The party you are trying to reach does not accept calls
from numbers with caller ID blocked.
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The party you are trying to reach does not accept calls
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The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off.
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a call.
We couldn't get much worse, but if they could they would.
One diddley bomb for the best respect for worst.
I hope that's understood.
One diddley bomb!
One diddley bomb!
One diddley bomb!
One diddley bomb!
One diddley bomb!
One diddley bomb!
One diddley bomb!
And a very good evening to everybody.
Good evening to everybody.
The program is Off the Hook.
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you.
Joined tonight by Kyle.
Kyle, are you there?
Hello?
Yes.
Am I being heard?
I hear you.
I don't think you can hear you, though.
Oh, I turned myself down.
Yeah, you got to turn yourself up.
Oh, we're doing that?
Yeah, we're doing that this week.
Out there in Skypeland, I think we have Rob T. Firefly.
Good evening.
And we have Gila.
Good evening.
And we have Alex.
That you do.
Good evening.
And tonight, we're doing one of our WBAI listener call-in shows.
That's where WBAI listeners get to call in and talk to us, ask questions.
The phone's ringing already.
I didn't even give out the phone number yet.
We're not going to take them immediately.
So you're wasting your time, whoever's calling us right now, but in a few minutes.
And wait for us to give out the phone number because it's not...
Well, obviously, it's the number that person's calling, but it's not the number you might
think it is.
Yeah.
Is there anything you can do about that ringing sound, Kyle, to make it go away?
Other than that picking up and hanging up.
Okay.
I meant turning down the ringer, but fine.
When we give out the phone number?
Oh, you're picky.
A little bit.
Yeah.
Look, I answered the question.
I fixed that.
I really...
All right.
The methods, the means.
Can we just stop critiquing?
Let's just move on.
Let's just move on.
It's been a rough week.
The word of the day, by the way, is capitulation.
Whether it be capitulation by our mayor, whether it be capitulation by our country, whether it
be capitulation by an entire political party, whether it be capitulation by many of us.
It's worth spelling out.
It's worth looking up.
And we're going to be hearing an awful lot about that.
But I want to focus on a couple of things that have been going on.
Scary things.
Most of them are scary these days.
And this involves our friends over at the FCC who like to intimidate people and radio stations
and all kinds of other broadcasters and people who are trying to do their jobs.
The FCC, led by this real nightmare of a chairman named Brendan Carr, basically said the agency
is investigating a San Francisco-based radio station for its coverage of immigration enforcement
actions in San Jose.
Yeah.
Basically, this is sparking concerns from press freedom advocates drawing all kinds of right-wing
backlash to the radio station.
I'll let you guess what radio station it is, too, by the way.
In an interview on Fox News, Trump-appointed commission chair Brendan Carr said he opened
the investigation after the radio station shared the live locations and vehicle descriptions
of immigration officials on January 26th.
We have sent a letter of inquiry, a formal investigation into that matter.
And they have just a matter of days left to respond to that inquiry and explain how this
could possibly be consistent with their public interest obligations.
Imagine that.
A radio station reporting on where ICE agents are.
First Amendment advocates worry the FCC investigation will have a chilling effect on news organizations
reporting on the Trump administration's mass deportation plans.
And law enforcement operations, immigration or otherwise, are matters of public interest,
said David Loy, who is the legal director for the First Amendment Coalition.
People generally have the right to report this in social media and in print and so on.
So it's very troubling because it's possible the FCC is potentially being webinized to crack
down on reporting that the administration simply just doesn't like.
Yeah.
Loy worried that the move could deter other news organizations from pursuing reporting critical
of the Trump administration.
It's an intimidating exercise.
The process is the punishment, Loy said.
Even if charges are never filed, people have to look over their shoulder to wonder,
is the government going to come after me because I report something the government doesn't like me to say?
And that is scary.
That is scary.
And I say this not just because this is another radio station and that this radio station here
that I'm speaking over talks about this kind of thing all the time.
This basically affects everybody who has an interest in freedom of speech, in reporting the news,
in basically just saying what is true.
Yes, there are ICE agents in the neighborhood and they were spotted on this street.
You know, if you break into their computer system and get access to their plans for the day
and report that, that I could see being considered a crime.
But simply reporting what was being done on the streets, in public,
for that to be considered something worthy of an investigation and intimidation tactics against this station.
Wow, that is a step.
Now, you might say, okay, you know, you guys over at Pacifica, always causing trouble,
always reporting what's going on, always criticizing.
Maybe you deserve, you know, a smack every now and then just to get back into reality.
Well, at this point, let me reveal, the station is not KPFA or KPFK or any of our stations.
