She doesn't need to stoop to things like checking the facts, reading your writing, looking for proof etc, she knows two things in her blood and bones—that she is on the Right Side of History™, armed with proper dogma and thus righteous and infallible; and that anyone opposing her tribe is ipso facto an evil "far right" bigot who needs to be slandered and denounced so that any inconvenient facts don't see the light of day.
Matt is Galileo arguing with a tribunal of religious fundamentalists. They would sooner give him the death penalty than admit he's right and they're wrong.
Excellent! Matt has made this mistake before - showing up to engage bad-faith self-promoters masquerading as 'edgy', clever and moral people of the left - the perfect Sanders supporter, in short. I watch the Rising regularly and she's proven to be predictably partisan and, thus, indifferent to fact.
My guess is she's yet to take a stand that would threaten her membership in team progressive blue, whatever that means at present. Sad, really. Coz she's very far from a fool; just young and unwilling to take any real intellectual risks and stand apart from her crowd.
Kudos to Matt for giving her a chance - she certainly doesn't deserve many more. An American friend in Paris has a saying: "Here's what you need to know about the American left: there isn't one." Brie is another case in point.
She'll eventually follow Ezra Klein to the NYT, or NPR, or a sinecure among the rest of the Versailles crowd. I'm not at all sure she's ready to admit to herself that cash and fame are her true north stars.
I think the mistake is that Matt doesn't perform very well when he feels personal about it. He came off extremely badly vs. Hasan and he's not very good here.
Mostly because he comes in fixated on his points and is no Jordan Peterson on his feet.
Like for example failing to make clearly the point that "I didn't need to search for Bernie Sanders material because the types of searches I was doing would have turned up Bernie Sanders material if the organizations were censoring Bernie Sanders"
I would argue that Briahna Joy Gray fully understands that most Americans really don't care about Bernie Sanders anymore, if they ever cared at all, or can even remember Sanders or recall more than a few details of his campaigns, probably now more forgotten in the collective American imagination than the Battles of Antietam and Bull Run.
Gray climbed aboard the U.S. media gravy train and straightaway fashioned a new career, post-Bernie, now busy bull-horning the same platitudes and hackneyed political positions---from the right, left and in-between---as the other thousands of media "influencers," co-splaying journalists, amateur and professional partisan propagandists, and career opportunists now polluting the political ether---here, there and everywhere.
Bernie Sanders was an internship to a job, a way station on the career path, a seat on the media merry-go-round where the chief pursuit is to grab more "clicks" and likes" than the other social media jockeys.
Briahna Joy Gray, indeed, is no different from the "retired" schlubs from Langley, Foggy Bottom, the Pentagon and Wall St. who go on MSNBC and Fox to...pollute the political ether.
No, he's not Jordan Peterson, and maybe he could have done better, however, the reality is, Matt is an investigative journalist (a damn good one in my view) not a seasoned debater or a live air personality (read talking head), AFAIC he did fine relative to Brie, who shot herself in the foot repeatedly and will go on many folks growing list of people to not trust to get the story right.
Matt just said in the interview that the team used three-letter agencies and the like as search terms and unearthed a treasure trove. If you go digging with a shovel and find gold after one scoop, are you going to next try with an oil rig drill?
Thx. Upon reflection - chalk this one up as a win for Brie - clever, attractive woman of color holds white, establishment cis-male to account. The optics and chance to advance brand Brie by taking Matt "to task" for his indifference to genocide (TM) is all that matters.
My only critique of your comment- 14 million people voted for Sanders in 2016: they were not the type you described. Many voted for Trump months later.
In 2020, Sanders campaign was infiltrated by the exact people you described. No one will ever convince me that Sanders 2020 wasn't an op; Sanders got neutralized and captured, I don't blame him, because he did some very good things for 50 years before his capture.
He did a lot of good, but the proof is in the pudding. When push came to shove, he sided with the party of war and corruption. He might as well have endorsed Bush-Cheney. And his Russiagate stuff? What a way to end a career. Cheers, and you're quite right about many Sanders supporters. Good people.
BERNie had Heart Problems, but all the policies BERNie wanted, are feelen the BERNie in biden admin and Iran, Ukraine, Israel, OIL, GAS, Inflation Reproducing act are Feelen the BERNie of usa = weak & wimpy like BERNi'e's heart.
You do realize you're making my point with A; and that B has nothing to do with the integrity, intellectual honesty, or intelligence of Ms. Gray. So, thanks!
This was theatre. It is what the minions of the MSM and the surveillance state do. Is there any better illustration of their vacuous little hearts than The Munk Debate, the Taibbi/Shellenberger Congressional Hearing and the other distorted "gotcha" attempts to put Matthew Taibbi in his place. Matt is a truth speaker. "We the people" deserve a solutions oriented truth/fact based American national conversation. RACKET NEWS is attempting to provide exactly that.
Visiting surveillance controlled media is like visiting a leper colony. Is it any wonder that some of the inhabitants stink. Or when visiting an insane asylum being surprised that many there are bat sh!t crazy? Swimming in the mind numbing waters of faux journalism and the electronic surveillance sewer that it serves has left us all a little mad. There is no left or right. The Republic, the Constitution and the free citizen is our only engine of survival. Everything else is psyop and pathology.
I can't help but feel you're misinterpreting, or at least poorly characterizing, your Paris friend's statement, "Here's what you need to know about the American left: there isn't one."
Facts remain facts. Brie, as one would expect from a truly dogmatic progressive, relies on obfuscation. It is a long standing modus operandi of the faithful progressives. Their "truths" demand adherence to self generated proclamations in lieu of accepting inconvenient facts.
It think what you write describes most ideologies. Any fact worth its salt is going to be inconvenient, right? Is not the truth usually sort of gritty? When you want to put something over on someone, does that not involve a certain amount of smoothing off?
I disagree that "Any fact worth its salt is going to be inconvenient". A fact, by definition, is based on a verifiable occurrence. It would be very convenient to one or the other side of any disagreement. Refusal to acknowledge and accept facts, to form opinions by individuals, is a glaring indicator of a true ideologue. Self delusion is rationalized as the end justifies the means. Obfuscation by proclamation is not smoothing off the grittiness. It is commonly known as lying and fabrication.
The bottom line is that the "Twitter Files" was a very selective, disingenuous, meretricious piece of propaganda cooked up by Musk, disseminated by handpicked lunchpailers (Taibbi, Weiss, Schellenberger), and then when Col. Musk saw that enough was enough and it was done, it was done. Weiss seemed to sense this sooner than the others.
LOL, though, on the concept that "someone got to Musk and made him cut the "twitter files" series short." You might be confusing the twitter files with that Spook movie scenario you're working on.
Taibi states in the interview that the team used three-letter agencies (or something to that effect) as search terms and got a treasure trove of info. If you were to strike gold after one scoop of a shovel are you then going to reach for an oil drill? jeesh.
I see a new meme coming, the Right Side Of History, or RSOH for short. We'll call them arsehoes. And I don't know about you, but my lower case L key someltimes sticlks places I doln't intend. So if I wrilte arseholes by accident, you'll forgive me.
If there's a Right Side of History, there ought then to be a Left Side of History, and maybe other sides as well. "Right Side of History" seems to me to get us back to good old 19th-century optimistic progressivism, which I would think after the 20th century might provoke just a bit of skepticism.
Yes I think you're exactly right she reports on stories that other reporters have reported on... she doesn't do investigative journalism herself and hasn't a clue on how to do that.
People are chastising you, claiming she's indeed smart. I lean in your direction. I heard her on Glenn Loury a couple of years ago. She was discussing her student loan debt and whined, no kidding, "What I am supposed to do with a Harvard law degree?"
The irony is that she tries to come off as an "anti-establishment" figure, and yet she happily does the Establishment Left's bidding over and over again. She's a self-righteous shill, the Taylor Lorenz of The Hill.
She's like a liberal whose pained education about all the things the Democratic Party forgot it stood for was stopped halfway through. So she knows that we shouldn't be giving Israel bombs to kill Palestinians, but she was out the day we learned that the Dems forgot what free speech was.
As a Leftist for over 50 years, I can assure you there is no such thing as the 'Establishment Left.' Woke identity politics has nothing to do with Leftism.
As I understand it, wokeism is basically a restatement of Marxism, with intersectional identity replacing class as the determinative factor. I won’t pretend to be an expert on either, but it does seem to new pretty close to leftism.
Then we'll agree ti disagree on the existence of an "Establishment Left." I'll continue to maintain that it exists. I somewhat agree that woke identity politics don't entirely agree with a more traditional understanding of Leftism, but like it or not, in the current day, wokeism has co-opted much of the movement in the same way MAGA has co-opted much of the Right. Both are really two sides of the same coin.
'The Establishment Left' is a contradiction in terms. People who haven't a clue what Leftism is have named wokeism as a Leftist school of thought, and millions of others who are equally philosophically ignorant (not stupid) have bought it. I mean, most people think 'Idealism' means having high ideals or goals. That's nonsense. Idealism is the philosophical opposite of materialism, which is not the love of possessions. Idealism says ideas are 'primary;' "I think, therefore I am." Materialism believes that matter is 'primary.' You need a brain (matter) in order to think.
You lost me with the 'two sides of the same coin' thing.
If you don't think there is an Establishment Left, then you're likely part of it, and living in too much of a bubble to be self-aware. The Establishment Left includes those who run the DNC, those who run and are employed by most of the major news outlets, and all those who believe the version of the world peddled by those two institutions. And yeah, John, that's a very real thing.
Surely you are aware that the majority of the contemporary left is following the precepts of the Frankfurt School, not concerned with class but with oppressed identity groups.
I see, however, that the American Communist Party's platform is informed by traditional Marxism, only giving lip service to social justice as a means to recruit more "workers" in the ongoing project of destroying Capitalism and creating the worker's paradise, the destruction of the Bourgeoisie for the Proletarian and all that rot.
You are correct. That is a separate discussion; however, calling oneself a Leftist doesn't mean you are one. In fact, towards the end of his life, Marx declared, "I am not a Marxist."
She is completely in the wrong on this one, and it's not the first time she's fumbled. However, she's definitely not an establishment actor in any way. She easily could have gone that direction and had a more successful career. If you watch Rising regularly or catch her podcasts she focuses most of her attention on leftist ideas and criticizing liberals. There's no harm in being honest about her while criticizing her take on the Twitter Files, etc.
She bats for the Leftist Establishment all the time, although I truly believe she is completely unaware of the fact that she is doing it. Just look at her attempt to berate Taibbi for "not doing enough journalism that is favorable to the Left" as though that's how journalism is actually supposed to work. She's unabashedly partisan and makes no attempt to hide it, thus her credibility as a "journalist" is non-existent. She's trying to "punch up" in this case, and she does it all the time - desperately trying to seem credible while also being completely biased.
Brie has no ability to question her conclusions. She simply pulls out a bullhorn, pops on the record that skips in the same place everytime and goes to town. She jumped the shark years ago and has found solace in intellectually stunted company.
That's the bottom line. I was a regular listener for a while because the format of 10-15 minutes on a current topic in the news is convenient. But she takes over ever segment from her weak-kneed cohost and turns it into an adamant, preachy, whiney lecture welded to her narrative. It became unlistenable to me. A shame, because the Friday substitute hosts show the format can work.
That guy Gorbachev seemed pretty reasonable. Now, it wouldn't have been that difficult to pull anything over on Reagan, but he seemed to be a pretty straight shooter.
Gorbachev's religion wasn't Communism. He was a realist. A bit naive, considering what we did in the following decades, but he knew the USSR couldn't continue as it was. Can't tell you either way if Brie is a communist and it doesn't really matter. She is as intellectual as Boeing is an engineering driven company in 2024.
Pretty sure she was fired because she's not a compelling personality. Or likable. Or interesting. Or has a unique perspective. Or added much value vis a vis her pay. Or had thoughtful content.
I was disturbed and disappointed that Brie said on several occasions "OK, I got the facts wrong, but let's set that aside and talk about my question". For a reporter to not care about facts, and to admit it openly, is damning. Then to insist on discussing a question which was based on those incorrect "facts" is worse.
Brie is a ShitSitrrer, out to cause discord and get clicks from folks who want discord. She should not be on a reputable show.
