting back like never before. There's so much guilt by Democrats slash Clinton, and now the facts are pouring out." In all caps, "DO SOMETHING." That's one of the more disturbing tweets I've ever seen. In all caps, DO SOMETHING. I mean, what does that mean?

0:05:21 Thomas: Who is he talking to? What, I mean... That was one ofthe more disturbing tweets I'd seen by him ever until he tweeted about this recent terror attack when he, in in all caps, he said, death penalty. I'm not talking about this today, this terror attack, but since I'm on it, the president of the United States tweeted, New York terrorist was happy as he asked to hang ISIS flag in his hospital room. He killed eight people, badly injured 12. All caps, should get death penalty, and there's more. Would love to send the New York terrorists to Guantanamo, but statistically, that process takes much longer than going through the federal system, there is also something appropriate about keeping him in the home of the horrible crime he committed, should move fast, all caps, death penalty.

0:06:09 Thomas: The leader of our democracy is tweeting in all caps, death penalty. I promise I'm getting right back to the uranium and all that in a second, but really, we need to constantly remember that this is not normal. This is, we need, need to tattoo that on our forehead so everybody else can see it. Because, I mean, unless when you look at the mirror, so that's up to you if you want to tattoo it backwards so it looks right to you. Either way, we need to remember this is not normal. I mean, this is normal in Westeros. This is normal if you're King Joffrey saying death penalty in all caps. That's, I means that's normal in that universe. But in America, the leader of the country does not say things like that, or used to not say things like that, up and until now.

0:06:59 Thomas: Okay, back to what we were talking about. Uranium, Hillary, the dossier, all that stuff, all these attacks, these counterattacks are part of this Darvo strategy. They fit so perfectly into it, it's spooky. Deny, well, he does that all the time. No collusion, in caps. Attack, well we've seen that too. We've seen the the anger, Republican anger and unity over the lack of investigation on the Clinton-made dossier and the uranium to Russia. So there's the attack. And reverse victim and offender. This is something I could ask Jennifer Freyd about if I ever get her on. I think that the attack partially also does reverse victim an offender, I'm not sure how distinct those are, but at any rate, this idea that it's a witch hunt and that he's under attack attack, is the reversal of victim and offender.

0:07:52 Thomas: So he has done something horrible, but he says, "What's with this witch hunt? There are people, fake news, witch hunting me, accusing me of all this stuff." That is so clearly this DARVO strategy. It fits absolutely precisely. Now, in one more, which hopefully will be the last tangent, this DARVO stuff, at first, of course, I thought about Trump, and then it instantly reminded me of somebody else. Here's a quote from Jennifer Freyd in a paper in 1997. Here's a quote: "Actual abusers threaten, bully, and make a nightmare for anyone who holds them accountable, and their attack is intended to chill, terrify, and typically includes threats of lawsuits." And that's when I realized, is there anyone else I know of who has tried to make life a nightmare for anyone who has held them accountable for their abuse? And I, I promise I'm not going to dwell on this.

0:08:43 Thomas: I just want to give the data and then we'll move on. So when I called out Carl for what he did, he said I was literally a white supremacist, found all these ways to counterattack in that way. And I think that was deny, attack, reverse victim and offender. And he even threatened legal action in a personal Facebook message to me. I haven't released it because I don't know if that violates Facebook's terms, and I just am trying to move on and not care about it. But when I read that quote from Jennifer Freyd with the typically includes threats of lawsuits, again, this is from 1997, I thought, oh my gosh, that's exactly what one Carl Benjamin has done toward me when I tried to hold him accountable for his behavior.

0:09:32 Thomas: It's very interesting. I'll allow you to decide if you think that applies or not. But back to Trump and back to the Democrats and the Clintons. Now, no matter how much I know that Trump is full of shit and does this all the time, I still worry because I saw this uranium thing. I didn't know anything about it. Uranium deal. What is this uranium deal? I thought, well, I better look into this. Who knows? Maybe there will be something to this. I never want to be somebody who excuses bad behavior by Democrats or whatever, whoever that I favor because somebody else I think is worse. I never want to excuse bad behavior. So I wanted to look into it. I also wanted to Look into the Steele dossier. We talked a bit about that on opening arguments, but there's a tiny bit more to say that about that here.

0:10:19 Thomas: So let's talk about the uranium deal. Now, I know this delves back a bit into the Clintons, and people are tired of that, and we shouldn't be talking about them right now. We should be talking about Trump. Trump, I'm going to get to that in a minute. But we can't escape the fact that this is relevant. Here's what will happen if you and I ignore this uranium thing, and we ignore the Steele dossier, and we say, "That's bullshit, I don't care about it." I mean, I read about it because I know it's bullshit. The problem is it's not just Trump supporters who will use this. Now, that is reason enough, because I think we should do our best to be armed for if we want to debate Trump Trump supporters. I know it's nearly impossible, but if anything's going to work, we have to at least try.

0:11:06 Thomas: But it's not just that. If it were just Trump supporters, if it was just this like 20% of people who knows that think there's some uranium thing, but it's Not that there's shockingly a high number of people Who believe this. And not only that, we're also going to face it from people on the far left. People on the Far left are still justifying a third party or a Bernie Sanders write in on the grounds that Hillary was just as bad. And so you're not just going to hear this uranium crap from Republicans. You're going to Hear it from potentially people on both sides on the extreme ends of both sides. All right. So what is this uranium deal? What is it all about? Well, the deal itself, the thing that they specifically that Republicans are specifically going after that Trump specifically going after is from 2010.

