The FBI Has a Secret UFO Unit — And Congress KNOWS | Ft. Matt Laslo (Ask a Pol)

0:16 Speaker 1: Thank you for watching.

1:28 Speaker 2: All right, everybody, welcome back to Total Disclosure. My guest tonight might be one of the most important journalists working the UFO beat right now. He doesn't do it from a studio. He covers it right from the hallways. Matt Laszlo has reported... from Capitol Hill for 20 years, and he's a contributor to Wired and Raw Story. Also the founder of LCB, the Laszlo Congressional Bureau, serving public radio stations nationwide. He's an adjunct professor for political communications at John Hopkins University, George Washington, and Boston University.

2:06 Speaker 2: In 2023, he founded Ask A Poll, which takes subscribers' questions directly to their representatives. he's taken, he's asked all 100 senators about David Grush's claims. He's the reporter. Senators actually learn the fate of their own bills from. And with that, we welcome my friend, Matt Laszlo.

2:28 Speaker 1: I was going to say, man, that guy sounds boring.

2:36 Speaker 2: Snooze. Well, I was like, this is such a long intro. What do I cut? So I just was like, All right. Got long enough in? Jump to the let's go.

2:48 Speaker 1: That's my problem with SEO and GEO. I'm like, oh, what do the algorithms think I am? Who knows?

2:59 Speaker 2: Too good. Too good. Matt, seriously, thank you. We're three days from the midterms. Arguably, you know, a real crossroads, if you will, for not just the UAP field, but for a lot of different topics. What is, what's going on right now? Like, you know, breaking the ice a little. What's the thing you're hearing most? Are we in trouble?

3:26 Speaker 1: Yeah, the most I'm hearing is just lies. And then the other side lies. And then those lies, compounding on those lies. I mean, from an outside observer to my friends in Europe, they're like, ha ha, inside the cauldron. I know. this is not fun. Especially as like a media professor, I teach on like history of new media and blah, blah, blah. And just seeing how like the traditional media has failed us all. You know, you get these cats, like my nemesis, Jim Acosta sits there in the Rose garden yelling like, Mr. President, we're not fake news.

4:04 Speaker 1: I'm like, shut up and sit down, Jim. You're acting like a kindergartner on the playground. Like, How do you convince someone you're not fake news? It's not by calling them doo-doo head. You're a doo-doo head. You're not fake news. No. Do good journalism. Instead, the media is like, oh, we're going to get Trump elected twice and then make money off pitching and whining because, oh, how did he get elected? Because of you. Because of all of you and me.

4:36 Speaker 2: Because you literally cover him 100% of the time, all day, every day. Like he's in the forefront of everyone's mind at all times because, you know, and that's something that does actually bother me like a lot is the fact that everyone's sitting there asking, how did this guy get elected twice? And it's like, you run his, like every single sentence he says, you guys deconstruct it. And you're putting him in the minds of voters just constantly all day. And you said it perfectly.

5:12 Speaker 1: Deconstructed because literally, you know, a lot of my clients are local NPR stations. So I listen to NPR a lot, watch CNN a lot, watch Fox News more, watch OAN more. But you have all these MSM, you know, mainstream media outlets who literally put on what they call a Trump lie. Yeah. Hey, this is false information, but it's the president saying it. And then the anchor cuts in and says, hey, that person who you just voted in twice said is a lie. Trust me. Trust me, because I'm the East Coast media elite.

5:51 Speaker 2: I've got your back.

5:53 Speaker 1: What did we learn in 2016 and 2024? That nobody trusts the traditional media anymore. And that's a big reason why we have Trump and a big reason that we all should be... I mean, maybe it's good for you. this beat, this topic, um, arguably seems to be working to your advantage a little bit.

6:17 Speaker 2: Yeah. Arguably the disclosure, like it's hard to talk about too, because it becomes something that has seemingly started to spin out of control. Um, you know, online, uh, the, the, the, the community, uh, you know, cause we've, you know, 25 years ago, anything you know, FBI secret UAP unit, any one tranche of files, if any of these things came out 25 years ago, that would have been UFO news for five, six years in a row. We're eating so well now that the community seems to, when it doesn't have news, you start to see it turn on itself.

7:01 Speaker 2: And just, it's this seemingly cesspool of just, I mean, I don't even know, but... It's weird.

7:11 Speaker 1: But a lot of that, I put that blame on us in the mainstream media, traditional journalists, because you have all these bloggers, small little outlets who are constantly mining from the New York Times, from Washington Post. They're citing them, saying, hey, this came from the New York Times, but these big outlets definitely drive the conversation because they have so many bodies They just physically have people who can research more who they have so many bodies, they get all their sources, blah, blah, blah.

7:44 Speaker 1: And so it totally makes sense to me why there's this huge disconnect between, I always use the example of UFO Reddit back in 2023 when I started covering this. It was like 3.1 million or so. Now it's up to like 4.3 or 4.4 million. So, as everyone's losing interest in government and all this, they're gaining more and more interest in UFOs. Yeah. And, like, the government and the president, like, and Congress, like, they get it to a degree. Because I think Trump looks at it besides just, like, wait, Obama's getting credit for UFO stuff?

8:33 Speaker 1: Like, I get that. I'm disclosing everything um that was which i think this community should definitely deploy like you guys have that spade just be like someone ask obama a question.

8:48 Speaker 2: Literally just show bodies that's what i'm saying is is with this president all you have to do is beat the guy a bit you know uh so it's that's pretty funny actually i could see me like it's got it I just.

9:04 Speaker 1: Got a glint in my eye from my AR-15. Don't mean to offend anyone out there. I've covered 40-plus mass shootings in my 20 years in D.C. Talked to lawmakers as they bled on their uniforms after Steve Scalise and others were shot. I take this very seriously. I know a lot of the Newtown survivors. Because one of my stations was WSHU in fearful Connecticut for years, which is why when lawmakers started wearing these AR-15 pins, I was like, I gotta get one of those.

9:38 Speaker 2: I like.

9:39 Speaker 1: And cause you know, history buff, I collect stuff. But so today's Halloween and I am Pete Hegseth, which is why I got my flag and my AR-15 pin, which I do not ever wear except for today.

9:53 Speaker 2: That's really funny. Cause I forgot that I like dressed this whole set for Halloween. I didn't even talk about, Hey, happy Halloween, everybody. I spent so much time doing all this web stuff back here. And you can only see a little bit of it, but that's whatever. No witches?

10:12 Speaker 1: No, no, no.

10:13 Speaker 2: I mean, aside from ghosts, like actually in my studio, no, no witches today.

10:19 Speaker 1: It's my kind of like big claim to fame that no one knows about is my great, great, great, great grandpa founded Salem, Massachusetts, home of the witch trials. Yeah, Roger Conant. Really? On my mom's side. So when you drive in, like my sister did her undergrad at Gordon College, just 30, 40 minutes north of Boston. And my dad was driving her out there for orientation. They're going through Salem. And my dad stops the rental car and goes, Alyssa, that's your relative. He stops at this huge statue of Roger Conant in the middle of the street there in Salem.

10:59 Speaker 1: That's my blood.

11:01 Speaker 2: Oh, God. I mean, everyone's there today. You know Salem. Salem, everyone's there right now. I mean, that's why I actually had to go that way to get something. And I was like, no, I can't come today because it's like.

11:15 Speaker 1: Traffic jam?

