Mission Implausible is now something you can watch.

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In our show notes, I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry O'Shea.

We have over sixty years of experience as clandestine officers in the CIA, serving in high risk areas all around the world, and.

Part of our job was creating conspiracies to deceive our adversaries.

Now we're going to use that experience to investigate the conspiracy theories everyone's talking about as well as some of you may not have heard.

Could they be true or are we being manipulated?

We'll find out now on Mission Implausible.

Welcome John Cipher, Jerry O'shee, and Adam Davidson to our twenty twenty.

Five Year in review wrap up.

So think of this as your Spotify playlist of the year.

You know how Spotify does all wrap up and they tell you what what have you guys been talking about or thinking about the most?

So this is a good ridden this twenty twenty five show.

Is this what it is in a don't let the door hitch in the ass on the way out.

The only problem is twenty twenty six doesn't look too.

Really, Yeah, it's damn.

There's a lot of talk oh the midterms and the next election when we're talking about politics, but like everything's a long way off.

Remember when we first started talking about this show, and like conspiracy theories were like this interesting, kind of weird thing that a small percentage of people were into and like it would be fun.

You know, I guess this isn't this year, but it does seem like this year really cemented conspiracy theories place at the very heart of American life as a like almost a first response.

We actually we don't go through the official response and then get to the conspiracy theory.

We go through the conspiracy theory and then well trying.

To in ninety seven episodes, which we've done so far, you know, we've had fun.

Now we have Bigfoot, great fun and Kem trails.

Those are obviously outliers.

But now it's more I agree with you, it's more insidious.

And maybe it's more insidious because the conspiracy theorists are at the helm of the ship now, right that the patients have taken over the asylum.

Christ look at the.

FBI, right, you know, Dan Bongino is the Epstein guy, right, and then now he's in the guy he is them right alone, Jade Vance and Trump himself and a lot of these other people.

So yeah, I mean he is like almost not being pushed at the periphery.

What's happening at CIA?

Oh, I was gonna that was.

One of the things I wanted to talk about, and I want to talk about general conspiracies in politics and all that type of stuff, But the year in intel is actually worth like bear with me for a minute.

Like cash Patel is weakening the counterintelligence part of the FBI and that belongs to the intelligence community.

All of the leadership of the CIA, the Director of National Intelligence, DoD and FBI are all pushing up partisan public statements day after day, which is something that's never happened in the past.

They've been cherry picking intelligence to declassify and can There's a couple of specifics that we can talk about as we get going here.

They're firing people in their own midst who are putting out reporting that's true just because they don't want to hear it because it doesn't fit with their partisan sort of viewpoints.

There's a senior intelligence people who were on a signal chat with a journalist and they were spreading classified information, which then they went publicly and said there was no classified information on it, when they know that's that's not true.

We bombed Iran and immediately the heads of the intelligence community said, oh, we've destroyed the Iranian nuclear program and it can never rebuild, obliterating lid, which is not a professional assessment, and normally you just shut up if you're the head of these kind of things, And now they're trying to They're taking the things that happen in twenty fifteen twenty sixteen Russia assessments and trying to recreate them as a manufactured coup against Trump that involved obomba on and all this other kind of stuff.

They revoke security clearances for top officials.

It's been a mess when you have an intelligence community which is supposed to be the place where truth is told to power, and the leadership, just to get the jobs, have to say that the twenty twenty election was stolen.

How do you do that, automate to get the job, you have to say that facts aren't true, and then now you're in the job.

So I think the intelligen screen is a place has really taken a beating and I don't know how it fixes itself.

Sounds like sour grapes.

Did you apply for the job?

Yeah?

It strikes me as the you know, Putin's intelligence assessments right when like, yes, sir, yes, sir, ninety to ninety five percent of the Ukrainians are going to support you when you march in.

It'll be three days.

Yeah, because they were all scared shitless to say anything else.

Like remember forty seven years ago when Trump became president again believe it or not, that was actually this year.

But we were talking about Tolsa Caabbart and the risk to you know, part the sharing that we were that we normally get from allies who would know longer want to share with us.

But what is your sense, like, what what would be your damage assessment of our intelligence.

Capacity when you threaten your allies we're going to take over Canada, We're going to invade Denmark and take Greeny away from the.

Way, you're saying that Canada might not share as much intelligence with us.

I say, when you threatened people, you tend not to get And of course now most people want paying attention to this, but this national security document that they've come out with.

I mean, we out and out say that we want to we want regime change for the our European democratic allieses.

And it doesn't mention any potential enemies or anything.

We have no threats about there except for europe.

Right and wokeism or whatever exactly.

So the answer is I think that the big secret that the Europeans that are Europeans, that the Allies, and to the Japanese and the South Koreans and Filipinos in this as well, is that they can't help but not look at us as something different.

Right, we don't stand for anything anymore.

It is just transactional.

What's in it for us?

And you know, I.

Think the damage of this, the damage assessment.

Is not going to be just maybe in twenty twenty six when Congress comes back and hopefully it's democratically led and starts doing investigations if we have fair elections, which I'm not sure we will, or even when Trump is gone.