0:11:54 Thomas: But it has history that stretches is a bit before that. It involves Bill Clinton, involves the Clinton Foundation, so many rabbit trails. But I guess we'll start with the deal in 2010. A company called Uranium One announced that it'd sign an agreement that would give 51% of its company to a Russian company that has several different names. We'll call it Rosatom, which I think might be like Atom. It has Atom in it. It's Because that's the only name that I can pronounce. The others are really Russian and weird. But Rosatom, and so the claim is Hillary Clinton handed 20% of our uranium to the Russians. That's how the statement has been made. That's a really inaccurate way to say it. I'm looking at a factcheck.org article. I have several factchecky articles about this, probably four or five. And they all say the same thing, that putting it that way is really bad.

Now, is there some kernel of truth in this that often happens with the Clintons? Is there some little thing in there that you could say, well, OK, maybe that is some shady behavior? And that was what I wanted to do is look at, like, is THERE ANYTHING to this claim? And there might be something to this claims, but not at all what is being claimed.

0:13:16 Thomas: Here's the Trump quote from a press conference: "We had Hillary Clinton try to do a reset. We had Hilary Clinton give Russia 20% of the uranium in our country. You know what uranium is, right? It's this thing called nuclear weapons and other things. Like, lots of things are done with uranium, including some bad things, but no one talks about that. I did not do anything for Russia. I've done nothing for Russia. Hillary Clinton gave them 20% of our uranium.

Hillary Clinton did a reset, remember, with a stupid plastic button that made us all look like a bunch of jerks." End quote. You know, I can't help but laugh, because the way he talks is so childish and idiotic and just, just anti-intellectual and everything terrible, it's funny. But however, it's not really funny. It instantly becomes not funny when people believe it. You know, I was just reminded, I think it's that old Twilight Zone where a kid controls, like, a whole town because he can do stuff to them with his mind or something, and then it's like, oh, it would be funny, a little kid is mad or saying things, but it's all funny until he does some crap with his mind and controls a town, and people are actually listening to a babbling child who's unintelligent, then all of a sudden it's deadly serious. Then it changes from funny to deadly serious.

So we start with the the batshit crazy claim, which is Hillary gave 20% of our uranium to Russia. That's literally the claim. So let's look at all the different ways that that is bullshit. That is 100% bullshit. There's some other things in this that are kind of not, and I'll get to it, but that claim on its face is wrong in a million different ways. First off, Hillary didn't do it.

The State Department, during Hillary's time as Secretary of State, the State Department was one of nine member departments in a committee called the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States.

0:15:01 Thomas: So the State Department was 1 of 9 members of this committee, and the committee approved the sale. So we go from Hillary Clinton did this to the State department, not Hillary Clinton, the state department was part part of a nine-member committee who all approved this. And by the way, the committee actually, it's kind of weird, I don't know why this is, but the committee can't actually stop a sale or a transaction. It can simply approve it or it can not approve it. And then the only person who can actually stop it is the president, who was Obama at the time. Jose Fernandez was a former former assistant secretary of state, and he is the one who represented the Department of State on this committee.

0:15:47 Thomas: And he said that Mrs. Clinton never intervened with me on any CFIUS matter. That's the committee I just told you about. So, well, but he would say that, wouldn't he, if he was in on the JFK moon landing, whatever. No, the uranium conspiracy. Others have said that the secretary of State would not have been involved in something like this, even if she were, the best she could have done was try to argue for the deal, but that's still a nine-member committee. And if it was supposedly some egregious deal, you could imagine that as one voice out of nine, including the fact that Obama could have vetoed this thing, that if it were some egress deal that benefits Russia, that it wouldn't have been approved. But even that is speculating in in favor of the conspiracy theorists here.

0:16:36 Thomas: All the evidence we have, including all the voices who have talked about this decision, have said, no, she had nothing to do with it. And not only that, the transaction is not a big deal. So let's get to what the transaction ist. And this is where we talk about the 20 percent of uranium part, because we did not give Russia 20 percent of our uranium. What happened was a Russian company that, yes, does have ties to Russian So, it's fair to say that this Russian company is entwined and part of the Russian government. This Russian company bought Uranium One, and not the whole thing, but 51%, so a controlling amount of UraniumOne. And Uraniumone has two licensed mining operations in Wyoming.

0:17:22 Thomas: Now, these mining operations amount to about 20% of the currently licensed uranium production in the U.S. So what started as "Clinton gave Russians 20 percent of our uranium" is now Clinton was not at all involved. A sale happened that gave a Russian company controlling interest in another company that has operations that amount to 20 percent of our currently licensed uranium production capacity. However, they are not authorized to export this uranium. So even if we did hand this company, even if hypothetically Clinton herself had handed this company over to the Russians, they can't export the uranium.

0:18:08 Thomas: The uranium is simply sold in the United States. Now here's where someone could say, and they have, okay, maybe we didn't give Russia our uranium, But if we've given Russia essentially control of this company that does control potentially 20% of our uranium production capacity, is that a national security risk? I.e., could Russia, in a fit of rage when they're mad about something or other that we've done, could they somehow harm us by charging too much for this vital uranium that we use for energy, that kind of thing? And that's what that committee is designed to do, is designed to evaluate, is this a national security risk? And as I said, that nine-member committee said no.