It's KCBS is the station being investigated.
The same CBS, by the way, that's being investigated by the same FCC for daring to air an interview
that the current president didn't like.
Folks, we are rapidly moving into some very, very dark territory.
And the only way we're going to survive this is if we talk about it, if we reveal it,
if we don't get intimidated by the people who want to intimidate us.
And believe me, they want to intimidate us.
Speaking of ICE, sticking with ICE for a second.
Amid anger and protest over the Trump administration's plan to deport millions of immigrants,
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to monitor
and locate negative social media discussion about the agency and its top officials.
That's according to contract documents reviewed by The Intercept.
Citing an increase in threats to ICE agents and leadership,
the agency is soliciting pitches from private companies to monitor threats across the internet
with a special focus on social media.
People who simply criticize ICE online could get pulled into the dragnet.
In order to prevent adversaries from successfully targeting ICE senior leaders,
personnel, and facilities, ICE requires real-time threat mitigation and monitoring services,
vulnerability assessments, and proactive threat monitoring services,
a procurement document reads.
If the scanning uncovers anything the agency deems suspicious,
ICE is asking its contractors to drill down into the background of social media users.
That includes previous social media activity, which would indicate any additional threats to ICE,
information which would indicate the individual or individuals and or the organizations
making threats have a proclivity for violence,
and three, information indicating a potential for carrying out a threat such as postings depicting weapons,
acts of violence, references to acts of violence,
to include empathy or affiliation with a group which has violent tendencies,
references to violent acts, affections with violent acts,
alluding to violent acts, etc., etc.
It's unclear how exactly any contractor might sniff out somebody's apoclivity for violence.
The ICE document states only that the contractor will use social and behavioral sciences
and psychological profiles to accomplish its automated threat detection.
And once flagged, the system will further scour a target's internet history
and attempt to reveal their real-world position and offline identity.
In addition to compiling personal information, such as social security numbers,
addresses of those whose posts are flagged,
the contractor will also provide ICE with a photograph, partial legal name, partial date of birth,
possible city, possible work affiliations, possible school or university affiliation,
and any identified possible family members or associates.
The document also requests facial recognition capabilities
that could take a photograph of a subject
and search the internet to find all relevant information associated with the subject.
The contract contains specific directions for targets found in other countries,
implying the program would scan the domestic speech of American citizens.
That's from The Intercept.
That could go on, but I don't want to scare people even more than I've already scared them.
This is something that we should all be paying close attention to.
I was wondering, does a newfound love for the Second Amendment to protect my speech qualify?
I don't know. I don't know. Maybe that's something worth exploring.
Alex, did you have something? Go ahead.
Yeah, I had a few things.
I mean, I think this particular call for action from the government in trying to respond to this particular,
I guess it's some kind of RFP, something like that, some kind of request for proposal,
I think is exactly what happens when we don't have real data security and privacy laws on the books in this country,
something we have been clamoring for, for, God, I hate to say it, but literally decades now.
Something that Europe has had on the books for quite some time in action since 2018 with GDPR.
In Europe, this type of thing would not happen.
These types of contracts would be, I think, prima facie illegal.
But I want to go back to what you mentioned originally, though, Emanuel,
which I think is particularly frightening with respect to the legal threats and the misuse and abuse of process
that the FCC has engaged in with respect to, I guess, what was the station?
It was the CBS station out in California, KCBS?
KCBS. You couldn't get any more CBS than that.
Yeah, pretty extraordinary.
Well, I've got to tell you, there was an incredible article that came out yesterday in Foreign Affairs
that was entitled The Path to American Authoritarianism by Stephen Levitsky and Luke Enway,
two academics that have been pretty much right on the money with respect to how Trump was going to act
in his last presidency and how things have gone.
And what they argued in this particular article, this scholarly article that came out in Foreign Affairs yesterday,
was that what we see here is a real decline in American democracy through the abuse of processes
and the destruction of institutions that we've come to trust.
And they call it something, this is a term that's been around for quite a while, but competitive authoritarianism.
And this is basically a system in which there are still elections, there's still parties that are competing in elections.
So there is what looks like from the inside and the outside democracy,
but that the incumbents party abuses power and abuses process and abuses the federal agencies
and systems that are in place to try to create an unlevel playing field with the opposition.
And I think that is exactly what you had described with respect to KCBS at the outset of this show.
And it is exactly the type of deterioration of the First Amendment that will happen if nobody steps up and opposes this anymore.
Like you said, if we all just capitulate.
And that seems to be what's happening.
We seem to be seeing that left and right, whether it's tech companies, whether it's mass media,
or whether it's individual people.