Yeah, the oh-who-cares-about-the-facts attitude is really unbecoming of a journalist. I'm glad Matt wouldn't move on until he had made a case for every correction he wanted to make on air.
It's not just the who-cares-about-the-facts attitude, it's the who-cares-about-the-twitter-files attitude that bothers me. Matt gave the world a gift with his reporting and they just dismiss it as right-wing drivel.
Matt left her little choice but own up to her dishonesty. Getting the facts wrong proves that, in this case, she's more interested in banging a drum than checking her claims. Unfortunately, that's become a pattern for her. Scratch the surface and you'll find someone who in October will be sounding the alarm and calling for all right and moral people to line up behind Biden.
She's 'that' kind of leftie, totally onboard with suppressing fact and giving America's censorship and military industrial complex a free hand. Her self image matters far more to her than the well being of ordinary folks inside and outside America.
Interesting observation. She definitely prints like the standard "lets go to lunch at Chipotle, extra beans for all, and roll up the windows on the way back to the office" type. Just can't get enough of herself. The vanity is nauseating.
I respect Matt for taking the high-road. Partisan journalists, too often, rely on inductive logic to fuel their stories (I believe ‘XYZ’ narrative, therefore -> [Facts: A, B, NOT C] are true). Too often unwilling (or unable) to re-assess the facts fairly, accurately and thoroughly, only the narrative (right or wrong) prevails. And as a result, it drives any reasonable discussion into this murk, conversations that lack symmetrical argument and response.
I like Gray sometimes, but she does this so often I’ve stopped watching Rising. I like Soave’s reporting quite a bit, although I wish he’d push back harder when Gray filibusters.
She’s certainly not a journalist, she’s an activist, and fairly honest about it. You can certainly see her lawyer roots when reporting, but she’s more like a shady, unethical lawyer that will argue something unrelated to the case when they don’t have the facts on their side. Gray does this in nearly every segment, and about nearly every topic. If the facts aren’t going her way, she argues something unrelated — often created from full cloth — facts be damned.
(I was really surprised to see Jilani go down this road. Incredibly disingenuous of him, and I liked his work, which has mostly become trollish tweets — and no actual writing — the last few months.)
100% agree on all of the above. Shady lawyer tactics are Brie's specialty. Misdirection, strawman and other logical fallacies, changing goalposts, filibustering, even mic bullying. I've always found Robby kind of a lightweight, but these days I prefer his no-nonsense, reasonable style as well as his takes on bread and butter issues.
I liked Robby's reporting at Reason well before he was on the show. He got major-league dragged when he was among the very first to call bullshit on the Rolling Stone/UVA rape story. And he was right, and everybody else was wrong, although those wrong "everybody else" people who attacked Robby's character, ferociously, all got kicked upstairs to jobs at the New York Times and Washington Post, for being "right in spirit," I guess. He was even the bête noire for Chapo Trap House for quite a bit – for being right about the wrong things. Those Chapo guys can be really funny, but they're maybe a hundredth as smart as they think they are (see also: literally every other Brooklyn beardo boy).
There was a good moment a few months back where Robby had enough of Gray's playing loose and fast and annoying with the facts on something Gaza-related and screamed "I don't give a fuck!" or something along those lines. His brethren at Reason were all quite pleased that Robby finally broke, and wish he'd do it more often, but I appreciate that Robby can be milder and calmer and nicer and smarter than other people in the room. We need more of that, and less bully pulpit-pundits.
I tried listening to the Chapo House nerds a few years ago, but couldn't take their smug pretension. And I do like Robby—when I say I've thought of him as a bit of a lightweight, I only mean that he's not always the most eloquent speaker or nuanced thinker. Sort of how I think of Kim Iversen. Which is not to say that he or she should engage in lawyer-speak like Brie!
I think of myself as left-libertarian, sharing some viewpoints and positions with both the progressive (Brie) and libertarian (Robby) sides. I just can't stand Brie's method and style, and ultimately I think it hurts her cause.
Yeah, I haven't listened to Chapo in years. I do think they can be funny, but they can be even more annoying. Amber A'Lee Frost can be quite good (I've been meaning to pick up her book), but she hasn't been on it in years. Nor has former Chapo and later Briahna Joy Gray/Bad Faith co-host Virgil Texas, who had direct messaged with an underage girl at some point and has never been heard from again (exiled from Brooklyn for all I know, or put to death and buried in the Brooklyn Barista Bad Boy Cemetery).
Chapo Will Menaker fancies himself some sort of movie expert and has some incredibly bad takes on movies, which annoys me the most. I saw his review of MASH on Letterboxd where he says "many of my favorite movies are about how being in a war would be fun and cool," which is the most ridiculously stupid misreading of one of the greatest anti-war movies I think I've ever seen.
And I'm with you: I consider myself both left-leaning and a civil libertarian, and appreciate views from both of those camps (but I also like hearing reasonable arguments from conservatives, moderates, and even intelligent Trump supporters — hearing from everyone is important!). I thought Ryan Grim was much better on Rising. Although he wears his similar-to-Gray politics on his sleeve, he could actually get into the weeds on almost any topic without resorting to hysterical filibustering. He did, however, get his feathers incredibly ruffled many times by erstwhile third host Kim Iversen, with some of her "kooky side of the online left" takes (some, including a weird-to-watch-in-retrospect Kim segment on how "the COVID vaccine is not actually stopping transmission" that Ryan got in quite an unfortunate, ridiculous huff about, since Kim was proven right a week or two later).
But it could be much worse, if you've ever seen Ayesha Cross fill in for Briahna, with some "olde tyme-y ripped-from-MSNBC" takes that make you close the window immediately. I'd rather have my testicles waxed by a pack of rabid hyenas than have to sit through that (or MSNBC proper, natch). Aren't there any honest leftie/liberals journos that can honestly cover all sides of any story that aren't covert party hacks left? Or even better: how about some journos that can discuss all sides of a topic where we don't even know their personal politics?
Yeah, I was a fan, and he seemed to be on the same beat as Taibbi, Greenwald, and other lefties/liberals warning of encroaching authoritarianism in the post-Trump Democratic Party. I liked his projects with Leighton Woodhouse and Shant Mesrobian a good bit, but they didn’t stick with them long enough to get them established. He was affiliated with Shellenberger’s Public briefly, and now seems unattached.
After going quiet for a bit, he’s seemingly rebranded as a “resistance” troll, maybe auditioning for a role at The Bulwark or Arc Digital with ultimate dullwits like Grossman or Belvedere? Not a great career arc, and out of character enough that I hope he’s doing okay.
But that’s not what Jilani has been at all. He wrote about the Democrats being a threat to democracy while claiming that Trump is in Public two months ago. He wrote a quite positive piece about Josh Hawley in The Federalist. He’s been generally one the smarter, calmer, intentionally non-partisan voices — although he’s almost certainly a leftie — on Twitter for years, which makes this turn so surprising.
Besides Taibbi, I’ve seen him going after Coleman Hughes — although maybe not directly — and members of FIRE.org’s staff.
I’ve never watched Rising but was a big fan of Breaking Points and have the same objection about Krystal and Saagar. Krystal is just not nearly as smart as she thinks she is, and Saagar seems a bit too squishy to push back on her more absurd claims.
Yeah, I stopped watching Breaking Points a while back as the entire show seems to be mostly based on Krystal's activism now, and Saagar is allowed very little push back. They were a bit better when they were still on Rising, although Krystal exhibited the same activism vs. journalism failings Briahna does. (I occasionally check in when they have a good guest or something, and I mostly like Krystal, I just have issues with their format.)
It appears that Krystal and Briahna are besties, and I'd be pretty certain that they (along with a host of other 2020 Bernie surrogates/"Justice Democrat"-friendly activist journalists) are getting their talking points in order via text and email — or even a Slack channel — every morning.
Krystal is now married to Kyle Kulinski, one of the founders of the Justice Democrats that brought us "The Squad," a political operation that quickly became one of the biggest, most embarrassing failures in modern politics, and the ultimate destruction of the 2016 Bernie movement, which replaced old-fashioned class-based policies with laptop class-friendly policies and identity politics. (Kulinski himself doesn't seem too bright, and is an insufferable jerk out loud about nearly everything. He was also my least favorite cast member on Jersey Shore; who'd have thought he'd have entered politics? It thought it would have been Snookie for sure.)
I'd note that Krystal and Briahna exhibit many of the same failings as our wonderful congresspeople — especially prevalent in "The Squad" — of not being able to think on their feet, instead battering home a pre-rehearsed talking point, and surrounding it with convenient fabrications and misdirections no matter where the conversation, and the facts at hand, go. If it's annoying when the activist press and corporate employees and CEOs do it, it's just pure evil when arch-partisan executive branch types, congress, mayors, governors, as well as activist bureaucrats, NGO employees, judges and lawyers do it. Everything can't be about personal politics all the time, especially when your personal politics are so stringent and inflexible and shallow, and they're treated with cult-like religiosity and righteousness.
The big problem with Kulinski, Ball, Gray, Marianne Williamson, Chapo, Cenk Uygur, and even Ryan Grim, Ross Barkan, David Sirota, et al, is that they're not actually DNC: they're the people behind and in lockstep with the upstart branch of the party in The Squad, who instead of reforming the Democratic Party from the inside, became one of the worst—and most embarrassing—parts of the damn thing.
That's why most of those people, who cheered Matt Taibbi when they thought he was one of them, turned on him so hard when the Twitter/FOIA/Censorship Files kept coming, because it so deeply implicated the party that they're failing miserably to reform so much. They're doing to the thankless, idiotic work of sheep-dogging the pseudo-radical, pseudo-left youth vote back into a Democratic Party that's more the party of the Ted Lieus, the Jamie Raskins, the Dan Goldmans, the Adam Schiffs, the Debbie Wasserman-Schultzes, the Nancy Pelosis than ever before. They've literally accomplished less than nothing—the Democrat Party has radically regressed, if we're being honest—but at least they're really loud and annoying about it.
BP is Krystal's channel and explains Saagar's inability to have robust debates with her when she goes unhinged. Which is on most subjects. She's not a rational thinker and that comes through clearly when she's pushed on her opinions and gets defensive. I quit watching in their second year.
I try to stop watching but the headlines given each day in the emails I receive from them are so darn compelling. So I jump from time stamp to time stamp and fast forward during Krystal's repetitive rants.
I've actually done something similar with both Breaking Points and Rising, where I watch the first 2 minutes of each segment only. I know there's a solid 8-12 minutes in each segment that are worthless, so why stick around?
I agree; I lose interest quickly these days with both shows because I can usually tell where the conversation is going to go after the 'news' part. Seems like things are rarely discussed with any iota of nuance anymore. I actually find the dynamic between Krystal and Emily or Saagar and Ryan better. There's not as much steamrolling over their co-hosts on those segments.
My God if you think shady lawyers act like Brie, you have not practiced law. Law is a very difficult profession because Brie would be considered VERY honest. She lets you know her bias at the top. Again, I don’t think this was her best work, but some fair questions were asked.
I never have practiced law, and I forgot that, like politicians, you can’t criticize lawyers unless you’ve done their job before. Or: I’ve dealt with enough shady lawyers to know one when I see one.
I’m not a Gray hater. She can be good on topics where she doesn’t have to resort to obfuscation, but obfuscation pops up more often than not.
There’s a whole host of Bernie surrogates in alt media that all seem to be in a text chain with each other, and get their messaging linked up every morning and they’re all always on the same exact beat. Some of them are pretty good, some aren’t. I was a Bernie supporter too, but the problem is with this group is they’re deluded into thinking they’re affecting change from the inside in a Democratic Party that’s rotten, twisted and broken. It’s over. And allegiance to party is what they do, not journalism, even if they claim otherwise.
Wow! When Briana said 'what did you look into that would be a concern of the left? or whatever I wanted to yell 'the FBI, DHS, etc involved in censoring the American people IS a concern of the left or at least used to be.
If what's going on in Gaza is a genocide which is false propaganda. How come the MSM never talks about the REAL Muslim GENOCIDE of the Uyghurs China?? Maybe Briana is afraid because the Uyghurs slave labor is used to make solar panels which are 90% coming from China. That's why Biden and the green grifters of the solar industry don't care as long as they can make money off a slave labor from China.