0:18:55 Thomas: They said this is not at all a risk. And I think the reason is, of the amount of uranium that we purchased in 2016, we purchased 50.6 million pounds of uranium. Only 11% came from any U.S. domestic producers. Only 11%. And furthermore, despite the fact that I've said 20% of the licensed uranium production capacity, that's just capacity. The company is only actually responsible for 11% of U.S. uranium production. So that's 11%of11% is what the Russians control. For those really good at math, they will have realized that that's something like 1% of total U.S. purchasing of uranium.

0:19:42 Thomas: And so that would mean if Russia wanted to get all evil and say, ah, we're going to extract revenge on the US, we are going to charge a bazillion dollars for every pound of uranium, that would affect exactly 1%of the uranium we buy, so we could just buy a little more from other people. So in terms of the whataboutery, which this is, this is all whataboutary. Of course it's whataboutry. What about this? What about This collusion with the Russians? That charge is absurd because this doesn't benefit Russians really in any specific way other than, yeah, they bought control of some mines, but that's just a Russian business doing business. They could do business anywhere and make or lose money anywhere. So why would Hillary even do this?

0:20:29 Thomas: Well, the argument is what happened was Bill Clinton is friends with this one guy who's named Frank Giustra, I think, if I'm pronouncing that correctly. And this Frank Giustra guy is a businessman who is an owner or was, I Think, an owner of Uranium One, which is the company that the Russians bought. And furthermore, this Frank Giustra fellow has donated a lot of money to the Clinton Foundation. Ah, the plot thickens. So now, and this is all, by the way, this is straight out of this book, Clinton Cash, that was written in or published in 2015 that was explicitly designed to try to harm Hillary Clinton before the election. And the New York Times, this is the part that's a little troubling.

0:21:17 Thomas: The New York Times did an article reporting on this, and it's by Jo Becker and Mike McIntire, in April 23rd, 2015. And it's titled "Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation Amid Russian Uranium Deal." And that sounds bad. And I think that title is kind of misleading. Now here's the thing, there are some little, little kernels of truth here and there. So they were reporting on things that are probably worthwhile to know about, but how they framed it is a bit misleading. And ultimately, though, I think most of it holds up as technically true. The context and the misleading way that they reported some of the facts is what really has led some people to blame the mainstream media, like the New York Times, a bit for being too hard on Hillary and not hard enough on Trump prior to the election.

0:22:12 Thomas: For example, one of the main allegations is, ah, this Frank Giustra guy donated all this money to the Clinton Foundation and it wasn't disclosed despite the fact that Hillary had said she would disclose all of that stuff. Sounds pretty bad, doesn't it? It's on paper when you just look at the facts, okay, this guy, Frank Justa, a bunch of donations, at $31 million, and then later hundreds of millions promised to the Clinton Foundation. And then he gets this deal, which is the Russians were able to buy his company. And Hillary may have had some impact on that. In theory, again, this is giving the conspiracy theorists the benefit of the doubt. Then you start to think, well, maybe there is something there.

0:22:59 Thomas: Maybe something did happen. And if you're someone who hates the Clintons, you're not even like that, you're like, "Oh, definitely, that's corruption. As They're as corrupt as the day is long, total Clinton corruption, Clinton Cash, Uranium, hashtag MAGA," that kind of thing. But there are a few things that don't make a whole lot of sense when you think about them. First is, this money did not go to Bill or to Hillary Clinton made out to cash, and then they spend it on their evil doings. No, this went to the Clinton Foundation, which we know has been rated very well as a charity. It gives something like 90% close to, I think it's 89.6, of its money goes to these charitable causes and it goes to other initiatives. I can point you to this factcheck.org article, which has a lot of good sources for this.

0:23:46 Thomas: They evaluated this claim, where does Clinton Foundation money go when Carly Fiorina on Fox News and also echoed by Fox Business and all these, the usual suspects, it's frustrating how little they care about facts. She made the claim that only 6% of Clinton Foundation money goes to charity. Now, if that were true, that would be horrifying, and that would actually lend an incredible amount of weight to some of these Clinton corruption claims. But this is why it's this whole network, and I've called it before a different epistemology. I mean, if you already believe that the Clintons are evil, money-grubbing people, people and there are some elements of truth to some things they've done.

0:24:31 Thomas: But anyway, setting that aside, if you believe that they're not just people who occasionally are opportunistic and do appreciate the spotlight and do, of course, want to make some amount of money while they're doing their charitable work, whatever. If you think they're evil, it's so easy to believe all these claims. And then they all combine into this web of knowledge that reinforces itself So that whenever there's a question, whenever there is some judgment you have to make as to whether or not a particular thing is what everyone is saying it is, it is as the Clintons represent it, or is it this hidden evil thing that actually still fits all the data. I mean, you could just make it up in your head, okay, sure, they would say that, but actually behind closed doors, they're doing all this evil stuff.

0:25:17 Thomas: It just reinforces itself in this network of knowledge, this web, your epistemology that involves the Clintons being evil, and that's what this is. It? Because 6%, it's based on this, it's totally false. It's based on a misrepresentation, which is very hard to imagine, is not intentional, that on this paperwork, this Form 990, the Clinton Foundation shows a total revenue of $149 million in 2013 and a total charitable grant disbursements of $9 million. And that's where people get the 6%. That's where Carly Fiorina got got the 6%, 9 million. Where's all the money going? But the problem is that's just one part of what they're doing. Because when something is a foundation, it turns out usually when something is called a foundation all they do is give money to different charities.

