Transcript- America This Week, Mar 21, 2025: "Terror Hypocrisy and the Real JFK Revelations"

The JFK Files don't unmask a killer, but they do reveal a spy state out of control. Plus, "The Golden Bird," by the Brothers Grimm

Matt Taibbi: All right, welcome to America This Week. I’m Matt Taibbi.

Walter Kirn: And I’m Walter Kirn.

Matt Taibbi: Who was in Fairfield, Connecticut, or is in.

Walter Kirn: I still am. I have yet to discover the difference between Fairfield and Southport. Apparently Southport is a wholly contained subunit of Fairfield, Connecticut. But I was here in order to speak at Fairfield University, a Jesuit university that I am absolutely in love with now. I went last night, did a 90 minute Q&A with an audience of heterodox thinkers who were, I was told, divided one-third, one-third, one-third, politically. I don’t know what the third third is, apolitical. But fearing the worst, sort of fearing 2018 style protests of my presence, my otherwise non-controversial presence, which was not before 2017 a problem, I found that I was completely wrong and that we have a very sophisticated audience for America This Week, a lot of whom were there, and that I could speak across lines and boundaries that you weren’t encouraged to speak across before. So it was a very encouraging evening for me in every way.

Matt Taibbi: That’s great.

Walter Kirn: Got to talk about podcasting. Got to talk about the secret life of Matt Taibbi. I was asked far too many Hollywood-style gossip questions about your life, all of which I answered with naked detail because you’re so mysterious. The man in the red room on the podcast. And I just altogether had a great time and it gave me hope for America’s ability to build bridges between otherwise immutable bubbles that aren’t as immutable as they used to be. Whoever’s telling you right now that we’re more divided than we’ve ever been is wrong because I take the temperature every once in a while and the temperature right now is interesting. The hot and cold are running together into a nice, comfortable bath.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah. I’ve long suspected that this was the case, but I think it’s becoming more the case.

Walter Kirn: The attempts to divide us are always more intense when we allude to division. In other words, when the news is telling you they’re blowing up Tesla dealerships and the revolution’s coming, and it’s true that they’re doing that, and when the right is doing its thing, you can be sure that what’s actually happening out on the street is that people are talking, which apparently they don’t want anymore.

Matt Taibbi: Right, right. And illusions are being shattered and people are kind of, they’re beginning to drift in certain directions. It was really funny, David Shore, the Democratic activist and pollster, he was one of the first high profile wrongly canceled people. Remember he got asked for retweeting or liking something to the effect that it was a study suggesting that nonviolent protest was more effective than violent protest, and he retweeted this in the middle of the Floyd thing and lost a job because of it.

Walter Kirn: A job where? At what bulwark of American antagonism did he work that they couldn’t stand that opinion?

Matt Taibbi: I mean, first of all, it was the most milquetoast... I mean, he was just citing somebody else’s research on this, and I forget for whom he worked, but he put out a big thing recently about kind of the reasons the Democrats lost and what they need to do if they want to be introspective about this.

Walter Kirn: Oh, I just saw it. Yes, I saw it.

Matt Taibbi: And he put out all this amazing, interesting detail about, yes, it’s true that Trump made significant gains with Hispanics, women and Blacks, and that needs to be paid attention to. But the more important issue that he felt needed to be noticed was that people were identifying less, they were thinking about themselves less in terms of their racial identity and less in terms of their partisan identity and more in terms of their status as just citizens in general.

Walter Kirn: And their interests, their actual interests.

Matt Taibbi: Their actual interests, right. And there were a multitude of revelations on that score. And of course it got no press whatsoever. There are a number of great write-ups on Substack, but it dropped like a stone in the press, which is telling us exactly opposite things. So yeah, I think you’re right. As always, and that’s a good segue into our first little thing for the show, which is Walter, we got to give you credit, you’re not all the way there in this one yet, but pretty close.

Walter Kirn: I’m all the way there, Matt. It’s not quite all the way there.

Matt Taibbi: It’s not quite there. Okay, all right. So you predicted that Luigi would come back and that he wouldn’t get out, that he wouldn’t be convicted, right?

Walter Kirn: That’s still to come, but I hold to that prediction.

Matt Taibbi: Right. Look, there was a very recent... Well, let’s talk about the comeback. One of the few magazines where it’s still important to be on the cover in America is People Magazine. And Luigi recently got on the cover. Okay, it’s not People Magazine, but he was on the cover of InTouch Magazine, Luigi Mangione.