Capitulation seems to be the theme.
Just do what's easy.
Don't get noticed.
Don't speak out too much.
And that's difficult for many of us.
It's difficult for many of us to abide by.
And I dare say it's not going to succeed on their end eventually.
I don't know how long it's going to take.
You know, it could be relatively short, or it could be much longer than any of us want to believe.
But, you know, fascism and oppression, it never lasts.
It never lasts, but it can take a damn long time to get rid of.
Go ahead, Alex.
Yeah.
I mean, one thing I also want to mention, too, is that, of course, this is what Trump has promised us.
When he was running for election, this is the plan that he said he was going to enact.
And because he won the Electoral College by a landslide, he didn't win necessarily the popular vote by a landslide,
but the Electoral College, you know, he feels like he has a mandate to go through with this particular plan,
regardless of whether it comports with the Constitution, would destroy our fundamental liberties,
or destroy, you know, what we would consider to be, I think, real tenets of American democracy.
Because he told us this, I mean, you really don't, you don't need a Ouija board to figure out which way the wind is blowing here.
Now, we know what the endgame is.
We knew it from the outset.
It's extraordinarily sad.
The one positive thing I can take out of your remarks is that he believes he won by a popular landslide,
when in fact he did not.
And that might be the fatal flaw.
That might be his weakness.
The fact that he believes he has support he does not have.
It's up to the rest of us from that point to prove him wrong.
So, our phone number is, and write this down because it's not the usual WBAI phone number.
Ready?
Okay.
802, don't be scared by the area code.
It's a perfectly legitimate area code.
802-321-4225.
802-321-4225.
We can only handle one call at a time.
Meaning if we're talking to somebody and you call at that point, you'll go to voicemail.
And if you get voicemail, either leave us a message or call back.
And we'll take your phone call.
802-321-4225.
I'd like to read a letter from a listener.
This is from Phil.
I'm a miserable liberal and I want to be deported back to my grandfather's land.
America sucks.
And that's with three Ks.
Give me a one-way ticket to Ireland and like $50,000, I'll be out in the flash.
I also have some Rob T. Firefly rare paintings of Zeus and Banneker.
However, I'm looking to sell to finance my getting the F out of here.
And Rob, I imagine those are worth quite a pretty penny at this point.
And Phil, you know, I'm not sure if you know this.
You probably know this, but in case you don't, if in fact your grandfather did come from Ireland,
was born there, you are entitled to Irish citizenship.
And anyone who has a parent or grandparent who was born in the Republic of Ireland,
you can apply for Irish citizenship.
And by extension, an Irish passport.
It'll take at least a year, but it's something, you know, it's a little bit of insurance.
I don't think people should abandon the place and go to other countries and watch from afar.
It's not helping.
It doesn't help.
I understand, though, if you need to do that, and I'm not going to condemn people who do,
maybe you need to do it for a little bit.
Whatever you have to do to stay sane, but just know you're not alone and we are in it
for the long haul and we're not going anywhere.
Okay.
We have a phone call, I believe.
We do.
Okay.
Let's take our first phone call.
Good evening.
You're on WBAI.
Speak up.
Go ahead.
I don't hear anybody there.
We definitely are.
There's definitely somebody there.
As far as I know.
Okay.
We'll reset that and try again.
All right.
I hit the right buttons.
802-321-4225 is our phone number.
You can turn the ringer back on, by the way, so that I'm aware when calls are coming in.
I have done that.
While we're on the subject, though, of whether or not to leave the country, I do want to
shout out a project that's come up.
It's a site called transworldexpress.org.
And this site exists to assist people under threat from fascism to migrate to safer communities by connecting people with resources to people in need.
This is geared toward the trans community, many members of which find themselves not feeling safe where they are.
So this is still a developing project.
There are lists of various places in the world and any specific information that someone in the trans community might need if they're considering immigration and other ways that you can help if you're in the U.S., if you're in a destination country, if you're an ally.
Check it out.
Transworldexpress.org.
Okay, and we have another phone call.
Good evening.
You're on WBAI.
Go ahead.
Really?
Okay.
Folks, stay on the line if you call us.
802-321-4225.
All right, I'm going to go into another story now.
Hopefully, we get a call by the time I finish it.
In October, what, do we have a call already?
Okay.
What are you signaling me?
Hurry up, because it's going to come.
We mean hurry up.
The first line.
Okay.
I can't make the calls come in any faster.
In October, Elon Musk preached the message of government transparency during a presidential campaign rally that he held in Pennsylvania in support of Donald Trump.
