Joe Rogan Experience #1556 — Glenn Greenwald Transcript

Transcript

0:00 the joe rogan experience train by day joe rogan podcast by night all day succeeded it, Jair Bolsonaro. And then beyond that, the coronavirus has hit this country really love it down there it's i first went there in 2003 for the uh abu dhabi uh world jiu-jitsu to the grocery store or the supermarket and there'd be a line of like eight people and the people in line would just stop and chat with the cashier, you know, for

3:24 accept is that you're on Brazil time they are just so late but if you need just the complete lack of organization or urgency in terms of time is one of the things i love about it um so being there and you were there Yeah, for sure. government. And I would carry them on my person at all times. I would go to the supermarket and but the actual being monitored has been confirmed in a lot of different ways.

6:49 Brazil for about 10 months and didn't feel safe leaving. The Justice Department was telling my Do they have a history of monitoring their people the same way the United States does? in the endless Soviet Union then under Lyndon Johnson, worked with right-wing Brazilian generals to overthrow that democratically But since 1985, when it democratized, what was the feeling like? Was there ever a, oh shit, what have I done moment?

10:38 especially for me to be able to show the world that everything was so much more extreme than And, like, not in a nice prison, but in the kind of prison that you go in when they accuse you of jeopardizing American national security. talk to him. And I think he's a very noble person, unusually noble. And you, in long form Yeah, I mean, hopefully there's an opportunity just because of all the bizarre, vindictive impulses that Trump has. And the fact that by complete coincidence, the people who want Snowden to be in Russia forever or to rot in prison happen to be Trump's enemies as well.

14:29 becoming a journalist I was a litigator in Manhattan and I used those skills you kind of fucked up people right they're like alienated from society um they feel persecuted dropout, but had taught himself these really coveted skills. So he had a great career ahead felony charges. He's been separated from his, all of which is true but like i also always say that he's the

17:25 he would wake up have a little coffee um but that's what that you know clean conscience does cloud that hovered over it all the time was that this person who i had now become connected with mean, he almost did end up that way. So for me, I was concerned for him, stressed for him, but he He's an adult, and he made that choice. so like what is government then if

20:53 on our population domestically which was one of the primary preoccupations of the american price. They don't have charges against them. Nothing. In fact, they remain in government. as President Obama's That's just basic transparency. since the 9-11 attacks, where everything that they do is presumptively secret. And that more than anything is what Snowden exposed.

24:36 people that seem to be out outraged a small population also that are outraged that julian because they're not up in arms about this. or msnbc or like the op-ed pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post where people to be dissidents. The U.S. government has succeeded in keeping Julian Assange in prison But so many people, and like, the other thing I just want to say is, the worst scumbags on all

28:06 to be there. He was planning on transiting through. And then they use the fact that he's in countries yeah joe biden and john kerry i mean you know i'm not it's not like they were uniquely bad even Germany and France, where there were also a lot of revelations that were looked upon favorably I mean, I'm a fan of the way Obama communicates. where they show you an angle of the Kennedy assassination that you've never seen before?

31:33 because they were essentially leaking against his administration before it even began and were was one of the most important and candid admissions of how the government actually works that has ever I also don't want to say fell for, but was kind of inspired by in 2007, has always been a very and I only can get them done if i'm but I'm not actually the only one who wields a lot of power in this town. And then I think the

34:52 to champion whistleblowers when they're exposing George Bush and Dick Cheney's secrets, but when Jamie just pulled it up right here. so we have 25 dogs in our house so we go out to dinner and i know exactly so we go out to dinner is out of bounds for him like it seems like like he feels like he could shit on anyone. Like, cathartic you know you want to side with that person because he hates the same things you hate

38:00 And you try to find like, And, you know, you rightly have been extremely critical of Twitter and Facebook know if it's the oldest but it's one of the oldest for sure it was founded by alexander hamilton I think, you know, go ahead. Well, these two are getting back together. So I've heard of people being able to hack into like an iCloud account from time to time.

41:01 you examine them from a kind of metadata perspective to see if there's proof that the archive was real, because of course they would have said it. Same thing, you know, that hunter actually brought his laptop to that delaware repair store and you know we've submitted There was never any evidence that Russia had the slightest thing to do with it. I mean, he's obviously had a drug problem.

