Public evidence record
Published podcast speaker
Claim ledger
21 transcript-backed records
01 / evaluation
“The Obama administration was failing at because they were so afraid of being labeled Islamophobes, that they refused to accurately identify that ideology driving these terrorist groups.”
02 / belief
“I don’t think that’s naive at all and I think there are so many examples through history that point to the power of that, the real power in that.”
03 / belief
“I went to Syria looking forward to coming back and shedding light on different perspectives, experiences and stories that I found that would give people a more broad understanding of what was happening in that country.”
04 / commitment
“” I won’t say I’m cautiously optimistic because I understand how that place works, but their pause at least gives people the opportunity to continue to kind of sound the alarm and for people to call their senators and express their concerns with this, that are very real, valid concerns.”
05 / belief
“I mean, they all … And this is like The Social Dilemma documentary, I think exposed a lot, that there’s so much that these algorithms do in these various social media platforms that’s problematic to say the least.”
06 / belief
“There are different examples of this across different sectors of our society, but I think the military industrial complex over time has proven itself to be the most powerful and influential, and that’s what is behind it, is this is why they try to destroy anyone who dares to ask the most obvious questions is because it is about power and wielding power.”
07 / observation
“The only way this ends is when both sides come to the table and find an agreement that neither side is going to be completely happy with, both sides being forced to make some concessions, but one where they will both walk away and this war can end.”
08 / belief
“I think that his message resonated with so many people across generations and across different views, different backgrounds to where people cried on the night that he was elected because they felt so hopeful.”
09 / belief
“Experiencing firsthand that high human cost of war caused me, a 20-something-year-old from Hawaii… I had left my seat in the state legislature to volunteer to deploy with my brothers and sisters in my unit to Iraq, and so recognize the cost of war, I think, in two fundamental ways.”
10 / belief
“I guess the bottom line upfront is this is another piece of legislation being expedited through Congress with strong bipartisan support in the name of national security interests that is essentially a power grab and an assault on freedom and liberty. And I’ll just say this in, I think, probably the top three things that they’re not actually telling us that’s in the bill.”
11 / belief
“Going into the detail of some of the things we’ve talked about, about my own experiences, about what I have learned along the way, but also how even in the last year or two years, certainly under this administration, people who I worked with in Congress who were Democrats, dependable voices for civil liberties, dependable voices, speaking out against the insanity of people who wanted to wage war for the sake of war.”
12 / evaluation
“” Even advocating for that is seen as a kind of heresy in the warmongering establishment in Washington, and the cost of their retaliation against those who are reasonable voices, who look at the world as it is, not some fantasy that they wish existed is, in those rooms, during those critical moments, people will, even if they know in their heart or their mind that this could end really badly, their instinct is to self-censor and not speak up because they don’t want to experience the wrath and ire, whether it be coming from four-star generals, or the secretaries of state, or defense, or these high-ranking people in positions of power and influence.”
13 / evaluation
“It is a tired yet dependable playbook that is used not only by people like Hillary Clinton, but also people like Mitt Romney and others to try to smear, discredit and destroy the reputations of people who have the audacity to question their objectives as they call for one war or another, or have the audacity to say that this is not in the best interest of peace, or in our country, our national security. They keep going back to this playbook as they do today, because again, they’re not willing to debate the substance of one position versus another, which is what we should have.”
14 / recommendation
“Those kinds of engagements are the most, to me, the most powerful exercises of diplomacy that can’t be matched, especially when our president’s foremost role and responsibility is to serve as commander in chief, and I wish that we had leaders who were more willing to engage because I think we’d make a lot more progress more quickly to find areas both of mutual interest as well as to help de-conflict and de-escalate areas where there is tension or disagreement or adversarial interests.”
15 / evaluation
“There are very serious problems within both of our political parties, specifically coming from politicians who are driven by this desire for power and who are so afraid of losing that power that they’re willing to do whatever they feel they need to do, which centers around taking away our freedom because the more free we are to make our own decisions, even if they may end up being the wrong decisions, but to learn from those things and know that we’ve got to live with the consequences, the beauty and messiness of what a free society looks like.”
16 / evaluation
“If you’re not part of the official narrative of the US government, which was intent on a regime change war in Syria, then you’re an outcast. And it was unfortunate because people levied all kinds of accusations and smears against me for going and having the audacity to go and learn more, try to seek the truth, in the hopes of preventing more needless war and in the hopes of preventing yet another quagmire and disastrous war in the Middle East.”
17 / evaluation
“I got curious about how much it costs us as taxpayers. And so I started asking around some of the people, and I think at that time it was like, well, every time a soldier or a service member walks through the door, if I were to go in for breakfast and grab a banana and walk out, that’s an automatic $35 per head per meal four times a day, thousands and thousands of people.”
18 / evaluation
“They are incredibly powerful and don’t have any qualms at destroying those who try to get in the way of their power, and they’ve got a lot of tools. They’ve got a lot of tools to do that, which I think is why President Eisenhower chose to include this in his farewell address as a warning, because the only recourse, the only real power that has the ability to destroy them and stand up against them is a free people living in a free society, exercising the rights that we have enshrined in the Constitution and Bill of Rights.”
19 / evaluation
“Obviously, there are other companies that this is their business model. They get away with it because of their political connections, and the lobbyists that they have, the relationships they have with politicians.”
20 / evaluation
“When you have some people in the Israeli government who don’t want the Palestinian people in Gaza at all and want them to go and repatriate in other countries, I think that’s a big problem, and that further exacerbates this hatred and resentment that continues to grow there. This is a generation’s long challenge, unfortunately, of the resentment and tension that exists between many Israelis and many Palestinians that can only be resolved when there’s strong leadership representing both peoples who are able and willing to come together and recognize that the only way forward is to let the past be in the past and find a way towards peace in the future.”
21 / evaluation
“Again, I served in a medical unit and what we saw was a downward shift in casualties from the unit that had been there before us, simply because of that basic human connection that our guys sought to make.”