11:17 Speaker 2: You have no idea, dude. Like every year, every year it gets bigger and the town stays the same size. It is not, it's not equipped for millions of people to descend upon it. So, I mean, it is what it is, but yes, happy Halloween to everybody. That's a really, I forgot to mention that. Yes, you are Pete Hegseth.

11:46 Speaker 2: Hilarious costume idea. But for people who maybe don't know about Ask a Poll UAP, what you do is you walk up to the most powerful people in the country in hallways, elevators, and you make them answer questions from your subscribers, their representation. Then you publish that raw unedited for the most part. Where did that idea come from and why do you think it is continuing to work?

12:16 Speaker 1: So I call it interactive political journalism and like, it's kind of cool. Um, even though it kind of annoys me because I'm a one man band for the most part, especially this year is I'm in some like legal battle with the nation's TV networks. So it's just me on the Hill these days. Um, but, another independent journalism outlet, DropSite News, they got the great idea of now, and they have the money, have a second phone where they have their subscribers do a nice little video for that lawmaker, and then they play it for the lawmaker.

12:53 Speaker 1: And right ahead of the long extended recess ahead of the election, I heard one female Democrat ask the DropSite News guy, How do I know that's not AI? How do I know that's a real voter?

13:07 Speaker 2: Oh, wow.

13:08 Speaker 1: But then like Dropside News came up to me and they're like, hey, you know, I step on your toes. I was like, no, no, no. Every news outlet should literally be telling their anchors to shut the fuck up. And they should be listening to their audience and then trying to regain credibility by literally going mute and just doing what we're supposed to be doing, which is just being flies on the wall. It's like after Trump got elected in 2016, my reaction was I took my own name out of my bureau. So I run this wire service.

13:45 Speaker 1: It used to be the Laszlo Congressional Bureau. Now it's just the LCB because I was like, oh, part of the reason Trump got elected is because the American people rejected the mainstream media. You know, and what do we the mainstream media keep doing? We just get our follower accounts way high. On X, which most of America isn't even on X, or now, a lot of them run to blue sky.

14:09 Speaker 2: Yeah.

14:10 Speaker 1: It's that little freaking oasis, like a little liberal haven. Like, shut the fuck up. Like, literally, the president has his own social media company. I'm not promoting true social, but I'm on it because that's where the president is. And so that's where... That makes sense. The mainstream media, my colleagues just kept doing the same thing. And I'm like, no, the American people have spoken to us and the old way is now rejected. And so that's where Askapul came in. I had the URLs. I owned them for a few years.

14:51 Speaker 1: But then actually when Grush dropped his bombshell in May of 2023, I did a piece for Wired Magazine. You know, it's magazine speed. So when crush dropped this bombshell, every other publication was on it, you know, like, Oh, this guy. And so there was no way for me to do like a day of a week of story. So I pitched the magazine piece. I'm like, Hey, this is a very conspiratorial Congress when it comes to vaccines, uh, space lasers, et cetera, et cetera, all elections being rigged. And so, um, I was like, all right, let me, and I studied the media.

15:37 Speaker 1: So I was like, let me do a feature putting this topic into that context. And so I do, and I think it was Dean Johnson, who I know sometimes ruffles some feathers in the community, but I'm pretty sure it was him, who like, I just got hundreds and hundreds of responses to that piece, mostly on X, people in the community being like, dude, you're cynical, blah, blah, blah. You're a snarky asshole. I'm like, yeah, that's why Playboy pays me. That's why Rolling Stone pays me. Yeah.

16:10 Speaker 2: That's why, yeah, yes.

16:14 Speaker 1: That's why Vice News Tonight with HBO paid me, yo.

16:17 Speaker 2: Exactly.

16:17 Speaker 1: So with all that, they put out the piece and literally, so like I've been retweeted by like, Matt Gaetz, and AOC. Because I would cover both of them for psilocybin. Two of them overlapped on drug policy stuff. Which Gaetz always gushed about and would retweet me. AOC wouldn't because she didn't want to be tied to Gaetz because she might be in the White House. But with that, I always... Where's that going with that? Because I don't think about AOC as president.

16:55 Speaker 2: Yeah, that completely... puts a wall up in someone's head like yeah you were going somewhere but no.

17:05 Speaker 1: So i've covered like for vice news the joke was laszlo's our uh squad correspondent it's like aoc omar presley philippe i know them all i covered them and so like i've been retweeted by all of them and they have millions and millions like on my last check AOC had like tens and tens of millions more followers than the speaker, former speaker of the house, Nancy Pelosi was like, social media is new ish politics, but like that's unprecedented. And so like AOC's retweeted me and I'll get 10, 15, like I'll get two weeks of just like hate and racist and rapist shit in the feed.

17:50 Speaker 1: So it just ruins my account for a couple weeks. But I'll gain like 50, 100 followers, blah, blah, blah. When I dropped this Wired piece on UFOs and on Crush, initially I got like 500 new followers. Then I got like 1,000. So then that Dean Johnson, he goes, hey, you guys are, don't look at the Wired headlines. don't look at what Matt Laszlo wrote. He like literally stripped me out of my own piece. And it was just like, guys, this is a wired feature that has nine different lawmakers talking on the record about our topic.

18:36 Speaker 1: And literally by the end of that day, I had 3000 new followers. And so I was like, all right, this is different. And that's when I deployed the ask a poll entities, um, Especially the one that asked for UAP. Because I was like, this community is hungry. And like, we have other entities like crypto, drug policy. I call it the un-news. The political class.

19:02 Speaker 2: Including the media.

19:04 Speaker 1: We've just like, given up on you all. And like, all these politicians, they're fighting for like that middle. And I'm like, guys, guys, guys. What if you went after disaffected voters and could actually tell them, look, I'm not full of shit. I can get something done for you. So the number that sticks out to me from the 2024 election isn't that Trump won by the most ever, which every president here on out does. To me, the number that stands out is the 90 million Americans who saw the choice between Kamala Harris and Trump and said, no.

19:49 Speaker 1: they sat at home I want those 90 million that's the audience that's Ask a Poll's audience and like it again cuts me out I take your questions our subscribers questions and it's mic'd up video when we can there's still restrictions on video in the capital but yeah it's literally just making me the conduit. Yeah. It's interactive political journalism. It's arrived y'all because of this community.

20:18 Speaker 2: Yeah. I use you. I'm not using, that sounded very wrong, but.

20:22 Speaker 1: No, thank you.

20:23 Speaker 2: Thank you.

20:24 Speaker 1: Please. Yeah. I know my place in this world. Right.

20:28 Speaker 2: And I take what you say to, I really do really value, you know, what you do and how you do it. It's, it's, Like I said, it really is like old school journalism. And you do it without inserting your opinions too much, if at all, which is something, again, I think other outlets should be looking at what you're doing from a grassroots effort, especially if they have big budgets and could fund something like what you're doing. It's untapped potential.

21:02 Speaker 1: What's that thing you were talking about? Funding? Funding. I don't know that word.

21:05 Speaker 2: Are you speaking.

21:07 Speaker 1: In French now?

21:12 Speaker 2: But, yeah, so the Grush piece was really pivotal.

21:19 Speaker 1: Well, dude, so that actually overlapped. So that came a couple months after U.S. airspace was invaded by this Chinese balloon, they said. And I was like, wait, wait, wait. And so, like, Congress and the Senate They had, I think two or so classified hearings on that. Um, well they had one, I think on the balloon and they, they had another one just on declassification. And I was just like, wait, wait, wait. Um, well, cause the American people freaked out and rightfully so, because what we dropped about a trillion bucks a year on our military.