In fact, we've been hearing this ever since the word that applies is coup that Elon Musk has been involved in, as far as basically taking over various departments and not being elected and having all this power without being answerable to anybody.
Well, what we keep hearing is that the people voted for this.
And no, the people did not vote for this.
The people voted for one person.
They voted for a degree of change.
They did not vote for this kind of, of, uh, and just realize when he's saying that I realized this in the press conference the other day.
I don't know if you'll have a story about that, but, uh, what Musk is doing is lying in the same style that Trump does, like saying one thing, even when it's a complete false.
So just, he's trying, he's practicing that technique because it's, I don't think comes naturally to him or maybe it does.
And he's trying it in this new position, but know that when he says transparency, he's lying.
It's a lie.
There's, there's absolutely none that in fact, it's the opposite.
And that's the whole thing is he's working on his ability to say the opposite of what he does to pro right to project the opposite of what he's hanging out with Trump long enough.
It's going to rub off on you for sure.
Well, yeah, but the whole thing here is that, uh, we're trying to be transparent and we get a lot of, uh, feedback from people, especially on Twitter, uh, that, uh, say that, um, you know, we should not be standing up.
It's weird because they say you shouldn't be standing up for the government.
And I think they forget that, um, Trump is the government.
They seem to forget that.
But of course, you know, on Twitter have to have to quote unquote, people are actually bots still.
So you never really know what you're talking to.
Uh, but the fact of, um, uh, the, the, um, the image that what Musk is doing is transparent somehow.
It's a complete fabrication because now the white house has designated his office, the United States, those service as an entity insulated from public records requests or most judicial intervention.
Until 2034, by declaring the documents it produces and receives presidential records.
Yeah.
So they're dodging transparency.
So when you hear somebody say these people are being transparent and trying to reveal all the skullduggery that's going on, it's a lie.
It is deception.
It is one of those games in the street where they, they steal your money.
Literally, that's what they're doing.
So, um, yeah, um, the designation has a special legal meaning under a law called the Presidential Records Act.
The law shields from the public all documents, communication trails, and records from the president, his advisors, and staff until five years after that president leaves office.
That law still requires presidents to keep a broad set of written materials, uh, created or received by them while executing their duties.
Nonetheless, presidents can also dispose of their records after getting a written approval from the archivist at the National Archives.
Well, guess what?
On Friday, Trump fired the archivist, Colleen Shogan.
No cause or reason was cited.
So, um, he's going to put somebody in there that is loyal to him, and that will allow him to, uh, weed through the documents that involve Elon Musk.
And we will never find out what's actually going on.
And there's your transparency for you.
All right, we have a phone call.
Let's try this again.
Good evening.
You're on Off the Hook Overtime.
Oh, wait, this isn't Overtime.
This is Off the Hook.
Regular time.
Regular time.
We always take phone calls on Overtime.
Good evening.
You're on Off the Hook.
Go ahead.
I'm here.
I don't know if you hear me.
We hear you just fine.
I'll be darned.
I've been listening to you guys for many, many years.
Uh, you're now broadcast live through WGXC up in, uh, Acre, New York.
So that's like the Hudson, Catskill, Athens area.
Wow.
That's awesome.
Yeah.
Well, in any case, I just wanted to share a few things and then ask you some questions.
One is this.
Uh, I'm a child.
I'm a child of the 60s.
And before I knew what fascism ever was, I already knew that Americans would make first
class fascists.
This is something I saw as a child.
Um, I never thought I'd live to see it, but I, now I am seeing it.
Um, what I question is this, there are people who believe that when Trump is no longer president,
he will leave peacefully.
I have a hard time believing that.
And before I hang up, I want to hear what you fellas have to say about that.
Yeah, I, uh, I completely agree.
And I think someone should, uh, someone should wake up Bill Maher, let him like, uh, evaluate
his crystal ball about, uh, what his dates are on, on the exit of this president.
I don't know why you're picking on Bill Maher.
He's the one who said that he wasn't going to leave peacefully the first time.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So obviously he's going to say the same thing again.
He's obviously changed.
I mean, maybe it's, uh, he's moved the dates up a little bit or he has new projections for
that.
Well, how about everybody else wake up too?
Because obviously that's not going to happen or it's going to be, um, uh, set in such a
way that he's still going to be very, very present or try to run for a third term or something
like that.
Yeah, but this, again, this is what I want to run by you guys.
How could he not turn over the presidency after this present term?
What, in other words, in real terms, what could he and his cronies actually do to keep
him in the white house?
Well, I guarantee you somewhere, there are a bunch of people working on how to make that
happen and they'll, they'll, they'll try to find, was it the 22nd amendment?