0:26:10 Thomas: So they kind of funnel money typically. But the Clinton Foundation doesn't actually do that. It performs charity itself, itself, so that six percent is just money they were funneling to other charities and like grants and stuff like that to certain charities. The rest of the money that makes up to the 90 I referenced early, earlier, is work that they're doing. They, they employ 2,000 people worldwide at the, at the time of this writing, I think it's changed now, but they employed 2,000 people worldwide on many different initiatives, four or five large charitable initiatives, and they are using the money to do the work themselves. So when you cherry pick that charitable grant line item and then just say that's all they're doing, it looks awful.

0:26:56 Thomas: But that's so completely false. And it's so unjust to have made a claim like that. There's more numbers we could talk about with the Clinton Foundation, what the work they're doing. But Charity Watch, which is a philanthropy watchdog project of the American Institute of Philanthropy, gave the Clinton Foundation an A rating. And it's because its metrics are actually really good in terms of how much it's spending on programs, what it's spinning on fundraising, which is only 20%. It's a lot higher sometimes. A lot of times these charitable organizations merely spend money to make money, spend money to raise money. Not the case with the Clinton Foundation. It's very good foundation. So then that already changes is what we're talking about, because now we're talking about Hillary Clinton. By the way, this was Bill Clinton's foundation. And now what does the claim look like?

0:27:45 Thomas: It's that a charitable donation from a personal friend of Bill Clinton, a donation to his foundation, as we've established, most of which goes to charity, I don't know how much if any goes to like Bill himself, maybe there's some small amount, but the charity receives an A rating, the foundation receives an A rating, it's a good foundation. The idea that for a personal donation to that foundation, Bill's wife, not even Bill, but his wife, would exert influence on a nine-member panel, on a five-member committee, the State Department being one of the members, despite the fact that everyone said she didn't and the fact that everyone said this deal wasn't any threat to national security, so there's no reason that anyone would have needed to counteract the deal.

0:28:34 Thomas: So, what is that claim? What are you left with? It looks like a whole lot of nothing. Now, here's another claim, and this was something that was made in the New York Times article I just referenced, the one that came out in 2015. This is the language from that article. Quote, "As the Russians gradually assumed control of Uranium One in three separate transactions from 2009 to 2013, Canadians records show a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton Foundation." What a way to word that. "Uranium One's chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling 2.35 million. Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors."

0:29:20 Thomas: Other people with ties to the company made donations as well. So that sounds really bad, and I think it's badly worded. I think its misleadingly worded when you say a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton Foundation, and then later when it claims the Clinton Foundation didn't disclose this. Well, when you look into the details of it, it's not really as clear cut as that sounds. The Washington Post did a profile on this relationship. The Clinton and the Giustra relationship, this guy who is this big donor that partially owned Uranium One. And they talked about the fact that Giustra and Clinton have said their story is, and again, this is one of those little times where if you think the Clintons are evil, then you think, well, Bill is making it up.

0:30:07 Thomas: And this Frank Giustra guy, he's in on it too. He's making it Up. But they said, and their story is, that Giustra was very inspired by Bill Clinton's philanthropy and started going on trips with him to look over what the Clinton Foundation was doing and has been inspired by that work. And that's why he's donating $100 million and has donated different amounts to this Clinton Foundation. But then you think, well, why didn't they disclose that then? Why did they try to hide it? Definitely something fishy going on, right? Well, let's look at what the Clinton Foundation said about this. I'm going to read from a statement they made when this started blowing up. Quote, the foundation has 11 different initiatives, some of which function in organizationally different ways. One of these 11 initiatives is the Clinton-Giustra Enterprise Partnership, which is focused on advancing innovative solutions to poverty alleviation on a global scale.

0:31:03 Thomas: CGEP, that's the Clinton Giustra Enterprise partnership, has come under heightened scrutiny me this past week and I want to explain how it operates. This is not from Hillary, by the way, this is whoever I'll look at the name. It is Maura Pally. I don't know how to pronounce that. I'm sorry, but she's the Senior Vice President of Programs and Acting Chief Development Officer. So this is her statement that she's written. I will go on and continue. The Clinton Foundation executes all of the work that CGEP does. CGEP Does receive financial backing for projects from from an independent Canadian charity called the Clinton-Giustra Enterprise Partnership Canada, which Frank Giustra established so that Canadians could support the initiative's valuable work and receive a charitable tax credit.

0:31:52 Thomas: CGEP Canada provides funding on a project-by-project basis, and this money goes exclusively to CGEP projects, not the foundation's general operating fund. I think that's pretty important. One more paragraph. Graph. Like every contributor to the foundation, the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership Canada is publicly listed as a donor on our website. But as it is a distinct Canadian organization, separate from the Clinton Foundation, its individual donors are not listed on the site. This is hardly an effort on our part to avoid transparency. Unlike in the U.S., under Canadian law, all charities are prohibited from disclosing individual donors without prior permission from each donor. So let me summarize and kind of bottom line that for everybody.

0:32:40 Thomas: So what happened was people claimed that the Clinton Foundation did not disclose that there were all these donors related to this Uranium One company and the Clinton foundation didn't disclose it. They tried to hide it and then they did this stuff. Hillary Clinton herself did this the stuff that would benefit Uranium One, i.e. her State Department was one member of a nine thingy, whatever. We've already covered that. But anyway, that's what the allegation was. They hid these donors by saying it was just kind of under a different charity. They sort of hid it. But the statement I just read you says differently. It says, no, all that money for the CGEP, the Clinton-Giustra Enterprise Partnership, can only actually go to the specific initiatives That that Frank Giustra guy wants in his charity.