Sweet, sweet Boris. Are you still looking for the Trump Russian pee tape? do you have it!? Well keep looking then. I'm sure it's somewhere mixed up in your porn collection on Betamax. Get to it, son!
CIA FAB?? SELLOUT BORIS? believe the GREEN GRIFTER$ Profit$ biden admin and using Defense Production Act of this corrupt admin to import these Genocidal Solar Panels https://public.substack.com/p/ban-chinese-solar-genocide-panels Trump caled it Uyghur Muslim Genocide! RIGHT AGAIN!
Boris we freed all the inhabitants of the mental asylums in the USA. They're all on the street getting antidepressants, they don't have homes because all the illegals have taken all the shelter space. Yes, Brian here former mental asylum patient but now I'm living on the streets and hoping that I can score some fentanyl from China number one!!!
Not responding to this link directly, but to the thread as a whole:
I am sick unto death of being bombarded with polemical "reporting" on Israel's war against Ham-Ass every time I search for news, both because it's impossible to get any neutral information on this particular nightmare and because I strongly oppose US funding of wars and our government's pathetic attempts to maintain its obsolete role as world cop defending international commerce.
My wife has a degree in Latin but rarely speaks it. Cutesy Time is Over! Choice==BRANDON's = BLOB's Endless WARS -VS.- TRUMP's MAGA Peace Through Strength! HEY dead language BS Cutesy Time is Over! https://www.grammarly.com › blog › non-sequitur
What Is a Non Sequitur? Definition and Examples | Grammarly
Nov 1, 2023A non sequitur is a response or statement that is not related to the previous one. Learn how to use non sequiturs in writing for comedy and characterization, and how to avoid them in logic and reasoning.
Agreed - As up to date as she is on the issues, she's unaware of how much the national security state is censoring pro-Palestinian voices and she's asking that question? She's so narrow sometimes!
It seems like Matt had an epiphany about her something most of us had the first few times we listened to her. Typical indoctrinated Ivy League talking head who interrogates guests rather than interviews them..... the irony being that the guests like RFK Jr, Dershowitz, Matt, Schellenberger, etc have light years more knowledge and experience than her.
People you or me don't like also have knowledge about world affairs, sometimes quite a bit. They may even have valuable insights which your or my outlook has blocked due to our worldview or emotions.
Reporting on the horrors of genocide does not make her a Hamas supporter. That Israel engages in the same actions as Nazis did in the Warsaw Ghetto deserves all the criticism she gives.
You glossed over the genocide of October 7th against the Israelis which started the whole conflict. Not to mention the 150 plus hostages they took who continue to endure the daily assaults by Hamas as detailed by a hostage recently released.
After the aid convoy bombing, practically the whole world has had enough with Israel. BJG is hardly alone in criticizing Israel. You'd have to be pretty oblivious to not know this fact
ah, there's the not so subtle rebranded bigotry. boris, you have to do better. I admire your adherence to stupidity because at least you're consistently conned into the same clap over and over, but buddy, at least try to do a better job at making it yours. Use your creativity - I mean what little you have - and try express your hatred of Jews in a novel, less predictable way. In other words, try. This isn't a big ask, little fella. You can do it!
I did not gloss over 10/7..i didn't mention it. 10/7 was not the beginning, horror that it was. Occupation of land (I'll be generous and say since 1967) and the refusal to give it up (please don't blame Palestinean leadership or lack there of) is the beginning.
this is Dr. Anthony Fauci thinking. One day of mass murder and slaughtering people indiscriminately doesn't make genocide. Silly goose, it's collateral damage in a war that defines genocide. Just like fauci's fainting couch moment when he realized he was the science and could just change the definition of words. Greg, you have to do better than this. You just have to.
Clearly, you have nothing to say on the merits of my little paragraph. I am flattered that you looked up my profile and could use it in your attempt to hide the fact that you could not respond on the merits.
I was surprised to read this piece from Matt in that he seemed to think highly of her as a journalist/commentator. She's a progressive activist. That's fine. But, how he didn't know this going into this discussion is surprising. He's been around awhile. But, perhaps he had to be on the receiving end of her 'inquiry' to see her for what she is.
Stopped watching Rising when they f***** over Kim to protect Fauci. Brie seems like a lovely breed of leftist, which is unabashedly incompatible with the Constitution. She may be pleasant, but she represents those who are a threat to the founding document.
No, no she's not. There is a peculiar problem with leftist hosts in Rising. It was there with KBall and continued through today, including Kim. A nasty group of people.
He could probably use some media training. He held his own here very well. He was a little more defensive on Mehdi Hasan's show ("doing PR work for the world's richest man!"). But then again, when someone starts throwing knives as you with the first question, then reaches for a gun, one might get defensive.
My read is that Matt is fully aware of what he's going to encounter. Just because you know the game is rigged doesn't mean you don't step up to the plate anyway.
What has surprised me about Matt lately is his willingness to spend time and energy trying to justify himself to his former peeps. He wants them to see reason and whether or not he is just realizing that reason isn't their point, or that he doesn't want to be seen as a Maga sympathizer is unclear. He's wasting time on this. They won't let him win.
She's getting worse every day. I actually used to kind of like her. But as the Bernie campaign recedes into distant memory (gravely disappointing epilogue and all), and Brie retreats ever farther into her own bubble, the less relatable, reasonable and appealing she is. I'm surprised she's still on the show, unless there's just a lot of hatewatching going on.
I couldn’t understand what poor old Bernie had to do with anything. In 2015 Hillary and her vile sidekick Debbie WS put the knife in his back good and deep. Chastised, he stayed in the Senate as a faithful, predictable shill for every talking point Democrats came up with. He’s a goner.
The whole exchange was confusing. I remember the Substack article when Musk pulled the rug out from under the Twitter files and wondered then if Matt and Michael were straying too close to information Musk didn’t want discussed.
She was bad even during Bernie’s first run. Some congresswoman accused Bernie of racism and Brie, his head of comms, took it completely seriously and I believe even thanked her for the feedback before politely pushing back. Instead of calling her full of crap, as she clearly was. Even then she was looking out for her media career way more than she was actually trying to get Bernie elected.
I agree. I saw Monday's but haven't yet seen Matt's rebuttal (yesterday?). I'm usually but not always in Briahna's camp and only occasionally in Robby's, but I appreciate the show for its diverse and often polar-opposite viewpoints, and the chemistry between the hosts. Briahna is sharp as a tack but like all of us, even she can have blind spots and focus to strongly on purity. I hope there is no permanent rift between her and Matt, because I know she considers him a good journalist, as do I. Like Briahna, I am however perplexed and disappointed by his silence on Gaza, particularly given his vocal opposition to the US proxy war in Ukraine. I am very grateful to him for his critical coverage of the national security state, censorship, and Dems' new embrace of both.
You're disappointed with his silence on Gaza? Did it ever occur to you that not everyone can drop everything they are doing to opine on Gaza? Were you disappointed by his silence on every atrocity before and since Gaza? Is a stance on Gaza some kind of purity test now?
Exactly. He nailed when he said to Bri “I’ve always said Gaza/Palestine was the canary in the coal mine re new surveillance…” which conveniently failed 10/7
Now the AI oddly named Lavender that Israel found to have used for targeting he’s got a great start.
+972 got a great scoop with Lavender. It's as dystopian as eff. AI war machine programmed to accept a 100 to 1 civilian to military target kill rate depending on the rank of the military target.
Yeah. Still haven’t wrapped my head around Lavender :(
The one Matt & Walter missed & in their zone is when Congress did a resolution conflating Zionism & antisemitism. We know Semitic definition already mangled.
That "shitshow" is being funded by, and carried out with the diplomatic cover of, the United States. Israel's apocalyptic siege of Gaza harms Israel's security interests, and the US's unconditional support of it harms the US's security interests. Israel has become its own worst enemy, and a liability to the US.
Agree about Sharpton. Have any facts about Brie or Jesse Jackson? Clearly not. Both focus on class more than race. I admit that Jackson evolved on the issue.
Sure, check out her Twitter feed or pick at random a few episodes of "The Hill" where she defends the idiocy of the Summer of Love, 2020 version or the insanity that has gripped universities with DEI. It's a consistent, dishonest, 1/2 hearted effort to report anything accurately. That's why I compared her to the other well known race hustlers. Because that is what she has become.
I generally like Briahna Joy Gray (her positions on Gaza have been excellent and she usually asks good questions - especially in comparison to immoral toady Robbie). But that segment from Monday with Matt was one of the few times where Robbie was far more logical and balanced. She was just being absurd... and yes, Matt is correct: prosecutorial. It just seemed like she had made up her mind and was hell-bent on getting a confession.
Well, I would say, not aligning with her moral and factual positions on Gaza, would lead me to think you need to re-align your heart, as well as your analytical skills about what constitutes a genocide.
Speaking of genocide, I didn’t realize the Israelis were only using paragliders to kill 33,000 + people (not counting of course the mass graves). The news gives the impression they have an air force, bombs, drones, tanks and a highly sophisticated AI system to target anyone they decide is a terrorist and blow them and everyone around them to their death.
I guess the point is to show off your ignorance then. First off you speak as if there was no history of 75 years of massacres by Israelis. You can read Israeli historian Ilan Pappe if you want to end your ignorance. B
Then when it comes to Oct. 7 itself, since not a single woman on Oct. 7 has been confirmed as a rape victim.... since by Israeli numbers over 400 of the dead are acknowledged as military not civilian woman and children - that's in Haaretz (you know, an Israeli newspaper) ... since there's plenty of good reporting that a significant number of the 800 or so civilians (some or many of which may have been armed since the kibbutz all have defense components to them - in fact one kibbutz fought off the raid) died in a "mass Hannibal" incident done by the Israeli military using tank fire and hellfire missiles ... since after the Hamas military raid, Islamic Jihad and unaffiliated people also streamed through the fence... in other words, we don't who did who (Hamas, Islamic Jihad, random individuals, the Israeli military) did what to how many civilians in cross-fire and who were deliberately killed by which group.
There's a reason why Israel so quickly buried those 70+ burned out cars which had carried multiple passengers. Use your common sense if you have any. Hamas was carrying light arms - you can't carry heavy weapons on a motorcycle or a para-glider... while the damage done to those cars was exactly what a hellfire missile does. And the damage done to the buildings in Kibbutz Beri was done by tank fire - exactly as the Israeli eye-witnesses have stated.
But certainly some civilians were killed by one of the Palestinian factions in cross-fire and some deliberately. Maybe 100s. Yet, how does that justify the killing of at least 40,000 people who had nothing to do with the Oct. 7 raid - more than half of them woman and children (since the population of Gaza is 50% percent children) and then the deliberate starving of the remainder? The complete destruction of nearly every home? The destruction of every hospital but 2? The destruction of every university? The deliberate execution of academics, poets, doctors, nurses, medics and journalists? These are documented facts. You can't find the links - I'm not going to do your work for you.
But you'll clearly prefer to wallow in your atrocity fantasies justifying genocide. That's the lesson of the Holocaust: genocide is never justified or should be done to anybody.
Another person unquestioning Hamas stories despite the video evidence they themselves took. It's remarkable stupidity or hatred of a particular semetic people.
She's a black supremacist. You're siding with a racist. She's gone over this time and time again. Also, grab a dictionary. Look up genocide and then remove your head from your backside.
Plausible genocide is what the International Court of Justice ruled back in January, for what has been unfolding in Gaza. International humanitarian law is not dictated by "dictionaries".
Karen, words have meaning. I can't believe this point has to continually be repeated. For example, vaccine has meaning. Immunity and immune response are not the same thing. Also, the ICJ has said virtually nothing about the 500k killed in Syria or the 10k Yazidis killed by ISIS, so let's not get too excited by a court that seems to lose focus when the issue at hand requires intellectual honesty. In short, the court is a joke. Like most international bodies are.
"This woman" generally does have her facts straight. More saliently, that what is occurring in Gaza is plausibly a genocide unfolding is not an opinion of Briahna's, but the *decision* of the International Court of Justice in January 2024. Israel is isolating itself from the international community, as is the US by unconditionally funding and providing diplomatical cover for Israel.
