Did Walter just say we’ve done our best to end the Gaza nightmare? WTF? Have we stopped the constant air bridge of weapons to the sycho sadist Israelis? That would be NO, Walter.
I tuned in for five minutes and wished I hadn't. So let me understand: the US is supplying the weapons to both Ukraine and Israel, but Trump has done everything he can to stop the wars, even though he's not tried the one thing he could do which is stop the weapons and money. And suddenly, invading Venezuela is okay because we have Venezuelan refugees here and it's bad there or something and that justifies another war, oh, sorry, "doing something about it" (I couldn't give one flying f--k about the hypocrisy of the politicians and the media--those both go without saying).
I'm curious why like Mr. Wright Stuff you simply cancel your subscription? This approach is clearly the theme log Racket News and isn't likely to change. I am not chastising or challenging, just curious?
I paid for a year. I still like the Eric Salzman content. I thought the Twitter files were very well worthwhile and Matt showed bravery in challenging the Russia, Russia, Russia theme. I wanted to support him. I used to enjoy America This Week, not because they bashed on the Left but because I thought they were both truly political orphans. But since October 7th, they've pretty much adopted a side and from what little I watch anymore are very careful about how they tread around that side, which completely undercuts their credibility. And Racket News's "theme" used to be exposing the things the powerful didn't want you to know, now it's only exposing things certain powerful people don't want you to know and ignoring or running cover for other powerful people, which really makes it no more useful than the mainstream Leftie media Matt and Walter ridicule.
Reasonable. I've only recently subscribed mostly on Matt's history. I suspect my views are much closer to the middle because I haven't found them offensive. On the other hand I acknowledge it hasn't been the hard hitting deep dives Matt is known for. October 7th? Well war is hell and I'm uncertain just what unbiased would appear. In closing if this does turn into a gossip column by my criteria I'd probably agree with you.
Here is a paragraph from Taibbi's latest article: "Twelve years ago we had reports that the U.S. killed 76 children and 29 adults across eight years of failed efforts to drone one suspected terrorist, Ayman Zawahiri, and killed about 1,000 more bystanders while targeting 40 others. I covered that story, but few others did, while outlets like the New York Times and Newsweek ran fawning portraits of Barack Obama’s “Terror Tuesdays” drone-targeting ritual, through headlines like “How Obama Learned to Kill.”"
This is precisely what Israel is doing in Gaza. I suspect that Taibbi was critical of this when it came to the US on even the small scale, but by the IDF's own accounting, 83 percent of the 70,000 dead are civilians, and the excuse used by Israel is the same excuse used by Obama and Bush: civilians are just collateral damage and the terrorist shouldn't hide behind them.
So twelve years ago, when it came to America, Taibbi obviously thought this was a negative worth pointing out and noting, but now? "War is hell." Except it's not really war when your civilian-to-combatant ratio gets that high. It isn't when the US does it, which Matt seemed to understand. And it isn't when Israel does it, especially with our cover, finances, and weapons, which Matt seems desperate now not to understand.
I don't suspect that Matt will miss us when we're gone, and I will likely be gone when my subscription runs out, but there are so few decent journalists, it's hard to watch one decide to give up journalism and just write pieces to make a certain audience feel good.
Some of us paid for a year before this show turned into a long partisan blowjob for Trump with a side of Matt dissing hypocritical liberals, back when they actually covered things that mattered occasionally.
Things like the Biden admin escalating a war with Russia... something Walter says Trump is trying to end while he simultaneously approves deep strikes on Russia with U.S. weapons, something even Biden did not do... it is enough to make a thinking person sick.
I might have worded it more delicately, and I don't care about dissing hypocritical liberals. I'm a liberal. If you're going to be hypocritical, you deserve dissing. But I do care that it feels like they've adapted their content to fit a certain audience.
I’ve been a supporter of Matt’s work for years and only recently have I been providing much needed negative feedback, within the last year.
I understand you’re a cracked out retard that doesn’t know any of this and so you simply make things up like a child, but I figured I’d at least clarify what the truth actually is for others.
Lol, I've personally witnessed this and confronted you about it over the course of years, so I have first-hand knowledge of your antics. You've never once explained why you've given Matt money for the privilege of opposing him publicly.
More crack head babbling. You will never find what you refuse to see. I’ve praised Matt and his Twitter files reporting repeatedly, even within the last year while he turned into a partisan bobble-head doll tuned to nod in rhythm with Walter’s bloviating. I praised their coverage of Americas involvement in Ukraine as well. There are many other instances of me praising and supporting the show in the past.
The difference is now that Trump won the nomination and since the democrats went after Taibbi he turned into a partisan shill. Meanwhile Walter Kirn is performing like a jester for Trump every week in order to secure a lifetime appointment to Librarian of Congress.
Before about last November I rarely complained because they criticized the administration in power and the media that protected him. Now they do the opposite.
Of course, if you had actually taken the time to read through my comments instead of pretending your limited interactions with me are representative of everything I ever said or posted on here you would have known this. Instead you went with the crack head method of having public hallucinations about years of my posting.
