Gabbard revokes clearances over intel weaponization (08-20-2025--Hour2)

What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to dpeakclendershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free, rite to your smartphone or tablet, and again, thank you so much for your support. CNN reporting the US government security clearances of at least thirty seven current and former national security officials have been revoked by Director of National Intelligence Toulci Gabbard. According to a memo obtained by CNN, those impacted include people who were involved in conducting an assessment of Russia's efforts to influence the twenty sixteen election, as well as members of former President Joe Biden's National Security Council. According to a person familiar with what the memo with what, the person noted, most of the intel professionals impacted are not household names, so you wouldn't know them. What was the assessment? They just mentioned it in passing that they were involved in conducting an assessment. What assessment. Would that be? How about this, I'll ask it this way. Which assessment was it? The first one that said that the Russians did not have any impact on the election, There was no evidence. The Intel Agency said, low confidence in this idea, low confidence that there's any proof that the Russians hacked the DNC email servers, like like that those assessments or the assessments after Brennan, Clapper and Comy started meddling in the development of the assessment to rewrite it to then overstate and exaggerate. Dare I say, lie that potent wanted Trump to win and that's why the Russians were doing all of this stuff even though they didn't really have any evidence of it. Is it that assessment you're talking about. See, here's the problem. The CNN viewer or reader of their website would not know. They would not know. The memo from Tulsa Gabbard does not cite specific evidence of wrongdoing by current or former officials. It was circulated on Monday to multiple US Intel community agencies. In that sentence makes it sound like this is simply punitive or pettiness, but it is in response to evidence. The evidence would be the declassification of new numerous documents. Over the last month, we've been we've been covering them here on the program. We've talked about them, we've gone over them, put together the timeline. That's evidence. So the memo does not cite specific evidence because the evidence is already in the public domain thanks to the declassification by the person who did the memo, Tulsa Gabbert. The dn I memo accused impacted individuals of the politicization or weaponization of intelligence to advance personal, partisan, or non objective agendas inconsistent with national security priorities. By the way, these were also the accusations that were made by the Durham Report Inspector General Horowitz over the last decade. They've said this that the intel assessments and the actions undertaken by the Obama intel community, as well as the existing deep state actors that were still on the payroll when Trump took over, their efforts continued and. Like that. That's what they were accused of doing by two different investigations. So it's not just the DNI memo accusing these individuals of doing it. This has been on the public record for quite some time. As I said, Gabbard's move is the latest in a string of actions by senior Trump administration officials to discredit the Intelligence communities twenty seventeen assessment that here we Go Russia sought to intervene in the twenty sixteen presidential election in support of Trump and penalized those involved. Gabbard released documents last month that she said were evidence of a treasonous conspiracy by the Obama administration, including former President Barack Obama, and made criminal referrals to the Justice Department to again, this is all being framed as well. This is just what she's saying, right, But why don't you tell your readers what was in the actual memos? Why won't you describe that? The CIA director John Ratcliffe also put out his own review critical of the twenty seventeen assessment. Again, which one are you talking about, the final one or the one that they drafted first, that Obama said redo that they came back two weeks later with a redone version that then said the opposite of what the original had said. Meanwhile launching the leak campaign to put this stuff into the media immediately within hours of the of the first meeting they had leaked it to the Washington Post and had told the Washington Post that they had the intel community had come to this high confidence conclusion, and the intel community had not. Attorney Pam Bondi also has directed federal prosecutors to launch a grand jury investigation into accusations that the Obama administration manufactured intelligence. I don't believe that's actually I don't believe that's an accusation anybody has made that they manufactured intelligence. They did improper spycraft, They took stuff that was not supported, they took rumors, they took oppo research from the Hillary Clinton campaign, and they use that stuff to build a false narrative. They didn't manufacture intel, unless there's some other charge that's out there that I'm unaware of. I mean, Christopher Steel manufactured some intel and then that got laundered into the intelligence community assessment by John Brennan. He didn't manufacture that, just put it into