It's not like that our allies are going to go, oh, that was just a one off, Right, we voted the guy in twice, and they're going to be concerned that you know that he's gonna.

Yeah, it would be irresponsible for a foreign leader not to think even if the Democrats win in twenty twenty eight.

There's the genius of American foreign policy since the end of World War Two is that we have genuine allies, and allies are democratic.

They're messy and difficult, but they actually are on our side.

Russia has a couple of vassal states but no allies.

China has no allies, a couple of vassal states that it blackmails into supporting them.

You know, we were something different and we're slowly not anymore.

I mean, the damage is just incomprehensible.

So I agree with Jerry, the allies thing is a big one.

But when you said the capacity of the intelligence community, I still think there's lots of talented people and there are lots of cool things that the intelligence community can do.

But in the past, for example, when Bill Clinton was in power and he didn't really care about the Intelligence Committee, you know, he didn't really want to hear the morning brief.

He wasn't that interested unless there is a crisis, and then of course he would get briefed in that type of thing.

And so that's happened in the past.

Presidents have not paid as much attention to intelligence.

But what this administration is doing is they're undermining the intelligence community, like they're trying to actually weaken the parts of the FBI that try to stop foreign interference in our country and election.

They're trying to undermine the CIA by saying that it's involved in coup planning and all this other kind of stuff.

So there's capability there, but they're undermining it.

So it will hurt it when we try to re we put it back together, even if there is another election.

So the Allies thing's a big one, but even just you have a place that's built on professionalism and you undermine the professionalism, it's going to take a long time to fix.

And I would expand that out real quick and just say not just the intelligence community, but the national security.

I really worry going into twenty twenty six that the US military is going to be pushed into some really difficult decisions, like about operating internally inside the United States.

Like shooting boats out of the water.

Adam, what I want to know from you is if you read the press the last week or two, and especially after the death of Rob Reiner, for example, there is this sort of view that things might be starting to turn.

The economy is not looking great, but Trump says it's great.

Trump is not really out on the stump anymore.

Tariffs are hurting His just nasty behavior is even turning some Republicans a little bit away from things.

Is there a turn or not?

I remember I announced the turn once years ago and it turned out than twenty eighteen or something, and turned out I was slightly off.

But we are seeing some things that are interesting, right.

We are seeing like Marjorie Taylor Green, who you know, we have a friend of the pod, a friend of the pod.

But like when you have people in lockstep for years, and you have an entire party in lockstep for years, anyone stepping out and then not being like destroyed that I was listening to this British historian talk about how he was noticing that nobody ever compares a Trump to other American presidents except maybe Andrew Jackson.

You know, no one's ever like you compare him to Saddam Hussein or Putin or something.

So I'll do just that one thing that I think Putin or Saddam Hussein or yes are r Fat or I mean, we could list a lot of people when you want that kind of control, you really need to punish dissidents, right, Like that's an absolute vital move in comedians and comedians Yeah no, seriously.

Yeah, medians are the dissidents.

Yeah, in our Yeah.

So when you see people, you know, even this horror fic Rob Reiner tweet, when you had a bunch of people, I mean they were like soft on Trump Republicans already, but just really using strong language like language we would use.

This was in conscient ball.

How could he?

You know, I don't know, it's hard.

Is that a total shift?

Is that game over for Trump?

I don't think so.

I do think.

You know, a lame duck is a lame duck, you know, and that's why he needs to keep alive the idea that he might not be a lame duck.

And it's not a zero chance, right that he'll try and the Supreme Court will somehow give him cover or you know, that crazy plan that doesn't seem all that much crazier than things that have happened.

That JD.

Vance will be elected and then step down immediately with Trump as his vice president.

Anyway, but assuming he's a lame duck also, you know, I do think the cognitive decline seems real.

I mean that it does seem so one way or another.

We are nearing the end of trump is we are seeing wild unpopularity, I mean real electoral results and stuff.

So it's if it were anyone else, I'd be like, yeah, obviously, this is the other side.

It's a fever.

But we've been here before.

And you know, the guy who spent his life in Greenwich Village and silver Lake and Vermont is maybe not the guy to tell you exactly like I will tell you based on everyone I'm close to.

Yes, he's not particularly popular.

Even then there's Trump and then there's trump Ism.

That is the question, right, And I think it felt like early twenty twenty five there was talk of like now the Trumpists and the trump Ism and that JD.

Vance and Elon Musk and that whole project.

And it isn't a project.

I think that's kind of their problem.

It's many different projects.

There's like the nativist racist project, there's the oligarchic Grifter project.

There's certainly plenty of people doing really, really well.

It's a good time to be Barry wise, it's a good time to be a Silicon Valley oligarch, but it's nobody has really gained traction.

And that's also typical of strong men, right, they don't want that next tier.

I mean I remember when I was Middle East correspondent.

Yes, Sir our Fat was still in power, and one thing you would study is his approach to power, which was always to have lots of different there where I forget the number eleven or fourteen different security services within the Palestinian authority, and he could kind of raise and lower them at will, so they're constantly looking at each other.

