Understanding why MAGA is chomping at the bit for retribution (09-26-2025--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 thepeteclendershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support. Last hour went over the indictment of Jim Comey, talked a little bit about Andrew McCabe's role in that as well. But there's another angle to this, allow me to elaborate. This is from the National Review piece by Britney Bernstein or Stein Bernstein, probably Bernstein. The charges because Jim Comey was indicted on an obstruction of justice charge as well as a percharge for lying to Congress back in twenty twenty. The charges also center in part on in October twenty sixteen New York Times story, the headline was investigating Donald Trump, FBI sees no clear link to Russia. The Times article was a response to reporting in Slate, a leftist publication that had said Trump established a communications back channel with the Kremlin involving servers at Trump Tower in Manhattan and Alpha Bank, one of Russia's largest financial institutions. You remember this story. This was a hoax from the very beginning. This was Democrat Party oppo smears that was laundered through the intelligence community by allies in the IC. Slate runs the article Hours after the the article is published, The New York Times report related to the FBI conclusion that the back channel claim was unfounded. The report also detailed that the bureau's counter intelligence investigation of Russia's malign activities in connection with the twenty sixteen campaign were not linked to Trump and his campaign. Special Council John Durham probed the leaks to The New York Times in connection with this story. They investigated as unauthorized public disclosure or UPD, or as I call it UPED, the yuped of classified information unauthorized public disclosure of classified information. The February twenty twenty closing memo for the probe by John Durham that was obtained by Catherine Herridge, national security correspondent veteran journalist, and the memo found there were two major government sources for the New York Times story. They were James Baker, who was the FBI's general counsel and a close advisor to Comy, as well as the FBI's chief of Staff, James Rybicki. Baker told the investigators at the time that he was quote under the belief that he was ultimately instructed and authorized to provide information to The New York Times by then FBI Director James Comy Okay, so he was under the belief that he was instructed and authorized. Baker did not claim that Comy ever, gave him a direct order though. See, because these guys are smart, they're not going to directly say this. They're not going to instruct you verbatim explicitly, but the message gets communicated and is received. As Baker said to the investigators, that he was under the belief that he was instructed and authorized to provide the leak, hence why he did it. So that's part of it too. So when Comy goes in and says to Congress, I never authorized any leaks, I never say anything like, is he trying to kind of walk this line by saying I didn't explicitly say it that way, but everybody knew what I meant. This is from David Strom at hotair dot com. He says, first things first, James Comy is a lying, disgusting, unethical, terrible, horrible, no good, very bad man. Even worse, he violated his oath and his ethical obligations to the constant and the country out of political spite, helping orchestrate a hoax that tore the country apart, and personally directing the destruction of a good man, General Mike Flynn in a way that even he knew was unprecedented, unethical, and over the objections of the very agents he had assigned to investigate Flynn. He broke countless laws to further his efforts, and as profited handsomely in doing so. By the way, all you Democrats that blamed Jim Comey for Hillary's loss in twenty sixteen, which is not true, by the way, But and by the way, he also went around protocol and did a bunch of shifting stuff with that investigation too. But remember he laid out all the evidence against Hillary Clinton, and everybody's like, oh my gosh, they're going to indict Hillary Clinton. And then he said, no reasonable prosecutor would indict which was not true because the evidence was clear as to what she had done and it was a violation of the law. What she had done was moving classified material through an unprotected, illegal private server. And again I always say this whenever I mentioned Hillary Clinton's server. It's not her emails. The emails lived on the server. The smoking gun was the server. There isn't any other reason why you would create a server except so you could delete all the information off of it and have no record of it after you do so. Otherwise, you would just use a Gmail account or a Yahoo account or whatever, probably AOL for her, but yeah, that's what you would use. You would just use a regular email account. But the problem there is that if anybody were to find out that you have this email account, they would be able to get an fo A Freedom of Information Act of FOIA request and they would be able to get that. And you know, Congress could subpoena Google or Yahoo or whoever and get the data get your stuff off of their servers, because they own those servers. But if you own the server and you set up your own email accounts through your own server, now you can use programs like bleach bit like to wipe it like with a cloth, famously, right, you can wipe that server and you can get rid of all of the incriminating information that's on it, which is precisely what she did. And then for good measure, broke all of her cell phones with a hammer, just to make sure that there wasn't any information that they could retrieve. That was always the smoking gun, the existence of the server itself. So all you folks that thought Jim Comey was responsible for Hillary's