these reports, even though it was unsupported and it was paid for by the Clinton campaign. Democrats have accused Gabbard and Trump of using the Russia investigation documents to try to distract from the furor surrounding the Jeffrey Epstein files and to punish his domestic political enemies. Right without I would add here that CNN is not telling you, I would add without any defense of the specific evidence. Right throughout all of this declassification that's been going on for the last month or two, Democrats are not coming out with any kind of coherent response or defense of the specific evidence. All they're saying is release the Epstein files, files that they didn't give a flying fig Newton about for a decade. Only once they saw some people in the MAGA podcast universe mad that the files were not getting released. They saw that as an opportunity to try to draw to drive a wedge in the magabase. And there are some people inside the MAGA podcast to stand land that are not actually America. First, they're not actually MAGA, they're grifters and yeah, and so they are essentially running an op inside MAGA. I'm not telling you who they are. You should make your own determination for that. I'm not going to go and start naming names like Candice Owens or Tucker Carlson. I'm just going to say that there are people that are in that world that are not really of that world. The Democrats have not offered any defense all they keep screaming about is the Epstein files. They want to splinter the coalition that Donald Trump has built. The officials on Gabbard's list include former top aids to Obama Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. See here's the thing, too, they keep their clearances, and that allows them to do consulting work because they still get access, so they parlay those clearances into paychecks. I'm fine with them revoking all. Of these security clearances. Totally fine with it. All right, if you're listening to this show, you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events, and I know you do too, And you've probably heard me say get your news from multiple sources. Why Well, because it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed with ground News. It's an app and it's a website and it combines news from around the world in one place so you can compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out at check dot ground, dot news slash pete. I put the link in the podcast description too. I started using ground News a few months ago and more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The blind spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the left and the right. See for yourself. Check dot Ground, dot news slash pete. Subscribe through that link and you'll get fifteen percent off any subscription. I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature. Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports Ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. National Review, in its coverage of the suspension or the revocation of the security clearances of thirty seven officials from the Intel community, features also several the thirty seven officials feature several signatories to a statement supporting the House Democrats twenty nineteen impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump. Okay, so there are people on this list that had their clearances revoked who had signed on to the Democrat's efforts to impeach him the first time over the Perfect Phone Call, which resulted in the first impeachment in twenty twenty. It included several national security officials from the Obama and Biden administrations, the last two Democrat administrations, which lasted a combined twelve years. Her office publicized a memo that it had crafted to announce the revocation for all of the Intel officials. Their access to classified information and systems will end, and their contracts with the US government will be terminated. The Trump administration previously revoked the security clearances of fifty one former Intel officials who falsely claimed that the Hunter Biden laptop story had the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign. In October of twenty twenty, Trump also removed the security clearances held by past political opponents, including the three Democrat candidates he ran against for president, two of whom he defeated, took their clearances as well. By the way, did. Y'all see or hear this clip from Jim Comey, former FBI director, who is like, you're talking about Taylor Swift. Have you heard this? Hang on? I have it? Uh, yeah, here we go. Here's James Comy For no reason. Last week's cold turns out to have been COVID. Quite a flashback, and Donald Trump is still president and still humiliating America on a national stage standing next to Vladimir Putin. It's like a dream, a bad dream you can't wake up from. That would be a night I don't want to talk about that bad dream that I want to talk about a truly inspirational public figure named Taylor Swift. Oh my gosh. All right, so that's quite a segue, like I'm going to start talking about this thing that I don't want to talk about. By the way, Roland Radio, it's a good rule of thumb is that if you don't want to talk about something, just don't talk about it, right, Don't tell people I don't want to talk about this topic. Just don't talk about it. Because when you're talking about it and you don't want to talk