Got ya. In no way am I giving Biden a pass, he escalated the war and I was praising that the show used to actually cover that topic. Trump has gone further than Biden in regards to approving and facilitating long range strikes inside Russia with U.S. made weapons, that is just the reality.
But my intention isn’t giving Biden a pass. My complaint is that this show is giving Trump a pass instead of keeping up the focus on this topic. As far as I’m concerned, this entire Ukraine project spans not just party affiliation but over generations. Each president has moved us closer to this war, and Biden finally flung us into it fully with his absolute refusal to negotiate NO NATO for Ukraine. For that he should burn in hell.
I see you're buying into the crude approach to dialogue, sad. However, the jury of thinking people is out to whether they agree with you. Or let along sick.
But they promised me something better than Fox News. They told me that they are independent media, and independent media is better than mainstream media. It's not "captured" and doesn't twist itself into pretzels trying to justify the unjustifiable. They promised me journalism and I'm getting propaganda.
You don't see the propaganda because you agree with it and you've bought it. That's how propaganda works. But it is very much propaganda that Trump has done his best to stop the wars and it's also propaganda that we're invading Venezuela because Maduro is a dictator (Trump hosted a dictator last week and basically gave him a tongue bath, in the form of the Saudi Prince) and over drug trafficking (Trump is offering to *pardon* the ex-president of Honduras who is in a US prison convicted of trafficking 400 *tons* of cocaine into the US). You know it's propaganda because the contradictions and therefore the lies are obvious.
You don’t see the propaganda? Old Man Kirn is giving a full throated endorsement of the war on drugs…something that I think (until a few weeks ago) everyone acknowledges is an out and out farcical, failure. Until Trump does it, of course.
Grandpa can’t even bother getting his facts straight. Even assuming those boats are transporting drugs, they’re not transporting fentanyl, they’re transporting cocaine. Fentanyl almost exclusively (about 97% of it) comes in over land through two areas, southern border between San Diego and AZ and the northern border of Washington state.
So you’re saying that the stuff they're spouting about Trump trying so hard to stop the wars has all the validity and credibility of the Koran. I agree.
Walter Kirn is suggesting Trump has done everything he can do to stop the war. That I consider propaganda as it is patently false. Now does Kirn actually think it’s true? IDK. Same with Venezuela. We’re not going after Maduro because he’s a dictator and because of the drugs or because things are “bad” in the country. That can be demonstrated several ways. Now what is an opinion is whether or not if that were the case, it would justify what Trump is doing.
Week in and week out these two morons pontificate about the horror of the inaccuracy of MSM. But some how your panties are bunched if someone dares to critique your hero’s drivel. You are a pathetic suckadick
Matt, you once promised us that this was Golden Age of journalism. You did this at a time when you were openly cheering DOGE. You bought hook, line and sinker the lie that Elon Musk was interested in promoting free speech and efficiency in government. In an email exchange between you and Musk only slightly less embarrassing than the one between Larry Summers and Jeffrey Epstein, you sent him a Dear John missive telling him how hurt you were that he’d shadowbanned you when you’d agreed to not criticize him (you wisely revealed this to your readers before it was leaked).
Since then, the fraud of DOGE and the Comey, James & Weissman prosecutions, which was obvious to most working reporters except you, have been exposed.
Your response has been to double down on silly culture war memes.
A conservative back-of-the-envelope calculation puts your revenue at over $30 million per year.
My subscription will expire on Dec 31 (I tried to cancel earlier, but I’d paid the year subscription) me and thousands have been fleeing your page.
We were promised fearless journalism in the mold of IF Stone, but all we’ve gotten is rehashed culture war trivialities and settling of scores with your MSM enemies real and perceived. That and Trump apologia on a scale that would embarrass Fox & Friends.
Now in a note to your readers, you’ve promised to give us real journalism, not partisan tripe. I have my doubts, but maybe you could start today by acknowledging your shortcomings so far when it comes to reporting these last 4 years.
I believe DOGE didn’t fulfill any of its promises. It was performative from the start- and millions suffered needlessly because of it. We didn’t get our promised checks and spending went up. And Btw way Bill Clinton cut many more jobs through attrition and phasing out. It was never about that, Musk and his buddies who all are welfare queens who made their fortune through government (including Trump) hoovered up our private data which they can weaponize or profit from. I believe Comey is innocent until proven guilty.
Which is because the left responded so hard and vicious. Yet we all know when we look at the Morass of government on various levels we realize that it's not a good place for anyone, maybe even especially the ones that have to work in it. Hard work that accomplishes things of reality and value give humans satisfaction. The illusions of the US govt of today is bad on almost every level. Have pity on the public servants especially the ones that just ended up in this swamp of horrors.
Correction, government has been bery, bery good for Trump & cronies. Never have so few profited so much from Uncle Sam. Mind you, most of Trump’s fortune has come from bilking the government, that is if you include the nearly half a billion his dad slid him under the table after overcharging the US government in historic amounts, his epic cheating on his taxes and his historic grift and corruption while in office (the balance has been mainly shady Russian money, cheating of bank loans and money from TV). And of course, most of Musk’s money, as Trump reminds us, comes from government contracts in the forms of vast subsidies or payments to shoot things into the sky.