loss, why wouldn't like, why wouldn't you want Jim Comey indicted for lying to Congress? Now all of a sudden, you love you some Jim Comey, which is not true, by the way. And they're going to try to say that they're occupying a moral high ground by saying, well, we don't like Jim Comey, but this is unprecedented. But again that's not true, because it is it is precedented. Is that a word precedented? There is precedent. It's over the last five years, like we've seen all sorts of indictments against all these people inside of Trump's orbit, and we know this to be true. So like you guys don't get to say it's unprecedented now you may object to your own rules and standards being applied to you because you expect Republicans to be better than you, which is quite the admission. Really, if you think about it, like we know we suck, you should be better than us. But this is what is it from the book Doune I believe, and I forget who said it. But when I live under your rules, I demand mercy because those are your standards, right, But when I have the power, then I demand vengeance because those are my standards. Something like that. It's a it is, you know, an inherent or dare I say, an institutional or systemic double standard. I'm going to hold you to a higher standard than I hold myself. And this is why Republicans are done playing this game. They're just done. Mega people, just done, specially maga folks. After you tried to kill Donald Trump, after you tried to imprison him for the rest of his life and bankrupt his companies and his family, They're just done. So now they are. You know, you brought the weapon to the fight. You've been disarmed. The weapon lies on the ground, and now you're begging them not to pick it up and use it against you, and your cry for mercy is falling on deaf fears. I don't know any of I don't know anyway back. This is what has been alarming to me, And this is what I've been saying for five years, actually going back into the first Trump administration. I've been saying this for a long time. He's like, this is the pathway to ruin. But I understand why MAGA is doing what they're doing. I understand the rationale, even if I don't agree with all of the actions that they take when they claim that that's the reason they're doing it. So here we are. Game on Week one starts now, and every touchdown brings you closer to a payout. With Draft Kings sports book and official sports betting partner of the NFL, this isn't just football. It's first touchdown fireworks anytime TD rushes live bets that ride every momentum shift. At Draft Kings, every play is your next shot to win. Will the Panthers win? Will we even get a touchdown? New customers bet just five dollars and get three hundred dollars in bonus bets instantly, plus get over two hundred dollars off NFL Sunday Ticket from YouTube and YouTube team. So your season starts now. 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See Sportsbook dot DraftKings dot com, slash promos NFL Sunday Ticket offer for new subscribers only and auto renews until canceled digital games and commercial use sxts included. Restrictions apply additional NFL Sunday Ticket terms or at YouTube dot com slash go slash NFL Sunday Tickets slash terms limited time offer. Tom Elliott, founder of Grabian News, points out that Jim Comey indicted Martha Stewart and General Mike Flynn for far less than what he's accused of, and Comy's behavior is far worse since he was lying in service of wiretapping the Trump campaign, the results of which would be used to try to sway the twenty sixteen election and later sabotage the first Trump administration. Hatching a fake narrative to set the national security state against the duly elected president is as scandalous as it gets. On the text line, I do not know why a grown man would be would be a swiftye saying about yeah, bad breakups and stuff. I don't know. And then there's this from a nonymous in South Carolina. What you just told every independent voter is that conservatives don't have the high moral standard that we have. First off, I'm not sure I believe this person is in fact a conservative, but whatever these are one of the tells that seminar callers give, you know, lifelong Republican here, But now I'm going to sound like a Democrat. I'm going to attack Republicans and everything else. So maybe this person's never Trump. I don't know what you've told independent voters is that is that Conservatives don't have the moral or have the high moral standard that we have bragged about for decades. In fact, we are so easily defeated that we are bound to follow the rules established by Democrats. We will follow their lead without hesitation, even though we claim to know better. We are incapable of leadership with integrity, and it's the democrat's fault, all right, So let's go over this, shall we. Conservatives don't have the high moral standard that we have bragged about for decades. Yet this may come as a shock, but politicians claim to have higher moral standards than their political opponents all the time, all the time, and some of them may and some of them may not. And that has nothing to do with the D or the R next to their name. That's an individual thing. You either exhibit the moral standards or you do not. Me recognizing where we are in America right now, doesn't mean this is the standard that I would like to see applied. I recognize, though, why people who have been abused by their political opponents with law fare, with the deplatforming, with the weaponization of the intelligence agencies, with the weaponization of the courts and judicial system against them, I understand why they seek justice because that is in fact what the justice system is supposed to be there for. And so you'll notice Jim Comey being indicted for lying to Congress and obstruction. Those are not things that he's been indicted for. I mean, those