21:58 Speaker 1: Now Trump's asking for 1.5 million. I'm like, guys, don't give him that money. We still haven't audited the Pentagon. Like, what the heck have they done with the trillion bucks a year we've been giving them if they can't protect our freaking airspace?

22:12 Speaker 2: Right.

22:13 Speaker 1: New Jersey lawmakers still haven't gotten a response from the FAA.

22:20 Speaker 2: A resolution on that.

22:21 Speaker 1: Or anyone else. Or the Pentagon. Blah, blah, blah. And, like, that. And Jersey woke lawmakers up. But a balloon floating over the entire U.S., I think enliven a lot of our Cold War heroes. Yeah, yeah. Because there's just this fear.

22:45 Speaker 1: But it's like, no, no, no. Demand more from your government. This is like to everyone, not just this community. But it's like, take it down to like the simplest thing. So a lot of people are like, oh, Laszlo, he covers aliens, UFOs. I'm like, sure. Sure. But I also covered the military-industrial complex, and they're not faring very well, now that they're under the microscope of ASCAPOL. Like, we just broke the news that Langley Air Force Base, which I'm here in D.C., about a mile from the Capitol, it would take me about three hours, two and a half hours, to get down to Langley by car.

23:22 Speaker 2: Right.

23:23 Speaker 1: But Langley, I guess one of America's first, if not our first, Air Force Base, That's where our fifth generation fighter jets are. That's where the F-22 Raptors are held. So Langley to the White House is about 30 minutes in an F-22, which makes Langley a part of the security plan to protect the nation's capital. And we just broke the news from the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mark Warner. He told us, and Senator Mike Rounds basically told us that, yeah, They now believe it was China.

24:02 Speaker 1: I asked them both, well, have you seen proof? Did you see what the Pentagon said? They're all like, I don't remember. Come on. If I see a DJI drone, boom, I take a picture just because I don't know who's running that drone.

24:24 Speaker 2: The Americans.

24:29 Speaker 1: Air force we couldn't for 17 days we couldn't protect the airspace above a u.s military base like stop the presses like guys we don't need to cover trump you know chewing out another reporter you know being a pig by calling him a female colleague's piggy like who.

24:50 Speaker 2: Cares that's openly talking about nikki minaj's ass like what the fuck is going on this isn't real right hey Hey.

24:59 Speaker 1: With that, I'm like, finally, he's telling us what he believes. You remember first administration, they denied that he called all these African nations, shithole nations. This administration, this one, round two, Trump's like, yeah, shithouse nations, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, say it out loud. Say it all out loud. I have to say, that's my job as.

25:23 Speaker 2: A political reporter these days.

25:27 Speaker 1: I say our job as political reporters is to get lawmakers to fuck up and tell us what they're actually thinking. Because I also teach comms. And at comms, you're deflecting and playing defense.

25:42 Speaker 2: That's a good point.

25:43 Speaker 1: Our job is to get relationships. Enough of which, so they open up to us. Which they do regularly on Ask and Fold. We have broken so much classified news that they shouldn't be talking about.

25:57 Speaker 2: I really want to dive into this Langley thing because there's something I want to pivot to in just a second.

26:05 Speaker 1: Nicki Minaj's ass again?

26:07 Speaker 2: No, no.

26:13 Speaker 1: My bad. My bad, bro.

26:17 Speaker 2: This is going to be fun. We're just getting started, brother. I like you.

26:21 Speaker 1: No.

26:26 Speaker 2: So, with Langley, I don't think.

26:29 Speaker 1: I told you I'm playing Hexeth, so I'm hammered right now. Kidding. Kidding. Might be on a little road with Tessa.

26:46 Speaker 2: Fuck, man.

26:47 Speaker 1: Yes, sir. Can't take me anywhere.

26:51 Speaker 2: Have you, uh....

26:55 Speaker 1: Dunk oak with pete hexa.

26:57 Speaker 2: Yes yes yes an eight ball with uh with the secretary of war no um people are talking about how a lot of these a lot of nations right now are even the pentagon is talking about stockpiling uh munitions going off the civilian grid um people are a little worried about like what is going to happen after the midterms if the Dems take over? You know, will the administration just look at that like, all right, you know, like, do it now. Let's go. And, like, are we being warned? You know, what do you think?

27:38 Speaker 1: Well, so, like, broadly, I'd say this. Like, presidents really do wake up. Historically. after their first midterm election. And it usually pulls that president to the other side. Like the reason Bill Clinton's praised for all these bipartisan deals and budgets and blah, blah, blah, is because he got his ass handed to him on election day. And so he had to work with Newt Gingrich. And so like, yeah, the Trump administration is more overtly testing every inch of our little constitution, but whatever.

28:24 Speaker 1: He's a politician. Like I expect that, um, the reality. So like right now it's all fake. We're all just like, and then it's these campaigns and everyone's throwing hate. So like your question, I'm not thinking about, um, Ted Cruz just being in Michigan and calling the democratic Michigan, um, Senate candidate, Syed, literally Ted Cruz said, if Schumer puts him on the Senate Intelligence Committee and we have an operation going on overseas against terrorists, how do we know that Michigan Senator isn't going to just call those terrorists?

29:09 Speaker 1: Ted Cruz literally said that. And so like, we just had this normalization of tribalism.

29:16 Speaker 2: Yeah.

29:17 Speaker 1: Like I did my MA thesis on the increase in partisanship from the 80s on. Partisanship is not the problem anymore. It's just straight tribalism. We are trained and taught that other side is the enemy, which is so bad. But for a topic like this, it actually might be the saving grace. because this issue has been nonpartisan. Um, it got a little more partisan this year, which I judge those lawmakers who did that. Um, but this maybe cannabis policy, like there's a few issues that are so bipartisan. that they were never taken up in the 119th Congress because they can't raise money.

30:07 Speaker 1: You can't like sell fear. Yeah. Can you?

30:11 Speaker 2: Oh, okay.

30:13 Speaker 1: Yeah. And so like, there's a handful of things like everyone forgets this and it's a little off topic, but psychedelics,

30:23 Speaker 1: this Congress, Oh, even the psychedelic Congress just like quietly, uh, helping the industry, allowing veterans to get more access. This Congress covered cannabis, drug policy for a long time. Every two months, I'll ask the author of a cannabis banking bill because every cannabis company that's legal in half the nation is still an all-cash business, basically, which is public. health threat and all that uh and the shit's not tested like that's insane yeah like i moderated the first cannabis panel ever at aspen ideas fest in 2019 and like those three phds i were talking to were literally like watch out like like one guy uh who was doing a grow like the phd was going to visit him and it's grow and he goes hey what's that smell the guy's like oh that's uh There's roach problems.

31:29 Speaker 1: I just sprayed them. Cannabis sucks up whatever's around it. So if you spray all your plants with roach spray, I might be growing a cannabis plant in my backyard. Four generations of landscapers.

31:43 Speaker 2: Hell yeah.

31:47 Speaker 1: Yeah, there's just an idiocy. So many people are now using cannabis products that have never been tested on any level. You don't know what cannabis is. dispensary and they're like, oh, this will work for stress. Oh, this will work for your back pain. This will work for this. I'm like, no.

32:07 Speaker 2: Tell me.