Walter and Matt, Wall Street needs to steal Venezuela’s vast oil, gold, and mineral resources…it has NOTHING to do with drugs…the US dollar dominance is plummeting and we are a trillion dollars in debt.
OUR GOVERNMENT DOESN’T CARE IF WE ALL DIE FROM DRUG OVERDOSES.
Delighted with your focus. Walter's observation that only fools today waste time with "did you know" Trump/Rubio/MAGA/RFK circle jerks by a media paid to mislead and deceive.
I particularly welcomed Walter's rebuke of Matt "I'm more worried about what might happen", than what's actually happening right now and has been happening over the last decade. Bard Matt, let us not forget, looked and listened hard in 2016 and deemed "We came, We saw, He DIED!" as the intelligent, liberal, and moral choice to lead America.
To Matt's credit he listened. But still confirmed Bard Matt's nausea-stalgia for the fictional land of Democratic make believe.
Walter is entirely correct - we're supposed to pretend the media isn't still covering for auto-pen, not the MAGA hate doll, but the actual auto-pen, fully functional arm of the security state, still pulling our strings in December 2025.
Walter is completely right, too, about trolls working for Big Pharma and trolls and nut cases whining that Trump 2.0 hasn't dismantled the US security state and built MAGA Disneyland on the hill in twelve months.
The principal aim of the auto-pen media is to reset skeptical Matt and his ilk back to Bard Matt once more backing Bernie and HRC and guess what: its fucking working.
The "Oops" moment of realization will arrive in less than 12 months when the auto-pen Dems and their auto-pen Republican pals regain control of Congress. Fun times!
Where are you coming up with the idea that Matt supported Clinton in 2016 or voted for her? As far as I know he did neither. He certainly never endorsed or openly supported her. He did shit on Trump, which was appropriate. Is that what you are referring to?
Walter just claims to and Matt mostly just tacitly agrees. It is a strange performance that I continue to observe for the same reasons that I still listen to NPR for as long as I can stand it in the morning.
You really nailed it. These two are the right wing version of NPR now and I have the exact same morbid fascination causing me to tune in - how far into partisan tripe will they sink this week?
When we actually invade Venezuela or engage in whatever war plan they cooked up, that will probably be peak. At least so far. But Matt lauding the bombing of Iran is a close second.
Walter, thank you for joining today despite your clearly not feeling well. It's obvious you felt strongly enough about doing this show today, feeling as awful are you do, because you have very sincere beliefs that you know have value, and that motivates you to participate, for our benefit. We do appreciate it very much. I grow concerned at times when listening to you and Matt, as I did a short time ago, that you two may have some very fundamental differences with regard to many issues, most all of them involving Trump. I worry that you two may split up, agree to go in different directions, but I rely on your deep friendship and mutual respect to hold the bond that keeps this relationship and program going. I would be so disappointed if it ever ended. I find myself, almost without exception, agreeing completely with your views, as I did today, with your comments re the Dems and parrots in the news media in the latest dem political strategy of "don't give up the ship", how enormously out of bounds that is, how significant, and how you had to challenge Matt, who seemed to not quite understand how it is clearly an act of insurrection. Matt seems to still maintain some hesitancy, some mental block, based possibly on his past experience where there were still certain norms and boundaries. Matt still seems to feel that Trump's often crude methods of communicating somehow balance or justify the negativity he receives, but hopefully as time goes on and he spends more time in conversation with you, and witnesses more of the extremes of the Dems and news media, he will have a more clear picture of the reality of things. I also agree with Walter completely on Trump's new WH tactic of showcasing fake news stories openly. The insane news media bias, hypocrisy, double standards, and open lying, needs to be exposed at the highest level.
Biff? I guess some of the cognitive dissonance (for listeners) may be attributed to the fact that more and more Taibbi appears to be a guest on The Walter Kirn Show.
Kirn is a love him or not quantity. But subscribers came here (initially) to read and occasionally listen to Matt Taibbi.
Kirn’s influence on Taibbi is nothing short of shocking. And it’s ironic. I will cancel my subscription too at the end of the week and when I do I will miss (if I miss any of it) Kirn’s bloviating. He’s entertaining. But anyone hoping for a balanced assessment of Trump’s administration won’t find it here.
No, I’m not. I want to know how far the right wing partisans in this audience, as far as they exist, would like the punishment of Kelly to go.
Sedition from what I understand is not punishable by death under US code. Despite that I want to know what they think should be done, not what is strictly legal.
For an informative podcast on what is really going on in Venezuela, check out Glenn Greenwald's episode on the topic. It will help clarify the situation:
The way Matt said that Comey “lawyered” his way out of it doesn’t fill me with hope Taibbi will cover this objectively.
What actually happened is the predictable outcome of pursuing this legal action under a person who was serving in an “acting” capacity and who was never approved. This is much less “lawyering” one’s way out of the situation and much more a case of obvious, blatant, malicious incompetence stopping the prosecution before it started by presenting a massive and unavoidable weakness in the case right off the batt.