are not related to or those are there are no direct charges. I'll say it like that. There are no direct charges here for all of his other behavior. It's just the line to Congress. And that seems to me to be a perfectly reasonable thing to indict somebody, because here's the deal. If you lie to Congress, I want there to be a standard that you will in fact be held to account for that, because you should not lie to Congress. You should not lie under oath, and you damn sure shouldn't be lying if you're the head of the FBI under oath. So you either set a standard here that if you're in the intelligence community. If you're the leader of one of these agencies that you can lie to Congress and suffer no ramifications. If you would like that standard to obtain, then that's fine. You could make that argument, anonymous, so called conservative, you can make that argument. I'm not Now. Maybe the evidence comes out that Jim Comey did not lie to Congress and he gets acquitted. Okay, we'll see, but right now seems like he did. We'll find out. That's the point of the trial. He welcomes the trial too, if he doesn't cut a deal, but we'll see, we shall see. They then say, in fact, we are so easily defeated that we are bound to follow the rules established by Democrats. Well, here's the thing. I would argue that conservatives are not quote so easily defeated. In fact, I would submit that this has been a process that has occurred over decades, decades of people not being held responsible for lying to Congress for these kinds of machinations, and if you allow it to persist, you will get more of it. Do you want people in elected office and people working in the bureaucracy to feel like they can break the law with impunity. I do not, so I would like to see people face the repercussions of their decisions like this, And then the last line, we will follow their lead without hesitation, even though we claim to know better. I'm not sure nobody's claiming to know better. Again, there was a precedent that was set under the last administration that you can, in fact go and charge former presidents, you can go after campaign workers, you can go after government officials. That you can do all of that. And that's not a moral play. That was sort of like a gentleman's agreement kind of a thing that was abused. It's been abused. And if you believe that the government is well within its rights to go after the Trump folks like they did, then you should believe that the same standard should apply here. That's all because if the government believes that these people in Trump's orbit violated the law, that's why they went after them. Then Okay, there's ample evidence that Jim Camy lied under oath, so you should apply that same standard. This is why I suspect that this is a seminar caller kind of a text. So when I was a kid, my grandpa died with Alzheimer's and before he died, my mom and my dad took care of him as he got worse. Forty years ago, there were no treatments and not much support for caregivers and family. But things are different today because of the work of so many people, including the Alzheimer's Association of Western Carolina. It's a great organization with awesome people with huge hearts. I've been a supporter for twenty five years. This cause means a lot to me. I participate in the annual Walk to End Alzheimer's and I'm leading a Charlotte team again this year, and it's called once again Pete's Pack. You can sign up and you can join the team and walk with us. It's on October eighteenth, that truest field. Sign up at alz dot org slash walk and then you could search for my team name Pete's Peck. There's also a link at thepetepod dot com. There's also a link in the description of this podcast. Also, I'll be am seeing the Gastonia Walk on October eleventh, and so you can make a team and join that one too, or make a donation and help me hit my goal of five thousand dollars. If you do, I really appreciate it. There are a bunch of other walks all over the Carolinas. You can go to alz dot org slash walk for all the dates and locations. We're closer than ever to stopping Alzheimer's. Can you help us get there? Will you walk with me? For a different future, for families, for more time for treatments. This is why we walk. A couple more messages from the text line. I think this is Anne Yes who says, despite the base wanting Trump to prosecute Hillary Clinton for having government emails and classified information on our private server, he practiced restraint. But after what happened under Mereck Garland against him, the gloves are off right. See here's the thing for you never trumpers, or for you, you know, people of the left, Democrats, media. But I repeat myself, if you are trying to actually understand, this is what you have to understand, if you need to, if you're trying to actually understand the way Republicans are reacting and the way MAGA is reacting, and why the indictment on Cominalist, and why there is this animosity. There is a long list, a long list of grievances the right, particularly MAGA has been collecting grievances against you for a very long time, and it predates MAGA, but it just got it got ratcheted up under Trump. You're gonna hear from Larry O'Connor in a in a minute, and he goes over some of this stuff because it ties into the violence that has been directed against Republicans and MAGA. Let me see here, do uh fast and furious. Nobody even showed up to lie. That's true, Pat quoting me, says Pete. It's different when Democrats do it. This from Bill, who says the people suggesting two wrongs don't don't make a right falsely assume that the left will not engage in law fare the moment that they can again, they have already admitted that if they win back the House, impeachment begins the next morning. Yeah. So MAGA is responding to the signals you guys have been sending as well. Why do we have to tell Congress