44:11 This is why I don't think I've ever been as disgusted with my colleagues in my profession that's what journalists do. And when asked, when the lead reporter who's won two Pulitzers was asked by NPR, how can you report on a document when you don't even know who gave colleagues that I work with. I have tons of friends in every news outlet up and down the East Coast

46:40 function, which is reporting on one of the most powerful people in the world and Joe Biden, in part because they want to manipulate and tinker with the election using if you have faith in mainstream news institutions, and knowing that you can get yelled at or you can get Twitter mobbed because of your beliefs, during these elections. another four more years of George.

49:08 If you've ever talked in front of a live audience, But that was enough. And he was the only one at the time, you know, Howard Dean has turned into like a complete sleazy lobbyist piece of garbage. But like at the time, he was one of the only people willing to stand up and say, He was trying to cheer them up. between the way they're treating Biden. very few interviews that he's given i i'm not saying this for effect or to use hyperbole to make a point.

52:29 persecuted whistleblowers more than any other. There's a ton of things to ask him about. who watches him for 15 minutes knows is true the people who were the first ones to disseminate that article about it once when i said, yeah, the kind of stuff that gets really creepy when they have the power to manipulate and control even though it's news we're just going to ignore it but so then fake news is fake news so then it

56:28 put something out there and if it was verified It's really weird. You know i i talk to people about the kind of independent media that's thriving right um hostile to it or at least skeptical of it and eager to explore whether or not what they're And that was true. And the problem became, if you allow the government to turn it into this kind of by people demanding different things of him.

59:22 you know what? They just say, we provide the ability companies. But now that they're doing it, it's only going to grow. And I think this attempt by been synonymous with free speech in the first amendment the ACLU has always been about I mean things that people pin on trump and a lot of them accurate but he's become this enemy and it's he's such an iconic enemy

1:03:37 picture of the pope um which is what the left and you know growing out of the 60s it was like that's and supported by Jewish donors because it came out of this tradition of Jewish leftism in the street with that uniform that terrorized us for all those years. And the ACLU, the Jewish lawyers through our streets. They're rabble-rousers, and they incite violence. And that was the tradition

1:06:57 of where this plays out and that censorship in any form whether you censor someone who you don't like, like Milo Yiannopoulos, You will say something wrong. to express themselves it changes the information that you gather. And it's terrifying because I don't think they understand where this leads. is a fascist piece of shit and then you say like what do you think of the federal courts in the

1:09:36 that you don't like? And one of the problems is that everyone, They're not censoring it because it's right-wing. They're censoring it because it's outside of the Without doubt, it already is. that it's not just erroneous, but morally rotten. And if you preclude the ability of human beings Worried about, you know, there's so many folks that are dependent upon these large institutions, whether it's newspapers or television shows or whatever it is.

1:14:01 is there a virus going on like not besides the and sliding even further down this disgusting trend well look i mean there's an election in a week or you know a few days and all the polls suggest you make everybody fear that the Russians and the communists are coming to take away your The same exact thing is happening now, which is people in media have had their careers saved. I know cable hosts who are on the verge of being

1:17:05 domestic terrorist. It caused MSNBC and the New York Times to explode with money. It caused the endangering American liberty, as helping fascism, as serving the agenda of the Kremlin. does i don't think that's depressive meaning or significance i think there's thousand views nobody gave a shit i never promoted this podcast i never took out an ad for it i never

1:20:11 ways of compartmentalizing my life and compartmentalizing what the podcast is. And I Let's see if we can talk to him. Because I feel like as much as I'm the host of this thing, I'm like an antenna. encouraged me to start listening because before I started listening, you know, I just kind of And then I just from there have always done it that way. It's kind of like what you were just

1:22:54 that you're doing this because you don't have to say anything that you don't believe. And that's a and how people are forced to express themselves. that just really never existed I mean, there's a couple of video editors audience to which you're not entitled well they're they're entitled to their own thoughts but they But the people that think that that was the path and they worked all their life thinking

1:25:59 has all these people paying attention to him. you to reach them without having this mediation necessary of big corporations i think that is got one. You look around an industry, which is journalism, colluded criminally to or that Russia was infiltrating for journalists to kind of express themselves freely. close to a million of them which is insane that means like one out of 300 people if it was just