And Matt described this like it was some magic trick by a Comey lawyer. Laughable.
Listening to the recorded livestream. Walter Kirn, the attacks by the State of Israel against Palestinians didn't start after October 7, 2023. They started in 1947-1948, and have been continuing ever since. The US aggression against Venezuela has been going on since the Hugo Chavez administration, since they are a major oil-producing country trying to chart an independent course through BRICS and their trade with Russia and China.
Just a pedantic detail, but what is meant by "firing on" survivors? How? With what? What specifically was the weapon used in the first strike? You don't "fire on" two people with an air-to-surface missle. Are they saying they took out the boat with a heatseeker and then, what? You flew back low and strafed the guys with bullets? What missle can a US aircraft fire and hit two people in the ocean?
The lack of specifics is a red flag in this. The stories show what looks a missle strike on a drug boat, it blows up. Then you are led to imagine firing a missle on two men in the water, which is impossible. WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED?
The best Walter can ever do to distract us from Trump’s obvious cognitive decline is to parse words or move us toward some left field justification of how horrible the place is (his opinion). The point is to get us used to Trump’s language and too many sheep have already adopted it as their own. The emotive intention and response by the media is one and the same. Anyone can hold an argument in a paper bag, but it doesn’t mean it still holds water, Walter.
Venezuela offered to sell us oil at favorable prices but we instead put tariffs on it. Interesting, though, that Venezuela won't export oil to Israel and that Chiquita banana cutout Trump wants to install vowed, as one of her first official acts as President of Venezuela, to move the Venezuelan embassy from Telaviv to Jerusalem. WTF?!
Was really bummed to hear Comey is off the hook on a technicality. This whole Russiagate saga feels like a repeat of the JFK assassination hearings, where the objective of the DC insiders club is to stall for as long as possible while slowly muddying the facts so that those alive at the time have conflicting understandings of what happened, and future generations just don't care.
A technicality which was completely foreseeable and preventable by the way. Almost like they don't actually give a shit if Comey even gets put on trial let alone locked up, only about putting enough of an "effort" out to fool the rubes into thinking that there is an actual pursuit for "justice."
Which is more likely - The entire Trump admin is too legally and constitutionally inept to know that this small technicality would be an issue, or that they knew it would be an issue and don't care because they got the headlines they wanted for a few weeks?
I concur. Trump occasionally throws something shiny to his diminishing faithful out of habit. Inertia. But he is ready to move on and focus on becoming the next Satoshi Nakamoto. There's indecent amounts of money to be made by the crypto bandits but there's not much time left. Little Marco can handle Russia; Trump has his eyes set on Trillionaire.
It took several attempts on al-Zawahari, resulting in the cumulative deaths cited, to finally get him in 2022 (!) with a much lauded 'surgical' strike on a balcony with two (!!) drone-launched Hellfire essentially non-explosive 'sword bombs' that only killed him and left the building intact, other than the balcony, so Matt is really off base here.
The point is that collateral damage of this sort is often cumulative and these 'extremely questionable' recent operations have produced a large number of nameless dead people in just 3 months. And it wasn't just 'two people in a boat', it was 11 people, making it more of a massacre and highly unlikely to have been a drug transport to boot.
Did Walter just say we’ve done our best to end the Gaza nightmare? WTF? Have we stopped the constant air bridge of weapons to the sycho sadist Israelis? That would be NO, Walter.
Kirn is hopeless when he’s healthy. Now he has a man cold what do you expect? 😂
Walter Kirn is brilliant and wise.
I suspect that you are neither.
I tuned in for five minutes and wished I hadn't. So let me understand: the US is supplying the weapons to both Ukraine and Israel, but Trump has done everything he can to stop the wars, even though he's not tried the one thing he could do which is stop the weapons and money. And suddenly, invading Venezuela is okay because we have Venezuelan refugees here and it's bad there or something and that justifies another war, oh, sorry, "doing something about it" (I couldn't give one flying f--k about the hypocrisy of the politicians and the media--those both go without saying).
If I wanted this crap, I'd just watch Fox News.
I'm curious why like Mr. Wright Stuff you simply cancel your subscription? This approach is clearly the theme log Racket News and isn't likely to change. I am not chastising or challenging, just curious?
I paid for a year. I still like the Eric Salzman content. I thought the Twitter files were very well worthwhile and Matt showed bravery in challenging the Russia, Russia, Russia theme. I wanted to support him. I used to enjoy America This Week, not because they bashed on the Left but because I thought they were both truly political orphans. But since October 7th, they've pretty much adopted a side and from what little I watch anymore are very careful about how they tread around that side, which completely undercuts their credibility. And Racket News's "theme" used to be exposing the things the powerful didn't want you to know, now it's only exposing things certain powerful people don't want you to know and ignoring or running cover for other powerful people, which really makes it no more useful than the mainstream Leftie media Matt and Walter ridicule.
An excellent and absolutely reasonable description of what’s happening here.