32:07 Speaker 1: I'm like, I want Tylenol in the strain. I want this. Even with all that pressure, this Congress, cannabis, they've only moved back on the policy. The bipartisan congressional cannabis caucus for the first time in my 20 years covering Congress, has not, in this news I break for marijuana moment, one of my wire service clients, the bipartisan cannabis caucus has not had a single meeting in the 119th Congress. It's in part because Ms. Ilhan Omar, if that's her real name, is one of the co-chairs, and Republicans don't want to touch that.

32:50 Speaker 1: But as cannabis became this four-letter word in this Congress, Mushrooms, psychedelics, all that stuff. Ketamine has really, because it's been focused on veterans, boom, there's been this quiet in the background groundswell. And so part of me wonders for this issue if it's not going to be that oasis from all the bullshit. And every lawmaker, especially party leaders, they know their job is to sell bullshit. And, but that's publicly. Okay. They also have to like get something done. And UAP, UFO, I mean, especially like, because a lot of people, like we don't know what's happening with this disclosure rollout, whether it's a PSYOP or whatever, but I'm like, they've released seven tranches of stuff that they said didn't believe, that they said didn't exist.

33:53 Speaker 1: Right. like a year ago, I'm like, yeah, winner, winner, like the community won. And so like, now they can never back down from that. So the conversation has changed and not because they changed UFO to UAP. Like they already tried that. And so like, it will be interesting, but especially if you get Moskowitz teaming up with Burleson, I mean, cause it's, The people who care about this issue are mostly Republicans right now in this Congress. They wield the gavels and stuff. There just becomes these natural but seemingly unnatural connections when those roles get reversed.

34:38 Speaker 1: Like, yeah, Dems are going to come in, flip over the tables, do some high-powered hearings. That's all made for TV bullshit. In the background, I have a little bit of hope Not much expectancy, but a little bit of hope that they could reclaim this as nonpartisan issues. Like, crypto was a nonpartisan issue, and that failed, but that was ahead of the election. It might pass after it. And so that's where this whole year I haven't been able to really gauge where Congress is on this issue, because you know some of these D.C.

35:18 Speaker 1: consultants... or telling lawmakers, especially tight races, like, oh, don't talk about that issue at all, blah, blah, blah. Well, Luna, Rounds, Warner, Burleson, like, they've all broken pretty serious news to ask a poll very close to the election. So if those consultants are in their ears, which I don't think they are anymore, then, uh,

35:48 Speaker 1: they're just giving a middle finger to the DC consultant class, which would be progress. So we'll see the kumbaya relationship between the FBI, the secret UFO task force, who just like printed coins for the UAP folks. I'm very curious. And I actually wonder if it might help the disclosure effort to get some of those conversations that were in Burleson and having behind closed doors. get those out in public.

36:21 Speaker 2: So to clear it up a bit, you don't think that there's any big military push coming where civilians should be worried about some offensive move if the elections don't go the Republicans' way, something where they might have to stockpile food, medicine, because that's something that's been going around lately. Do you think that's just kind of, you know, fear-mongering?

36:58 Speaker 1: I mean, this is my don't-shred-on-me flag that I wore out of the Capitol on January 6th to camouflage in with the rioters. This is my doorstop that, with the doorstop of the Senate Radio TV Gallery, on the start of January 6th, by the end of that day, this was my shank in one pocket, and I had a wrench from CNN in my other pocket. So, yeah, I think the American political system is pretty volatile. And, like, today, vote parties are terrible, but, like, today the warning came from, or what terrified me, Professor Laszlo, me, is what Kamala Harris said.

37:46 Speaker 1: She literally told the Pack Stadium there's a certain kind of ruthlessness that Democrats need to govern with. I'm like, girl, girl, girl, I know you. I've interviewed you for decades. Why the fuck? Like, you're in California. You've seen ICE and L.A. residents just duking it out for.

38:12 Speaker 2: Their freaking lives.

38:13 Speaker 1: Like, do not tell those people don't tell that....

38:20 Speaker 2: Voter base to gear up.

38:21 Speaker 1: Pull of gasoline. Don't tell the match on it. Right.

38:24 Speaker 2: God damn. Jesus.

38:28 Speaker 1: I know. And then Ted Cruz saying there, and Trump saying, Republicans are just using the word terrorist for anyone who's like a little bit left or who wants Medicare for all. And I'm like, guys, guys, guys. But like, breathe. Do you remember 9-11? like literally we're the same freaking country um and so yeah that's where election years we just get this distortion cloud over everything so what i mean it's depressing as hell and trump's vengeful but democrats are really pissed and they've got a very left-leaning base that's gonna maybe be more powerful so they're gonna be pulled in different directions so like I stopped doing any predictions when Trump locked up the GOP primary in 2016.

39:26 Speaker 1: My last prediction was Guardian op-ed where I was like, okay, Mickey Mouse is going to get more votes than it's ever gotten. Because academically, we call it the Mickey Mouse effect. And when voters come, they might still want to vote for their local people. When they come and they're like, all right, that's horseshit and that's bullshit. Mickey Mouse. I mean, it's right in Mickey Mouse. My conservative dad called him the day after the 2016 election. I go, so you vote for Trump? He said, no, I couldn't.

39:56 Speaker 1: I read the Bible too much. He goes, I voted for Mickey Mouse. Dad, dad, that was not the point of that op-ed.

40:04 Speaker 2: I didn't mean to do it.

40:05 Speaker 1: Geez.

40:06 Speaker 2: So talk to me about this FBI secret task force or this SIG special interest group. What is going on there? Because I was told not to like, someone flagged it in my research and was like, you know, get this cleared up a bit. So what is going on with the FBI and this? What have you learned?

40:42 Speaker 1: Wait, wait, wait. Explain that a little bit. I'm curious what you were told. But maybe give that to me after I answer your question.

40:53 Speaker 2: Yeah, okay. Yeah, fair enough.

40:54 Speaker 1: So, like, I... So, here's just a story. So, I've been covering Congress now. This year is my 20th year. The day that Ask a Poll, UAP, the day that we broke the news of this FBI special unit, you know, it was the day that Burleson and Luna first learned of it and first had their classified meeting down at the FBI headquarters, Hoover building, just right down the block from the Capitol. And like me and Joe, uh, Gail or Khalil, um, him and I were there after votes and him and I were both just like trying to put our best poker faces on.

41:41 Speaker 1: Cause we were like, wait, wait, wait. Why is Burleson and why are Luna telling us all about, this secret FBI unit. And so, like, we did our jobs. We just smiled and nodded and let them talk. Well, that night, it was a Friday. It's that night, my first time in 20 years covering Congress, that I get a call from a lawmaker on a Friday night.

42:05 Speaker 2: Right.

42:05 Speaker 1: And it was just a lawmaker warning me, you know, just heads up, the FBI is not happy that Ask a Poll UAP is broke this news, which was literally breaking the internet at that time. On the phone, what did I do? I just giggled. I'm like, you gotta be scared of those fucks. I'm not scared of the FBI. They can dismember me and shit and tap me or whatever, but no. They have nothing to do with my journalism. Maybe I shouldn't talk so much.

42:44 Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean, what were they expecting you to do? To retract it? And be like, oh, just kidding.

42:50 Speaker 1: No, and this is the thing. So, like, I'm going to my grave with so many freaking secrets. And, like, some of them are just dumb. And, like, if you go, the last night the Senate was in session, before they took, like, the month of October off, there was a fender bender right outside the Senate. And it was a certain Senator staffer who that Senator does not answer my questions as like got a little annoyed at me with asking about the David Grush stuff. Cause I had to chase her down twice. Cause I was like, wait, did you really mean this?