The one that, uh, that limits presidential terms.
They're trying to find a way to either nullify that or interpret it in a way that, uh, is not
how anybody else ever interpreted it.
But believe me, they're working on it.
They're, they're, they're working on ways or to have somebody in the Trump family continue.
They're, they're, they're taking notes from all sorts of, um, uh, of dark places.
All right.
And this is my last question.
I'll hang up.
Okay.
My, my understanding as of right now, once Trump is no longer president, let's go down
that path that he is no longer president.
He can still stand trial for things that he's done.
I'd like to believe that, but, uh, the way the Supreme court has, um, has ruled, uh, it
seems like he can do whatever he wants right now and not be responsible at all.
At least that's his dream.
Um, but that's not what I mean.
His first term, the things he did in the first term, he could still stand trial for when he's
no longer president.
I'm not sure.
I'll defer to Alex on this as far as the interpretation.
Uh, but, uh, we're going to answer this on the air and, uh, thank you very much for calling.
Thank you.
All right.
Later.
8 0 2 3 2 1 4 2 2 5 is our phone number.
Go ahead, Alex.
Would, would, would Trump be, uh, uh, be responsible for anything he did during his first term, the
way things are now?
It could be the case.
It could be the case, especially if they are state crimes and he couldn't pardon himself
or somebody else couldn't pardon him for federal crimes.
There's also a statute of limitation issues that could arise given the passage of time
between the first term, Biden's term and the second term.
So that could complicate things with respect to the caller's theory that he could stay in
office for another term after this particular term.
Trump has certainly hinted at that.
It might've been specifically to provoke media attention.
And ways he could do that would be to amend the constitution and specifically the 22nd
amendment, as you stated, there may also be a loophole within the constitution, the security
vulnerability, if you want to bring it back into hacker parlance here, whereby if Trump
is elected as vice president in another term coming up, and then the actual president who
is elected resigns, he may be able to ascend to the presidency once again.
There's a scary thought on which to leave you.
Thank you for that.
Okay.
Our phone number again, 802-321-4225.
I believe the phone line is open, right, Kyle?
Correct.
And we have an 800 number, don't we?
Rob, do you know what that is?
I haven't got it in front of me at the moment, but let me see if I can find it.
Okay.
But while I'm looking for that, I do want to mention that speaking of a potential third
Trump term, by the time he's no longer president, he's going to be 82 years old.
And I think that's very much a frightening prospect for anybody to, you know, still be in control
at that age, showing the signs of...
Now, all of a sudden, that's not an issue.
Okay.
So that's only an issue when the Democrats are in power.
It's not an issue when Trump is in power.
All right.
We have a call coming in, so we're going to go to that before we go to any more stories.
And you are on the air.
Go ahead.
Oh, hi.
I'd just like to let you know that you're also being, every Wednesday, broadcast live
on WIOFLP, Woodstock 104, 104.1 FM in Woodstock, New York.
Wow.
And that's been for a number of years.
So are we only broadcast in upstate New York?
It seems to be the place where we're broadcast.
They have the technical acumen at some time.
Wow.
Okay.
Well, that's great to know as well.
But we're welcome to be carried elsewhere, right?
Yeah.
I mean, as far as I'm concerned, anybody can...
We're glad for it.
Absolutely.
Is there anything else you had to say, caller?
We're a Pacifica affiliate, other than that.
Oh, awesome.
Well, hang in there.
Thank you for your off-the-hook program and very informative.
Okay.
Thank you very much.
We appreciate your carriage.
Keep up the good work.
All right.
Take care.
Yeah, if you have a radio station, please, you're welcome to broadcast us either live
or on tape.
And if we're on tape, make sure you mention that so that people don't try to call us when
we're on tape, which is always frustrating for everybody.
We have another phone call.
What's funny about this phone call, Kyle?
Are you looking at the caller ID?
I am.
I am.
It's a funny one.
It's a funny caller ID.
Okay.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Go ahead.
I'm on already?
Yeah, you're on already.
Apparently, you have a funny caller ID.
Yeah, I've been calling.
This is the third time, and I kept leaving messages.
But with Tom here in New Germany, a.k.a.
in New Jersey, folks can't start crying because back in the early 90s, they should have saw
all this crap coming.
All right.
The bullies were able to get laws passed that were retroactive, federal and state, and that
means that even if your criminal sentence was over, right, they could come and do things
and tell you to comply with things that you were not sentenced to, no matter how long ago
your criminal sentence was, and everybody scared to death over some BS allowed it to go down.
All right.
So when you start doing stuff like that, then it comes back to bite you in the butt, right?