Brie hasn't had her facts straight since 2019. I'm sorry karen, but your judgement is iffy at best and your reliance on bigoted 'journalists' like brie indicate you're not thinking.... you're just accepting as fact her ramblings. This interview she had with MT wasn't an outlier. She's been this way for years. Please..... do your research.
You generally like a journalist who as you acknowledged, was hell bent on getting a confession? Hmm, may want a hard look at your judgement in journalists.
I feel like if anyone was going after confession it was Matt. He would not let it go and just had to list all of the grievances that he came there to air. I kept wondering if he was looking for her to get on her knees and apologize.
I have found BJG to be one of the better "left" talking heads on YT. Especially a couple few years ago, she confronted head-on questions about what it takes/means to be "on the left" in a particularly socialist fashion.
Most of the American "left", including self-identified Marxists, are in all but labels and t-shirts some variety of liberal. Like every other American across the spectrum.
Most of Matt's followers, judging by the comments here, are one flavor or another of right-wing sloganeer who wouldn't like Brie no matter what she says or how she conducts herself. Par for the rightwing course.
On the other hand, I do think Brie has a job to do on Rising and that job leads her into taking liberal or radlib "woke" positions that insult both her and our intelligence as leftists. Fortunately for Brie, Robbie's on-display juvenile idiocy around Gaza makes her look good even when she goes down a rabbit hole.
Her obsession with Matt's "bias" regarding the Twitter Files is, I think, deeply personal, as well as part of her "job". She really resents Matt for not using "Bernie" as a search term, probably because like a lot of Bernie fans from the before-time she has a hard time accepting that anything other than nefarious manipulations by all and sundry explains Sanders' massive failure and what it meant for that "surge of socialism" we heard so much about.
The person wrote that most of his *audience* is right-wing, judging from the comments here. I concur. Matt isn't, even if he appeals to many on the right. He acknowledges that liberals no longer care about government/corporate censorship and other free speech issues - formerly issues championed by the left - and that the right, the progressive left, and Libertarians are now on the same side of this issue.
Presumably you are responding to "Most of Matt's followers, judging by the comments here, are one flavor or another of right-wing sloganeer who wouldn't like Brie no matter what she says or how she conducts herself. Par for the rightwing course." and pretending that I think Matt is right wing?
Just as hard right dumbasses latch onto black writers like Sowell and Hughes to launder their racist takes through a "negro" lens, Matt gets championed by some really ugly rightwingers because, for the moment, free speech advocacy lets them direct their fire at the usual suspects without seeming to be the usual rightwing turds.
So, to be very clear, I don't think Matt is right wing. Having read all his books and subscribed here from the beginning I think I would have discovered his "rightism" by now.
He has some dumb takes, like everyone else, but that is neither here nor there.
Wow, your flavor of idiocy is rare. Your hatred of anything other than yourself must make you a blast at parties, airport terminals, the DMV and animal shelters.
Matt is an old-fashioned liberal who isn't a fan of war, really doesn't like censorship, and also opposes things like the government spying on our own citizens. I don't think he's ever voted for a Republican. These days, I don't think he'd vote for many Democrats either. But he was a Kucinich supporter when Brie was just becoming a teenager. Hell, he supported Bernie before Brie did.
Matt has a loyal following who have read him since at least the RS days. Following his publication of the Twitter Files, he gained a large number of Twitter followers, as people were interested in this government/NGO/tech industry conspiracy to censor. Many of them also found his Substack. It is true that the newcomers seem to be more to the right than the previous audience, but all the newcomers have really made this comments board great. If one wants an echo chamber for comments, one can go to The Free Press. And maybe since they no longer perceive that they are surrounded by other Trump-haters, some of those with TDS have radically drawn back their Orange Man Bad rants.
But for Brie to even think for a minute that Matt doesn't go after the right-wing bad guys, it demonstrates her ignorance. Matt goes after the FBI, DHS, CIA, etc. You know, THE BAD GUYS?? Her problem is that she, along with an enormous number of idiots in this country, have decided that the FBI, DHS, etc. are all great, because they will help prevent Trump. All fun and games until they turn their guns on you.
Like I said, I think she has a personal investment in the Bernie catastrophe having been caused by nefarious doings above and beyond the DNC and MSM blatant manipulations. She also has a job to do on Rising.
I can't agree that one-note rightwingers make anything great. but as we used to say YMMV.
Spicy take - right wingers and left wingers in and of themselves are not the problem. When either side turns authoritarian is where we have problems. And in 2024, the left wingers are the authoritarians.
If you accept the way Americans talk about "left and right" as having some relationship to the traditional meanings of "left" and "right" then I agree these labels are obsolete.
The right, and they have been doing this for 40+ years, label Democrats "socialists" and "communists" with great frequency. Obama, according to the brain-damaged, historically illiterate American right, was either a "communist", a "socialist", or a foreign-born Muslim jihadi burrowing into the pureland of Amerikkka to destroy it from within. And these are the folks who have gifted us with the "meaning" of "left" that Americans regularly operate with.
The "left", if we just bracket the meaninglessness invoked in the previous paragraph, are now just as bad as the idiot right. Oppose mandated vaccines? "Right wing extremist". Call Killary names? "Just another useful idiot in the vast right wing conspiracy". Trump is a fascist, American democracy teeters at the brink and a few thousand yahoos in the Capitol is an attempted coup. If this is the left, I'm John Coltrane.
If we persist against the rising tide of idiocy that characterizes most of what passes for "political debate" in the American sphere and hold to the tripartite division of socialist-left, liberals of the left and the right, and conservatives on the right, we can still use the labels "left and right" to mean something.
But by all means, join the clown car folks and think that Wall Street Droner-in-Chief Obama is a committed "leftist" and see where that gets you!
The clip from today was exasperating to watch. "Ok, I got a bunch of stuff about you radically wrong - I don't see why you want to focus on THAT part. I want to talk about how you didn't conduct yourself in a way that would have validated MY preconceptions." Then to condescendingly imply that somehow you were being overly personal and unnecessarily defensive was beyond the pale. I had the impression that she was genuinely shocked that one could take issue with the sloppiness of her analysis, and that an apology and correction were in order. I was heartened to see that the comments were nearly universally critical of her sanctimonious attitude.
The larger point here is who cares if Matt is writing about the Left or writing about the Right as long as he is uncovering the biggest abuses of power. Right now, those seem to be coming from the Left.
She doesn't need to stoop to things like checking the facts, reading your writing, looking for proof etc, she knows two things in her blood and bones—that she is on the Right Side of History™, armed with proper dogma and thus righteous and infallible; and that anyone opposing her tribe is ipso facto an evil "far right" bigot who needs to be slandered and denounced so that any inconvenient facts don't see the light of day.
Matt is Galileo arguing with a tribunal of religious fundamentalists. They would sooner give him the death penalty than admit he's right and they're wrong.
Bad Faith, indeed.
Excellent! Matt has made this mistake before - showing up to engage bad-faith self-promoters masquerading as 'edgy', clever and moral people of the left - the perfect Sanders supporter, in short. I watch the Rising regularly and she's proven to be predictably partisan and, thus, indifferent to fact.
My guess is she's yet to take a stand that would threaten her membership in team progressive blue, whatever that means at present. Sad, really. Coz she's very far from a fool; just young and unwilling to take any real intellectual risks and stand apart from her crowd.
Kudos to Matt for giving her a chance - she certainly doesn't deserve many more. An American friend in Paris has a saying: "Here's what you need to know about the American left: there isn't one." Brie is another case in point.
She'll eventually follow Ezra Klein to the NYT, or NPR, or a sinecure among the rest of the Versailles crowd. I'm not at all sure she's ready to admit to herself that cash and fame are her true north stars.
I think the mistake is that Matt doesn't perform very well when he feels personal about it. He came off extremely badly vs. Hasan and he's not very good here.
Mostly because he comes in fixated on his points and is no Jordan Peterson on his feet.
Like for example failing to make clearly the point that "I didn't need to search for Bernie Sanders material because the types of searches I was doing would have turned up Bernie Sanders material if the organizations were censoring Bernie Sanders"
Also, maybe the former spokesperson for the Bernie Campaign doesn’t understand that no one really cares about Bernie Sanders anymore.
I would argue that Briahna Joy Gray fully understands that most Americans really don't care about Bernie Sanders anymore, if they ever cared at all, or can even remember Sanders or recall more than a few details of his campaigns, probably now more forgotten in the collective American imagination than the Battles of Antietam and Bull Run.
Gray climbed aboard the U.S. media gravy train and straightaway fashioned a new career, post-Bernie, now busy bull-horning the same platitudes and hackneyed political positions---from the right, left and in-between---as the other thousands of media "influencers," co-splaying journalists, amateur and professional partisan propagandists, and career opportunists now polluting the political ether---here, there and everywhere.
Bernie Sanders was an internship to a job, a way station on the career path, a seat on the media merry-go-round where the chief pursuit is to grab more "clicks" and likes" than the other social media jockeys.
Briahna Joy Gray, indeed, is no different from the "retired" schlubs from Langley, Foggy Bottom, the Pentagon and Wall St. who go on MSNBC and Fox to...pollute the political ether.
I
Shoulda, woulda, coulda...
No, he's not Jordan Peterson, and maybe he could have done better, however, the reality is, Matt is an investigative journalist (a damn good one in my view) not a seasoned debater or a live air personality (read talking head), AFAIC he did fine relative to Brie, who shot herself in the foot repeatedly and will go on many folks growing list of people to not trust to get the story right.
Matt just said in the interview that the team used three-letter agencies and the like as search terms and unearthed a treasure trove. If you go digging with a shovel and find gold after one scoop, are you going to next try with an oil rig drill?
Exactly... he didn't search "Trump" or "right" either... he searched the agencies and he struck gold and mined it.
It would have been a great analogy for him to use. Crazy how he is being pigeonholed into something he clearly Isn’t.
Might be the whole 'explaining things to a toddler' is just something not considered.
Kudos. The best description of her I've heard.
Thx. Upon reflection - chalk this one up as a win for Brie - clever, attractive woman of color holds white, establishment cis-male to account. The optics and chance to advance brand Brie by taking Matt "to task" for his indifference to genocide (TM) is all that matters.
My only critique of your comment- 14 million people voted for Sanders in 2016: they were not the type you described. Many voted for Trump months later.
In 2020, Sanders campaign was infiltrated by the exact people you described. No one will ever convince me that Sanders 2020 wasn't an op; Sanders got neutralized and captured, I don't blame him, because he did some very good things for 50 years before his capture.
He did a lot of good, but the proof is in the pudding. When push came to shove, he sided with the party of war and corruption. He might as well have endorsed Bush-Cheney. And his Russiagate stuff? What a way to end a career. Cheers, and you're quite right about many Sanders supporters. Good people.
BERNie had Heart Problems, but all the policies BERNie wanted, are feelen the BERNie in biden admin and Iran, Ukraine, Israel, OIL, GAS, Inflation Reproducing act are Feelen the BERNie of usa = weak & wimpy like BERNi'e's heart.
Perfectly stated!
A. Ezra Klein was never a leftist. B. She is no more dogmatic than her co-host.
You do realize you're making my point with A; and that B has nothing to do with the integrity, intellectual honesty, or intelligence of Ms. Gray. So, thanks!
This was theatre. It is what the minions of the MSM and the surveillance state do. Is there any better illustration of their vacuous little hearts than The Munk Debate, the Taibbi/Shellenberger Congressional Hearing and the other distorted "gotcha" attempts to put Matthew Taibbi in his place. Matt is a truth speaker. "We the people" deserve a solutions oriented truth/fact based American national conversation. RACKET NEWS is attempting to provide exactly that.
Visiting surveillance controlled media is like visiting a leper colony. Is it any wonder that some of the inhabitants stink. Or when visiting an insane asylum being surprised that many there are bat sh!t crazy? Swimming in the mind numbing waters of faux journalism and the electronic surveillance sewer that it serves has left us all a little mad. There is no left or right. The Republic, the Constitution and the free citizen is our only engine of survival. Everything else is psyop and pathology.
Agreed, in many respects.
