26:23 One of them's long, the rest are pretty short. Four clips of this guy David K. Johnstone. Ah yes, this is what you put in the newsletter. Yeah, I wanted people to listen to it because it's pretty good. It was interesting to me because it was two very progressive liberals arguing with each other as opposed to, you know, a balanced of one side laughing and the other side, they're both Now, Johnstone makes a living out of writing anti-Trump books. He did win a Pulitzer once. I was going to say, both he and Greenwald are both Pulitzer Prize winners, which made it all the more entertaining. Yes. So I have a series of clips starting off with just Johnstone going on about, you know, what he never defended.
27:15 He's one of the guys that's rewriting the Mueller report and trying to imagine one thing or another. And these four clips are just actually fascinating, especially when at the very end, Greenwald just lets it rip. But here's Greenwald Johnson 1. David, your response to the Mueller report and to William Barr's summary of what he found? Well, we don't know what's in the Mueller report. We only know the brief interpretation offered by Bill Barr. But that interpretation opens whole new cans of worms. The standard here should not be beyond a reasonable doubt. That's the criminal standard. The standard is the constitutional requirements, which are faithful execution of the office and high crimes and misdemeanors, which doesn't require any criminal offense of any kind as the 18 impeachment proceedings we've had in this country have established beyond a doubt. Glenn Greenwald, your response? Let me just say two things. Number one,
28:16 Everybody knows and I don't care how many people try and rewrite history that the central question that everybody was obsessed with for three years was did Donald Trump, his family members and his aides conspire and collaborate and collude with the Russians to interfere in the election. And contrary to what David just said, it is absolutely false that Robert Mueller simply said there's not enough evidence to convict with a reasonable doubt. He said something much, much, much, much more important than that. He said that after 20 months of investigation, with a huge team of FBI agents and prosecutors heralded as being the most aggressive and skilled in the world,
28:57 We found no evidence that this happened. That's what Robert Mueller said. The whole thing was a scam and a fraud from the beginning. And the New York Times headline today says that as clearly as it can. Robert Mueller finds no collusion between Trump and Russia. That was the focal point of the entire narrative, no matter how much people try and change the focus. Yes, so he starts off with that and then it starts to go it he continues a bit with some more details This is clip two. He's distorting what our findings was that is laughable That's exactly the kind of conspiracy theories that led to this entire mess in the first place And we should no longer tolerate this Rachel Maddow
29:40 And MSNBC are the Judy Millers of this story, except unlike Judy Miller, who was scapegoated for doing things that her male colleague did and had her career destroyed, Rachel Maddow will continue to make $10 million a year for NBC because she's their most valuable brand. And there will be no reckoning and consequences for this story that the media got radically, fundamentally, and deliberately wrong for almost three years now in a very dangerous way. He makes the point that this is just, you know, causing tensions between Russia and the United States. Let's go to clip three. Donald Trump is an agent. I said he's an asset. If I did say agent, I should not have. But I've said repeatedly. Stop, stop, stop. This this continues after Greenwald called out
30:26 Johnston for calling Trump a Russian agent about one week before on the Democracy Now show, which he appears on constantly. On the Democracy Now show, Johnston said Trump is a Russian agent. And so Greenwald called him out on this and this is his response. Donald Trump is an agent, I said he's an asset. If I did say agent, I should not have, but I've said repeatedly he is what the old Soviet would call a useful idiot. He has advanced their cause. He called during the campaign for breaking up NATO. That's a Putin item.
31:02 He has said he trusts Vladimir Putin and not the American intelligence agencies. Those should all be things that deeply disturb us. And if the Mueller report, when we see it, shows that this is all malarkey, have me on and I'll say, you know what? Got it totally wrong because I go wherever the facts go. But I don't think the news media in this country has been totally discredited. And I noticed that Glenn's focus is on one cable TV show. By the way, I think I've been on once since Donald Trump's election on Rachel Maddow when I got the tax return of Donald Trump from 2005.
31:38 I don't appear on her show otherwise. And so I think fundamentally we do need to focus on the real economic issues. Donald Trump wants to make health care in America worse. He has not fulfilled any of his promises. There's no infrastructure bill. There is this focus on the wall with Mexico, which is never going to be built and certainly not paid for by the Mexicans. He has stirred violence against people of color and people whose religions he doesn't like. And he is utterly and completely unfit to hold office. He is, in the classic meaning of the Greek word, an idiot.
32:17 which originally meant someone who only cares about himself and has no regard for the society around him. David, yeah, on the show last week you did say Russian agent, that Donald Trump is a Russian agent. Are you saying you misspoke? I should have said asset. That's an extension from me. And asset is the term that I've used. And I do believe that, you know, you can unwittingly be an asset. And I believe that Donald Trump is a Russian asset. I think the kindest thing you can say about Donald Trump is that he has divided loyalties. Fact check. That's true. Now, this is funny because he goes on and on how he only follows the facts and then he blatantly lies about saying Russian agent. Oh, it was a mistake. He meant to say asset.
32:59 And so then he rewrites history right there. What a dick. He goes on and on with this sort of thing and he's not addressing the Mueller report at all. No, but what he's doing is he's going back to he's a racist, misogynist, anti-semitic. The Trump rotation. Yeah, just stuff that has been It's got nothing to do with the Mueller report. Pulitzer Prize winner, ladies and gentlemen. Pulitzer Prize winner. So at this point Greenwald is fed up and I think this clip 4 is the best of the group. Let me just say one thing about this idea that he's a Kremlin asset.
33:39 or that we need to find out what his relationship is with the Russians. We just had a 22-month investigation where the media and Bob Mueller did nothing but look into that exact question. He's saying it like nobody's ever asked this before, nobody's ever—we have the answer. And as for him being a Russian asset, it's so irresponsible to say that, because the reality is that the conflict between the U.S. and the Russians are at a worse and higher level than they've been in many years, probably decades. How can you say Donald Trump is a stooge of the Kremlin? when he's right now trying to remove one of Vladimir Putin's client regime states in Venezuela, or when he's trying to bully Angela Merkel out of buying Russian natural gas, probably the thing that's most important to the Russian economy, or when he sold lethal arms to the Ukrainians, something Obama refused to do on the grounds that it would be provocative to Russia, or when he bombed
34:39 Putin's client state in Syria. Over and over the Trump administration has taken actions far more adverse and aggressive and belligerent to the Russians than the Obama administration did. That's why this whole narrative that Trump all along was being blackmailed by Putin, that he's an asset of Russian intelligence. This is idiocy. It is completely irrational. It is contrary to all facts. And Bob Mueller's investigation, who spent 22 months examining that core question, what is the relationship between Trump and the Russians, concluded
35:16 That there is no relationship. It's time to stop these dangerous conspiracy theories that are ratcheting up tensions between the two most dangerous countries on the planet. The reality is the Trump administration has been constantly belligerent to Putin, has constantly acted adverse to the Kremlin's interests, and there's zero basis for thinking or believing or finding evidence to assert That Trump in any way is beholden to Vladimir Putin into Russia the whole thing has been a joke and a fairy tale from the start He'll never work in this town again I'm amazed they let him on Seriously, I mean that's hey make Glenn you just harshen the vibe man here democracy now, baby. Oh