Walter Kirn: Which is an explicitly celebrity-based magazine. In other words, even more than People, People does a lot of human interest stories about a fisherman who found a golden slipper or something. InTouch only does people who are meant for mass consumption as Hollywood or other style celebrities, and here he is right next to Meghan Markle.

Matt Taibbi: I mean, he’s been covered pretty extensively in People too, and it’s unbelievable. It’s almost like he’s a member of somebody’s royal family or he is our royal family.

Walter Kirn: Well, and look at what the story is, “Will he go free?” Whenever they ask a rhetorical question on the cover of a tabloid, it’s either because it’s not true, like, “Are aliens about to take over the White House?” That’s a way to make it seem plausible, even though it’s probably impossible. This is a way to make what people find implausible plausible, because it’s going to happen. Only one person in America was crazy enough to predict that the Luigi storyline ends with Luigi found either not guilty or let go in a hung jury or on some kind of legal technicality, at which point he becomes a political figure. He’s already a political figure, I was right about that. He’s already being cited by all the activists and protesters and so on who are committing these vandalism sprees at Tesla dealerships and so on. Bill Burr already said, “Free Luigi,” on a YouTube video about a week-

Matt Taibbi: Oh, did he?

Walter Kirn: Yeah. About a week ago, he suddenly turned in the most inorganic planned way, went, “Free Luigi.” The creation of a political American revolutionary. You know what? He’s obverse Oswald. Oswald was an assassin who became a villain. This is a villain assassin who’s becoming a hero. They dressed him like in the same sweater that Oswald used when he was actually shot by Jack Ruby. They have cited and alluded to and sampled, let’s say in the language of rap and recording, every major American sort of anti-establishment rebel in building this character. The reason I knew he was going to come back from the moment he came out was that he was an obvious op against the oligarchs, Elon in particular. So they gave him some space to be in jail for a while, but now as his trial approaches, we’re going to see this stuff ramp up, we’re going to see an intense sort of almost Beatlemania meets Charles Manson-style cult of personality around him. And that’s what he is to me, is Beatlemania versus Manson. If you did an AI study of American anti-heroes, you would come up with Luigi.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah. And they’ve been leaking out things almost weekly about the weakness of the case against him. But let’s back up just quickly, let’s hear Bill Burr on Luigi.

Bill Burr: But CNN and Fox News are not going to bring up the insurance companies that are just going to keep everybody’s premiums and still give themselves a bonus, yes. Free Luigi. I love how they acted surprised. “Why did that happen?”

Walter Kirn: So Bill Burr-

Matt Taibbi: It’s slightly ironic, slightly.

Walter Kirn: What a phony.

Matt Taibbi: Don’t you think?

Walter Kirn: What a freaking phony, what a paid shill for whoever is running the Luigia. First of all, the Luigia puts the onus for America’s healthcare problems on insurance companies rather than the pharmaceutical companies right now, which are doing everything, I assure you, in their power, I’ve talked to people just in the last few days, to make sure that RFK Junior does not dent their motorcycle.

Matt Taibbi: Right, right, there’s a lot of rice bowl guarding going on right now.

Walter Kirn: Dude.

Matt Taibbi: It’s unbelievable.

Walter Kirn: But this guy is the most convenient character to come along. He came along at the same time as the New Jersey drones. He was a big distraction. I predicted before Christmas that this would happen. I gave a speech to a think-tank in early December in which I predicted it all to a very high toned inside audience. I’m going to stick with it because I know I’m right. I know when I’m seeing a TV show turned into a supposed domestic set of headlines and concerns. This is artificial news and he’s an artificial character. And people say, “Does that mean he didn’t do it? Or he did do it?” Well, that really doesn’t matter. What matters is his utility to the political culture. And after a devastating loss for the Democrats, he had a lot of utility. He appeals to young people, he appeals to women. They’ve set him up-

Matt Taibbi: Just because he’s good looking? Is that the whole thing?

Walter Kirn: Good looking goes a long way in America.

Matt Taibbi: I guess it does.

Walter Kirn: I was once told by a Hollywood producer, in casting, it always comes down in the end if you have two actors for a role to hot or talented, always pick hot.

Matt Taibbi: That explains a lot of movie casting decisions.

Walter Kirn: It sure does.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah. So, all right, well, just to tie into some news that is relevant to what you’re talking about, there was a guy named Daniel Brennan Clark Pounder.