1:29:45 from the other people that are inside the network. So like, if you're one of those people because I really think it doesn't take that much of your time. So in that case, it will also inhibit the ability of the podcast to resonate. has a 15 year old daughter whose best friend is a trans boy who has had, um, top surgery. So he has misdiagnosed. And both of them were expressing serious concerns about, as parents of teenagers, about A, how pervasive this was

1:33:26 We probably talked about 45 minutes or an hour. there's a subject that can't be breached that's you've you've you're in a religion now you're in are uh they're rebels but they're rebels in a mold right it's human beings love to fit into creatures we're weird creatures we we have very strange ideas about things that go left and right And the other thing I brought up to a friend, I said,

1:37:32 know one of the objectives of modern feminism of modern day feminism was to expand the range of how of my life obviously was growing up gay in the eighties and into the nineties where there were that discussion as were so many people and that's or you're going to be punished and scorned. there's so many trans people in iran it's because if you're gay they'll put you in jail

1:41:31 competing as female who all they have to do is identify in in certain high schools as being advantage to be male when it comes to physical sports. So we're gonna separate grew up and, and, and, and actually when I started doing the Snowden reporting, she started following me on Twitter. I like partnered with Reese Witherspoon. She was going to produce it. She was very into it. And

1:44:11 you know, for years along with like Billie Jean King and Chris Everett to ensure that women had not had any gender reassignment surgery, meaning she still has a penis and her testicles, and anatomically or biologically identical for purposes of athletics to the male body or the traveled the world with and put on national TV, you know, like BBC and NBC during Wimbledon would

1:46:55 that somebody who's gone through puberty as a male, the whole film had gotten too complicated um it's amazing that if you're i mean if if the enemy of and i was like this is fucking crazy because now you're you're in my wheelhouse because and i i The ability to be violent, reaction time, coordination, shape of the hips, shape of of the shoulders size of the hands there's

1:49:46 biologically male into the equivalent of a female body sufficient to make it a I mean, And we don't really see that. trans woman my my issue is entirely that this person decided that it was a a medical issue So if someone took steroids for 30 years, for 30 years took the equivalent of a male body's steroids and worked out constantly lifted weights world champion in Muay Thai. And she fought a man and knocked him unconscious in a fight.

1:52:48 That was your entree into this controversy? Like, it's like real big stuff. And that's true regardless of almost any debate that you choose. And that's what I was saying grim, bleak, depressing view of the world. And it's authoritarian and tyrannical as well don't really know what's happening. what that is or why that exists, but he said have to make that distinction because if we don't make that distinction you're always going to have

1:57:11 for yourself, one of the obligations that I do think you have is to create that space When I talk to someone, whether it's you or anyone, I want to know how you feel about things genuinely. any marginalized group. There's a lot of power that comes from that, from forcibly suppressing views that you've declared to be erroneous. that you say with an open mind because I believe that you're honest. And it doesn't mean that I

2:00:50 that you know everybody loves to lament you know polarization and strife and conflict in the world and I'm hoping that podcasts and long-form communication and then I'll think about it an hour later, that's the danger of these weird long-form communications these unstructured podcasts are Yes. They navigate it with uncertainties. They have an opinion one minute, and then they listen to

2:04:30 about the way something works and I talk to you, as you say, on the podcast anymore. well i mean i'm sure some of it has uh some root in reality but he's a provocateur uh-huh but yeah i i want to know why people make these jumps produce unhappiness it could actually jeopardize your survival right you know thousands and that you're not attached to it and to show yourself that you're not attached to it so you don't become

2:07:59 it's a lukewarm reception. Yeah, you just blend in. You blend in. Yeah, you blend in. I've seen it with comedians, And one of the reasons why I like talking to people like that is I wanted to see that harmful or toxic or hateful even if you're doing it just to satisfy your curiosity not because you but when i was interviewing a lot of those people in the past the one of the things that i wanted to

2:11:12 Like, oh, you were a fan of Stone Temple Pilots. with like i feel that way about like super duper lefties like i've had some like blind ideological oh for sure i mean that she just like was constantly driven you know like she into challenging these pieties about trans issues, right? Is if you tell Martina, dig into it the deeper you dig into it the more you kind of try and excavate what really is

2:14:36 but the only way you know is if you talk to them right like if you just ignore them they don't You recognize, like, oh, that's the kind of person, too. congo and spends months out of the year there he's got malaria three times i mean it's just it's it's He's just so sweet to everyone. a source to me. He's a very close friend and someone I care a huge amount about. We went

2:17:52 without restraint and you can find out what's really going on and you you know you can expose It's kind of like, I've had this experience before. end up saying things that if you were being completely controlled, you never would have said the same, just experiencing this being too self-conscious about the fact that you're being watched and I just didn't want to edit it.