43:28 Speaker 1: Um, just trying to clarify. She's like, Oh, you're being rude. So like that was years ago. I go up to her as like the staffers talking with Capitol police. There's a video of it. Um, on I think my personal Instagram, um, and my client raw stories. But as I was leaving, I saw, I like saw this as an opportunity to chat with the Senator. And I just go, Oh, what happened? Um, I think I said, Oh, is this drug bust? Welcome up. No, no, no. Just a fender bender. And so like, I just got that little bit in the exchange.

44:07 Speaker 1: I'm like, no one hurt. No. And so I go, well, your secret safe with me, ma'am. Oh, shit, I said it's a female. Well, because I effed up and said that, you know, your word is your bond as a journalist. Yep. Because I said your secret's safe with me. Like, I reported it, just left her name out. And that's, like, that's the politics. That's why I call us in the media a part of the political class.

44:34 Speaker 2: Right.

44:34 Speaker 1: We're not going to be able to change that. We need to, like, look in the mirror and recognize that every day to make sure that we're going out of our way to not be tools for the media. for these folks even as we gotta like tickle them enough

44:51 Speaker 1: to they trust us and give us their secrets and so like yeah that that's congressional and just political reporting these days and like y'all see the White House stuff like guys that is made for TV made for SNL BS and like a good way you know that is when the correspondent asking the question in the first couple rows, when they have a separate cameraman on the side here with their cameras pointed, not at the press secretary, or when the president's at the podium, they're not looking at the president.

45:31 Speaker 1: Their cameras are focused on their correspondence. Yeah. That's what's wrong with the news business.

45:40 Speaker 2: That actually paints it pretty... pretty picture like it makes and that that makes total sense to me when it's if it i'm not nancy mace told you that she wants people to see what she's seen nancy i i mean uh after the second hearing i had uh i was able to sit down with nancy for you know an hour or two she's I know people like, again, she rubs people the wrong way, you know, whatever. Um, but she told you that, that she wanted people to see what she's seen. Um, and, and you asked her.

46:17 Speaker 1: About that or was your interview before mine?

46:21 Speaker 2: I think it was before. Yeah, it was before. Um, do you think that these tranches are, if you look.

46:30 Speaker 1: At my last interview with Mace boom on camera, Because I may have had numerous conversations with X lawmaker and Y lawmaker, blah, blah, blah, where they're like, oh, let's keep that between us. And I'm like, no, no, no. You're one of the few people at the table on this issue, whatever issue it is and whatever the lawmaker is. But yeah, a lot of these lawmakers are juvenile and even So a senior senator told me, they're like, hey, have you seen, what's the, I'm going to get stoned and tarred by the community, Disclosure Day.

47:20 Speaker 1: Yeah, Spielberg. I was thinking Asia Disclosure. But so a senior U.S. senator comes up to me and goes, hey, have you seen that film? And I was like, no, I haven't seen it yet. They were like, you've got to see it. It's awesome. It's amazing. And, like, I was recording, but they said on background, or no, they said off the record. And then I was like, wait, you've got to give me that on the record. Like, that's cool. Like, people want to see that side of you. And then the response was, I'm afraid of, like, I don't want the conspiracy folks in this community to swarm on me.

48:03 Speaker 1: So, like, that lawmaker... didn't want to have anything UFO UAP related tied to their name, even though they're transfixed on the issue. I know it's sad, but I think like a deep, deep step back. Um, both sides are learning a new language. Like this makes sense to me. Like it's been 70 years that the government told this community, you, are full of shit.

48:33 Speaker 2: Like you're, there's nothing here.

48:35 Speaker 1: Yeah. The government, no, they said you're liars, you're idiots, you're fabricating stuff. They, for rush, they, um, release his mental health records. I'm like, I've had numerous friends die of suicide. Um, fuck that. No, that is not something to be weaponized. No, it's the toughest guys in the world have fucking mental health issues. Talk to my NFL player buddies. Talk to, uh, Uh, my buddy, Travis Pastrana, world's top motocross bro. Like, yeah. Um, and so, yeah, seeing the government get down to their dirtiest and then year later, months later, they're like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

49:20 Speaker 1: Sorry. No, they didn't even say sorry. They're just like, here's evidence that, yeah, you were right on a lot of what you were saying. Okay. Like literally, I haven't seen any of my colleagues take a step back. Like they're all still stuck. Um, It's kind of like lawmakers are with cannabis. They're stuck in this old war on drugs mentality. They're stuck in this Cold War. I don't even know what reality they're stuck in. Guys, we entrust you with a lot of our tax dollars to give us the stoutest military in the world.

50:02 Speaker 1: If there's stuff going on that you can't handle, voters have a right Yep. To know that. And so, like, a lot of lawmakers, especially in the intel committees, were just kind of like, yeah, you know, foreign actors, foreign actors. And so, like, I speak their language. So I'm like, okay, I'll go at it from that angle. It was China that was over Langley? Like, China shut down Langley Air Force Base for 17 days? Like, That looks a lot worse in my book than if it was fucking E.T. Like the unexplainable.

50:46 Speaker 2: E.T. you can go, bro, they're fucking millions of years ahead of us. What do you want?

50:51 Speaker 1: We don't know what that was.

50:52 Speaker 2: If you tell.

50:54 Speaker 1: Us you think it's China, whoa, what the fuck were we building more huge aircraft carriers for when China's got a drone army? Like, if you look at their fireworks displays and like, yeah, I've got a million drones. If you take like some of those Chinese drones, they're like most of our drones here in the U S like DJI, like that's the mic I'm using right now. Yeah. Do really good work.

51:22 Speaker 2: They do.

51:22 Speaker 1: US companies aren't doing that, but I'm just like, Oh, the idiocy and like the lack of curiosity in my colleagues in the media. Cause I'm like, guys, We still haven't gotten back to, for one, the balloon from China that invaded American airspace from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean.

51:50 Speaker 2: It's a big deal.

51:52 Speaker 1: What? Wait, what did we find out in that? We have to drop millions of dollars on each missile? We don't have a slingshot? We don't make aircraft slow enough? To track our enemies? Like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Like, let's just have, like, a lo-fi conversation here. Like, something is not right.

52:18 Speaker 2: Talk to me like I'm an 11-year-old. Why did it take that? And you know what really fucks me up is what if the next balloon or what if the next drones are tipped with, like, or included in their payload are some sort of biological weapon.

52:40 Speaker 1: I mean, things are going to give us Wuhan virus. Sorry, sorry. I know folks think that's racist. Beep.

52:49 Speaker 2: It's okay. It's all but admitted now that it was a lab leak. I mean, that was another conspiracy that they were like, oh, you guys are conspiratorial, yada, yada. And now that is looked at as, I mean, just look at Fauci's testimony. Oh, wait, you can't.

53:10 Speaker 1: But I'm like, so I don't think China is going to out USA the USA. Like, I don't think they're going to be passing out smallpox blankets to us. But the fear I've heard from folks adjacent to the intelligence committees, or pardon me, intelligence community, is that, wait, if we've had these sightings above Nevada, nuclear and air force and private contractor sites. Um, Jersey, like where did these drones, like where were they seen in Jersey? Um, and munitions Depot, it's still active. And I don't know why they call it musician, uh, munitions.

54:01 Speaker 1: Like we're fucking America. Like we're building bombs and grenades, like blah, blah, blah. But like, I think it was two munitions depots. And then, oh, third spot is the current president's golf course. And he was the candidate then. And then, like, oh.