Reasonable. I've only recently subscribed mostly on Matt's history. I suspect my views are much closer to the middle because I haven't found them offensive. On the other hand I acknowledge it hasn't been the hard hitting deep dives Matt is known for. October 7th? Well war is hell and I'm uncertain just what unbiased would appear. In closing if this does turn into a gossip column by my criteria I'd probably agree with you.
Here is a paragraph from Taibbi's latest article: "Twelve years ago we had reports that the U.S. killed 76 children and 29 adults across eight years of failed efforts to drone one suspected terrorist, Ayman Zawahiri, and killed about 1,000 more bystanders while targeting 40 others. I covered that story, but few others did, while outlets like the New York Times and Newsweek ran fawning portraits of Barack Obama’s “Terror Tuesdays” drone-targeting ritual, through headlines like “How Obama Learned to Kill.”"
This is precisely what Israel is doing in Gaza. I suspect that Taibbi was critical of this when it came to the US on even the small scale, but by the IDF's own accounting, 83 percent of the 70,000 dead are civilians, and the excuse used by Israel is the same excuse used by Obama and Bush: civilians are just collateral damage and the terrorist shouldn't hide behind them.
So twelve years ago, when it came to America, Taibbi obviously thought this was a negative worth pointing out and noting, but now? "War is hell." Except it's not really war when your civilian-to-combatant ratio gets that high. It isn't when the US does it, which Matt seemed to understand. And it isn't when Israel does it, especially with our cover, finances, and weapons, which Matt seems desperate now not to understand.
I don't suspect that Matt will miss us when we're gone, and I will likely be gone when my subscription runs out, but there are so few decent journalists, it's hard to watch one decide to give up journalism and just write pieces to make a certain audience feel good.
Some of us paid for a year before this show turned into a long partisan blowjob for Trump with a side of Matt dissing hypocritical liberals, back when they actually covered things that mattered occasionally.
Things like the Biden admin escalating a war with Russia... something Walter says Trump is trying to end while he simultaneously approves deep strikes on Russia with U.S. weapons, something even Biden did not do... it is enough to make a thinking person sick.
I might have worded it more delicately, and I don't care about dissing hypocritical liberals. I'm a liberal. If you're going to be hypocritical, you deserve dissing. But I do care that it feels like they've adapted their content to fit a certain audience.
You've been here bitching relentlessly for years and years. 🤣 What a load.
I’ve been a supporter of Matt’s work for years and only recently have I been providing much needed negative feedback, within the last year.
I understand you’re a cracked out retard that doesn’t know any of this and so you simply make things up like a child, but I figured I’d at least clarify what the truth actually is for others.
Lol, I've personally witnessed this and confronted you about it over the course of years, so I have first-hand knowledge of your antics. You've never once explained why you've given Matt money for the privilege of opposing him publicly.
More crack head babbling. You will never find what you refuse to see. I’ve praised Matt and his Twitter files reporting repeatedly, even within the last year while he turned into a partisan bobble-head doll tuned to nod in rhythm with Walter’s bloviating. I praised their coverage of Americas involvement in Ukraine as well. There are many other instances of me praising and supporting the show in the past.
The difference is now that Trump won the nomination and since the democrats went after Taibbi he turned into a partisan shill. Meanwhile Walter Kirn is performing like a jester for Trump every week in order to secure a lifetime appointment to Librarian of Congress.
Before about last November I rarely complained because they criticized the administration in power and the media that protected him. Now they do the opposite.
Of course, if you had actually taken the time to read through my comments instead of pretending your limited interactions with me are representative of everything I ever said or posted on here you would have known this. Instead you went with the crack head method of having public hallucinations about years of my posting.
Maybe you should stick to The View and Rachel Maddow to keep from having your brain challenged by facts and intelligent conversation.
Agreed. Except for letting Biden off the hook...
Who is letting Biden off the hook? I said I valued the show back when they criticized the Biden admin.
"deep strikes on Russia with U.S. weapons, something even Biden did not do" is what I was referring to.
Got ya. In no way am I giving Biden a pass, he escalated the war and I was praising that the show used to actually cover that topic. Trump has gone further than Biden in regards to approving and facilitating long range strikes inside Russia with U.S. made weapons, that is just the reality.
But my intention isn’t giving Biden a pass. My complaint is that this show is giving Trump a pass instead of keeping up the focus on this topic. As far as I’m concerned, this entire Ukraine project spans not just party affiliation but over generations. Each president has moved us closer to this war, and Biden finally flung us into it fully with his absolute refusal to negotiate NO NATO for Ukraine. For that he should burn in hell.
I see you're buying into the crude approach to dialogue, sad. However, the jury of thinking people is out to whether they agree with you. Or let along sick.
"If I wanted this crap, I'd just watch Fox News."
Okay, go ahead
But they promised me something better than Fox News. They told me that they are independent media, and independent media is better than mainstream media. It's not "captured" and doesn't twist itself into pretzels trying to justify the unjustifiable. They promised me journalism and I'm getting propaganda.
i dont see the propaganda. Still independent reporting !