By the way Paul those were great comments yesterday.
Any handle with "NYC" in it is starting off behind the 8 ball with the rest of America, lol....seriously...lmao
Donald Trump is about to close the circle with that reality.
I can't help but feel you're misinterpreting, or at least poorly characterizing, your Paris friend's statement, "Here's what you need to know about the American left: there isn't one."
Good to know! Thanks!
More succinctly, Welcome to the Machine.
This is Matt's Coleman Hughes on 'The View' moment. Reasoning with those who prefer to change facts.
Facts remain facts. Brie, as one would expect from a truly dogmatic progressive, relies on obfuscation. It is a long standing modus operandi of the faithful progressives. Their "truths" demand adherence to self generated proclamations in lieu of accepting inconvenient facts.
It think what you write describes most ideologies. Any fact worth its salt is going to be inconvenient, right? Is not the truth usually sort of gritty? When you want to put something over on someone, does that not involve a certain amount of smoothing off?
I disagree that "Any fact worth its salt is going to be inconvenient". A fact, by definition, is based on a verifiable occurrence. It would be very convenient to one or the other side of any disagreement. Refusal to acknowledge and accept facts, to form opinions by individuals, is a glaring indicator of a true ideologue. Self delusion is rationalized as the end justifies the means. Obfuscation by proclamation is not smoothing off the grittiness. It is commonly known as lying and fabrication.
It wasn't that long ago that people with similar attitudes burned witches.
times change, people never
Eppur si muove.
So it does, but in what direction? Forward or backward?
I think it’s a spiral, in a downward direction.
Yes -- or a strange attractor.
Feel the heat?
So the bottomline is that someone got to Musk and made him cut the "twitter files" series short? Is that correct?
The bottom line is that the "Twitter Files" was a very selective, disingenuous, meretricious piece of propaganda cooked up by Musk, disseminated by handpicked lunchpailers (Taibbi, Weiss, Schellenberger), and then when Col. Musk saw that enough was enough and it was done, it was done. Weiss seemed to sense this sooner than the others.
LOL, though, on the concept that "someone got to Musk and made him cut the "twitter files" series short." You might be confusing the twitter files with that Spook movie scenario you're working on.
Nothing there? Really?
Yeah, some people really still believe that, which is fascinating.
Taibi states in the interview that the team used three-letter agencies (or something to that effect) as search terms and got a treasure trove of info. If you were to strike gold after one scoop of a shovel are you then going to reach for an oil drill? jeesh.
I see a new meme coming, the Right Side Of History, or RSOH for short. We'll call them arsehoes. And I don't know about you, but my lower case L key someltimes sticlks places I doln't intend. So if I wrilte arseholes by accident, you'll forgive me.
If there's a Right Side of History, there ought then to be a Left Side of History, and maybe other sides as well. "Right Side of History" seems to me to get us back to good old 19th-century optimistic progressivism, which I would think after the 20th century might provoke just a bit of skepticism.
I expect no less from most talking heads. What's her reporting experience? Isn't she a lawyer by trade?
Galileo ... Jesus Christ what an embarrassment.
That was very funny - thanks
Well said!
Brie is horrible & disingenuous.
She's and activist, not a journalist.
Yes I think you're exactly right she reports on stories that other reporters have reported on... she doesn't do investigative journalism herself and hasn't a clue on how to do that.
And not too smart either.
Brie is NOT stupid. That’s why this was so appalling.
I would be willing to bet she is an operative. Anytime you see that kind of nonsensical pushback, it's government sponsored newspeak.
The problem is not that she's not smart. The problem here is that she's acting in bad faith and being a bit of a cunt.
Feckless?
People are chastising you, claiming she's indeed smart. I lean in your direction. I heard her on Glenn Loury a couple of years ago. She was discussing her student loan debt and whined, no kidding, "What I am supposed to do with a Harvard law degree?"
Ok maybe she is smart, just not too bright.😁
Actually, she is quite smart. Criticize her content, not her intelligence.
The irony is that she tries to come off as an "anti-establishment" figure, and yet she happily does the Establishment Left's bidding over and over again. She's a self-righteous shill, the Taylor Lorenz of The Hill.
She's like a liberal whose pained education about all the things the Democratic Party forgot it stood for was stopped halfway through. So she knows that we shouldn't be giving Israel bombs to kill Palestinians, but she was out the day we learned that the Dems forgot what free speech was.
Your comment is a bitter poetic pill that captures the essence of the woke leftists' intentional ignorance.
As a Leftist for over 50 years, I can assure you there is no such thing as the 'Establishment Left.' Woke identity politics has nothing to do with Leftism.
As I understand it, wokeism is basically a restatement of Marxism, with intersectional identity replacing class as the determinative factor. I won’t pretend to be an expert on either, but it does seem to new pretty close to leftism.
Then you don't understand it. At all. Thanks for alerting us.
Sorry, then you (and millions of others) don't understand, but billions have been spent to ensure that you (they) don't.
Then we'll agree ti disagree on the existence of an "Establishment Left." I'll continue to maintain that it exists. I somewhat agree that woke identity politics don't entirely agree with a more traditional understanding of Leftism, but like it or not, in the current day, wokeism has co-opted much of the movement in the same way MAGA has co-opted much of the Right. Both are really two sides of the same coin.
'The Establishment Left' is a contradiction in terms. People who haven't a clue what Leftism is have named wokeism as a Leftist school of thought, and millions of others who are equally philosophically ignorant (not stupid) have bought it. I mean, most people think 'Idealism' means having high ideals or goals. That's nonsense. Idealism is the philosophical opposite of materialism, which is not the love of possessions. Idealism says ideas are 'primary;' "I think, therefore I am." Materialism believes that matter is 'primary.' You need a brain (matter) in order to think.
You lost me with the 'two sides of the same coin' thing.
If you don't think there is an Establishment Left, then you're likely part of it, and living in too much of a bubble to be self-aware. The Establishment Left includes those who run the DNC, those who run and are employed by most of the major news outlets, and all those who believe the version of the world peddled by those two institutions. And yeah, John, that's a very real thing.
I never said woke-ism had anything to do with it.
Surely you are aware that the majority of the contemporary left is following the precepts of the Frankfurt School, not concerned with class but with oppressed identity groups.
I see, however, that the American Communist Party's platform is informed by traditional Marxism, only giving lip service to social justice as a means to recruit more "workers" in the ongoing project of destroying Capitalism and creating the worker's paradise, the destruction of the Bourgeoisie for the Proletarian and all that rot.
Anyway, this is a separate discussion.
And a good many of your powerful friends on the right are big supporters of this movement, it's just carried out surreptitiously.
You are correct. That is a separate discussion; however, calling oneself a Leftist doesn't mean you are one. In fact, towards the end of his life, Marx declared, "I am not a Marxist."
She is completely in the wrong on this one, and it's not the first time she's fumbled. However, she's definitely not an establishment actor in any way. She easily could have gone that direction and had a more successful career. If you watch Rising regularly or catch her podcasts she focuses most of her attention on leftist ideas and criticizing liberals. There's no harm in being honest about her while criticizing her take on the Twitter Files, etc.
She bats for the Leftist Establishment all the time, although I truly believe she is completely unaware of the fact that she is doing it. Just look at her attempt to berate Taibbi for "not doing enough journalism that is favorable to the Left" as though that's how journalism is actually supposed to work. She's unabashedly partisan and makes no attempt to hide it, thus her credibility as a "journalist" is non-existent. She's trying to "punch up" in this case, and she does it all the time - desperately trying to seem credible while also being completely biased.
Brie has no ability to question her conclusions. She simply pulls out a bullhorn, pops on the record that skips in the same place everytime and goes to town. She jumped the shark years ago and has found solace in intellectually stunted company.
That's the bottom line. I was a regular listener for a while because the format of 10-15 minutes on a current topic in the news is convenient. But she takes over ever segment from her weak-kneed cohost and turns it into an adamant, preachy, whiney lecture welded to her narrative. It became unlistenable to me. A shame, because the Friday substitute hosts show the format can work.
What's her "narrative"? I'm not a regular viewer.
She's a communist. They lie.
Honest to fucking god -- do you even know what a communist is? Clearly not.
Is she not an avowed Marxist?
That guy Gorbachev seemed pretty reasonable. Now, it wouldn't have been that difficult to pull anything over on Reagan, but he seemed to be a pretty straight shooter.
Gorbachev's religion wasn't Communism. He was a realist. A bit naive, considering what we did in the following decades, but he knew the USSR couldn't continue as it was. Can't tell you either way if Brie is a communist and it doesn't really matter. She is as intellectual as Boeing is an engineering driven company in 2024.
I call Marxists communists. I guess I'm the weird one.
She's a communist? My god, you need to learn what a communist is. It seems the political spectrum is a dark mystery for you to make that comment.
Back from recess already?
Understatement
Great take (not). Disparaging her does not help the situation. Calling anyone you disagree with names gets us nowhere.
And she absolutely refused to issue a correction, she interrupted Matt several times, and, of course, HAD to bring up Palestine.
The Hill only hires whores🤷🏾♀️
😂... Wait a second I don't think Katie halper was a whore... 😆
No. she's not. That's why they fired her.
Pretty sure she was fired because she's not a compelling personality. Or likable. Or interesting. Or has a unique perspective. Or added much value vis a vis her pay. Or had thoughtful content.
I was disturbed and disappointed that Brie said on several occasions "OK, I got the facts wrong, but let's set that aside and talk about my question". For a reporter to not care about facts, and to admit it openly, is damning. Then to insist on discussing a question which was based on those incorrect "facts" is worse.
Brie is a ShitSitrrer, out to cause discord and get clicks from folks who want discord. She should not be on a reputable show.
Carry on, Matt!
Yeah, the oh-who-cares-about-the-facts attitude is really unbecoming of a journalist. I'm glad Matt wouldn't move on until he had made a case for every correction he wanted to make on air.
It's not just the who-cares-about-the-facts attitude, it's the who-cares-about-the-twitter-files attitude that bothers me. Matt gave the world a gift with his reporting and they just dismiss it as right-wing drivel.
Wrong place, sorry.
Matt left her little choice but own up to her dishonesty. Getting the facts wrong proves that, in this case, she's more interested in banging a drum than checking her claims. Unfortunately, that's become a pattern for her. Scratch the surface and you'll find someone who in October will be sounding the alarm and calling for all right and moral people to line up behind Biden.
She's 'that' kind of leftie, totally onboard with suppressing fact and giving America's censorship and military industrial complex a free hand. Her self image matters far more to her than the well being of ordinary folks inside and outside America.
Her favorite line: "During my time at Harvard..."
I am so over “Harvard.” Most people I know who went to Harvard mention it frequently. My friends who went never do.
Christopher Rufo's exposure of ex-President Gay has gone a long way to reveal the "veritas" about who's running that asylum.
Interesting observation. She definitely prints like the standard "lets go to lunch at Chipotle, extra beans for all, and roll up the windows on the way back to the office" type. Just can't get enough of herself. The vanity is nauseating.
I mostly agree with your assessment of Brie. But she has often stated that she voted for Jill Stein in 2020.
Thx. Good to know.
I respect Matt for taking the high-road. Partisan journalists, too often, rely on inductive logic to fuel their stories (I believe ‘XYZ’ narrative, therefore -> [Facts: A, B, NOT C] are true). Too often unwilling (or unable) to re-assess the facts fairly, accurately and thoroughly, only the narrative (right or wrong) prevails. And as a result, it drives any reasonable discussion into this murk, conversations that lack symmetrical argument and response.
She's a reporter? I understand she's a lawyer.
I watched it. Cringy. I am truly sorry you had to be subjected to the venal and disingenuous manipulations of this woman in a journalist costume.
This is a solid summary.
I like Gray sometimes, but she does this so often I’ve stopped watching Rising. I like Soave’s reporting quite a bit, although I wish he’d push back harder when Gray filibusters.
She’s certainly not a journalist, she’s an activist, and fairly honest about it. You can certainly see her lawyer roots when reporting, but she’s more like a shady, unethical lawyer that will argue something unrelated to the case when they don’t have the facts on their side. Gray does this in nearly every segment, and about nearly every topic. If the facts aren’t going her way, she argues something unrelated — often created from full cloth — facts be damned.