0:33:32 Thomas: So then then what are we talking about? Then what what looked like this quid pro quo is now actually, no, this guy, Frank Giustra, is a bazillionaire. He kind of set up a bit of an arm of the Clinton Foundation in a way. He set up his own part of it, his own initiative that would raise money mainly through him, but also through other donors that are his friends. And they would work specifically on what he wanted, on what that entity wanted, which was finding ways to fight poverty. And the Clinton Foundation merely manages that because the Clinton foundation has the experience of doing this kind of work. So that's a really weird quid pro quo. When you actually look at the facts, it's no, this rich guy kind of set up his little shell charity to do this work, but he's doing it through the Clinton Foundation.

0:34:26 Thomas: In no way does that really benefit Hillary and Bill. It's not that it's kind of a crazy thing to think that they're so money grubbing that they did this really bad deal for America and they threw America under the bus and gave their uranium to Russia all so that they could get this tiny portion of this money that might maybe go through some administrative salary to Chelsea or something. Like, there's, they don't even really benefit, unless you would. You could argue, okay, their organization, the Clinton Foundation, it gains prestige, sure, but along the way, it's doing really great charity work. This is what I mean by having this different epistemology. And this is the major theme I want to talk about.

0:35:12 Thomas: In addition to the Darvo theme, because that's important, this is a theme I want to tell you about. When you have a right-wing media like Republican Pravda that has been for years making the Clintons out to be evil people, not just flawed people who have made questionable decisions. And we could argue about that. If we could sit here in a totally objective manner and talk about what the Clintons have done that hasn't been the best, we could have that discussion. Of course, they're not perfect. They're politicians. They have their flaws. But this separate epistemology in which they're evil people. It takes all of these little different questions that I've gone on through. Like, what is this money used for? Is Hillary in on this decision?

0:35:58 Thomas: Is the Clinton Foundation a good charity or not? It takes all those little questions that you can look into the answer and you have to make a judgment call on. Because ultimately, humans are able to live in a world where their conspiracy theories are true. You're able to make the data fit to your conspiracy theory. You can do it. And we do this not just with conspiracy theories, but with everything. I mean, we fit our web of beliefs and our data together, and we can often fudge which one we need to. Ideally, you would change your web of belief. You'd change what you believe, but you can kind of change the data and you can use these ambiguous questions. Like, I don't know, maybe this person, Maura Pally from the Clinton Foundation, what if she was totally lying about that whole thing and she just made it up.

0:36:48 Thomas: Well, I mean, you can think that. That fits the data. The data we have is this column. I just read you some paragraphs of this explanation from the Clinton Foundation. That is our data. And the interpretation can be, well, that's 100% a lie because we know the Clinton Foundation is total bullshit and they're evil and all that. Or it can be, oh, actually that makes sense. According to Canadian law, they're actually not allowed to divulge the individual donors that went into this Canadian charity that this Frank Giustra guy set up in order to make sure Canadians could deduct their donations, because otherwise they couldn't. That all makes sense on face value. It actually makes perfect sense. But it also totally fits the interpretation that she's one of the secret lizard people who is actually a lizard and would say all that to make us believe it.

0:37:37 Thomas: I mean, you really can fit that in. And here's that little kernel of truth that I was telling you about. Here's something that I uncovered, and it's referenced, but I wanted to look into it. And honestly, in doing my best to be objective about this whole thing, I think that there's something a little fuzzy. It's not illegal, I don't think. I'm not an expert. I could ask Andrew. But in 2005, Clinton and Giustra went to Kazakhstan. And in the process of that visit, which according to Bill Clinton, I was talking about Bill, not Hillary. According to Bill, it was to secure a deal to buy AIDS medication cheaper for his foundation, for the Clinton Foundation to do better work because they've done a lot of work on AIDS.

0:38:24 Thomas: So that was his reasoning for why they went. But while they were there, Frank Giustra secured a deal to mine uranium in Kazakhstan, a very lucrative deal that actually benefited him quite a bit. And according to a New York Times article, which incidentally is written by one of the same people who wrote that 2015 article that I referenced earlier, it's kind of interesting. Thing. But anyway, in it, it talks about the fact that some people in the energy industry were surprised by Kazakhstan having granted the rights, the mining rights, to Giustra's company. Now, Giustra claims that this deal was months in the making and that it was already going to be approved, that they didn't need government approval really, and the Clinton visit had nothing to do with it.

0:39:14 Thomas: And furthermore, Bill Clinton didn't know anything really about it, was not interested in it, and did not speak to the Kazakhstani president about it. That's his story, and Bill says a similar thing. But I'll be honest, based on what I'm seeing in this New York Times article of how kind of surprised people in the energy industry were that this sale took place, because Giustra's company was not really that experienced. Experienced, and it doesn't seem like, based on this reporting, if it's accurate, it doesn'T really make sense that in a vacuum without any of this Clinton influence, this deal never would have happened. Now, what is that? What is that is? Is that illegal? I don'T think so.

0:39:59 Thomas: I think that likely what probably happened was what happens in business all the time, which is connections matter. The Kazakhstani president saw that this person had a relationship with the ex-president of the United States. And, you know, maybe that gave that guy a leg up in getting the contract. Now, again, if you are an anti-Clinton conspiracy theorist, and maybe you're right, it is entirely possible that I'm wrong and that all these little interpretations actually are the evil, like, Clinton lying interpretations and I'm wrong about it.