I think King Hussein did a version of that, So I'm certainly did a lot of that and that in Russia.

Look at Putin whot has he built up anybody to follow behind him?

No?

Yeah, he's certainly not it.

Yeah, yeah, I do want to talk about oligarchs.

Can we talk oligarchs because that's been very much on my mind.

Hey, wait, before you start talking about oligarchs, let me just put it in a side here with Jerry and I with Rob Reiner.

Yeah.

I met Rob Reiner when he was very focused on Russian interference in twenty fifteen twenty sixteen, and he wanted to talk with General Hayden and myself and some others about that, and he came to Washington and I got to meet him.

I was really like shellacked.

Oh my god, meat heads.

And he was such a nice guy and it was very focused on those issues and stayed in touch.

And then when Jerry and I first started the company, he went to la We called him and he invited us over to his house and he was having a big dinner there and there was all kinds of Barbara Streisan and Larry David and all of those kind of people.

So it's when you see this horrible thing happen to someone who's so nice, and you know personally.

That's you know, I have a lot of friends in Hollywood, and there's not a lot of people you've only heard good things about, and him, Henry Winkler.

You only hear good things about Henry Winkler.

But that is all right, So that's an aside.

I apologize.

I was thinking about the thoroughness of the oligarcic slash strong man, because that does feel like you talked about permanent changes in national security.

I mean, i'd say permanent changes in our economy, like the idea that a the way the president feels about a company and its CEO is a meaningful like a significant economic indicator, Like we're way in that, Like people don't even.

Or they're even taking pieces socialism.

The government's taking pieces of all these big comieties too.

Yeah, it troubles me both because it's gross in and of itself, but it also scares me.

The bribes that like Tim Cook giving him gold, people literally giving Trump gold bribes.

Here's what I would want them to be thinking.

I would want them to be thinking, oh boy, I better not do that because he's only going to be president in another few years and this is obviously illegal and we're obviously going to have like some kind of correction, and this is really risky.

So the fact that they're all doing it, that they're jumping into bed with him, is I mean, leave aside just it being upsetting and morally repugnant.

It like why aren't they more concerned?

Like it makes me think they are already in this oligarchic capitalism and just let's define it for a minute, and maybe John you can help me here.

So the whole sales all right, let me get on.

Can I get to my economic lecture goal?

Soapbox, the whole sales pitch of capitalism.

Literally, like, the one thing that's got going for it is that we harness greed to produce societally beneficial outcomes and through competition.

So well, all three of us want to make a lot of money.

We don't give a crap about anybody.

And we're all bakers, you know, to use Adam Smith's canonical example, the only way we can win, at least in the toy universe that Adam Smith describes, is make better bread, or make cheaper bread, or make faster bread, or And a key part of that is that we have to fail if we don't do well.

So if you're in a world, you know, and you know when Adam Smith was writing, like it was still fairly common for corrupt bakers to put sawdust in instead of wheat and all sorts of nasty stuff.

As soon as what you're optimizing for is not consumer demand consumer surplus, as soon as what you're optimizing for is like pleasure of the leader, for you don't even get the pleasure of the leader, necessarily, you distort the entire ecosystem and it becomes a net drain on the society.

I mean, in a less dramatic way than like Saddam Musin or Vladimir Putin.

Like in Japan in the nineties, the banks were kept alive by bank regulators, and so the banks took out really irresponsible loans because they didn't really have to pay the negative cost of any losses, but they did reap the rewards.

So they took riskier and riskier bets, and it stored up more and more capital of the country and sort of non performing assets.

And you've had total stagnation in Japan for going on, heading towards thirty years.

You know, you can then think of it.

You know, name your other oligarchic country, you know, whether it's Angola or Iraq or Russia or whatever.

They're closely associated with a lack of democracy, lack of a middle class, lack of stability, because the way you succeed is you compete with other oligarchs.

You a mass wealth.

I mean, it makes me think of John Lee Anderson who was on the show.

He told me the story of when he was in Afghanistan.

He was talking to his local guy and he started thinking, like what would it take to be a warlord?

And the guy's like, well, about ten grand will get you enough troops that you could take over enough territory and drug area that it becomes self sustaining.

So you just need that first ten grand.

And John Lee was like, I can put ten grand together.

Bet you know either he'd be a good he'd pick THATOD one in all the ways.

And I want to run this through a conspiracy, which I think maybe a conspiracy, And I'd love to get all three of your your comments on it.

So Adam, you probably know this better.

But there's this guy, Chengping Zhao, right, he goes by CZ and he's the he's the CEO of Binance, or at least he was.

I think he's going to be again, and he was.

He was running basically the biggest money laundering drugs money laundering institution out of the face of the earth.

And pick I've got it down here.

One of his employees wrote when they were investigate him, we need a banner.

Is laundering drug money too hard?

Come?

We have cake?

This is like.

So it's not like they don't know, right.

So he's you know, he's investigated first under Trump and then Trump won.

He's sentenced underby He only gets four months because he's got great lawyers, and but he's he's his company I think has got a four point three billion dollar, billion dollar fine.