Right after that, some of the laws they passed, federal and state, was limiting habeas corpus, right?
Well, some people didn't like it, but it wasn't nothing you could say because you already let it go down prior to that.
And now all kinds of bullies are going to bully the bullies, right?
Those people who were bullying some people because they were powerless, usually, you know, ex-cons.
Now you're starting to see what it feels like.
So don't cry now.
And like I said in my papers, King Downing has them.
He won't share them with you.
I don't know why.
There are certain people that when it hits the fan, they're not going to be your allies.
You can forget that.
And so all these people should have known that this was coming.
And how can you be a federal government elected official and some 20-year-old punk going to come to you
and put his hands on you and say you can't do something?
That's why you have Capitol Police.
That's why you have D.C. police.
That's why you have, who's those guys that deal with elected officials?
They're security.
Secret Service.
You know.
Yeah, Secret Service.
Federal Marshals.
I mean, like, somebody's pulling something over on the people, and it ain't just Republic
clans.
All right.
You want me to hear your comment real quick?
No, I think very well spoken and good points and something to reflect upon.
Absolutely.
Well, last thing.
Yes.
This station is not the only one.
The main mass media does it more so than everybody else.
They kind of, you know, pretend that somebody that gets a damn government job is like some kind of alien from out of space,
some kind of superhuman.
No.
There are people just like you.
If they don't wash, you know what?
You ain't going to want to be around them, right?
Yes.
Some of them come there and hang out at the station.
The great Charles Barron, who finally have, you know, kudos to him for really starting to recognize that there's no country called black.
And I hope Elle from Long Island is okay because she helped support that, you know, that fact.
And I haven't heard from her for a while, so I can't get over there to check on her, hope somebody go over there and check on her.
But these people ain't no divine beings, so stop talking about them like that.
You know, I had to learn that lesson, you know, embarrassingly, many years ago, state representative Richardson, Dave Richardson, out of Philadelphia, taught me that lesson.
But even though I had lived in D.C., had went in the back of the Supreme Court and stolen galoshes and umbrellas, I still didn't understand, hung out with these guys, did fashion shows with congressmen.
I still kind of had this, you know, this aura of, like, these people are something really different, right?
And I had to find out, nah, you know, Yusef Salaam, he's one of you.
He's no different than anybody else.
Now he's city councilman.
So stop all this nonsense.
Like, these people are untouchable, invisible when they want to be.
It ain't nobody, you know?
And as long as you have the audience and the people, like, with this kind of, you know, like, I don't know what you call it.
I used to have it.
I don't have it anymore.
But that his guy is, he's an elected official.
He ain't official nothing.
He just an elected person.
You can get on that damn thing.
And every convicted felon in this country need to stampede the boards of election and start getting on ballots.
That's how you defeat these people.
And I haven't heard a peep from anybody on this station, including the so-called On the Count show, say a damn thing about it.
And it's a damn shame.
You get all this airtime, you know, you're on the air 10, 15 years.
You know, when somebody calls, they can't get 30 seconds.
If you comment on whatever they said, it's only after you've cut them off.
And they don't get a chance to say nothing back.
You have brilliant callers all the time, and there's no follow-up.
You know, hey, hey, hey, bruh, let me put you on hold, man.
We need to talk to you.
Y'all don't do that.
It's like you got this big luxury.
When they got 1,500 AM stations, right, the evangelicals got over 700.
And I learned a lot of that from this station, right?
And, you know, I'm like a media, you know, that's my thing.
I mean, I would do it free for you if you wanted.
You know, I research and study this crap.
But, you know, the real talk show is putting a microphone on the sidewalk and just letting people come up and talk.
And going into the high schools, especially the all-male high schools, and having them young brothers have a chance to say whatever the hell is going on out there.
You have nothing for young people on this station.
Not even the college people.
We need to definitely improve on that.
You're going to stay alive if you start bringing them in.
Right.
Yeah, what were you saying?
I'm saying we need to do that because, you know, young people are the key to the future.
And if we have involvement from them, then we have a future.
And that's extremely important.
But I want to thank you for raising all these points and give us and our listeners and our staff things to think about.
But we do want to take other calls.
So I hope you keep listening and I hope you keep calling.
Yeah, and have some follow-up with some of your callers, man.
Because these people ain't no joke.
They, some of them are brilliant.
And you just, you know, fluff them off like they ain't said nothing.
All right, peace.
All right, take care.
Good call.
Wow.
802-321-4225 is our phone number.
We only have a few minutes left, though.
So we do want to get as many people in as possible.
You know, this whole Elon Musk thing, though, that we've been talking about.
We mentioned this last week.