about it, you're talking about it. See how that works. Of course I watched her podcast interview with the Kelsey Brothers. Of course I watched the whole thing, although on YouTube, Teresa and I got kicked off for the last fifteen minutes and finished it on her phone, But I watched. It compelling and rich. These are the kinds of background details that really paint the picture for you. We got ticked off YouTube, like, oh my gosh, dude. What are you even talking about? You see Taylor Swift and I go way back. I went to my first concert of hers fifteen years ago. I've been to a second and I have helped financially support the attendance of a lot of family members. At others, I'm in a family's swifty group chat. Okay, your family has a Swifties group chat. This is so lame. Oh my gosh name. Also, what's with the humble bragg there? Like? I also paid for a bunch of family members to go. Okay, yeah, so Daddy deep pockets over here is paying for you know, the daughter and all of her friends and cousins and stuff to go see Taylor Swift. And he said, we go way back, Swift, and I go way back. She doesn't know you. What are you talking about? I mean, she may know you from the media and stuff, but you guys aren't friends. You go way back. You've been a fan of hers? Kind of creepy, but you've been a fan of hers. I know all her music and I listened to it on my headphones when I cut the grass. So yes, I have a favorite of. Hers, although honestly, for me, it's a tie between all two well ten minute version and Exile featuring Bonny Verir. Taylor Swift has grown up with my family and provided us a soundtrack. Really, as we've grown ourselves and learned and adapted and dealt with adversity and celebration. She had songs for all of it. I suspect that's something that millions of Americans have also experienced in their families. I think that's. Because Taylor's swift produces great art, but also because she models something at every stage of her career. She's shown a certain way of being that resonated with my kids and also felt right to me as a parent. She's posing on the cover of her album dressed like a stripper. Hey, and like, isn't she just basically still at age? What is she now forty? I don't know, thirty five forty years old? Isn't she still just like LARPing as a sixteen year old who had her heart broken? That's my I know I'm going to get the wrath of the Swifties here. But here's the thing. Now that I know that Komi has been a swiftye all this time, is it possible that he may have weaponized some of our social media platform or bot farms or something like that. Could he have used the FBI to go after people critical of Taylor Swift? Have you heard about the Swifties Army. The Swifties like they just swarm you. They're like the Beyonce killer bees or whatever. They're queen bees or worker bees. I don't know what they call themselves, but the people who love Beyonce and they like they sniff out somebody saying something negative about their queen and man, they just go after them on social media. I think we should look into this. I think we should have a congressional panel that looks into whether or not Jim Comey weaponized the FBI or any other intelligence agency to advance the cause of the Swifties. I think it's only fair. Here's a great idea. How about making an escape to a really special and secluded getaway in western North Carolina. Just a quick drive up the mountain and Cabins of Asheville is your connection. Whether you're celebrating an anniversary, a honeymoon, maybe you want to plan a memorable propose, or get family and friends together for a big old reunion. Cabins of Asheville has the ideal spot for you where you can reconnect with your loved ones and the things that truly matter, nestled within the breath taking fourteen thousand acres of the Pisga National Forest. Their cabins offer a serene escape in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Centrally located between Ashville and the entrance of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. It's the perfect balance of seclusion and proximity to all the local attractions with hot tubs, fireplaces, air conditioning, smart TVs, Wi Fi grills, outdoor tables and your own private covered porch. Choose from thirteen cabins, six cottages, two villas, and a great lodge with eleven king sized bedrooms. Cabins of Ashville has the ideal spot for you for any occasion, and they have pet friendly accommodations. Call or text eight two eight, three six seven seventy sixty eight or check out all there is to offer at Cabins Offashville dot com and make memories that'll last a lifetime on text line. Suzanne says Comy is a nutcase. Steve in Indian Trail says Pete. I'm not a fan of Taylor Smith's muse or Taylor Smith Taylor Swift's music, but I got to hand it to her for turning what I consider to be a mediocre product into a multi billion dollar industry. Hmm yeah. Look, from what I understand, very good business person, you know, give her all the credit to her. I don't even think, okay, I do know. I think, well, I know a line from a song of hers like, uh, shake it up, shake it up, shake it off. Okay, there you go. So all right, that's it. That's the only that's the only thing I know. Okay, that's it. But Jim Comy knows all of the lyrics to all of the songs. He's a huge Taylor Swift fan, and James call me felt the need to tell us all about this with a preamble about how much Trump is terrible