He had a fifty million dollar fine, and Trump is just him.

At the same time, this guy cz his company, Binance was helping was it World Liberty Finance, the Trump kids, the Trump family stable coin outfit, and they were working together, and so he's he's put together for them that Binance assisted in putting together their stable coin.

And then this this stable coin was then later used by I think by Krishner certainly by one of the Trumps to do this deal with the UAE for two billion dollars.

But they're not going to use US dollars, which is good for us.

They're going to be using the Trump stable coin, right, which helps both Binance and the Trump family.

Right, they're both making money off of this, and they're not using US dollars, which would be good for US.

I guess, like, fuck the US.

And this is a guy who's enabling drug purchases around the world that damage and kill Americans if you really care about this kind of thing, which they claim they do.

But the guy's pardon he it helps Trump family.

They're all making money off of this.

Is this trinketing?

Is this a conspiracy or is this like a real conspiracy theory?

And I don't like conspiracy theories, and I know John dovisn't, but I'm really leaning into conspiracy theory here, or excuse me, conspiracy that like, no, there's a plan, whether they sit down and outlined it on the back of an envelope, but they all know what's going on, and so this is oldigar key.

But this is also some deep conspiracies to defraud the United States government and to fuck with us all.

This isn't capitalism.

It's also not hidden like it's not you know, this used to be.

I remember when I started reporting on money laundering and corruption.

I forget who said it, but there is I'm sure many people said it that in the West, and they were talking in this case about the former Soviet states that are closer to Europe.

There's a general feeling that corruption is something to hide and something to pretend you don't do.

But in a lot of the developing world and the Central Asian form of it states and Russia, it is the point like it is theatrically presented.

It's not like they'll have whatever bs they say to the public, but it's you know, I spent time in Azerbaijan.

You want to see that the Minister of Transportation, who officially made twenty six thousand dollars a year at his highest has a crazy mansion in the middle of Baku.

And to me, that's what I wonder, is this even Is it a conspiracy?

When they want you, they're not hiding it.

I just want to one thrown one thing.

Trump was asked about this in sixty minutes in his interview, and he says, I don't even know this guy, sez Well, if you don't know him, why did you.

Get your why did you pardon them?

And the same thing could be said about the Honduran former hundred and president.

Right, he's according to the DOJ when it was honest, the guy has brought in four hundred tons of cocaine into the United States.

So we're killing people who may be running coke to Surinam.

Who the fuck knows.

But the guy rings in four hundred tons of cocaine in the US and he does a couple of weeks and he gets pardoned.

Look at what's happening in Hollywood, right.

David Ellison in Paramount is trying to take over Warner Brothers at the same time Netflix is, and President Trump is weighing in, essentially likely to support David Ellison because he'd rather have a right leaning person running CNN than a left leaning company.

Yeah, and so it's just in the older.

If we only have the Partment of Justice, yeah, it would be okay.

But my point is I don't think we're supposed to not know it.

I think they want us to know it, right, Like that is like le tas Semoir, you want Yeah, it has to right.

But we also want you to know that nobody can touch me.

I'm immune.

And except I'm not sure people do know it.

I'll bet you the vast majority of people even listening to this podcast, who are probably fairly well in form people, couldn't sit down and tell you about how this guy, Cheng Peng Zhao is milking the system.

There's just so much of it.

So let me throw this out to the to the three.

Let's just pretend that in twenty twenty six the Democrats started investigating, or in twenty twenty eight we get a new president, a new broom.

Now do they go around like arresting everybody, Tim Cook, you gave him a fucking gold bar, right, right?

Do these people get or do they like, go, well, it's best to kick it under the table.

Let's just move on.

Or do the Democrats do the same thing.

I don't want false equivalents.

But it's not like Democrats have been cleaned forever.

Like there Trump is way many, many, many levels of first but the insider trading stuff with Nancy Pulp, Like I there's plenty to be mad about before Trump came in.

It is on a shole new level that we have not seen in over a century.

The way to clean it up, though, do you go after all these people or do you just go.

Hey, let's just start again.

Well is there a truth and reconciliation commissioned type of solution?

I don't know.

I mean look at Epstein, like even like you know, the state of New York could go after Like we all know who was in his orbit.

We all know best case scenario, they were witnesses to crimes.

Like why do we not see all of these people who are like quitting prominent jobs, who are like it seems like we have I'm going to say something radical.

You've never heard this before.

But it's possible that we don't prosecute rich white people in the way that we prosecute other people in this country.

And to Jerry's question, one of the reasons maybe we don't go after all those people is they may benefit by if Trump pardons everybody, then they actually don't have to do it.

But you were saying not everyone knows, and that's probably I mean, that's definitely true.

Of like I was paying attention, Maybe that's a better because it's just so but there's so much graft though.

Jerry, like people can see foreign leaders coming over.

He wants to know, like how many people in the Department of Justice are like maybe I will go after this, you know, and it doesn't even have to be one of the big things, you know, Yeah, or how many like how many prominent CEOs are like I mean, Costco suit him.

I was impressed by that that didn't have a choice.