But basically, what they are doing, Elon Musk on the right, they are, according to this story from the Times, they're trying to recast reporting as doxing.
So basically, what happens is if you publish information about someone.
First of all, doxing is defined as publishing private information about someone with malicious intent.
It refers to a revenge tactic originally used by hackers, hence the name doxing, used to bully, harass, or intimidate people online.
Again, Mr. Musk and others have expanded the definition this month, applying it to journalists and others seeking to hold the government accountable by reporting on public information.
One Justice Department official appointed by President Trump stated early last week that he had found evidence of lawbreaking from people who are targeting employees of Mr. Musk's government efficiency program.
Now, it really is something that is disturbing because they're basically saying you're not allowed to talk about the people that are invading your privacy.
You're not allowed to know who they are.
You're not allowed to report on what they're doing.
And even criticizing them could be thought of as something offensive.
You know, meanwhile, you have these people who are basically rummaging through Treasury Department files and payment information for people who get Social Security and God knows what else.
And you're supposed to just sit back and pretend it's not happening.
Well, there's this guy named Marco Elez.
And I guess I'm not supposed to say that name either because he's one of the people involved in this.
He is one of Elon Musk's lackeys at the Doge Group.
And he had to resign last Thursday after the Wall Street Journal.
Yeah, another Marxist rag.
They revealed a litany of extremely racist social media posts that he'd apparently made in the past.
And yeah, you know, as the vice president said, somebody shouldn't have their career destroyed because of things they said in their youth.
This was set in December.
All right.
Two months ago.
The exact reason for Marco Elez's abrupt departure remains unclear.
But as Wired reports, White House officials seem to have provided incorrect information about Elez only being given read-only permissions to the U.S. Treasury code base, hinting at the possibility that he could have been in trouble for things other than the egregiously racist post linked to his departure.
Now, according to Wired, Elez did in fact have right access, allowing him to push unvetted and untested changes straight to the Treasury Department's payment system, which is a nightmare scenario that could introduce all sorts of cybersecurity vulnerabilities and leave doors open for adversary hacker groups.
In other words, given Musk's well-established leniency and penchant for racist ideologies, there may be far more to the story than the Wall Street Journal's reporting lets on.
Did Elez push code changes to a payment system responsible for a gigantuan $5.45 trillion in 2024?
Put simply, it looks like Elon's doge boy was doing something naughty.
And regardless of whether he had permission from Musk, he may have ended up taking the fall for it.
But, you know, it all has a happy ending because Marco Elez was rehired.
Yeah, because apparently being a horrible racist saying terrible things like this, that's not disqualifying anymore.
So he's back having access to your private data.
And we're not supposed to talk about it.
All right, let's take another phone call.
And good evening.
You're on Off the Hook.
Go ahead.
Hi, thanks for welcoming me.
I used to call in.
I used to be a Board of Elections inspector.
I can't anymore.
I'm out in Suffolk County.
And I've been listening to you guys for years, and I so appreciate it.
You know, so you guys got a lawyer on your team I'm trying to contact and hire.
I know the name of the firm, so I'll take that from there.
You know what's dawning on me?
They're saying, oh, if they're going into Treasury, they're finding more than millions.
And it may not even be billions, it may be quadrillions that has been stolen and misappropriated.
You guys like film.
Have you ever heard of or seen the film by Aaron Russo?
He made Trading Places, the movie.
But he made another movie about the tax law, the income tax law.
And he sent that movie around free.
I got a call from someone I go through life with, and he said, I can't make it, but they're showing it at the comic multiplex.
So I went over and I saw the movie about how Congress has never ruled that they should collect from your federal income taxes.
Well, that's interesting.
So then the story, there were a couple cases in the movie.
But one of the cases, the judge was kind of bullying the jury.
And the jury said, well, no, but we want to actually see this statue.
No, just go in.
The judge was bullying the jury.
And they said, yeah, you know, and the judge kept bullying them, but did not produce the facts for them to peruse the jury.
And they came around and said, okay, the case is going this way against the government.
This law was never made.
They're claiming this.
Aaron Russo is deceased.
But he made this movie out of his pocket.
Or maybe he had someone, you know, funding with him or something, sent this movie around the United States to be viewed by the public.
I think that's tremendous.
Interesting.
Wow.
It is.
But, okay, so let me just get to this.
It's dawning on me.
In this new administration, whatever happened to the government accounting office?
You know, because somehow they were spending all those monies on hammers and toilet seats back in the day through the Pentagon.
But, you know, they would look at something and then they would get dissed and not recognized or not allowed or, well, isn't this a form of government accounting, too?