(I was really surprised to see Jilani go down this road. Incredibly disingenuous of him, and I liked his work, which has mostly become trollish tweets — and no actual writing — the last few months.)
100% agree on all of the above. Shady lawyer tactics are Brie's specialty. Misdirection, strawman and other logical fallacies, changing goalposts, filibustering, even mic bullying. I've always found Robby kind of a lightweight, but these days I prefer his no-nonsense, reasonable style as well as his takes on bread and butter issues.
I liked Robby's reporting at Reason well before he was on the show. He got major-league dragged when he was among the very first to call bullshit on the Rolling Stone/UVA rape story. And he was right, and everybody else was wrong, although those wrong "everybody else" people who attacked Robby's character, ferociously, all got kicked upstairs to jobs at the New York Times and Washington Post, for being "right in spirit," I guess. He was even the bête noire for Chapo Trap House for quite a bit – for being right about the wrong things. Those Chapo guys can be really funny, but they're maybe a hundredth as smart as they think they are (see also: literally every other Brooklyn beardo boy).
There was a good moment a few months back where Robby had enough of Gray's playing loose and fast and annoying with the facts on something Gaza-related and screamed "I don't give a fuck!" or something along those lines. His brethren at Reason were all quite pleased that Robby finally broke, and wish he'd do it more often, but I appreciate that Robby can be milder and calmer and nicer and smarter than other people in the room. We need more of that, and less bully pulpit-pundits.
I tried listening to the Chapo House nerds a few years ago, but couldn't take their smug pretension. And I do like Robby—when I say I've thought of him as a bit of a lightweight, I only mean that he's not always the most eloquent speaker or nuanced thinker. Sort of how I think of Kim Iversen. Which is not to say that he or she should engage in lawyer-speak like Brie!
I think of myself as left-libertarian, sharing some viewpoints and positions with both the progressive (Brie) and libertarian (Robby) sides. I just can't stand Brie's method and style, and ultimately I think it hurts her cause.
Yeah, I haven't listened to Chapo in years. I do think they can be funny, but they can be even more annoying. Amber A'Lee Frost can be quite good (I've been meaning to pick up her book), but she hasn't been on it in years. Nor has former Chapo and later Briahna Joy Gray/Bad Faith co-host Virgil Texas, who had direct messaged with an underage girl at some point and has never been heard from again (exiled from Brooklyn for all I know, or put to death and buried in the Brooklyn Barista Bad Boy Cemetery).
Chapo Will Menaker fancies himself some sort of movie expert and has some incredibly bad takes on movies, which annoys me the most. I saw his review of MASH on Letterboxd where he says "many of my favorite movies are about how being in a war would be fun and cool," which is the most ridiculously stupid misreading of one of the greatest anti-war movies I think I've ever seen.
And I'm with you: I consider myself both left-leaning and a civil libertarian, and appreciate views from both of those camps (but I also like hearing reasonable arguments from conservatives, moderates, and even intelligent Trump supporters — hearing from everyone is important!). I thought Ryan Grim was much better on Rising. Although he wears his similar-to-Gray politics on his sleeve, he could actually get into the weeds on almost any topic without resorting to hysterical filibustering. He did, however, get his feathers incredibly ruffled many times by erstwhile third host Kim Iversen, with some of her "kooky side of the online left" takes (some, including a weird-to-watch-in-retrospect Kim segment on how "the COVID vaccine is not actually stopping transmission" that Ryan got in quite an unfortunate, ridiculous huff about, since Kim was proven right a week or two later).
But it could be much worse, if you've ever seen Ayesha Cross fill in for Briahna, with some "olde tyme-y ripped-from-MSNBC" takes that make you close the window immediately. I'd rather have my testicles waxed by a pack of rabid hyenas than have to sit through that (or MSNBC proper, natch). Aren't there any honest leftie/liberals journos that can honestly cover all sides of any story that aren't covert party hacks left? Or even better: how about some journos that can discuss all sides of a topic where we don't even know their personal politics?
Too true regarding Chapo Trap House. Those guy are way too far up their own asses.
That's a damned informative and well-written comment.
I'm going to look at what he's written for "Reason."
She's a petulant child at heart. That comes through clearly.
Yeah, Jilani seems to have some issues lately. I generally like his work but he seems bugged out.
Yeah, I was a fan, and he seemed to be on the same beat as Taibbi, Greenwald, and other lefties/liberals warning of encroaching authoritarianism in the post-Trump Democratic Party. I liked his projects with Leighton Woodhouse and Shant Mesrobian a good bit, but they didn’t stick with them long enough to get them established. He was affiliated with Shellenberger’s Public briefly, and now seems unattached.
After going quiet for a bit, he’s seemingly rebranded as a “resistance” troll, maybe auditioning for a role at The Bulwark or Arc Digital with ultimate dullwits like Grossman or Belvedere? Not a great career arc, and out of character enough that I hope he’s doing okay.
Yeah, you never know with writers. Swimming in their heads a lot.
Republicans. Trump. Bad. Repeat.
But that’s not what Jilani has been at all. He wrote about the Democrats being a threat to democracy while claiming that Trump is in Public two months ago. He wrote a quite positive piece about Josh Hawley in The Federalist. He’s been generally one the smarter, calmer, intentionally non-partisan voices — although he’s almost certainly a leftie — on Twitter for years, which makes this turn so surprising.
Besides Taibbi, I’ve seen him going after Coleman Hughes — although maybe not directly — and members of FIRE.org’s staff.
I’ve never watched Rising but was a big fan of Breaking Points and have the same objection about Krystal and Saagar. Krystal is just not nearly as smart as she thinks she is, and Saagar seems a bit too squishy to push back on her more absurd claims.
Yeah, I stopped watching Breaking Points a while back as the entire show seems to be mostly based on Krystal's activism now, and Saagar is allowed very little push back. They were a bit better when they were still on Rising, although Krystal exhibited the same activism vs. journalism failings Briahna does. (I occasionally check in when they have a good guest or something, and I mostly like Krystal, I just have issues with their format.)
It appears that Krystal and Briahna are besties, and I'd be pretty certain that they (along with a host of other 2020 Bernie surrogates/"Justice Democrat"-friendly activist journalists) are getting their talking points in order via text and email — or even a Slack channel — every morning.
Krystal is now married to Kyle Kulinski, one of the founders of the Justice Democrats that brought us "The Squad," a political operation that quickly became one of the biggest, most embarrassing failures in modern politics, and the ultimate destruction of the 2016 Bernie movement, which replaced old-fashioned class-based policies with laptop class-friendly policies and identity politics. (Kulinski himself doesn't seem too bright, and is an insufferable jerk out loud about nearly everything. He was also my least favorite cast member on Jersey Shore; who'd have thought he'd have entered politics? It thought it would have been Snookie for sure.)
I'd note that Krystal and Briahna exhibit many of the same failings as our wonderful congresspeople — especially prevalent in "The Squad" — of not being able to think on their feet, instead battering home a pre-rehearsed talking point, and surrounding it with convenient fabrications and misdirections no matter where the conversation, and the facts at hand, go. If it's annoying when the activist press and corporate employees and CEOs do it, it's just pure evil when arch-partisan executive branch types, congress, mayors, governors, as well as activist bureaucrats, NGO employees, judges and lawyers do it. Everything can't be about personal politics all the time, especially when your personal politics are so stringent and inflexible and shallow, and they're treated with cult-like religiosity and righteousness.
PS: Remember how Krystal ugly cancelled Jimmy Dore….
We fully agree on dumb grifter Kyle Kulinski — despicable character and DNC operative
There’s something seriously wrong with Kyle K. My bet is he is on the psychopath spectrum. He has that crazy look in his eyes.
He's just the worst.
The big problem with Kulinski, Ball, Gray, Marianne Williamson, Chapo, Cenk Uygur, and even Ryan Grim, Ross Barkan, David Sirota, et al, is that they're not actually DNC: they're the people behind and in lockstep with the upstart branch of the party in The Squad, who instead of reforming the Democratic Party from the inside, became one of the worst—and most embarrassing—parts of the damn thing.
That's why most of those people, who cheered Matt Taibbi when they thought he was one of them, turned on him so hard when the Twitter/FOIA/Censorship Files kept coming, because it so deeply implicated the party that they're failing miserably to reform so much. They're doing to the thankless, idiotic work of sheep-dogging the pseudo-radical, pseudo-left youth vote back into a Democratic Party that's more the party of the Ted Lieus, the Jamie Raskins, the Dan Goldmans, the Adam Schiffs, the Debbie Wasserman-Schultzes, the Nancy Pelosis than ever before. They've literally accomplished less than nothing—the Democrat Party has radically regressed, if we're being honest—but at least they're really loud and annoying about it.
BP is Krystal's channel and explains Saagar's inability to have robust debates with her when she goes unhinged. Which is on most subjects. She's not a rational thinker and that comes through clearly when she's pushed on her opinions and gets defensive. I quit watching in their second year.
I try to stop watching but the headlines given each day in the emails I receive from them are so darn compelling. So I jump from time stamp to time stamp and fast forward during Krystal's repetitive rants.
Y'know, that's a pretty interesting strategy!!
I've actually done something similar with both Breaking Points and Rising, where I watch the first 2 minutes of each segment only. I know there's a solid 8-12 minutes in each segment that are worthless, so why stick around?
I agree; I lose interest quickly these days with both shows because I can usually tell where the conversation is going to go after the 'news' part. Seems like things are rarely discussed with any iota of nuance anymore. I actually find the dynamic between Krystal and Emily or Saagar and Ryan better. There's not as much steamrolling over their co-hosts on those segments.
Krystal is blue , she always has been, listen to her talking up Biden during Bernie’s 2nd run… always fake
I don't have any respect for party first bobble heads. I have derision toward people who are 2 faced with it. That's kball.
My God if you think shady lawyers act like Brie, you have not practiced law. Law is a very difficult profession because Brie would be considered VERY honest. She lets you know her bias at the top. Again, I don’t think this was her best work, but some fair questions were asked.
I never have practiced law, and I forgot that, like politicians, you can’t criticize lawyers unless you’ve done their job before. Or: I’ve dealt with enough shady lawyers to know one when I see one.
I’m not a Gray hater. She can be good on topics where she doesn’t have to resort to obfuscation, but obfuscation pops up more often than not.
There’s a whole host of Bernie surrogates in alt media that all seem to be in a text chain with each other, and get their messaging linked up every morning and they’re all always on the same exact beat. Some of them are pretty good, some aren’t. I was a Bernie supporter too, but the problem is with this group is they’re deluded into thinking they’re affecting change from the inside in a Democratic Party that’s rotten, twisted and broken. It’s over. And allegiance to party is what they do, not journalism, even if they claim otherwise.
He can’t say anything negative to a person of color. Every white person knows this.
Didn’t get the memo thankfully. Pls leave your racism elsewhere.
Covid left a lot of angry stubborn people in its wake and it’s not over.
Oh! You’re one of those. Just mentioning black or white makes someone a racist.
Not sure what COVID has to do with racism, but I suspect only those who regret getting the vax are angry.
Wow! When Briana said 'what did you look into that would be a concern of the left? or whatever I wanted to yell 'the FBI, DHS, etc involved in censoring the American people IS a concern of the left or at least used to be.
Wild interview.
If what's going on in Gaza is a genocide which is false propaganda. How come the MSM never talks about the REAL Muslim GENOCIDE of the Uyghurs China?? Maybe Briana is afraid because the Uyghurs slave labor is used to make solar panels which are 90% coming from China. That's why Biden and the green grifters of the solar industry don't care as long as they can make money off a slave labor from China.
Still repeating CIA fabrication about Uyghur “genocide”…. - here is another troll…
Sweet, sweet Boris. Are you still looking for the Trump Russian pee tape? do you have it!? Well keep looking then. I'm sure it's somewhere mixed up in your porn collection on Betamax. Get to it, son!
Lol
CIA FAB?? SELLOUT BORIS? believe the GREEN GRIFTER$ Profit$ biden admin and using Defense Production Act of this corrupt admin to import these Genocidal Solar Panels https://public.substack.com/p/ban-chinese-solar-genocide-panels Trump caled it Uyghur Muslim Genocide! RIGHT AGAIN!