Yeah, yeah, someone in the FBI can walk in it.

White House, Listen, you know, we've got some concerns with Russian intelligence in the United States.

We really want to crack down.

We really want to crack down.

And no, mister President, it's awkward, but it's your campaign so we got to you know, we're looking at some of your meetings your kids have had with some people on the terrorism watch list.

So I think the message gets to the people who need to know, and then.

The people who can benefit or avoid getting in trouble.

We've all spent time in autocratic nations, right, and you see pictures of the leader everywhere, and you see pictures of their kids everywhere.

There is that like this is a state, it that is owned by this family.

And to me, the puzzle is why people seem to like it.

I mean, it's a very it's a smaller number than it was a few months ago, but it's still more than a third of Americans.

It would be it curious to know how many of them do know what's going on and kind of see it as cool, like, yeah, what are you going to do?

I remember when Mayor the first of the father, Richard Day, I say, I remember I wasn't around, but I read about it.

Gave his son, who later became Mayor a job.

And you know this was back when Mayor Daily ran Chicago like frump Friends of America.

And his answer he was asked about he said, what am I gonna do?

Like not get my kid a job, And that was a pretty good answer for his followers.

They liked it.

Let's talk about oligarchs and conspiracy, like one of the things I think we've sort of been you know, there's been this big blizzard of horrible things of corruption and competence and all these things we've talked about.

That's about Elon Musk and DOGE.

I think we've forgotten about Doge.

What a disaster that was and how that just completely weakened the capability of public servants to do their jobs and expertise.

And it was based very largely on a bunch of conspiracy theories that Elon Musk got right off of Twitter, right, so he got these crazy things about USA AID causing all these horrible problems.

As a result, he destroyed the entire organization within the within just a few weeks, so rapidly and so thoughtlessly that literally hundreds of thousands of people may die as a result of this.

Yeah again, conspiracy crap that he believed on social media platforms has led to the destruction of a US big US government organization and worldwide consequences to include people dying and the science funding.

Like I was going to go there next by the time people start dying of polio, those people will have moved on, right.

And I know a bunch of folks in like cutting edge medical research, scientific research.

I mean that is a generational you know, we have long term studies that you know, we're supposed to go on for decades, that you can't just restart them five years later, like those are done.

We have entire avenues of research.

Like there's a very good chance that one of us or someone we love will be in a doctor's office ten years from now, twenty years from now, and they're won't be a solution because of research that was stopped.

And it is like I think where I go is that, Like it's awful, but it's fascinating that Like on the conspiracy side, so little information gets to be combined or no information, negative information gets to be combined.

But on the fact check the conspiracy or call out.

Like if you then say like look how corrupt Trump is, You're gonna hear like, well, no, it was actually his sons did this and they didn't do that.

And I think that I'm gonna talk about AI for a second.

People get worried about AI and deep fakes, which is like a fine thing to be worried about.

But what I'm thinking about is like, how does a fact become a publicly known thing or a lie become a publican note?

Like that whole information environment is utterly broken, irreparably.

I would say, like there might be some new thing that we can create.

But when I.

Started in journalism in the early nineties, like, there was a set number of gatekeepers, and this system had its issues, Like it wasn't flawless, certainly not, but there was a set number there was, and you know, and there still is.

But they clearly don't have that big an impact.

You guys worked in a truth oriented business at least internally, of that rewarded truth and had mechanisms for checking to see if things are true, and all of that seems broken.

I actually I feel like people will hate me for saying this.

I think AI exacerbates the problem, but AI also could potentially help mitigate the problem.

Like AI, I have used AI in ways to make things more factual.

It's not it, you know, you have to do stuff, but it's pretty good at checking and assessing things, researching things.

But that feels to me like a big theme maybe of the rest of our lives.

It's like the rapid spread of let's just call it information and then is it miss is it disinformation?

Is it truthful information?

How does that happen?

What are the channels that flows through?

So a couple of days ago, I was in Whole Foods and there was one stall right for for number two.

The guy just didn't come out right, and I like piped under the under the thing and his feet were there, and you know, and another guy was waiting.

See he knocks like nothing, and like, I don't know, is somebody o d in there?

Is he like asleep?

Is it a homeless person?

So I thought I better, So I went to the staff and said, hey, there's somebody in there and they're not moving, and I sort of went away and I bumped into the guy, the whole Whole Foods store employee.

He said, basically, he was just doing like his his health research on his phone, right, But this is where it's conspiracy.

He's basically he was doing research on his freaking telephone sitting on a public toilet.

But this is where people are doing it now, right.

It's like, Oh, I'm gonna I'm going to become an expert in RNA technology and whether autism caused whether vaccines cause autism, because I'm gonna like quick research this on the Whole Foods public toilet.

Well, it sounds like Whole Foods needs a breakroom, that's the problem.

Yeah.

Yeah, but he's.

Probably you know, he's probably got three million followers.

Probably you know, more followers than our progress especially if he has videos of himself on the toilet.

Good money that way.

Yeah, if we're looking back at the year, it's clear the corruptions, clear, the incompetence.