54:20 Speaker 2: He wouldn't even go.

54:21 Speaker 1: But then they're hovering over, like, Montana nuclear sites. So, like, if this is all coordinated and one country, and we can't stop them from 17 days over Langley, like, if they do blitz attacks on the stuff they've already mapped out, like that's the big fear. And like, now they play devil's advocate. So lawmakers say they address this last year's NDAA. And then the one before, uh, Senator Tim Kaine, even though the Pentagon still has not been able to tell him what, um, invaded Virginia airspace.

55:02 Speaker 2: Right.

55:03 Speaker 1: They had to change the law. So the Pentagon now, uh, has the right to shoot down foreign craft on US soil, which I'm like, what the fuck? Like, that makes no sense. Like, if Hitler, like, had one of his, like, balloons with A-bombs or whatever flying over the US, would there be a debate? Like, oh, shit. we got to get the attorney general in here. Like, we're going to have to let that thing float all the way to the Pacific and then we're going to shoot it down over there.

55:41 Speaker 2: For safety.

55:41 Speaker 1: That just makes no sense to me. And like, Kane, and he pushed like, top military brass on this. He's like, yeah, Langley, it's a big base, but it's surrounded by the suburbs. So yeah, shooting them down there could be at risk to civilians. I'm not buying that. I think our military really likes our weapons and I think they're really good. My nephew's a Marine and a buddy's a Marine sniper. America's really good at shooting shit. Usually when we shoot shit, it goes bang because we've got bombs that are small, big, large, huge.

56:25 Speaker 1: We're told that we can take out anything and everything.

56:32 Speaker 1: What couldn't we take out for 17 days. And, like, I'm reminded of an interview we did with Chris Smith. At a point, he was the only Republican in the Jersey delegation. Now there's Van Drew as well. But Chris Smith, he has not bought the Trump administration. Like, he's a Trumper.

56:54 Speaker 2: Fair, yeah.

56:55 Speaker 1: He died for the president, but he's not buying what they're selling on the Jersey drone invasion. He... told us that askable UAP that he heard that there was a craft taken down at Langley. And at 17 day incursion, I asked him if he saw it and he said no, or he abated, couldn't say it. So I fished around with some other lawmakers. I haven't been able to confirm that, but if you're out there listening, try to confirm that. Like literally take what I started askable UAP, which are your questions. and then use that as ammunition.

57:33 Speaker 1: Like that's what I do with lawmakers. I take one interview and then I play that against the other lawmaker just because we're talking about classified stuff. And so if I get a whisper here, whisper here, whisper.

57:43 Speaker 2: Here, then like, now you're building a puzzle.

57:46 Speaker 1: And the lawmaker thinks I'm read in. I don't ask questions.

57:52 Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. That's how you, that's, well, that's how you've been able to do what you've been able to do. And it's a very successful outlet.

58:02 Speaker 1: Um, Oh, success. Well, yeah. Yeah, Reddit.

58:07 Speaker 2: Yeah, you know.

58:08 Speaker 1: $ 6. 38 earnings that we can't unlock until we hit the $ 10 mark.

58:13 Speaker 2: The 10 minimum.

58:16 Speaker 1: It's been stuck at $ 6. 38 for months.

58:20 Speaker 2: I love it. Well, I will, whatever, I'll bump that for your appearance today. The midterms, three days out. We're three days out. Eric Burleson, he's an ally to the topic, is warning that if Democrats win on Tuesday, that they'll shut down certain UAP committee efforts. Robert Garcia, top Dem on oversight, won't say what Democrats would do until after the elections, three days before the vote. Do you think that UAP are about to come a partisan issue for the first time, or does that help or kill it?

59:00 Speaker 2: I mean, what are you thinking here? Cause there was also the Crockett thing that you just said, me.

59:06 Speaker 1: Yeah, and like, that's where Congress, if you think about it,

59:16 Speaker 1: I mean, as one of my professors, one of my colleagues and mentors, Doug Harris from Loyola University, he was taught at Hopkins, says it's like, Congress isn't it, and it's they. And so like, it's also just like kind of like a ship where you can take off like three, five layers of a ship, redo it completely. And it's still the ship. Like if you just keep the whole, but redo everything else, technically that's still the same ship. A hundred years old.

59:50 Speaker 2: And so like the ship of argument.

59:53 Speaker 1: Yeah. And so like this year, I think we have a minimum of like 84 pops in my mind, but like, I think there's a minimum of 80 seats that are going to flip just because of all the retirements. And so with all that, like I have no idea what the 120th Congress is going to look like. There's no idea. And anyone who tells you they do, yeah, it's selling you a load of BS. So like the contours of it could change. I mean, don't forget, Grush is, look it up at Askable UAP. An underutilized resource for the community is the search on our subsects.

1:00:37 Speaker 1: Literally, put in any topic and we probably interviewed a lawmaker on it. Here, when Grush first testified, Jamie Raskin, who had to get special permission to come and sit on the committee because he was judiciary. He was there because his constituents, which I read as funders, you know, well, my constituents care about this. He was like, you know, my constituents really cares about it. I'm like one who's very loaded, um, cynical side. But, um, he was there and afterwards he's like, yeah, I still have questions.

1:01:19 Speaker 1: Don't forget.

1:01:20 Speaker 3: Like, yeah, there is the far right folks. Um, The Freedom Caucus folks, Luna, Burleson, blah, blah, blah, Burchette, Ogles, all them. But there's also more moderates. Nancy Mace, the chair, James Comer, he sat there the whole time.

1:01:38 Speaker 1: Like literally in the back furthest corner next to Mace, just like taking it all in and listening. And yeah, and he told us he wants to have a hearing in the lame duck in between the elections and the new Congress in January. Everyone's rightfully skeptical of that. But that's also an issue that it might make sense for this hyper-partisan oversight committee. If they want to go out with a gavel in their hand and little attention from the American people, why not go back to a non-partisan issue? So I'm torn on who knows what will happen.

1:02:20 Speaker 1: But AOC, she was also there. And AOC, she comes at it. from her questions about the military industrial complex, especially the military contractors. Like the fact that Congress can't like subpoena military contractors in the same way with the same weight as they can Pentagon officials just boggles my mind. It's like, wait, wait, wait, you guys have government contracts. How do you not just bow down to our representatives? We ain't got no freaking king. We've got 435 morons in the House who collectively make our king.

1:03:02 Speaker 1: And a hundred dipshits in the Senate who come together and represent us. And I'm like, no. Military industrial complex does not have a seat at that freaking table. Except they do. Like somehow we've carved out a spot for them where literally the federal government could be taking its secrets, getting military contractors to sign NDAs, and then it's hidden from the American people. Not just that, it's hidden from lawmakers and from the White House. Like, fuck that shit! Like, the Constitution puts Congress in charge.

1:03:44 Speaker 1: Uh, full stop. Um, sure, each president for the past, like, 70 years has, um, taken the responsibility over wars that Congress has gladly washed their hands of and been like, no, you take it, you take it. But like, no, Congress, you are accountable for this. And I think that's where the contemporary Congress with like a 5,000 page National Defense Authorization Act, which had the election, it had the UAP Disclosure Act in it. Let's see. I mean, get on Cal, drop your bets now. Let's see if that's still in it when the two chambers come back and they have to rush it through in the dead of night.

1:04:32 Speaker 2: Yep.

1:04:34 Speaker 1: Yeah. So who knows with these fools?