for meeting with Putin. Of course, then the very next day Trump has all of the leaders of Europe and Zelensky from Ukraine in as well, and we may actually see something develop out of this. We don't know. I'm taking my usual approach with Trump on this, which is, let's give it a minute, see what happens. I mean, couldn't be worse than the thousands of people dying every single day over in Ukraine right now, right, So let's see what happens. Let me see what Mike has to say here. Hello, Mike, welcome to the program. Hey Pete, A big fan of your show. Man, Sir, thank you regarding your. Previous segment about radio stations expecting advertising dollars. Yeah, I had a really funny thought pop in my head the original Ghostbusters movie, the scene where the dean of the university terminates Bill Murray's grant and essentially fires him. Yeah, and then the very next scene, dan Aykroyd says to Murray, forget about MIT or Stanford. They wouldn't touch us with a ten meters cattle. Proud. I like Torking for the university. They gave us money and facilities. We didn't have to produce anything. You've never worked into private sectors. They expect results. Yeah. It came from Oh, that's exactly right, it is. That's exactly right, Mike. I appreciate it, thanks sir. Yeah, yeah, it's a great line. Yeah, we didn't have to do anything. Private sector expects results, which explains James Comy. Here's more of his belief. This ran about six minutes. I did not think he could last six minutes talking about Taylor Swift. But to be fair, the first thirty seconds of it was anti Trump. Stuff and she's still doing that. As a grown up, like a lot of you, I struggle with how to stand up to bullies without letting their meanness infect me and change me. You may have seen that the governor of California has been generating a lot of attention lately by posting on social media in a satirical way where he mocks Donald Trump and his all caps megalomania and his absurdity. And I find it very funny. Oh you know what he posted today, Gavin Newsom. Yet they posted an AI generated image of Newsome with a bandage over his ear. Get it. Oh, and then he's got like some hinz ketchup and right, indicating that like the attempted assassination of Donald Trump was staged, And of course we know it wasn't because somebody was actually murdered. Corey Comparatory I believe was his name. He died defending his family, protecting them from the incoming fire, and two others were severely injured, crippled, maimed. But I guess it gets you the retweets, and that's what's important, right, Trolling Donald Trump. By the way, there's only one Donald Trump. People on the left think that This is the most hilarious thing ever, and it just is as cringey as Comy's video, which looks a lot like a hostage video by the way, just really really poorly done. Dude, stick to rearranging seashells on the seashore, Okay, but he's probably got some time because he probably had to evacuate because I believe his property is in North Carolina, so he's down at the coast, and with Hurricane Aaron coming in, he may be in a hotel someplace. And that's why the video quality is so poor. Here hilarious even sometimes. Oh y'es hilarious, but I gotta be honest. It also leaves me with a strange feeling at times because I don't want us to become like Trump and his followers. There are far more. Decent, honest, kind people in America than there are mean jerks. No, so there you go. Mean jerks are Trump's followers, nicely played, so why not just go basket of deplorables there, Jim right, There's no way this guy allowed any kind of bias to infect anything he did while at the FBI. No, no, no, I. Don't understand who he thinks this plays to I really don't because the left does not like him. The left does not like Jim Jim Comey because how he, you know, ruined Hillary's chances of winning by not prosecuting her for the obvious crime of mishandling classified information by running a private server. Then, don't get me wrong. We have our jerks, millions of them. You may have noticed in particular, there's a stunning coarseness and ugliness in the Republican. Party, just the GOP. It's upsetting, But it's also a minority of America on the whole. We aren't like that, and we don't like that. You actually, actually Trump did win the majority of the popular vote, so it is the majority. If you're gonna if. You're going to paint with that kind of a broad brush, then that's more than half of America. It's not a minority. May want to get in Intel assessment on those numbers there, James. I think that's a big part of the reason so few Americans support Donald Trump when they have to see him and that up close. What and why. Republicans are so worried about what's coming for them next year. And to be clear, I am not an advocate for weakness. Of course, we need to stand up to jerks and defend what matters, but I think we have to try to do that without becoming like them, Which is what makes me think about Taylor Swift. What She's made clear that she sees Donald Trump for what he is, and last year she urged Americans not to make the serious mistake of electing. Him, and they did not listen to her. Spoiler of course, we're now living with the consequences of that mistake. But while our elderly makeup covered president is posting about whether Taylor Swift is still hot and declaring that he can't stand her, what's she doing living her best life, producing