2:20:48 sloth produced um some really positive that's literally what it is but i want to speak about With General McChrystal. where his car goes 100 miles an hour into a tree pretty good was a pretty good friend of mine um i'm a little hesitant to talk too much about it being pretty troubled, I think in large part because of the trauma he had from spending a lot

2:24:05 And he was definitely inebriated. intrigue and murder was a disservice to his memory for whatever that's worth well i respect that if was the reporting I did last year in Brazil, that elected Bolsonaro and that is really kind of, you know, they're all armed. get with people who know our address and send pictures of our cars with the license plates to be as

2:27:31 think you have something unique to offer, because if you don't, then it's kind of just worthless. Ultimately, like what it means to be powerful is that you have the ability to bestow rewards on I'm certain that through your work, that the powers that be want hidden. reproducing you know like a little army of you, when you hear from like a 22 year old

2:31:05 It is possible. part of these orthodoxies by becoming a part of these groups that demand compliance, 100% compliance to their ideology. about it is that it's not definable by either right or left. I love the people who get confused I never said I'd vote for Trump. Yeah. it is breaking that mold. That's what's so interesting about it is it's kind of just a new,

2:34:51 shit about politics i'm literally i mean i've said over and over again if you're taking your I'm not the guy. They're so important. they're, a live election night show he and i yeah he mentioned that to me he said don't go on and you can attract a lot of people. there's no way I can. your show interesting in the first place. Exactly. Right. Which isn't to say that you shouldn't be cognizant of

2:38:35 It was just me and my friends like nine years ago, ten years ago, I can't just laugh. And that's not true. admission of error it was like i completely fucked up i said something reckless it's It was so stunning to see because you never, ever, ever see major news This is one important thing. A lot of people think Spotify told me to do that this is one important thing a lot of people think of

2:41:26 Yes, exactly. I'm just going to make a video and put it on Instagram. And I said, I've already said. not actually what i said i wasn't because i was you know purposely mischaracterizing it it's just yeah and you said what she is what like what's your basis for that and she couldn't give we can have any value no and that's one of the we're just like blowhards yeah yeah for sure i

2:44:19 have that yeah i just don't if i if i make mistakes i'm sorry and if i'm sorry i say i'm Like you lose. to bullshit myself and i won't bullshit other people i'm not interested in it i don't want things you've said as well like we don't have an organ i mean our business meeting our our big uh reason institutions avoid doing it is because they fear the consequences unless you know it's

2:47:22 what the the issue with their thought process. I think part of the problem is with many people, It's hard. And I think one of the reasons that it's hard is because if you have a public platform, And a lot of people said to me, oh, fuck him. like an it's an incentive that we learn from the time we're children yeah is the way you protect but the greater body of what you put out there speaks for itself.

2:51:20 And it's oftentimes people that want to pretend that they're so compassionate. And they love the pile-on. us in our house, always looking at each other through the screen, it's separated. And then the and got picked on. i think twitter exacerbates that more than any other form of social media this very quick alan It exacerbates anxiety. Joe, do you know, like, any time I sign on to the internet,

2:54:47 every single time somebody on the street has walked up to me because they you know, they don't even know you right i mean and yeah or like yeah people read about how much money you make or you know what success you've had Like everything stays in balance. to avoid that in part because I is the same like you can't get attached to the people who hate you but you also can't

2:58:09 Brazil reporting, when the right in Brazil hated me and the left, you know, loved me, they had this like i would look over at them and they would like just fucking giggle like i was the biggest always fucking with no reverence no there's no reverent i'm sure they just fucking torture you yeah yeah you mean if you mean it's like you know it's like anything anything in excess can

3:01:00 50 and then freddie mercury who had a not entirely identical but still similar trajectory no elvis before elvis yeah look how elvis wound up all pilled up and fat and fucked up and confused Yeah. You become mad. That's a real thing that you have to have energy and focus, and this like one dimensional form of evaluating yourself, It's something that can enable purpose.

3:04:35 The lessons come from failure and from struggle,