1:04:37 Speaker 2: That's very telling as well. So zooming out a bit,

1:04:47 Speaker 2: Jay Stratton's memoir right now, it's a bestseller. He says Lockheed Martin is storing 12 saucers. Grush has not quit, but walked away from Capitol Hill. He also went on Rogan and says he's seen retrieval footage. He's talking to the White House about a waiver of some sort. Congress hasn't even called Stratton, or Stratton also won't testify to Paradigm.

1:05:19 Speaker 2: What's your make of these kind of situations bubbling up?

1:05:25 Speaker 1: Again, it comes down to me, like this makes perfect sense where gatekeepers are afraid of gatekeepers and like this different definition of gatekeepers, but like lawmakers on the Hill

1:05:41 Speaker 1: pretend like they're separate from the United States government. Right. You're not like you are the United States government. And so that's where it's been interesting watching. does your AP caucus members really trust this FBI unit? Or it's like, wait, wait, wait. And I pushed Burleson on it. We had a good interview on this because I was like, wait, are you still looking Department of Energy, blah, blah, blah. And he's like, Matt, he's like, I'm still skeptical. And he's like, I'm skeptical of the agencies, dot, dot, dot.

1:06:15 Speaker 1: And I was like, okay, so you haven't totally drunk the Kool-Aid But you just can't talk about the Kool-Aid that you guys spill in there. It might be the coolest Kool-Aid party ever, but the American public will never know.

1:06:29 Speaker 2: But it's a walled garden nonetheless.

1:06:32 Speaker 1: But I couldn't blame them. If I'm doing a big feature profile, like when Playboy flew me to Colorado to profile Cory Gardner, I'm not... I did some pieces that was like, profile through the lens of cannabis. Like I still use Cory Gardner for other stories in between like the four months when that thing went out. But like, I had held my stuff close to my vest and I'm like, I'm not going to let him and his office know the direction I'm like actually going. I'm just going to sit there and take notes.

1:07:10 Speaker 1: Um, I'm not going to lie to them and never be deceitful with them. But if anything, I'm too brutally honest that that piece is, hurt Gardner in the butt. But so like, yeah, if lawmakers, and I believe there is true curiosity with the UAP caucus, folks, like, yeah, probably the wisest thing for them to do if they believe they're actually getting information. And like, if they trust these folks, yeah, it's classified material. You should not be advertising that. But that's where like since Trump signed that executive order on the issue, which has like no weight of law.

1:08:00 Speaker 1: Right. But that's where these UAP cocks never started popping on all these podcasts and just like saying all this shit. And I'm like, well, isn't that classified? Isn't that classified? And their take was president signed a document and so like that almost felt to me like it was calculated like those three or four members came together and were like hey we have an opportunity right now to like not take on duke state head-on but let's all just start talking about some of this stuff as if it's like and that's how i get my scoops yeah like when i talk to warner and i just say yeah it's china boom That's when he's like, yeah.

1:08:46 Speaker 1: And then he's like, oh, shit, that's classified. So I get the techniques. And like Burleson, he's a smooth operator. I know people don't like him left and right, blah, blah, blah. Like he's thoughtful. And like, when I, we last talked to, uh, James Comer at Askapole UAP, he was like, yeah, you got to talk to, uh, Luna, you know, the chair of the secret task force. And he's like, no, no, no, Burleson. He's like, and Comer, the chair, he's like, no, Burleson, he's the go-to guy on UFOs. I'm like, That's true.

1:09:21 Speaker 1: On the Hill, he's the one who got Schumer's UAPDA included in the House version of the NDAA this year.

1:09:30 Speaker 2: Which did pass, right? It passed through the House, right?

1:09:35 Speaker 1: But for the first time in ever, the Senate has not passed their version. It's really all done behind closed doors, but usually they pass their very partisan bills and then even if the chambers are different parties then they like make it work because the US military is authorized by that bill like if that bill doesn't pass our military grinds to a halt like a transformer running out of batteries like and so like I think everyone is like oh that'll never happen but I don't know. This conversation is so terrible.

1:10:25 Speaker 2: Right.

1:10:26 Speaker 1: Pushing the envelopes. Is it true that....

1:10:31 Speaker 2: Is it true that... Because I heard this and I was like, wait a second, I need to ask about this. Did you actually inform someone, one of the members that the bill went through the House and they didn't even know and then Gillibrand didn't know what was in their version of the bill?

1:10:57 Speaker 1: Yes.

1:10:58 Speaker 2: How are these things possible?

1:11:01 Speaker 1: So here are my notebooks from this year. I usually go through about one a month.

1:11:10 Speaker 2: I love that.

1:11:10 Speaker 1: One extra one. I'm just a pesky little fly. Literally every two or three weeks. I'll give lawmakers some space, like with Jill Brand. Sometimes I'll ask her about crypto because she works with me with the fear of God. She's running the DSCC, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. She's just been focused on raising millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars for Senate Democrats this year. She has been a player on crypto she's been, what would the term be? Not dyslexic, unread, uninformed, useless, anything.

1:12:05 Speaker 1: And like a lot of people listening are like, wait, so she hasn't changed. But I'm like, no, no, no. Like she held a hearing on this last year. Um, but she, I guess she had an arrow briefing again. I, looked for her all the last few weeks the senate was in session and just couldn't find her because usually she's dialing for dollars uh just focused on the election so like i think having her back at the table and like after you run the dscc and take one for the team then you usually get propelled a little higher into democratic leadership and republican leadership so like maybe she'll be a better advocate and get more power.

1:12:52 Speaker 1: It's like, it's very curious.

1:12:55 Speaker 2: Yeah.

1:12:57 Speaker 1: What will happen with this? But like, I keep sending, um,

1:13:03 Speaker 1: this stuff I'm breaking on, um, Langley and China, blah, blah, blah. Cause if we have lawmakers now, I've got rounds and Warner basically saying it was China. So like, okay. Why isn't there a hearing, a public hearing, on how China shut down Langley Air Force Base? Like, that's one where I might plant that seed in the brain of a younger House member who's... Sorry, I learned this factoid during a piece. When Democrats took over in the 2006 wave, when Nancy Pelosi first got her gavel after. Six years of George W. Bush.

1:13:50 Speaker 1: Yep. Anti-war sentiment was high. Pelosi and them get into office. The Congress before that one had 900, I believe, hearings. Pelosi's Congress, 1,400 hearings. And of those 1,400 hearings, 200 of them were run by the oversight committee, which means there was 1,200 other oversight-ish hearings, or maybe even half that, another 600. It's like every committee on the Hill, if Democrats win one chamber or both, every committee is going to turn into an oversight committee, just like focused like a laser beam on their issues.

1:14:42 Speaker 1: And these lawmakers are all like, so digital and blah, blah, blah. Like they're all looking for their spot to dunk. And so people in the community convince them like, Hey, I'm your constituent. I care about this issue. I'd rather not have China flowing, flying clones over my house and then have the lawmaker be like, Oh, you know, those were Chinese drones. Well, Mark Warner, chair of the Intel committee, told us that. But you know what? Mark Warner, he couldn't remember if he saw a picture or not.

1:15:17 Speaker 1: Well, when you get these newer millennial lawmakers and Gen Z ones, they're going to not believe it unless there's a picture or a video. We're about to see the glory, painful as it sometimes is, the glory of America is going to be on display in Congress and that's what the founders intended. Like, yeah, you all work it out.

1:15:43 Speaker 2: Yeah. Literally. That's your job.