Typing from mental asylum?
Boris we freed all the inhabitants of the mental asylums in the USA. They're all on the street getting antidepressants, they don't have homes because all the illegals have taken all the shelter space. Yes, Brian here former mental asylum patient but now I'm living on the streets and hoping that I can score some fentanyl from China number one!!!
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/china-xinjiang-uyghurs-muslims-repression-genocide-human-rights
Not responding to this link directly, but to the thread as a whole:
I am sick unto death of being bombarded with polemical "reporting" on Israel's war against Ham-Ass every time I search for news, both because it's impossible to get any neutral information on this particular nightmare and because I strongly oppose US funding of wars and our government's pathetic attempts to maintain its obsolete role as world cop defending international commerce.
So why are you gonna vote for Biden??? Alias Brandon ohh let's go Brandon!
Mr. Non Sequitur, I presume.
My wife has a degree in Latin but rarely speaks it. Cutesy Time is Over! Choice==BRANDON's = BLOB's Endless WARS -VS.- TRUMP's MAGA Peace Through Strength! HEY dead language BS Cutesy Time is Over! https://www.grammarly.com › blog › non-sequitur
What Is a Non Sequitur? Definition and Examples | Grammarly
Nov 1, 2023A non sequitur is a response or statement that is not related to the previous one. Learn how to use non sequiturs in writing for comedy and characterization, and how to avoid them in logic and reasoning.
Agreed - As up to date as she is on the issues, she's unaware of how much the national security state is censoring pro-Palestinian voices and she's asking that question? She's so narrow sometimes!
i just yelled this at the damn video. exactly.
It seems like Matt had an epiphany about her something most of us had the first few times we listened to her. Typical indoctrinated Ivy League talking head who interrogates guests rather than interviews them..... the irony being that the guests like RFK Jr, Dershowitz, Matt, Schellenberger, etc have light years more knowledge and experience than her.
Dershowitz ? Israel apologist and Epstein associate Dershowitz?
People you or me don't like also have knowledge about world affairs, sometimes quite a bit. They may even have valuable insights which your or my outlook has blocked due to our worldview or emotions.
True, but not in Dershowitz's case. Outstanding legal mind, but he's no more qualified to be invited to opine about world affairs than either of us.
Bri (Shade) is that you? I have Hamas on Line 2 they have your script ready for tomorrow's show.
Reporting on the horrors of genocide does not make her a Hamas supporter. That Israel engages in the same actions as Nazis did in the Warsaw Ghetto deserves all the criticism she gives.
You glossed over the genocide of October 7th against the Israelis which started the whole conflict. Not to mention the 150 plus hostages they took who continue to endure the daily assaults by Hamas as detailed by a hostage recently released.
After the aid convoy bombing, practically the whole world has had enough with Israel. BJG is hardly alone in criticizing Israel. You'd have to be pretty oblivious to not know this fact
October 7 “genocide” ????
Even after the flood of lies and fabrications have been proven totally false !!
Joeybar you are insincere - just another Zionist troll.
ah, there's the not so subtle rebranded bigotry. boris, you have to do better. I admire your adherence to stupidity because at least you're consistently conned into the same clap over and over, but buddy, at least try to do a better job at making it yours. Use your creativity - I mean what little you have - and try express your hatred of Jews in a novel, less predictable way. In other words, try. This isn't a big ask, little fella. You can do it!
No need to call names. Doing so discredits what you said--which is correct.
I did not gloss over 10/7..i didn't mention it. 10/7 was not the beginning, horror that it was. Occupation of land (I'll be generous and say since 1967) and the refusal to give it up (please don't blame Palestinean leadership or lack there of) is the beginning.
Oh please?! One day does not a genocide make! Historically you’re delusional.
this is Dr. Anthony Fauci thinking. One day of mass murder and slaughtering people indiscriminately doesn't make genocide. Silly goose, it's collateral damage in a war that defines genocide. Just like fauci's fainting couch moment when he realized he was the science and could just change the definition of words. Greg, you have to do better than this. You just have to.
A career as a union staffer has made you into a moron.
Clearly, you have nothing to say on the merits of my little paragraph. I am flattered that you looked up my profile and could use it in your attempt to hide the fact that you could not respond on the merits.
Biden is the worst president of my lifetime and can still see that Lina Khan, his appointee to the FTC, is the best the FTC has been in decades.
Don't let your bigotry or anger get in the way of seeing clearly.
At least Dershowitz is more honest than her.
Bullshit.
🤮
Ok. Maybe you’re right. Hell, everyone is a liar.
I was surprised to read this piece from Matt in that he seemed to think highly of her as a journalist/commentator. She's a progressive activist. That's fine. But, how he didn't know this going into this discussion is surprising. He's been around awhile. But, perhaps he had to be on the receiving end of her 'inquiry' to see her for what she is.
Brie definitely has a self righteous tendency I find dysfunctional and annoying.
It’s female, “hiss! hiss!” syndrome. Kim I has gone into that mode over RFK vp pick Very off putting!
That's her personality. She hid it for a while, but you can't keep that hidden indefinitely.
Brie is terrible… I guess that’s why she is still on the show…
We all know exactly why she's on the show.
Stopped watching Rising when they f***** over Kim to protect Fauci. Brie seems like a lovely breed of leftist, which is unabashedly incompatible with the Constitution. She may be pleasant, but she represents those who are a threat to the founding document.
Same. Kim is still the bomb.
No, no she's not. There is a peculiar problem with leftist hosts in Rising. It was there with KBall and continued through today, including Kim. A nasty group of people.
She is the worst. She is exactly what’s wrong with the “left”.
Yeah.. I saw Brie's rap on Monday and immediately commented that she'd slipped a gear. Funny cause she's usually quite a lot better than that.
Keep up thr good work, Matt.
You are kidding, right? Brie is horrible, and Matt remains naive about TV.
I think Matt remains hopeful about TV. That’s why he continues to frequent the shows. These were his people. He moved on & realizes they haven’t.
He could probably use some media training. He held his own here very well. He was a little more defensive on Mehdi Hasan's show ("doing PR work for the world's richest man!"). But then again, when someone starts throwing knives as you with the first question, then reaches for a gun, one might get defensive.
You are right about the media training.
He's naive in that he thinks they are going to clear things up based on facts and reasoned discussion.
My read is that Matt is fully aware of what he's going to encounter. Just because you know the game is rigged doesn't mean you don't step up to the plate anyway.
What has surprised me about Matt lately is his willingness to spend time and energy trying to justify himself to his former peeps. He wants them to see reason and whether or not he is just realizing that reason isn't their point, or that he doesn't want to be seen as a Maga sympathizer is unclear. He's wasting time on this. They won't let him win.
She's getting worse every day. I actually used to kind of like her. But as the Bernie campaign recedes into distant memory (gravely disappointing epilogue and all), and Brie retreats ever farther into her own bubble, the less relatable, reasonable and appealing she is. I'm surprised she's still on the show, unless there's just a lot of hatewatching going on.
I couldn’t understand what poor old Bernie had to do with anything. In 2015 Hillary and her vile sidekick Debbie WS put the knife in his back good and deep. Chastised, he stayed in the Senate as a faithful, predictable shill for every talking point Democrats came up with. He’s a goner.
The whole exchange was confusing. I remember the Substack article when Musk pulled the rug out from under the Twitter files and wondered then if Matt and Michael were straying too close to information Musk didn’t want discussed.
Bernie's heart attack made him complacent but what caused the heart attack????
The knife in his back.
She was bad even during Bernie’s first run. Some congresswoman accused Bernie of racism and Brie, his head of comms, took it completely seriously and I believe even thanked her for the feedback before politely pushing back. Instead of calling her full of crap, as she clearly was. Even then she was looking out for her media career way more than she was actually trying to get Bernie elected.
I agree. I saw Monday's but haven't yet seen Matt's rebuttal (yesterday?). I'm usually but not always in Briahna's camp and only occasionally in Robby's, but I appreciate the show for its diverse and often polar-opposite viewpoints, and the chemistry between the hosts. Briahna is sharp as a tack but like all of us, even she can have blind spots and focus to strongly on purity. I hope there is no permanent rift between her and Matt, because I know she considers him a good journalist, as do I. Like Briahna, I am however perplexed and disappointed by his silence on Gaza, particularly given his vocal opposition to the US proxy war in Ukraine. I am very grateful to him for his critical coverage of the national security state, censorship, and Dems' new embrace of both.
It was not a blind spot. She told some gig* lies, and got busted It was a swing & a miss.
*make that BIG lies; no doubt a Freudian slip given that her job, apparently, is to lie
Yep
Thanks - I look forward to watching asap. I wish it weren't so, it's like watching mom and dad fight.
You're disappointed with his silence on Gaza? Did it ever occur to you that not everyone can drop everything they are doing to opine on Gaza? Were you disappointed by his silence on every atrocity before and since Gaza? Is a stance on Gaza some kind of purity test now?
Matt should use the brilliant analytical skills on display here to dissect Biden's rhetoric/policy dissonance on Israel.
https://www.racket.news/p/big-brother-war-is-good
Exactly. He nailed when he said to Bri “I’ve always said Gaza/Palestine was the canary in the coal mine re new surveillance…” which conveniently failed 10/7
Now the AI oddly named Lavender that Israel found to have used for targeting he’s got a great start.
+972 got a great scoop with Lavender. It's as dystopian as eff. AI war machine programmed to accept a 100 to 1 civilian to military target kill rate depending on the rank of the military target.
Yeah. Still haven’t wrapped my head around Lavender :(
The one Matt & Walter missed & in their zone is when Congress did a resolution conflating Zionism & antisemitism. We know Semitic definition already mangled.
A genocide is a purity test !!!
Take your meds, honey. The night nurse will be by soon with your oatmeal. And we're just going to put this jacket on to keep you safe.
He covers US foreign policy, censorship, and free soeech issues. Israel/Palestine/Gaza involves all three.
Glenn Greenwald covers these topics and reveals the rank hypocrisy of self-declared free speech absolutists like Bari Weiss: https://youtu.be/b6h_TcP9YpE?si=T_r2sWl5qZGGDbRl
"Is a stance on Gaza some kind of purity test now?"
Abso-freaking-lutely!
A test of your humanity methinks
You may be "perplexed and disappointed by his silence on Gaza," but I am grateful for it. I don't want to hear any more opining on that shitshow.
That "shitshow" is being funded by, and carried out with the diplomatic cover of, the United States. Israel's apocalyptic siege of Gaza harms Israel's security interests, and the US's unconditional support of it harms the US's security interests. Israel has become its own worst enemy, and a liability to the US.
karen, I admire your commitment to your name. Impressive.
You are clearly an imbecile. Goodbye and good riddance.
Terrific Karen response. Would you like to speak with the supervisor on duty?
True or not, it is too starved a subject for my sword.
No, she's not. She's a race hussler like Jesse Jackson or Reverand Al.
Agree about Sharpton. Have any facts about Brie or Jesse Jackson? Clearly not. Both focus on class more than race. I admit that Jackson evolved on the issue.
Sure, check out her Twitter feed or pick at random a few episodes of "The Hill" where she defends the idiocy of the Summer of Love, 2020 version or the insanity that has gripped universities with DEI. It's a consistent, dishonest, 1/2 hearted effort to report anything accurately. That's why I compared her to the other well known race hustlers. Because that is what she has become.
So is it really the case that some younger talking head is taking on a veteran journalist? Talking heads
should at least get their facts right, even if they, themselves are not journalists.
Well she was a columnist and editor at the Intercept and Current Affairs I believe. She's also like 39 or 40, not that that's relevant in anyway.
She definitely fumbled this one.
My sense is that Taibbi is an "elder", and a more accomplished journalist & writer.
Am I wrong?
I still think of his Coverage of our Finance Oligarchs and their nefarious activities as being some of the best, ditto the "vampire squid metaphor".
I generally like Briahna Joy Gray (her positions on Gaza have been excellent and she usually asks good questions - especially in comparison to immoral toady Robbie). But that segment from Monday with Matt was one of the few times where Robbie was far more logical and balanced. She was just being absurd... and yes, Matt is correct: prosecutorial. It just seemed like she had made up her mind and was hell-bent on getting a confession.