I mean, it's possible. It really, it's not impossible that I'm right. I'm not wrong about this, but if you are a Clinton's or evil person, then it's easy to say, oh no, they lied about it, Clinton went in there and he told that Kazakhstani president, you give this contract to my friend or I'll something, I don't know what, he's an ex-president, so I don't know what he could do, but he was, or maybe he said, I'll influence my wife, who was in the Senate at the time, to, who knows, vote on something. Maybe this allegedly could have had to do with things that she had said, because Clinton, Hillary Clinton at the time, had condemned Kazakhstan in certain ways. And it's argued that maybe Bill would have sold his influence on her to not be anti-Kazakhstan. I don't know.

That would be like the most dire conspiracy theory level of it. It seems highly unlikely to me. And furthermore, Hillary, her office said she didn't change her policy. And this was at the time. She said, there's no change in my policy toward Kazakhstan. There's no change of my stance. So it didn't affect her.

0:41:37 Thomas: So even if we take like the most dire set of circumstances, the dire interpretation, the most evil Clinton interpretation of the data, it still only implicates Bill. It doesn't implicate Hillary. And that is a lot of the sexism that I think went on in this election, was implicating Hillary for things that Bill did or might have have done, is saying that she is evil because of things that he did. I think that was profoundly sexist of us as a nation and as voters.

And it was unfair to Hillary, who I think had really good stances and policies, and that was flawed, but was also would have been a much, much, much better president than Donald Trump. But in terms of this Bill Clinton, Frank Giustra, Kazakhstan mining rights thing, I actually think that it might have been a little bit of Bill Clinton using his influence to get his friend the rights, which then of course would benefit the foundation, would be good for Bill Clinton, would Be pleasing a big money guy. And then the big money Guy Frank Giustra also coordinated, I believe, some speaking engagements for Bill.

So, you know, I think there probably is some quid pro quo in that way there. But I really want to take an honest look at that and see what that is. Is that evil? Is that corruption? Is that something that would condemn Hillary Clinton's presidency? I just really don't think so. I mean, it sounds like something that's maybe a gray area ethically. But at the same time, I don't know. I mean, it does depend on the details of what was said. According to both Bill and Frank Giustra, nothing at all was said by Bill about the deal.

0:43:22 Thomas: So if we believe them, if we take them at face value, absolutely nothing was done that was wrong. But I'm saying if we don't believe them and we want to say like, well, maybe it seems unlikely that there wasn't some influence there. If we take that worst case scenario, how bad is that? Well, it seems to me that it is an ex-president using his reputation to maybe garner favor with a government that would help his friend make money. And that friend in turn would donate a crapload of money to really good charitable causes around the world. I don't want to say that that's a saintly thing to do. I'm not going to paint that as some Robin Hood thing to do. But how bad is that? Is that evil? Role? Is that insanely corrupt?

0:44:07 Thomas: Or is that kind of what goes on every day in business? There are relationships. People try to use their relationships to influence each other and to help each other out. I don't know. I mean, I'm not sure. And again, this was just to secure mining rights for a company. If Frank Giustra's company didn't get these mining rights, some other company would have gotten them. Now you can say that's unfair to that other company who didn't getting him. But it's not as though Bill pulled one over on Kazakhstan is what I'm trying to say. I mean, as far as Kazakhstan is concerned, they were going to give these rights to some company and the company was going to mine it and then sell it and they would make money. And basically they both benefited because it was a business deal and both sides benefited. So that, I don't know. I mean, make your own call on that.

0:44:53 Thomas: I think it is a little bit shady ethically. I Think it probably probably likely was Bill using his influence to help a friend. I guess we just, I don't know, we have to judge how bad that is. Now, here's what I want to say about all this. I just spent something like 30, 40 minutes going in depth on this uranium claim. And I realize now that I was going to talk about the Steele dossier too. There's not much to say. I mean, we covered it on opening arguments. The RNC initially started the Steele dossier. And then when they gave up on it, when Trump was the inevitable candidate, and they were like, well, we don't want this really horrible information about Trump. We're not going to keep funding this. They started, the RNC, by the way, started it when they didn't want Trump to be the nominee.

0:45:40 Thomas: Once he was the nominee, they're like, like, it's an ex-nay on this ill dossier stay. And then the DNC picked it up. And so if the argument is, boy, the DNC was colluding with Russians, all because the Steele dossier was done by this guy named Steele who might have used Russian connections to come up with the information, that's a really, really loose claim. But that is the claim someone like Chris Wallace is making. He says there is more evidence at this point of Democratic collusion with the Russians than there is of Republican collusion with Russians. That's a quote. That is what he said. And his evidence is this Steele dossier, which is nonsense because the DNC and potentially Hillary's campaign continued paying a law firm who was doing opposition research who they would have even known who it is.

0:46:33 Thomas: They didn't know who was doing what. They were paying to do opposition research by a guy named Steele who was potentially, we don't even know for sure, but was possibly using Russian sources because he used to be an intelligence officer in Russia. Now, to say that that is collusion with the Russians on the part of Democrats, which by the way, if it is, then it's also on the party of Republicans who started paying him first. They were paying for the Steele dossier first. This is more and wider boundary because to say that there's more evidence of this point with Democratic collusion with Russians than Republicans, when we have the evidence that Donald Trump Jr. was sent an email saying, hey, we're the Russians, we would like to collude, yay or nay, and he says, that sounds awesome.