You don't see the propaganda because you agree with it and you've bought it. That's how propaganda works. But it is very much propaganda that Trump has done his best to stop the wars and it's also propaganda that we're invading Venezuela because Maduro is a dictator (Trump hosted a dictator last week and basically gave him a tongue bath, in the form of the Saudi Prince) and over drug trafficking (Trump is offering to *pardon* the ex-president of Honduras who is in a US prison convicted of trafficking 400 *tons* of cocaine into the US). You know it's propaganda because the contradictions and therefore the lies are obvious.
its not that simple sorry.
It's just that simple, sorry. That's how you know it's propaganda.
There’s nothing complicated about continuing the funding and arming of war. Denial is complicated, however.
You don’t see the propaganda? Old Man Kirn is giving a full throated endorsement of the war on drugs…something that I think (until a few weeks ago) everyone acknowledges is an out and out farcical, failure. Until Trump does it, of course.
Grandpa can’t even bother getting his facts straight. Even assuming those boats are transporting drugs, they’re not transporting fentanyl, they’re transporting cocaine. Fentanyl almost exclusively (about 97% of it) comes in over land through two areas, southern border between San Diego and AZ and the northern border of Washington state.
"Old man Kirn"? "Grandpa"?. What are you trying to say Graham?
And how is it you know so much about drug smuggling?
One man's propaganda is another man's bible.
So you’re saying that the stuff they're spouting about Trump trying so hard to stop the wars has all the validity and credibility of the Koran. I agree.
How do you distinguish between propaganda and ones opinion?
Walter Kirn is suggesting Trump has done everything he can do to stop the war. That I consider propaganda as it is patently false. Now does Kirn actually think it’s true? IDK. Same with Venezuela. We’re not going after Maduro because he’s a dictator and because of the drugs or because things are “bad” in the country. That can be demonstrated several ways. Now what is an opinion is whether or not if that were the case, it would justify what Trump is doing.
Week in and week out these two morons pontificate about the horror of the inaccuracy of MSM. But some how your panties are bunched if someone dares to critique your hero’s drivel. You are a pathetic suckadick
Checking my panties now.
They seem okay.
On to the knickers next. I'll keep you posted. Not sure why that's important to you, but really glad to help.
Matt, you once promised us that this was Golden Age of journalism. You did this at a time when you were openly cheering DOGE. You bought hook, line and sinker the lie that Elon Musk was interested in promoting free speech and efficiency in government. In an email exchange between you and Musk only slightly less embarrassing than the one between Larry Summers and Jeffrey Epstein, you sent him a Dear John missive telling him how hurt you were that he’d shadowbanned you when you’d agreed to not criticize him (you wisely revealed this to your readers before it was leaked).
Since then, the fraud of DOGE and the Comey, James & Weissman prosecutions, which was obvious to most working reporters except you, have been exposed.
Your response has been to double down on silly culture war memes.
A conservative back-of-the-envelope calculation puts your revenue at over $30 million per year.
My subscription will expire on Dec 31 (I tried to cancel earlier, but I’d paid the year subscription) me and thousands have been fleeing your page.
We were promised fearless journalism in the mold of IF Stone, but all we’ve gotten is rehashed culture war trivialities and settling of scores with your MSM enemies real and perceived. That and Trump apologia on a scale that would embarrass Fox & Friends.
Now in a note to your readers, you’ve promised to give us real journalism, not partisan tripe. I have my doubts, but maybe you could start today by acknowledging your shortcomings so far when it comes to reporting these last 4 years.
"My subscription will expire on Dec 31"
Well, Happy Damn New Year! Things are already starting to look up for 2026.
Why not address the writer’s more than valid criticisms you child.
That Wright guy has never been more than the fat kid who can't swim peeing in the pool.
And Steven is the little man in the nursing home with impaired sphincter function, literally and figuratively.
Such an amazing coincidence that all these haters pop up in comments all of a sudden.
If you dont like Racket, then listen to MS Now - if you don't work for then already...
Ahhh! Bye-bye little sensitive boy
Ask the nice lady in white to change your diaper and give you your meds, Steven.
We need more DOGE, a lot more.
Imagine a world where you tossed out 5 million Mexicans, and fired 5 million bureaucrats and taught them to pour concrete
This has not aged well— Matt calling DOGE amazing! and telling us it would usher in a new age of journalism. https://youtu.be/sLDaoW1UpSI?si=0Z3HPf7JMASrR9-N
Hey, if thousands are fleeing here and signing up on your site, you better renew.
So you approve of the waste DOGE uncovered? And you don’t believe Comey is guilty?
I believe DOGE didn’t fulfill any of its promises. It was performative from the start- and millions suffered needlessly because of it. We didn’t get our promised checks and spending went up. And Btw way Bill Clinton cut many more jobs through attrition and phasing out. It was never about that, Musk and his buddies who all are welfare queens who made their fortune through government (including Trump) hoovered up our private data which they can weaponize or profit from. I believe Comey is innocent until proven guilty.