Sounds like she was given a mission to go after Matt??!!
Bingo!
Yes, became obvious. And she basically told Robbie to shut up then had the gall to promote some other (hers) podcast at the very end.
Aligning myself with this woman on Gaza would lead me to rethink my position.
Well, I would say, not aligning with her moral and factual positions on Gaza, would lead me to think you need to re-align your heart, as well as your analytical skills about what constitutes a genocide.
Yes, paragliding over a border to murder and rape 1200 women and children could be called a genocide, I guess.
Speaking of genocide, I didn’t realize the Israelis were only using paragliders to kill 33,000 + people (not counting of course the mass graves). The news gives the impression they have an air force, bombs, drones, tanks and a highly sophisticated AI system to target anyone they decide is a terrorist and blow them and everyone around them to their death.
Gosh, you really can’t trust MSM, can you?
Nor Hamas for death statistics.
So you tell us a number. Funny, I haven't seen much argument from the PM about the kill count. Maybe not far off from his own.
Israel deploys US-supplied 2,000-lb bunker-buster bombs that not even the US would deploy in densely populated areas.
You do realize people on here can actually read what you've written here, right?
God, I hope so.
It is kinda the point of substack.
I guess the point is to show off your ignorance then. First off you speak as if there was no history of 75 years of massacres by Israelis. You can read Israeli historian Ilan Pappe if you want to end your ignorance. B
Then when it comes to Oct. 7 itself, since not a single woman on Oct. 7 has been confirmed as a rape victim.... since by Israeli numbers over 400 of the dead are acknowledged as military not civilian woman and children - that's in Haaretz (you know, an Israeli newspaper) ... since there's plenty of good reporting that a significant number of the 800 or so civilians (some or many of which may have been armed since the kibbutz all have defense components to them - in fact one kibbutz fought off the raid) died in a "mass Hannibal" incident done by the Israeli military using tank fire and hellfire missiles ... since after the Hamas military raid, Islamic Jihad and unaffiliated people also streamed through the fence... in other words, we don't who did who (Hamas, Islamic Jihad, random individuals, the Israeli military) did what to how many civilians in cross-fire and who were deliberately killed by which group.
There's a reason why Israel so quickly buried those 70+ burned out cars which had carried multiple passengers. Use your common sense if you have any. Hamas was carrying light arms - you can't carry heavy weapons on a motorcycle or a para-glider... while the damage done to those cars was exactly what a hellfire missile does. And the damage done to the buildings in Kibbutz Beri was done by tank fire - exactly as the Israeli eye-witnesses have stated.
But certainly some civilians were killed by one of the Palestinian factions in cross-fire and some deliberately. Maybe 100s. Yet, how does that justify the killing of at least 40,000 people who had nothing to do with the Oct. 7 raid - more than half of them woman and children (since the population of Gaza is 50% percent children) and then the deliberate starving of the remainder? The complete destruction of nearly every home? The destruction of every hospital but 2? The destruction of every university? The deliberate execution of academics, poets, doctors, nurses, medics and journalists? These are documented facts. You can't find the links - I'm not going to do your work for you.
But you'll clearly prefer to wallow in your atrocity fantasies justifying genocide. That's the lesson of the Holocaust: genocide is never justified or should be done to anybody.
Wow — a 100% Zionist troll and a supporter of Nazi Israel — calling himself “upright and chosen”…
Reading fail. No one but you said chosen.
But, I guess that makes me special!
Everybody "reads" you well for what you are ;-)) I added "chosen" just for you...
Yeesh, still making the rape comments after the multiple debunking.
The only debunking I have come across are from rape apologists and anti-Semites like you.
Another person unquestioning Hamas stories despite the video evidence they themselves took. It's remarkable stupidity or hatred of a particular semetic people.
Pretty sure everyone called that what it is, a terrorist attack.
Well, the anti-Semite was just throwing the term around, willy-nilly, so I thought I would see if we could pin it down.
Just because someone criticizes the government of Israel does not make him an antisemite. Usually this only happens in The Free Press comments.
She's a black supremacist. You're siding with a racist. She's gone over this time and time again. Also, grab a dictionary. Look up genocide and then remove your head from your backside.
What a braindead take. Yikes.
Oh Mike, if you can't see her bigotry, you're either willfully blind or you agree with it. Which is it? She has spoken of it frequently.
Try to think instead of just blindly believing what you're told to believe.
Plausible genocide is what the International Court of Justice ruled back in January, for what has been unfolding in Gaza. International humanitarian law is not dictated by "dictionaries".
Karen, words have meaning. I can't believe this point has to continually be repeated. For example, vaccine has meaning. Immunity and immune response are not the same thing. Also, the ICJ has said virtually nothing about the 500k killed in Syria or the 10k Yazidis killed by ISIS, so let's not get too excited by a court that seems to lose focus when the issue at hand requires intellectual honesty. In short, the court is a joke. Like most international bodies are.
No. International law is international law. Gaza is happening *now* . The Geneva Conventions are binding international treaties.
If you judge every position's worth by its dumbest adherents, you'll soon be left without any positions worth taking on anything.
"This woman" generally does have her facts straight. More saliently, that what is occurring in Gaza is plausibly a genocide unfolding is not an opinion of Briahna's, but the *decision* of the International Court of Justice in January 2024. Israel is isolating itself from the international community, as is the US by unconditionally funding and providing diplomatical cover for Israel.
Brie hasn't had her facts straight since 2019. I'm sorry karen, but your judgement is iffy at best and your reliance on bigoted 'journalists' like brie indicate you're not thinking.... you're just accepting as fact her ramblings. This interview she had with MT wasn't an outlier. She's been this way for years. Please..... do your research.
You generally like a journalist who as you acknowledged, was hell bent on getting a confession? Hmm, may want a hard look at your judgement in journalists.
I feel like if anyone was going after confession it was Matt. He would not let it go and just had to list all of the grievances that he came there to air. I kept wondering if he was looking for her to get on her knees and apologize.
I have found BJG to be one of the better "left" talking heads on YT. Especially a couple few years ago, she confronted head-on questions about what it takes/means to be "on the left" in a particularly socialist fashion.
Most of the American "left", including self-identified Marxists, are in all but labels and t-shirts some variety of liberal. Like every other American across the spectrum.
Most of Matt's followers, judging by the comments here, are one flavor or another of right-wing sloganeer who wouldn't like Brie no matter what she says or how she conducts herself. Par for the rightwing course.
On the other hand, I do think Brie has a job to do on Rising and that job leads her into taking liberal or radlib "woke" positions that insult both her and our intelligence as leftists. Fortunately for Brie, Robbie's on-display juvenile idiocy around Gaza makes her look good even when she goes down a rabbit hole.
Her obsession with Matt's "bias" regarding the Twitter Files is, I think, deeply personal, as well as part of her "job". She really resents Matt for not using "Bernie" as a search term, probably because like a lot of Bernie fans from the before-time she has a hard time accepting that anything other than nefarious manipulations by all and sundry explains Sanders' massive failure and what it meant for that "surge of socialism" we heard so much about.
Matt wrote for Rolling Stone, not Financial Times. He invented the unforgettable Vampire Squid metaphor for investment banks. That's right wing?
The person wrote that most of his *audience* is right-wing, judging from the comments here. I concur. Matt isn't, even if he appeals to many on the right. He acknowledges that liberals no longer care about government/corporate censorship and other free speech issues - formerly issues championed by the left - and that the right, the progressive left, and Libertarians are now on the same side of this issue.
Presumably you are responding to "Most of Matt's followers, judging by the comments here, are one flavor or another of right-wing sloganeer who wouldn't like Brie no matter what she says or how she conducts herself. Par for the rightwing course." and pretending that I think Matt is right wing?
Just as hard right dumbasses latch onto black writers like Sowell and Hughes to launder their racist takes through a "negro" lens, Matt gets championed by some really ugly rightwingers because, for the moment, free speech advocacy lets them direct their fire at the usual suspects without seeming to be the usual rightwing turds.
So, to be very clear, I don't think Matt is right wing. Having read all his books and subscribed here from the beginning I think I would have discovered his "rightism" by now.
He has some dumb takes, like everyone else, but that is neither here nor there.
Wow, your flavor of idiocy is rare. Your hatred of anything other than yourself must make you a blast at parties, airport terminals, the DMV and animal shelters.
You are an imbecile.
Matt is an old-fashioned liberal who isn't a fan of war, really doesn't like censorship, and also opposes things like the government spying on our own citizens. I don't think he's ever voted for a Republican. These days, I don't think he'd vote for many Democrats either. But he was a Kucinich supporter when Brie was just becoming a teenager. Hell, he supported Bernie before Brie did.
Matt has a loyal following who have read him since at least the RS days. Following his publication of the Twitter Files, he gained a large number of Twitter followers, as people were interested in this government/NGO/tech industry conspiracy to censor. Many of them also found his Substack. It is true that the newcomers seem to be more to the right than the previous audience, but all the newcomers have really made this comments board great. If one wants an echo chamber for comments, one can go to The Free Press. And maybe since they no longer perceive that they are surrounded by other Trump-haters, some of those with TDS have radically drawn back their Orange Man Bad rants.
But for Brie to even think for a minute that Matt doesn't go after the right-wing bad guys, it demonstrates her ignorance. Matt goes after the FBI, DHS, CIA, etc. You know, THE BAD GUYS?? Her problem is that she, along with an enormous number of idiots in this country, have decided that the FBI, DHS, etc. are all great, because they will help prevent Trump. All fun and games until they turn their guns on you.
Bri clearly doesn't think that.
Like I said, I think she has a personal investment in the Bernie catastrophe having been caused by nefarious doings above and beyond the DNC and MSM blatant manipulations. She also has a job to do on Rising.
I can't agree that one-note rightwingers make anything great. but as we used to say YMMV.
Spicy take - right wingers and left wingers in and of themselves are not the problem. When either side turns authoritarian is where we have problems. And in 2024, the left wingers are the authoritarians.
I am a big fan of Matt for decades and — a socialist (who hates “communism”).
Labels left and right are completely obsolete
If you accept the way Americans talk about "left and right" as having some relationship to the traditional meanings of "left" and "right" then I agree these labels are obsolete.
The right, and they have been doing this for 40+ years, label Democrats "socialists" and "communists" with great frequency. Obama, according to the brain-damaged, historically illiterate American right, was either a "communist", a "socialist", or a foreign-born Muslim jihadi burrowing into the pureland of Amerikkka to destroy it from within. And these are the folks who have gifted us with the "meaning" of "left" that Americans regularly operate with.
The "left", if we just bracket the meaninglessness invoked in the previous paragraph, are now just as bad as the idiot right. Oppose mandated vaccines? "Right wing extremist". Call Killary names? "Just another useful idiot in the vast right wing conspiracy". Trump is a fascist, American democracy teeters at the brink and a few thousand yahoos in the Capitol is an attempted coup. If this is the left, I'm John Coltrane.
If we persist against the rising tide of idiocy that characterizes most of what passes for "political debate" in the American sphere and hold to the tripartite division of socialist-left, liberals of the left and the right, and conservatives on the right, we can still use the labels "left and right" to mean something.
But by all means, join the clown car folks and think that Wall Street Droner-in-Chief Obama is a committed "leftist" and see where that gets you!
The clip from today was exasperating to watch. "Ok, I got a bunch of stuff about you radically wrong - I don't see why you want to focus on THAT part. I want to talk about how you didn't conduct yourself in a way that would have validated MY preconceptions." Then to condescendingly imply that somehow you were being overly personal and unnecessarily defensive was beyond the pale. I had the impression that she was genuinely shocked that one could take issue with the sloppiness of her analysis, and that an apology and correction were in order. I was heartened to see that the comments were nearly universally critical of her sanctimonious attitude.
The larger point here is who cares if Matt is writing about the Left or writing about the Right as long as he is uncovering the biggest abuses of power. Right now, those seem to be coming from the Left.
Or as Deng Xiaoping, my favorite Chinese leader, said ,"It doesn't matter whether a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice."
Matt is catching a lot of mice.
Yes, by a country mile.