But at the same time, based on Trump want to you know, and the idiots that they put in charge of things, the incompetence is there.

But in terms of the things that they've gone after successfully, They've gone after the media, they've gone after academia, they've gone after the law firms, and they've gone after the deep state, and they've had an effect on all of.

Those things, a massive event.

And so on one hand, I think of the people who run organizations are incompetent, But on the other hand, it's almost like they really did have a plan and they executed that plan.

Absolutely, and it's something like it's something I've read about in his books and political science books, but I never certainly never occurred to me.

I would experience it in my own country, which is, there's never enough like crazies, whatever you want to call, like Maga or Nazis or Bathists or whatever.

There's never enough true believers.

And generally when you have a sycophantic based system, you don't get great people because great people don't want to be sycopants, right, So, you know, it does seem like Trump has a handful of true believers in something like Stephen Miller, But for the most part, it's you know, Lindsay Halligan and Pambondi and stuff.

It's people who are operating many levels above anywhere they ever had any right to imagine they'd be, and they're just going to stick around.

But that group can't dismantle a system.

You need the people who believe in the system, who built the system, who created the system, who have upheld the system.

You need those people to destroy the system.

And that is that happened in a shocking, lee abrupt like the university capitulation.

The law firms, like the law firms really were shocking to me.

The universities were shocking to me, Like I think, you know, you sort of say like, oh, universities are a business, but you don't really think they're like like, so these schools will be smaller, or or some of these schools won't exist, or maybe your law firm doesn't exist.

Okay, yep, maybe that's an okay, Like you're still going to make millions of dollars at a different law firm.

And short term thinking too, is it really good business for five ten years down the road?

How many people are going to stop applying to your college or stop donating money?

And how many people will if you're standing up, how many people will choose I'm going to choose a law firm that fought for my rights.

And that is like you know, Columbia.

Like it just seemed to me there were so many making obviously dumb choices.

But then I'm like, do they know something I don't know.

I don't mean like in some Moorilly right way.

I just mean, but I think that is like people have said that of Trump, he's a master of human weakness, like he he sees weakness where the rest of us might see strength.

What about cracks inside of mega which I expected to be much wider and come much earlier, things like anti Semitism.

You've got parts of MAGA that are like, clearly, you know, Nick Flent is clearly anti Semitic.

What could be more fun than a gas chamber joke?

On the other side, the same movement, it's like we're behind Israel because eventually Jesus is going to come down and destroy it all when the rapture comes in.

And also two things like Christian nationalism.

And then you look at Cash Patel right and vice pread wush Vans, and there's there's a number of US Gabbert Hagen's still in the US government.

So it seems like Trump is Trump and Grift or the glue that's holding it together.

It seems to me, and I probably got it wrong, but I wonder about some of these fishers inside of the organization how long they can hold on.

I mean, I think that is the question end of twenty twenty six and twenty twenty seven, like will there be trump Ism after Trump?

It is hard to picture, like what that unified thing is other than.

Hatred and like we woke, anti woke, anti gay.

But don't you have to hate some there's a white nationalism piece, there's the grifting piece there, and they are separate and they don't necessarily like each other.

And we're seeing some of it in Congress.

But on the Jerry on that Steady State group with a podcast, we had Adam kinserground the other day and asked him, like Jim Lawler was doing it with me, and asked him, like, do you see any of your former colleagues in the Congress or Senate that you work with who will be like you, like a Republican's willing to stand up?

And he said, no, I don't.

He's just I think they've all completely gone away, they've quit, or there's just total cowardice.

And at the end of the day, you need some politicians to stand up too, like the regular society can stand up.

But if the executive branch and the judicial brands and the legislative branch are all sort of working against the American people, it's a hard it's a hard role.

It is I will set like it's heartbreaking, it's awful.

It also is fascinating like it is.

You know, I've read about civilizational collapse and I'm not even necessarily saying we will collapse, but I'm also not saying we won't collapse.

I think we're certainly seeing in a way none of us ever expected to see in our home country, the things that lead to civilizational collapse, whether or not it happens.

Like I think I would have thought a bunch of our norms were stronger, Like I don't even know if I would have consciously thought about it.

I just I would have thought their laws.

I think a lot of people are surprised at their norms.

Right.

Yeah, Oh, Clarence Thomas, he just took all this money, and that's clearly illegal.

No, it isn't he can.

But after Nixon, there was a lot of laws to try to push back.

What if that's what we see twenty twenty eight going forward, is the Congress actually taking up it's being a coward for so long, all of a sudden they're going to jump in and put all these laws together to try to fix the things that were supposedly broken.

And then especially like the DOJ.

I mean I assumed it was silly me.

I assumed it was a law that the DOJ couldn't work that closely with the White House.

If you remember, there was like Barack Obama on an airplane, he bumped into somebody Clinton.

That's right, They just like they talked on on a ptarmac.

Yeah, for five minutes.

And now you've got the Republicans were going crazy over that.

But now the DOJ and the White House are absolutely intertwined.

There's no debate about that.

I just assumed that the DOJ independence was legally binding, and it's not.