Which is because the left responded so hard and vicious. Yet we all know when we look at the Morass of government on various levels we realize that it's not a good place for anyone, maybe even especially the ones that have to work in it. Hard work that accomplishes things of reality and value give humans satisfaction. The illusions of the US govt of today is bad on almost every level. Have pity on the public servants especially the ones that just ended up in this swamp of horrors.
Correction, government has been bery, bery good for Trump & cronies. Never have so few profited so much from Uncle Sam. Mind you, most of Trump’s fortune has come from bilking the government, that is if you include the nearly half a billion his dad slid him under the table after overcharging the US government in historic amounts, his epic cheating on his taxes and his historic grift and corruption while in office (the balance has been mainly shady Russian money, cheating of bank loans and money from TV). And of course, most of Musk’s money, as Trump reminds us, comes from government contracts in the forms of vast subsidies or payments to shoot things into the sky.
Hard work...
That used to mean strenuous physical labor. Now it often means just showing up at the office enough to get paid.
Walter and Matt, Wall Street needs to steal Venezuela’s vast oil, gold, and mineral resources…it has NOTHING to do with drugs…the US dollar dominance is plummeting and we are a trillion dollars in debt.
OUR GOVERNMENT DOESN’T CARE IF WE ALL DIE FROM DRUG OVERDOSES.
38 trillion, but who's counting?
No propaganda there!
Venezuela and Guyana next to it has lots of oil, that’s what’s special about Venezuela.
Yes
Delighted with your focus. Walter's observation that only fools today waste time with "did you know" Trump/Rubio/MAGA/RFK circle jerks by a media paid to mislead and deceive.
I particularly welcomed Walter's rebuke of Matt "I'm more worried about what might happen", than what's actually happening right now and has been happening over the last decade. Bard Matt, let us not forget, looked and listened hard in 2016 and deemed "We came, We saw, He DIED!" as the intelligent, liberal, and moral choice to lead America.
To Matt's credit he listened. But still confirmed Bard Matt's nausea-stalgia for the fictional land of Democratic make believe.
Walter is entirely correct - we're supposed to pretend the media isn't still covering for auto-pen, not the MAGA hate doll, but the actual auto-pen, fully functional arm of the security state, still pulling our strings in December 2025.
Walter is completely right, too, about trolls working for Big Pharma and trolls and nut cases whining that Trump 2.0 hasn't dismantled the US security state and built MAGA Disneyland on the hill in twelve months.
The principal aim of the auto-pen media is to reset skeptical Matt and his ilk back to Bard Matt once more backing Bernie and HRC and guess what: its fucking working.
The "Oops" moment of realization will arrive in less than 12 months when the auto-pen Dems and their auto-pen Republican pals regain control of Congress. Fun times!
Where are you coming up with the idea that Matt supported Clinton in 2016 or voted for her? As far as I know he did neither. He certainly never endorsed or openly supported her. He did shit on Trump, which was appropriate. Is that what you are referring to?
Once again you confirm your ignorance. Please fuck off.
So you have no basis for this, thank you for confirming that.
It is PATHETIC that Walter and Matt believe everything about Venezuela that the government tells them.
Walter just claims to and Matt mostly just tacitly agrees. It is a strange performance that I continue to observe for the same reasons that I still listen to NPR for as long as I can stand it in the morning.
You really nailed it. These two are the right wing version of NPR now and I have the exact same morbid fascination causing me to tune in - how far into partisan tripe will they sink this week?
When we actually invade Venezuela or engage in whatever war plan they cooked up, that will probably be peak. At least so far. But Matt lauding the bombing of Iran is a close second.
matt!! y'all so measured and careful. Walter is so glib and careless!! please! Make him stop.....
Walter, thank you for joining today despite your clearly not feeling well. It's obvious you felt strongly enough about doing this show today, feeling as awful are you do, because you have very sincere beliefs that you know have value, and that motivates you to participate, for our benefit. We do appreciate it very much. I grow concerned at times when listening to you and Matt, as I did a short time ago, that you two may have some very fundamental differences with regard to many issues, most all of them involving Trump. I worry that you two may split up, agree to go in different directions, but I rely on your deep friendship and mutual respect to hold the bond that keeps this relationship and program going. I would be so disappointed if it ever ended. I find myself, almost without exception, agreeing completely with your views, as I did today, with your comments re the Dems and parrots in the news media in the latest dem political strategy of "don't give up the ship", how enormously out of bounds that is, how significant, and how you had to challenge Matt, who seemed to not quite understand how it is clearly an act of insurrection. Matt seems to still maintain some hesitancy, some mental block, based possibly on his past experience where there were still certain norms and boundaries. Matt still seems to feel that Trump's often crude methods of communicating somehow balance or justify the negativity he receives, but hopefully as time goes on and he spends more time in conversation with you, and witnesses more of the extremes of the Dems and news media, he will have a more clear picture of the reality of things. I also agree with Walter completely on Trump's new WH tactic of showcasing fake news stories openly. The insane news media bias, hypocrisy, double standards, and open lying, needs to be exposed at the highest level.
Biff? I guess some of the cognitive dissonance (for listeners) may be attributed to the fact that more and more Taibbi appears to be a guest on The Walter Kirn Show.