the truth and testimony, but Congress doesn't have to tell the American people the truth. Two way streets always have better traffic than a one way in a construction zone. This is all after the fact. Who was call me serving when he got involved with all this. I don't follow that under the belief my butt did the manlight to Congress or not? Yes or no? Right, That's what the point of the trial will be. John from New Jersey says, we'll quoting Henry the Second Well. No one ridden me of this meddlesome priest, one of the earliest documented cases of plausible deniability. Glenn says Trump should say this is the beginning of the revenge tour expose the House of cards. As a loyal listener of WBT Radio over a decade, I have now started to communicate my opinions via text. Be prepared. My opinions will be random, but will make WBT and your listeners laugh. Okay, now, Glenn, let's not make any promises that we cannot deliver on. I suggest Podesco full tilt on his political enemies and double down. My son is six years old. He's an awesome kid like me. He only responds and corrects his behavior based on harsh consequences. Scott in Charlotte says the whole plan in Trump's first term was to bankrupt members of his administration with legal fees. A broke person is easier to flip. At some point, they will say anything to save their own hide with all the censorship going on. This is from anonymous. Nobody ever mentions what happened to Parlor and how it was put out of existence, though it eventually did come back. Well, yeah, I mean they literally put companies out of business, they debanked, they deplatformed, right Google. Well here, let me just do this because this comes up on Next Up with Mark Halpern on his YouTube show, and he's got Larry O'Connor, who is the morning host at WMAL Washington, and O'Connor says that he now recognizes that people on the left truly do not understand him and concernervatives and why people like him believe they what they believe. And here's Larry O'Connor. I'm seeing so much in the rearview mirror now that it sort of all makes sense. I remember during the fights over abortion in this country, whereas a pro life conservative, I truly did care for the lives of those unborn children. I really did care for the emotional and mental well being of the mothers who were faced with a horrible decision, and sadly they only heard one side of the equation and moved toward extinguishing the life of that unborn baby, their child, and I had compassion for them, and I wanted them to know that there was another choice. At the time, on the left, all I heard from Democrats was that I was just trying to control women's bodies, that I was misogynist, and it wasn't really about the baby. I just wanted to control women's bodies because I hated women. It was the war on women, remember, And now that I look at it, I realized they really don't understand us. They really don't get and somehow we got to bridge that. We're going to a dark place mark if we can't figure out how to take each other on face value and actually listen to where we're coming from so that my political opponents can understand me, because if they don't understand me, it makes it that much easier to put a bullet in my head. He said, well, I'm not going to have time to play this clip forty two and a half forty three, Okay, I do have time, He said. The assassin didn't kill Kirk Charlie Kirk because of what Kirk was saying. He was killed because people were listening to Kirk. He was effective, and they tried to stop that conversation from happening. And the purpose is to silence conservative's ideas. Whether it's this violent act that was meant to marginalize our ideas and make them worthy of murder, or the more subtle actions that are taken by the media and by academia. By saying that voicing our opinions is equivalent to violence. You know, words are violence. They say that so that when we use words, it's okay to use violence against us. Trump is a Nazi, Trump is a fascist. Ice ICE law enforcement officers are just like the Gestapo. These words dehumanize us, They marginalize us. The fact that we're not booked to be on the Sunday shows as members of the Roundtable. We can go on there as a guest so that we can get attacked by the journalist who runs that Sunday show, but we're not invited to the roundtable to participate on an equal footing with all the other voices in Washington, DC, because our voices and our opinions are not worthy of polite discussion. This all builds into this dehumanizing effect. I believe in this country that marginalizes those of us, who, by the way, are in the majority politically right now based on the last election. So it's like I said at the beginning, and I think that you're right to say that the left and people on the political left are not trying to understand us. But I think it's because they have been told for over a decade now that we are not worthy of their empathy. Right, our voices and our opinions are so toxic that they don't even need to bother to listen to us. They should ignore us. And if we continue to speak and we get too loud, we should be silenced. Right, shut up, eriy. This is what Andrew Claven talked about twenty five years ago. This is the strategy. It is shut up to shut up. We don't want to hear what you have to say, and we control all of the institutions. We are the gatekeepers. Shut up. You know. Stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things, to understand experiences. Stories connect us to the people of our past while transcending generations. They help us process the meaning of life, and our stories are told through images and videos. Preserve your stories with Creative Video started in nineteen ninety seven and Minhill, North Carolina. It was the first company to provide this valuable service, converting images, photos and videos into high quality produced slide