4.5 • 2.6K Ratings
🗓️ 24 February 2025
⏱️ 7 minutes
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MintPress News reporter Alan MacLeod returns to Bad Faith to tell the story of how Elon Musk was mentored by his CIA handler to become the ultimate insider: a defense contractor for the US government who is now involved in a project to double the number of nuclear bombs in existence, and build an "iron dome" for America which would end the era of "mutually assured destruction" and nuclear peace. How did Mike Griffin, the COO of In-Q-Tel, a private enterprise funded by the CIA, come to have such a close relationship with Musk that Musk named his favorite child Griffin? What is the end goal of Musk's involvement in the defense sector? And how are conservatives like Musk and Tulsi Gabbard negotiating the "America First" anti-interventionism of the base now that they've gone full insider?
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Produced by Armand Aviram.
Theme by Nick Thorburn (@nickfromislands).
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0:00.0 | One of the kindest criticisms you can make of the modern conservative movement is that they are sometimes not ideologically consistent. |
0:08.0 | So Donald Trump, in his first term, right, he presents himself as an outsider, an anti-war figure, someone who will end the endless wars. |
0:16.2 | But, you know, just off the top of my head, you know, he dropped the mother of all bombs on Afghanistan, |
0:22.0 | the largest non-nuclear weapon ever used in anger. He threatened to drop nuclear weapons on North |
0:28.9 | Korea. He tried to organize an armed intervention in Venezuela. He pumped up the support for Saudi Arabia |
0:37.0 | during its genocide on Yemen. He approved the moving of the |
0:41.1 | U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. He increased the Pentagon budget massively to its highest point ever. |
0:48.1 | So these are not the actions of an anti-war president. And yet again, you know, Trump might talk a big game on a lot of |
0:56.4 | these things, but ultimately his track record doesn't really show that he's some sort of true |
1:01.4 | anti-war figure. He's not like a Cindy Sheean. He's not, you know, somebody who goes out constantly |
1:07.4 | and is getting arrested like people at Code Pink or whatever. And that's why there's |
1:12.2 | been a lot of skepticism on the left when it comes to that. But there is a genuine movement in |
1:17.2 | the United States and a genuine populist feeling among both people who are more on the left and on |
1:22.2 | the right that the United States has been involved in far too many wars. We are spending far too much money on defence and the military. |
1:30.8 | And that sort of money has to be used back at home to repair a crumbling infrastructure, |
1:36.5 | help the education system, which is in crisis, deal with the homelessness epidemic, |
1:41.7 | the epidemic among fentanyl use. |
1:43.2 | I mean, there's so many better uses for this money than throwing a trillion dollars every year |
1:49.0 | at Boeing and Raytheon and Lockheed Martin to provide us death machines, half of which if |
1:55.0 | were ever used might spell the end of the world. |
1:58.0 | So people can see this madness and they want their leaders, |
2:02.5 | whether that's political leaders like Trump or economic leaders like Musk, to reflect that. |
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