great music and as she urged all of us to do during the podcast, not giving the jerks power over her mind. All Right, you hear me talk a lot about incentives, right, Well, let's talk about incentive trips, the kind that companies offer employees to fire them up and reward their teams. If you own a business or you work somewhere that offers these incentive trips, first off, good for you, but also there is a custom app that's a game changer for these trips. It's called Incentive trip kit private group messaging, shared photos, your itinerary, travel details, all built into a single, easy to use app. There's even a traveler locator, so Carl from Accounting doesn't get left behind. The best part about incentive trip Kit it's totally private, no email captures, no sign ups, no cringe ads. It's simple, clean and secure. And when the trip is over, incentive trip Kit turns those highlights into a professional storytelling video. So think about it. When you launch next year's incentive trip campaign, that vid, you know, becomes your greatest motivator. Talk about a return on investment, right, You gotta check out incentive trip Kit for your business. Visit incentive tripkit dot com because great trips deserve even better returns. If you're going to text me on the text line and you want me or you want there to be a modicum of a chance that I read your text on the air, you can't use curses. Okay, you can't cuss on the text line. It's not gonna I'm not gonna read your cussing. Okay. I'm not the chair of the Democrat Party of North Carolina here, Okay, I'm not dropping f bombs all over the place. I got an FCC license to protect. Come on, I'm not reading that one. Um. I'm not reading that one either. And they're about Comy. Okay, um see now this one's borderline, Like what all right, I'll read it. Corey, poor Comy. His clips are hard to listen to. I'm sure this is a sign of a man who is suffering from low. T how well I look. I don't know that, but if he is, there are a ton of different options out there. Low country mail, for example, hymns is another one. Like there's there, there are options. I do have about fifty seven seconds left where he brings this in for a landing. Will he stick the landing? I don't know. Up until this point, he's kind of just been like like tripping and falling all over the mat in what looks like some sort of a routine but obviously has not been planned out or choreographed or practiced. So anyway, here's the last of his of his monologue. I know you get that even without the research. Just watch Fox News or hang around at X and you'll see what means. We can't stop people from being jerks. What we can do is stop it from hurting us from changing us at my second Taylor Swift concert in Hartford, Connecticut, fourteen years ago. This summer, she sang a song about this topic, asking why you got to be so mean? No, and she spoke directly to the nasty people. I bet you got pushed around. Somebody made you cold. But the cycle ends right now because you can't leave me down that road. You'll be glad. I didn't sing that. That's right because down that road is unhappiness. Nobody should have that power over us. Thank you, Taylor Swift, keep the faith. Nobody should have that power over us, except, of course the orange hitler. Right for a guy who started off this clip by saying saying he did not want to talk about Donald Trump, he could not help himself from talking about Donald Trump repeatedly. For the rest of the five minute and twenty three second clip. He kept on talking about Trump and Trump voters, more than half of the American electorate that voted to put Trump into office, and everything is this naval gazing introspection of the self with this guy. You're not the victim, Comy, You're not a victim here. I know we always perceive ourselves as either the hero or the victim. Never the villain, But you, sir, are the villain in this tale of the Russia collusion hoax of your tenure at the FBI. Why are you gonna be so MEI what's with the NPR affectation? What's up with that? With his whispery affectation? Yeah, it sounds like my Joe Biden impression. You'll recall Komy has a history of provocative posts. Not that this is a provocative post. It's just cringey and said, but remember he sent out the picture that supposedly he had no idea what eighty six forty seven meant. And remember he took the picture on this is I'm just walking on the seashore selling my seashells, and I happened to see some seashells neatly arranged into the letters the numbers rather of eighty six forty seven, which is a call for assassinating the forty seventh President of the United States, Donald Trump. And then he claimed he did not know that that's what that meant. He just thought it was an interesting shell form. He also drew backlash when he posted a vote Harris Shell again, like this guy comes across the most random seashells on his North Carolina beachfront property. It's truly amazing. I suspect one of the neighbors sees his seven foot seven self walking on the beach, and I think they're setting these shells up. I think they're doing this specifically, so he sees them and he'll instagram them out. Either that or he's doing it himself. Actually that's probably the case. All Right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, so if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to dpetecallnershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.