It's just a custom.

Well, the custom is the Senate approval of the Attorney General, and that protection went away.

Yeah, so we should wrap up with something optimistic.

I mean, I will say there are a few things, like most people still don't believe in conspiracy theories.

I think you think most people don't believe in conspiracy theories.

I think most people do.

I think the four of us do.

Yeah.

Maybe I'd believe in more conspiracies now than ever before.

Well you think they're conspiracies to other people, that are conspiracy theories, right, No, we're right.

We get to live through history in a rich and exciting way.

Gives us and sounding something you say in nineteen thirty four.

Yeah, it's like I saw somebody talk about if you get sucked into a black hole, like it would suck because of what they call spaghettification, where your body is stretched out until it's just a bunch of quirks.

But in those seconds or minutes you're alive, you would see the entire future of the universe in front of you.

I hope my glasses make it, because I can't crap without damn it.

Yeah, the Jets finally win the Super Bowl.

The Jets did win the Super Bowl, Jerry, just so you know, or nineteen sixty seven.

Oh they did.

Yeah, that's right.

But Adam's a writer, right, just so the people who live through the thirties got to at least write cool, good books about it.

Yeah, many movies and TV shows.

I mean, I do think like, if you think about the thirties, like the thirties in Germany, it probably was pretty impossible to imagine Germany a generation or two later would be.

Well, here's something optimistic.

A lot of people say that one of Trump's geniuses is gets everyone united against a common enemy and creates this common enemy through fear.

Now Trump has created a common enemy and fear against him.

He's united all of us.

Well, the immigrants become the other, right, So that's where everybody's causing your problem.

And they chose the immigrants to be the thing you should fear.

But they're almost overdoing it, right, So they're doing such nasty things that people in public that even even some of the people who I think would be happy to see immigrants be pushed out of the country are starting to say this is too much, this is over the top, And so maybe that's part of the turn I'm gonna try to be optimistic.

I do think there is a bit of a turn turn, right, so they attack the deep state, But to me, the deep state is are people of public servants with expertise, yes you legal professionalism, as opposed to politicians who we now see openly life, cheat and steel and have no courage.

Right, So I think there'll be a turnback on deep state the things we talked about law firms.

I don't know about media, but academia maybe will start to push back against these things.

Media I worry about because there's so many big oligarchs buying stuff, right, So that's a different thing.

But entertainment is spread out now and democratize and literally more people are watching YouTube than everything else combined.

I think media and journalism how we get our news.

We're already most of the way.

There, Yeah, for better and worse.

It's funny, like I was an insider in the media elite, but I was very critical of the way it was done.

You know, I had a lot of problems with it.

So I'm not like, oh, that was perfect, very much not.

But I do think there were, Like I do think there are ways to rebuild at least make available credible news and information like that.

Is that might be like more doable now than ever before.

It's a separate issue of like getting people to want to read that and to prefer that to exciting lies.

One thing to be optimistic about and something I do tell myself and John and I, Well, we've all served or lived in like fucked up repressive authoritarian states, and by and large they're more fucked up than we are.

They're just better at hiding it.

You know.

I think the Russian economy, I mean, I don't know, but I think it's in like way worse shape than anybody thinks it is, right, I mean, Putin is hiding it.

They've lost a million men, They're demographically fucked up.

I think China has got like huge issues that it's hiding as well.

Mostly economic, but also demographic.

No one is really loyal to the CCP.

It's everybody knows.

It's just the way to the top.

Right, whereas we have problems, I think our competitors are our rival arguably are as much or even more in trouble than we are their system.

So we may will out simply because we're not as fucked up.

The only thing is, Jerry, those aren't our competitors anymore.

If you read the National Security sturgey in the United States, those are allies and it's Europe that's the enemy.

Just so you know, yeah, I don't so, I don't know how inside the national you know, everybody who's like a worker level you spent, they say, you've been in for twenty years.

You know, you got another tend to go.

You know, the entire twenty is it's o'wellian, you know, like Russian China, the authoritarians, they're the bad guys, plucky little little European democracies.

Yeah they're paying the ass.

Yeah they're free riding on us.

But they are our allies, right, we have common values and TI weeks basically to say, though that's not the way it is anymore.

I'm not sure anybody buys that, And I don't know whether maybe that's another optimism that there's this huge reservoir of young people who are just biding their time at their leadership go in three more years, you know.

Yeah, I'm hoping that's the case.

I talk to my sons about this, who now going on ten years, the majority of their adult life, if not their entire adult life, have lived in a country where it's basically trump Ism, and they're not aware that it can be another way.

That's how they think it's always been and will always be.

Yeah, that is the piece that so you want to step out, That's what That's how people like Putin, those guys survive is you realize that if you want to play in the political arena, you'll get burned, and so it's better just to stay out of it.

Let the oldigarks and politicians run their things.

And so the people are apathetic.

And so I worry that Putin and j and China aren't really the things we're heading towards.

That sort of you know, I use Nazi analogies all the time because it's easy and fascile, but I think pernism is more the thing like we're heading towards.