shows, videos and albums. The trusted, talented and dedicated team at Creative Video will go over all of the details with you to create a perfect project. Satisfaction guaranteed. Drop them off in person or mail them. They'll be ready in a week or two. Memorial videos for your loved ones, videos for rehearsal, dinners, weddings, graduations, Christmas, family vacations, birthdays, or just your family stories, all told through images. That's what your photos and videos are. They are your life told through the eyes of everyone around you and all who came before you, and they will tell others to come. Who you are, visit creative video dot com. So I've got one more clip to play from Larry O'Connor, WMAL radio host. He was on Next Up with Mark Halpern and this is going to tie into another piece of developing news today. But first here's what he said he was talking about. They started talking about Jimmy Kimmel's suspension and coming back and all that, and he noted that there has been a power in balance in media against Republicans and against conservatives for decades. Now. I can only do my best to say what we on the right have been trying to say for decades now, which is it's not an even playing field. It's not fair in any way whatsoever. We very rarely see our perspectives voiced. That's how Fox News came about, That's how Rush Limbaugh came about, and the rise of talk radio came about, because we've had gone for so long without any fair representation for our ideas and our policies, which, by the way, at any given time, the majority of Americans hold and agree with. And so you know, listen, I am with you. I don't like the government leaning on corporations and trying to move this along. As far as we know, all we have is Brendan Carr statement on the Benny Johnson Show. If that was it, it pales in comparison to what the Biden administration. The president, we also the president on social media. Well again on social media, that pales in comparison to what we know occurred with the FBI and with the Biden White undred percent Twitter and Google under in fact, with YouTube, we learned this week, they came back to the White House and said, listen, these guys have not violated our terms of service, and the White House says, we don't care you get rid of them. Are you going to answer us. That's major pressure right there. One hundred percent agreed, number one. But that said, listen, you're worried about people losing their jobs or losing advertisers, or losing revenue because of their content because people have risen up and try to put pressure on these corporations to do something, criming a river that take a look at what conservative talk radio hosts have been dealing with since the mid nineties. You want to talk about a president applying pressure at an emotional time to a network. I'm old enough to remember Bill Clinton blaming Rush Limbaugh for the Oklahoma City bombing, all right, and the exodus of advertisers after that happened. I remember when they blamed Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin for Gabby Gifford shooting in Tucson, which had nothing to do with politics. This is something that we on the right in media, whether it's talk radio or podcasts or on Fox News or other cable news stations, have been living with for decades. We constantly have to be watching how we say, what we say, and how we present it, lest we run a foul of the people who are watching every syllable to boycott our advertisers or try to put pressure on our companies to take us off the air. Thankfully, there's still a huge audience for what we do. That's the only thing that's kept us on the air. But I have friends who have lost their jobs mark in the same way Jimmy Kimmel lost his job, and they didn't get the kind of support that Jimmy gott. He is exactly right. I know people who have lost their jobs in radio for stuff they said. It is a constant sort of damocles hanging over the head of everybody who does what I am doing right now. And this has been the case for, as he says, for decades. So yeah, cry me a river too. I'm not. I am not the softest shoulder to cry on. And I said that when Jimmy Kimmel got indefinitely suspended, which lasted half a Scaramucci, and he's back on the air. So now that being said, the larger point he was making there was that, you know, the rise of Limbaugh and Fox News. These were market responses to the fact that the left had captured all of the other institutions and there was no conservative viewpoint being expressed. That's why talk radio exists in the way it does still, It's why Fox exists. It's why you see all of these other competitors that have emerged. So for example, the right. Ever since January sixth, the right MAGA has been asking and demanding, like the FBI tell us how many agents they had on the ground at January sixth at the Capitol, And the FBI has never said, And the J six Committee withheld the information for five years, and now we know, now we know the Blaze reporting that the FBI has now acknowledged that it had two hundred seventy five plane clothes agents in the crowds on j six. A senior Congressional source said the number is not necessarily a surprise, since the FBI often embeds counter surveillance personnel at large events, but given the fbis until now steadfast refusal to disclose the level of its presence at the Capitol, the figure might still be viewed with skepticism in some quarters. They also had twenty six informants, four of whom entered the Capitol during the rioting. According to the Office of the Inspector General, none was actually authorized by the FBI to break the law or enter any restricted areas, and they were not direct to encourage others to commit illegal activity. So nice to finally get that information out. 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 thepetecleanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.