Kirn is a love him or not quantity. But subscribers came here (initially) to read and occasionally listen to Matt Taibbi.
Kirn’s influence on Taibbi is nothing short of shocking. And it’s ironic. I will cancel my subscription too at the end of the week and when I do I will miss (if I miss any of it) Kirn’s bloviating. He’s entertaining. But anyone hoping for a balanced assessment of Trump’s administration won’t find it here.
Very nicely stated!
Would you like to see Kelly tried and executed?
I'm curious, are you a veteran?
No, I’m not. I want to know how far the right wing partisans in this audience, as far as they exist, would like the punishment of Kelly to go.
Sedition from what I understand is not punishable by death under US code. Despite that I want to know what they think should be done, not what is strictly legal.
For an informative podcast on what is really going on in Venezuela, check out Glenn Greenwald's episode on the topic. It will help clarify the situation:
https://rumble.com/v72h7c4-system-update-show-551.html?e9s=src_v3_sa_o%2Csrc_v1_sa%2Csrc_v1_ucp_f
Also, I hope Matt covers the dismissal of the case against Comey. I would like to hear his thoughts on the matter.
The way Matt said that Comey “lawyered” his way out of it doesn’t fill me with hope Taibbi will cover this objectively.
What actually happened is the predictable outcome of pursuing this legal action under a person who was serving in an “acting” capacity and who was never approved. This is much less “lawyering” one’s way out of the situation and much more a case of obvious, blatant, malicious incompetence stopping the prosecution before it started by presenting a massive and unavoidable weakness in the case right off the batt.
And Matt described this like it was some magic trick by a Comey lawyer. Laughable.
Listening to the recorded livestream. Walter Kirn, the attacks by the State of Israel against Palestinians didn't start after October 7, 2023. They started in 1947-1948, and have been continuing ever since. The US aggression against Venezuela has been going on since the Hugo Chavez administration, since they are a major oil-producing country trying to chart an independent course through BRICS and their trade with Russia and China.
Also, aggression against the entire hemisphere.
Matt needs to stop watching Psaki and MSNOW(MSNBC) it is nothing but propaganda! No wonder it gets confusing for him!
Just a pedantic detail, but what is meant by "firing on" survivors? How? With what? What specifically was the weapon used in the first strike? You don't "fire on" two people with an air-to-surface missle. Are they saying they took out the boat with a heatseeker and then, what? You flew back low and strafed the guys with bullets? What missle can a US aircraft fire and hit two people in the ocean?
The lack of specifics is a red flag in this. The stories show what looks a missle strike on a drug boat, it blows up. Then you are led to imagine firing a missle on two men in the water, which is impossible. WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED?
We'll never know, is my guess...
The best Walter can ever do to distract us from Trump’s obvious cognitive decline is to parse words or move us toward some left field justification of how horrible the place is (his opinion). The point is to get us used to Trump’s language and too many sheep have already adopted it as their own. The emotive intention and response by the media is one and the same. Anyone can hold an argument in a paper bag, but it doesn’t mean it still holds water, Walter.
Venezuela offered to sell us oil at favorable prices but we instead put tariffs on it. Interesting, though, that Venezuela won't export oil to Israel and that Chiquita banana cutout Trump wants to install vowed, as one of her first official acts as President of Venezuela, to move the Venezuelan embassy from Telaviv to Jerusalem. WTF?!
Was really bummed to hear Comey is off the hook on a technicality. This whole Russiagate saga feels like a repeat of the JFK assassination hearings, where the objective of the DC insiders club is to stall for as long as possible while slowly muddying the facts so that those alive at the time have conflicting understandings of what happened, and future generations just don't care.
A technicality which was completely foreseeable and preventable by the way. Almost like they don't actually give a shit if Comey even gets put on trial let alone locked up, only about putting enough of an "effort" out to fool the rubes into thinking that there is an actual pursuit for "justice."
Which is more likely - The entire Trump admin is too legally and constitutionally inept to know that this small technicality would be an issue, or that they knew it would be an issue and don't care because they got the headlines they wanted for a few weeks?
It certainly feels like the latter of the two
I concur. Trump occasionally throws something shiny to his diminishing faithful out of habit. Inertia. But he is ready to move on and focus on becoming the next Satoshi Nakamoto. There's indecent amounts of money to be made by the crypto bandits but there's not much time left. Little Marco can handle Russia; Trump has his eyes set on Trillionaire.
I don't like listening to you.
It took several attempts on al-Zawahari, resulting in the cumulative deaths cited, to finally get him in 2022 (!) with a much lauded 'surgical' strike on a balcony with two (!!) drone-launched Hellfire essentially non-explosive 'sword bombs' that only killed him and left the building intact, other than the balcony, so Matt is really off base here.
The point is that collateral damage of this sort is often cumulative and these 'extremely questionable' recent operations have produced a large number of nameless dead people in just 3 months. And it wasn't just 'two people in a boat', it was 11 people, making it more of a massacre and highly unlikely to have been a drug transport to boot.
Taibbi is getting as careless as Kirn.