"Keith Olbermann Welcomes Government Spying On Journalists"
The Jimmy Dore Show (July 3, 2021)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNmlOESmwWo

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[screenshot of Tweet]:

Keith Olberman
@KeithOlberman

BREAKING: @TuckerCarlson may tonight have inadvertently revealed that the @NSA has found he is an asset of, or incontact with, a foreign entity trying to harm the United States of America.


Jimmy Dore: "He has Trump in his shadow. So if you know Jungian psychology, whatever triggers you the most is the part of you that you're denying of yourself inside. So when I look at Trump, I don't get angry at Trump so much. I get angry at the system that gave us Trump. And people like Keith Olberman foam at the mouth and became McCarthyite, Red-baiting maniacs who have no logic to what they're saying. And they're actually detrimental to democracy, freedom, liberty, and all that stuff. He became the thing he claims to hate."

"So, Tucker Carlson said he was getting spied on by the NSA. Is that the story, Glenn?"

Glenn Greenwald: "Yes."

So here we go:




"Tucker Carlson claims that the National Security Agency, the NSA, is spying on him, reading his emails and trying to take his program off the air. As the old joke goes: 'Just because you're paranoid, that does not mean they are not out to get you.' "

"Clearly, the NSA has found that Tucker Carlson is somehow connected to a foreign entity that intends to harm America. The NSA has responded Tuesday night that, quote: 'The allegation is untrue. Carlson has never been an intelligence target of the agency. And the NSA has never had any plans to try and take his program off the air.' The NSA added, in what seems like a throwaway bit of boilerplate, that it also, quote: 'has a foreign intelligence mission. We target foreign powers to generate insights on foreign activities that could harm the United States.'

That, in fact, is the most important part of the statement. Even Carlson, in his delusional, megalomaniacal way, kind of got the message. Responding on his show that he claimed, quote: NSA has read my private emails without my permission. Tonights statement from the NSA does not deny that. Instead it comes with this non-sequitur, 'Tucker Carlson has never been an intel target.' "

"Well, that's only a non-sequitur if you're a non-smart person. The conclusion is obvious. And the conclusion is chilling. The NSA is reading Tucker Carlson's emails. And since he's not their target, whoever he is emailing with must be. And if the NSA can only target foreign powers, then there is one conclusion only: Tucker Carlson is in contact with a foreign power trying to commit activities that could harm the United States. In other words, whether he is a foreign asset or a mere stooge -- my money is on mere stooge -- Tucker Carlson is working with a foreign entity to damage this country. And he's too stupid to shut up about it. And he's too stupid to flee the country because, ultimately, he's too stupid."

[3:11] Jimmy Dore: "Speaking of people too stupid to shut up. How much do you want to bet that his neighbors were yelling at him to shut up because they couldn't hear the Rachel Maddow Show. ... So what he's saying is that he's not upset that the NSA is reading a newsperson's emails. That doesn't seem to bother him at all. Isn't that a problem, Glenn? "

[3:42] Glenn Greenwald: "The ignorance of that rant is so multi-faceted and multi-pronged, that it would take hours to dissect. But let me just say that I find it so -- the unwellness of Keith Olbermann is manifest at this point -- I mean, just listen to him. I personally feel pity. He is clearly unwell. But I think it's important to take note of the fact that he is like the godfather of contemporary liberal media. He is the person who made MSNBC into what it is. He is the one who spawned it. His success in finding liberal audiences and delivering those rants is what then engendered Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes and Lawrence O'Donnell. They're all working within his creation. He's like their godfather, like kind of the guru of how liberals speak and how they deliver the news."

"And if you notice what he's saying. There are so many ignorant parts of it that I won't bore you with in terms of how the NSA functions and how they gather information. But if you listen to what he is saying, it's exactly that mentality of authoritarianism that I was describing earlier which is, his assumption is that if the NSA is targeting you or somebody with whom you're speaking, that in and of itself proves that you are a bad person and a threat to national security because the NSA would never ever target anybody except terrorists or other kinds of enemies of the United States. Imagine the authoritarianism required to believe that.

"During the 2016 election, we know that the NSA targeted Carter Paige who had been affiliated with the Donald Trump campaign. And the FBI, in order to get that warrant, lied to he FISA court. And the FBI lawyer who prepared those warrants was prosecuted for that. And he pled guilty to that. The reporting that we did for years that won the Pulitzer was all about how the NSA spies on peace activists. And for commercial advantage. They spy on human rights agencies, and on Amnesty International, and on foreign governments, including ones with whom the United States is allied. They fucking spy on everybody. And Keith Olbermann knows that. But his brain, like so many liberal brains, is completly broken by the Trump years, so that he looks at the NSA as his ally, as his protector, and believes in their inherent goodness to such an extent that he said right there that if the NSA is spying on you or someone with whom you are communicating, it means you are a bad person, a criminal, a threat to the United States who ought to be fleeing the United States if you know what's good for you."