And shouldn't there be?
You know, and I wouldn't let the wolf guard my penthouse necessarily.
So I'm not here to say Donald is or isn't honest.
You know, but I also think he's trying to do something, some things, plural, good for this nation.
Do you think he's trying to do anything good for this nation that isn't also good for him?
Not necessarily.
I mean, do you think he ever cares about anyone other than himself?
Not necessarily.
I'm also just going to throw in while I'm here.
In Huntington Station, right near the train station on a street called Broadway, I worked for a prestigious model for modeling, scale modeling.
After getting out of upstate college for scale modeling.
And I also got out of prison and got into my career.
I made a model of Television City was a proposal he had for the west side of Manhattan.
But I made that original model.
And he had to pay us to get the model to present it to the city.
And then the city took one look at it.
This is too big.
You can't build this.
So I'm not one of Trump's employees.
I was a lowly model maker for a firm.
And they were great people.
Thought it was a small firm.
And, you know, I made way less than $10 an hour.
Well, listen, we have to move on.
I thought it was a good point about the Government Accounting Office.
And, you know, what the hell.
Thanks, guys.
All right.
Take care.
I just wanted to end with a little bit more information about some of the Doge people.
Uh, and this, um, from, from, uh, from the Guardian, actually.
Um, the youngest of Musk's, uh, Doge hires is Edward Corustein.
Uh, he is the one with the online username of Big Balls.
He's a 19-year-old former intern at Neuralink, which is Musk's neurotechnology company.
And until recently, he appeared to be a first-year student at Northeastern University in Boston.
Uh, Luke Farator is a 23-year-old former SpaceX intern.
Uh, we know about Marco Elez, uh, who's 25.
He used to work for X and SpaceX.
Revealed by the Wall Street Journal to have authored several since-removed tweets, asserting,
among other things, you cannot pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity.
And, uh, of course, he has been rehired now.
Uh, Gavin Kligger, 25-year-old, who boosted a post on X by the white supremacist Nick Fuentes,
and who's newly launched Substack this week, highlighted the perils of skipping freshman English 101,
with a post entitled, Why Doge? Why I Gave Up a Seven-Figure Salary to Save America.
Other names, Akash Baba, uh, Gottlieb Kohl-Killian, and Ethan Shaltran.
And there will be more, and we will talk about them, because they are affecting us.
They have access to, um, uh, our most private and personal information, and, um, they must
be held accountable for whatever happens next.
We have one minute left.
Anyone want to fill that?
We don't have time for any more calls, unfortunately.
And we're not doing overtime tonight, but people can write to us.
O-T-H at 2600.com.
Go ahead, Alex.
What a fun night it was to have all these callers call in.
I'm looking forward to the next one we do next month.
And, uh, being back on the air, I think everybody should stay tuned.
What an important time to have radio.
Please support WBAI.
To keep us on the air during these absolutely critical times.
We absolutely will be in the crosshairs of, uh, this regime.
Scary times ahead, but it's so essential to support a station like WBAI.
And you can do that by going to give to WBAI.org, become a BAI buddy, and, um, make this place
stronger than ever, because, uh, we all need voices of many different backgrounds that will,
um, uh, share information and stand up to injustice.
All right.
Good night, everyone.
We will see you again next week.
And, um, write to us, O-T-H at 2600.com.
Good night, all.
Out of the airplane, stepped Chamberlain with a condam and a stare.
But we all cheered wildly.
A photograph was taken as you waved a piece of paper in the air.
Now the disco machine lives in Munich, and we are all friends.
And I slip on my Italian dancing shoes as the evening descends.
And the bells take their toll once again in a victory child.
And we can thank God that the final God's peace in our time.
There's a man going round, taking names, no matter who you claim to be.
As innocent as babies, a mad dog with rabies, you're still a part of some conspiracy.
Meanwhile, there's a light over the ocean, running brighter than the sun.
And a man sits alone in a bar and says,
Oh, God, what have we done?
And the bells take their toll once again in a victory child.
And we can thank God that we'll find our God's peace in our time.
We'll find our God's peace in our hearts.
We'll find our God's peace in our hearts.
We'll find our God's peace in our hearts.
We're lighting a bonfire upon every hilltop in the land.
There's just another tiny island invaded
When he's got the whole world in his hands
And the heavyweight champion fights
In the international propaganda Star Wars
There's already one spaceman in the white house
There's already one spaceman in the white house
What you want's another one for
And the bells take their toll once again
We'll find our man in a victory child
And we can thank God that we'll find our God's peace in our hearts.
We'll find our God's peace in our hearts.
Amen.
Thank you.
Thank you.