Even after Peron died right and Ivida was gone, they still maintained that kleptocracy, you know, in Argentina has never been the same.

Argentina was one of the richest countries in the world in the nineteen thirties and prone took over and paronism and different facets of it is still fucking that country outcome.

But that is like America is a weird Like we've had a pretty crazy run for two and fifty years.

It's like it is, you know, and I don't know.

I just read that ulysses as Grant biography by We're on Turnout.

It's really good.

He makes airment.

Grant himself was not hyper corrupt, but his he was too trusting and his administration was.

But his administration was comparably corrupt to like it was.

It was on a smaller scale.

The country was smaller, the economy was smaller, but it was not It was pretty bad.

And you know, we created the modern state like in the thirties as the result of the depression.

Like that helps me a little bit think, like it's not like America has existed forever and has been perfect.

And then Trump ruined it.

It's like, all right, we had this system from the thirties.

It started to fray by the seventies or eighties.

I mean, certainly the regulatory apparatus and you know, and there was always this conservative undercurrent that wanted to overthrow it.

But it's always been fairly popular and rough.

You know, people like social security, they like well regulated financial institutions, you know, that kind of thing.

So they want their food and water and air to be healthy.

People, I think can get riled up against anti Wochism, but they actually want a fair society, even if they don't understand or agree with every law.

I don't know how optimistic that has been.

It's just history's weird.

Lots of crazy things happen.

It's been worse the Civil War.

You're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, but that's not really helping me out.

With right, the plague of Hadrid in you know, five thirty eight.

We thought we were going in a certain direction, you know.

But I think what you're saying, Adam is after every crisis time in America, the reaction to it is actually a step forward.

Yes, yeah, I think that you have to touch the third rail, or you have to touch bottom before you go up, or whatever cliche we want to use.

And like absent Trump, we still had this like kind of crazy mix with social media, and there's clearly, like independent of Trump, some major distrust of authority and institutions, Like we're three pretty institutionalist guys, and which doesn't mean we think institutions are.

Flawless, not at all, Like we probably know institutions like Somalia in Afghanistan exactly, Yeah, the tribal areas of Pakistan.

I mean, I guess that is right.

Isn't that a big factor?

Like I've heard people say, like in a country this big, where most people have either never traveled or they've traveled on a guided tour to Europe, it's hard to know what we've got if you haven't seen what it's like to not have it.

So we need everybody to spend six months in the developing.

Well, we did some of these things we didn't have in our own country, Like it wasn't that long ago.

We didn't necessarily have clean water, and there was garbage on the streets, and you couldn't get a hot shower, and you couldn't if you had bad knees.

You couldn't get him fixed.

And I remember in New York when you didn't have to clean.

Up your dog poop, oh, dog shit, twenty twenty six.

That's my campaign.

Well, I'm looking forward to talking to you guys one year from today.

Well, let me ask you, guys, what do you think you might be saying a year from now?

Adam, I do think that we've been shocked before, but it will be shocking if the Democrats don't take the House.

And I do think these things have a seismic impact, Like it's not just the direct like there'll be investigations and all of that, which there will be, but there's also you know, we're going to be looking down the you know, George W.

Bush didn't really lose all his popularity until two thousand and six when nobody really needed him.

He couldn't really help anybody.

So I do think we'll be at the beginning, think hope, and like gently predict we'll be at the beginning of a fundamental and is it post trump Ism?

It could be worse.

It could be we're heading towards you know, JD.

Vansell get his sea legs and will be or you know, Stephen Miller will run for press or whatever horrible thing we want to think of.

I think, you know, we we do this on conspiracy theories, but I think reality eventually more or less wins out.

And so I do believe that the administration has built itself so much on lies and conspiracies that can't last forever.

And you add that to perhaps the Democrats winning in the midterm elections, with Trump's health continuing to go down and his lame duck statics going up, I do think will at least be seeing a better horizon by next year.

I think that we're going to have a cataclysmic event or two that people aren't ready for, either an economic crash or President's going to have a health crisis, or we're going to end up like fighting in Venezuela.

Somehow in some war.

Something's going to.

Happen, and generally we could work our way through, and we're going to find that the nation of nincompoops is the lead ship, is going to be unable to handle this in a rational way, and so we're going to have like a I would say nine to eleven is but certainly something is going to happen.

We're going to have a crisis and it is going to be handled very badly.

I mean it was Katrina really that cemented.

Right.

I could see something even like you know, I mean I don't really understand it, but I could see a crypto crash, right, and suddenly the billions that are put into there and suddenly at like the bottom falls out.

I predict a year from now, we're going to be talking about something that none of us are able to predict right now that will be completely surprising to us.

It's the unexpected things that have the biggest impact on history.

It's something like a Family Ties remake.

All right, that's a free idea, John, But if you do it.

I want someone all Right, thank you everybody for this year of Mission Implausible.

Mission Implausible is produced by Adam David, Jerry O'shay, John Seipher, and Jonathan Stern.

The associate producer is Rachel Harner.

Mission Implausible is a production of honorable mention and Abominable pictures for iHeart Podcasts.