"That is Fascism in its purest form."

[6:30] Jimmy Dore: "I couldn't agree more. And here's Rick Wilson." [shows tweet]

Rick Wilson
@TheRickWilson

Tucker's fauxrage over the idea the NSA is monitoring his show to take him off the air is one stop short of his dog telling him to murder people.

Jimmy Dore: "This is the guy who did the Lincoln Project, right?" [reads from tweet, emphasizing last line]

"No, it's not. Keith Olbermann believes that that is happening. We know that they are. What are you talking about? They're spying on everybody. How many times has the government already been caught spying on FOX News reporters themselves, tapping their phones and doing things like that. What is that?"

[7:07] Glenn Greenwald: "But, Jimmy, this is so imporant, actually, because just like Keith Olbermann, Rick Wilson is kind of a prototypical establishment Democrat and liberal. He's the person to whom Democrats poured all of their money during the 2020 election and made him extremely rich in the name of stopping Trump. Rick Wilson is one of the worst scumbags in all of politics. He's the person who masterminded the 2002 add that they ran against that Georgia Senator Max Cleland who lost both legs and an arm in the Vietnam war and morphed him into Osama bin Laden, which was for liberals at the time one of the lowest blows in American politics. This is who now is shaping and defining liberal political strategy in the United States. And this stuff he's saying there -- that you'd have to be insane to believe that the NSA is spying on you -- is the stuff I heard from neocons and conservatives when I was doing the Snowden reporting: 'Oh, you want to convince people that the NSA cares enough to spy on you?' This is that mentality. Like you're fucking crazy. Just like you think the CIA is doing coups in other countries. You must need a psychiatrist. That's how they have always tried to deligitimize skepticism. And this isn't coming from Republicans anymore. It comes from Democrats. Like I said, I'm about to go on Tucker Carlson's show and rebut stuff like this.

[8:35] "But the other thing that is so important to note is, I saw some leftists or liberals like the woman who's on the Majority Report that Emma person and a couple of other people saying that the reason why we shouldn't believe that Tucker Carlson would ever by spied on, is because we know that the government is only scared of the Left and not the Right. So I guess they think that, like, power centers around the world are shaking in their boots over the danger and menace posed by Sam Seder's radical ideology and all of the, like, threats that he poses to capital and militarism and the like. But if you look at what the government is actually saying: what DHS is saying, what NHS is saying, the CIA and the FBI are saying: they believe the greatest threat to the American homeland is right-wing extremism. They're initiating a war on terror in the name of stopping what they regard as right-wing extremists, anti-government extremists. They don't give shit a about Sam Seder. Sam Seder is a good little boy. He's a good little Democrat. He loves Russia-gate and he propagated the CIA's lies and bullshit. They love Sam Seder. The people they're afraid of, by their own reconning, are people they regard as anti-establishmentarians who question authority, who impede their agenda. Which to them means, essentially, anyone who is too far on the left or too far on the right."

. . .

[14:45] Glenn Greenwald: "And here is Brian Stelter saying 'at a well-run network this is what would happen'."

. . .

[15:08] Jimmy Dore: "Oh, and by the way, you guys pushed an evidence-free conspiracy theory for five years. You guys are not a well-run network. The trust in your network is at an all-time low. So this guy who is a media critic is just a straight-up propagandist. And, of course, that's the guy they hired at CNN to be the media critic, the guy who has got no problem being a propagandist. As Noam Chomsky said, if he thought anything different he woudn't have that job. That Brian Stelter has been groomed since kindergarten to be a fucking CNN newsman. And he doesn't realize it."

. . .

[shows and reads from screenshot of tweet]:

Keith Olberman
@KeithOlberman

Gotta say, I've lived my entire life with the stain of Russian heritage in my family. Then came their conspiracy to alter the 2016 election. A year later they hacked my computer.

But now they've attacked my boy Panarin, so I'll make it official:

Fuck you, Vladimir Putin

[16:32] Glenn Greenwald: "You cannot get more racist than that."

Jimmy Dore: "That's xenophobia to a "t". Oh, my god. It gets worse: [Shows video clip of Keith Olberman rant]:



"We are at war with Russia.
Or perhaps, more correctly, we have lost a war with Russia without a battle.
We are no longer a sovereign nation.
We are no longer a democracy.
We are no longer a free people.
We are the victims of a bloodless coup. So far, a bloodless coup.
Engineered by Russia, where,
if we did it to another country would be described as an act of war.
And in this country, we have conceded defeat.
The nation and all of our freedoms hang by a thread.
And the military apparatus of this country is about to be handed over to scum!
Who are beholden to scum!
Russian scum!
As things stand, January 20th will not be an inauguration ..."

Glenn Greenwald: "I remember that, too. And he was doing it under the banner of resistance. That's my favorite picture. Sitting on the floor, all scared in his little flag womb.