0:47:22 Thomas: I mean, come on. That is so much different. We've got someone pleading guilty. We've got Papadopoulos or whatever his name is pleading guilty to charges. This wasn't as though he was just charged and it's a trumped up thing by Mueller who's just making it up. No, he pled guilty because he is guilty. He pled guilty to a lesser charge of making misleading statements, of doing all this stuff in the course of working on a deal with these Russians. So to say that there's more evidence of democratic collusion is absolute bullshit. It's complete nonsense. The DNC and Hillary's campaign continued paying money to something that Republicans started that was opposition research that they didn't even end up using. And by the way, by the way, yes, the Steele dossier contained the P stuff, the claim that Trump, you know, had prostitutes in Russia pee on him or something, whatever that was.

0:48:20 Thomas: Yes, there was that. But there was also a bunch of stuff that turned out to be true and that the FBI actually confirmed. The FBI went on to hire Steele to continue the work he was doing. The FBI did. They went on to hire him. Now, once it became public, they terminated that relationship. I'm guessing because they just couldn't. I mean, I don't know how the FBI works, but I imagine if your confidential source, it becomes no longer confidential, then you don't want to keep using them. But they were. They were paying him to continue the work because a lot of it turned out to be true. So that's the Steele dossier. That's it's a ridiculous claim. There's more I could go into. But what I wanted to say about this, this is again, I've spent 40 minutes evaluating these claims. And you know why? Because I actually do care about them.

0:49:06 Thomas: If it were true that the Clintons took money in exchange for giving uranium to the Russians or benefiting their friend's company, if it were true that that the worst version of that was true, I would want to know. And in the course of doing that research, I discovered that, you know, what Bill might have done in 2005 with his friend, that might have been a gray area. But that's Bill Clinton, not Hillary, for one. And furthermore, all of this started because Trump went on this Darvo offensive. To use an analogy, it's as though Trump just shot a person on Fifth Avenue. And it's as though once the media said, whoa, Trump, you just shot a guy on Fifth Avenue, what in the world, everybody look at what he did, Trump then says, well, that person over there, Hillary, wrote a bad check once. And instead of keeping our eye on the ball, what everyone does is they say, wait, did she write a bad check?

0:50:03 Thomas: Let's look at the evidence of that because I would, you know, I don't. And then they get caught in that rabbit hole. Or if they say well, that doesn't matter. You just shot a guy. Then what happens is Trump supporters say, look at that. They can't even criticize their own. They're just as bad as the people they think we are. They see their person wrote a bad check. They don't even care. They want to look into it. They are busy pointing the finger at our guy who, by the way, probably didn't shoot. Someone probably planted that gun, et cetera, et cetera. And that's how it goes. The problem as I see it is that people who care about truth will always be at a disadvantage. It's like gish galloping. People who care about truth will be at, it's like a work disadvantage, a workload disadvantage. Because when you just spout off charges, when you spout off stuff that's false, that's totally misleading, or even worse, maybe it has some small kernel of truth, but is also false.

0:50:58 Thomas: And by the way, it's just meant to deflect from something worse that you're doing. When you spout all that off, people who care about truth and care about honesty say to themselves like I did, well, shoot, if Hillary is really that bad, or if somebody else, or if I've done something, whatever it is, if that could be true, I can't in good conscience cover that up or ignore it or whatever. And then we've lost, because then we're writing all these New York Times articles about potentially things that have happened that the Clintons have done and not focusing on the actual villain that is ruining our country and is doing these horrendously unethical things, like tweeting death penalty in all caps and 30 million other things he's done.

0:51:44 Thomas: It's an asymmetrical war, and I don't know what the answer is, and I don't think as a society we know what the answer yet. I think that part of it has got to be simply ignoring the person who wrote the bad check. Just simply ignoring. That we're not talking about Hillary right now. We're not talking about Hillary. That's what we should do. That might work if we all said somehow, if the mainstream media said, we're we're not talking about Hillary, look what these charges are, which are awful. The Paul Manafort charges, the charges on Papadopoulos, they're bad. I mean, if we just looked into what they were instead of feeding into this, well, okay, what about this uranium thing? What is this? But at the same time, it's hard because I want to know these true things.

0:52:31 Thomas: I want to know the truth about this Uranium thing. I don't want to do that, I'm going to do, if I'm wrong about something. But in a war between people who do not care if they're wrong and do not care about facts and truth versus people who do, they're at such an advantage. Trump is at such and advantage. He doesn't care if the things he says are true. He can spout them off, and he can spouts off far too many for all of us to keep up with. And he can deny, attack, reverse victim and offender, and do all that. And he could never apologize, never admit anything, simply deny, simply countercharge. And it's working. I want to leave you with a couple depressing things I read from Vox. This was an article I'll put in the show notes by David Roberts.

0:53:17 Thomas: And it says, America is facing an epistemic crisis. And I've said that before. It's a battle of two epistemologies. You can't really communicate. And so that jumped out at me as kind of some of the same language I've been using. And this article is way better than I could have put any of it. So I recommend you read it. I won't bother just trying to paraphrase something that's really good work, but it goes into how we are facing this epistemic crisis between the far right media sources who don't care about the truth and are impossible to engage with and the left, which, as this study, this Harvard study shows, the far left has enormous influence on the right. The far left doesn't have as much, and the center left is where most of the media lies.

0:54:04 Thomas: So the media falls and the amount of people and amount of inlinks that these media sources are getting are highest on the center-left, but for the right wing, they're highest on the furthest right. The conventional knowledge has been, and mainstream scholars have said, if Trump ignores Mueller or pardons everybody involved. He can't survive that. The conventional wisdom is he can't survive that, but what if he can? What if he does that? What if Mueller comes out with charges, let's say for Trump or enough people in the Trump administration, whatever, something that, I mean, it's clearly going to end up being some sort of scandal. It clearly is already, but let's say it gets worse. He has the evidence. He comes up with indictments and charges and the right wing media, this, this Pravda for the Republicans just paints it out as this is a witch hunt.

0:54:59 Thomas: Mueller is biased and just trying to take Trump down. It's all nonsense. The GOP knows it has, it is beholden to these people. It is beholden to these people who believe these crazy things. They, they rely on them to get elected. I think most of them know that it's bullshit. A lot of them know it's bullshit, but they're scared because the minute they go against it, they get primaried and then they're out. There's some, there's some true believers. I think there's some, you know, Tea Party-ish Freedom Caucus people who really do believe this bullshit. But I think Paul Ryan, I don't think he believes these conspiracy theories. I think he's using it and he knows that if he goes against it, there goes all his support for his tax cuts for rich people that he wants. So, nothing could happen. There could be all these indictments and Paul Ryan could just not act and furthermore, the right could just don't believe it and they could still show up to vote.

0:55:52 Thomas: I mean, you would think ideally, okay, if he gets charged with something, there's going to be a massive change in elections. But I want to read you a tweet by Matt Yglesias. He's also involved in Vox. And this is a tweet saying, my prediction, Mueller fired, blanket pardons issued, Republicans defend, Russians hack again in 2018, House Democrats win popular vote by seven points, GOP majority, which means House Democrats won the popular vote, but because of gerrymandering, there's still a GOP majority in the House. And so therefore, nothing happens to Trump. That is a scary tweet. And furthermore, it might be 100% true. It really might be. I don't know that Trump will fire Mueller. I think that right now the strategy seems to be play it all off as Trump wasn't himself involved.

0:56:43 Thomas: So anything people get charged with, It doesn't reflect on Trump because it was just these people acting by themselves. Right now, that seems to be the strategy. But by the way, side note, covertly, all these media sources that are owned by Rupert Murdoch are pushing for Mueller to be fired. It is an embarrassment. The Wall Street Journal editorial page is an absolute embarrassment right now. It is, they are saying that Mueller, because he has worked with James Comey before, needs needs to just recuse himself and be fired because he can't do this investigation. I mean, it is coordinated. It's scary. So that's what's happening. But Trump himself isn't embracing that yet. He hasn't talked about firing Mueller yet because the James Comey firing went so badly for him.

0:57:31 Thomas: So this is scary. I could really say that tweet I read you by Matt Yglesias, is that unfortunately, that sounds really, really plausible. Mueller fired, blanket pardons issued, Republicans defend Russians hacking in 2018. House D's win popular vote by seven points. GOP majority. It sounds really plausible and maybe House Democrats win by a little bit more, but there's still no, you know, I mean, how can we fight it? The only way we can fight is make sure we all vote. But that's only us. That's only as reasonable people who knows who know that this is bullshit. I mean, how many of us are there? Are there enough? If now there are enough, will there be enough in the future? These are things I'm very scared about. And this is why this epistemological crisis is a massive problem. And I don't know that we can simply ignore it.

0:58:17 Thomas: I don't know what we can do. And efforts to debate the other side don't seem to work. But just ignoring it can't be an answer. Because again, if the percentage of people who think Obama is a Muslim and he wasn't born here and all this conspiracy crap, if that gets to, this hardcore Trump support gets to a high enough number, what do you do? What do you doing? You literally can't talk to them and they can't talk to us, by the way. It goes both ways. They can't talk to us because all of their knowledge is based on conspiracy theory nonsense, is based on an epistemology that makes no sense according to us. But to them, our epistemolgy makes no sense. Don't get me wrong. We're right and they're wrong. I don't mean to say that they are right that Obama is a Muslim and wasn't born here, but their field of knowledge, their sphere of knowledge.

0:59:12 Thomas: They are right relative to their epistemology, and it's not as though you can simply point them to Obama's birth certificate and say, "Oh, no, you're actually wrong about this." No, because that's all part of it. So once again, it goes as deep as they need it to go. Everyone's a lizard person and they would, they would make a fake birth certificate, you know, it can go as far as it wants, it can goes far as its needs to, to justify itself. So how do we reach these people? How do fix this? That's an open question. But, uh, I, I, that will be something we have to figure out. And if I had the answer, I think I would be, uh, doing more than merely putting out a podcast where I talk about the uranium thing with the Clintons and then recognize afterwards, words that we really shouldn't be talking about it, but that's my show.

0:59:58 Thomas: I want to thank my patrons so much. Patreon.com/seriouspod. There's going to be another Jake news with Thomas coming up real soon. A little bonus content for you guys as a thank you. Uh, and also, uh, patrons can participate. I'll put up polls when I'm trying to decide what to cover there's influence you guys get to have over the content. So that's a good benefit of being a patron. Your support man means means the world. It really is the only reason the show can go. So thank you so much for doing so. And I will see you guys on Monday.