1:15:45 Speaker 1: Gridlock gridlock is the name of the system. Like that's on purpose. And so like, that's where, if I take a step back, I'm still astounded that the UAP UFO community has made such gains. Um, yeah, there's a lot of fuckery.

1:16:04 Speaker 2: Yeah. A lot of, and there always will be unknowns.

1:16:08 Speaker 1: Um, No, maybe not always. If Obama just comes out and says he saw a body, you know Trump is going to pull out 10 bodies.

1:16:20 Speaker 2: Fair enough. That's right. That's right, actually. That's a very, very fair point. So about those waivers that the president I mean, it broke a little while back. The waivers that protect whistleblowers who talk specifically to Arrow or the Pursue program, but not to Congress and not to the public. Grush, Dylan Borland, Matthew Brown all asked for public waivers in September and got silence. Do you think there's any chance that the White House is running a disclosure program or a containment program with just better branding?

1:17:05 Speaker 1: So yes, like everything is possible. I mean, where I see a flaw in that logic is if they're part of the coverup. I don't know why. Maybe the natural conclusion to a 70-year coverup is to be like, ha ha, just kidding. And I'm like, there actually has been a tangible impact from the UFO files on this Congress. And the tangible impact, from my perspective, is the only UFO outlet in D.C. is that Congress is like, we washed our hands of this. Like, you go look at the files. We're not gonna. Like, I had a staffer look at them, and like, Warner, Mark Kelly, others, turned to their staffers, When I asked, just like, hey, have you seen new UFO files?

1:18:07 Speaker 1: And they'll be like, hey, did we see that? And the staffer will be like, yeah, there's nothing new in there. And then Warner turns to me and says, yeah, nothing new in there. And it's like, wait, that's not very convincing, sir.

1:18:22 Speaker 2: Yeah, pardon me, but that didn't sell me.

1:18:26 Speaker 1: And that's where, like, the media's also failed so much here. And that's where, like, A few of these tranches, they've dropped. You've gotten mainstream media coverage, even as sideways as it can be sometimes. The media has not reckoned with it. I was saying earlier, with the war on drugs, like we're still living in this mindset the media is operating as if when you say UAP like so now they're even afraid of that term and so most lawmakers say drone and so when I'm talking about drones with most lawmakers I'm saying UAP because for years they said oh, the drones over Langley?

1:19:11 Speaker 1: Oh, the drones over the Luke Air Force Base in Arizona? That's what Mark Kelly, he's like, oh, the drones. I'm like, so you saw the picture? Like, why not just take those pictures, put them out to the public? Come on. Well, shut the fuck up. Answer. But they don't. And so that's where, that's where I'm hoping to invest and get a second phone in the next couple months. Because when the new Congress starts January 3rd, I want to do that. Just walk up with videos from my constituents, because y'all know so much more about the topic than me.

1:19:48 Speaker 1: And so that's where, like, and there's just a power that everyday voters have that I don't have. And that I'll never have, rightfully so, because, you know, I'm the media, blah, blah, blah. You're their constituent. So, like, when I say to former Senator Marco Rubio... When I say, like, hey, a Florida voter asked me this, they're like, oh, where are they from? Oh, Orlando area. Oh, really? You know, it's like, there's just that personal connection.

1:20:22 Speaker 2: There's a more, yeah, it links.

1:20:23 Speaker 1: Yes, you know, like, Iowa State Fair, blah, blah, blah. Whatever. You have to put your hand, your unparalleled hand onto another human being's hand, look them in the eye, and ask for their vote. It's like, That's what lawmakers have not had to do on this topic. Even just to like wrestle with the fact that, okay, the Pentagon has released a lot of stuff that really negates what the Pentagon and the White House and what you all have been telling us for years. And they're just getting a pass. Like if Washington Post, if Wall Street Journal, if they did another big deep dive, like they did an excellent one on the Langley incursion and so like it would be great for outlets like ask OUAP and where's Ross at and News Nation yeah yeah News Nation they've been doing great stuff and it's like we just need that curiosity and like you all who are part of the community maybe ping some of these outlets you know yeah Well, no, let me put it this way.

1:21:41 Speaker 1: You guys have probably pinged the lawmakers hundreds and hundreds of times. So now maybe they're like marked your email, blah, blah, blah. And you guys are smart enough to like get a new burner email. But that's where maybe if you get some of the publications, some of my competitors involved, lawmakers listen to bad press or even just pressing press. Yeah. So that's a simple question. Like, literally, if anyone out there is from Alaska or Michigan, I would love for you to send your senators, or Virginia, send your senators, like, hey, did you see images?

1:22:23 Speaker 1: Like, make it real short. Did you see images of this? If so, can I see them? Yeah. Like, don't even say, make them public. Just be like, hey, can I see them? Because, like, that's what they need. If enough, like, humans Ask that, because, again, the Alaska senators, they were like, oh, pretty sure, maybe. Yeah, wasn't that Air Force?

1:22:52 Speaker 2: That's awful.

1:22:54 Speaker 1: And listen to it. Murkowski, to ask a poll, she's like, yeah, I don't think the Air Force was ever able to find that. I mean, Alaska's big. But we've got a big... military arm up there. I'm like, does that mean Russia can just sneak into U.S. soil? Because if so, that's not very good, guys.

1:23:19 Speaker 2: Yeah, that exposes.

1:23:20 Speaker 1: It's not good from any angle.

1:23:23 Speaker 2: Yeah, no matter what way you cut that cake, we have a problem. Houston, we have a fucking problem. That's a.

1:23:32 Speaker 1: Also, folks should keep the questions coming to Schumer. Because, yeah, I don't fear. I wonder why Schumer attached his name to the UAP Disclosure Act. Part of me thinks it was a promise to Harry Reid. I'm from Illinois. The

1:23:56 Speaker 1: then person in line to take over for Reid was Illinois Senator Dick Durbin. What I always quip is that Durbin knows that, or no, Reid knew that Durbin didn't care about the UFO issue, but he knew that Schumer would trade his soul to become majority leader. So Reed got Schumer to be like, yeah, I'll take this UAP. You know? And so he does it for the cameras and then kills it in the background. It's like, not confirmed, but I'm like, if you really cared about this Schumer, just like if you really cared about that marijuana legalization bill that when you smoked that, or no, pardon me, when you signed that bong tonight, he signed a bong with my boss then, Shauna Thomas, on 420.

1:24:52 Speaker 1: So on 420, yeah, Schumer wants to be around that issue. And then what the fuck has he done for all his black and brown rural constituents locked in jail? For something I'm legally growing in my backyard.

1:25:05 Speaker 2: Right. Or I legally have right here.

1:25:07 Speaker 1: He's a part of the criminal industrial complex.

1:25:11 Speaker 2: The privatized prisons. That's another. I could sit with you. I could sit with you for a whole nother show just about non-UAP.

1:25:21 Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.

1:25:22 Speaker 2: I love that. I mean, I like talking about that stuff. people don't like it when I insert it into these kinds of conversations for some reason, because they're like, Oh, you know, I'm here for one thing. And if you don't do that one thing, then I will unsubscribe or hold it against you.

1:25:37 Speaker 1: Um, yeah.

1:25:39 Speaker 2: Have you ever had an experience with, uh, with, uh, with anything unusual? Have you ever seen anything that didn't quite make sense to you?

1:25:48 Speaker 1: I come from a family of, uh, my dad's like big, rock collector and stuff. And, um, so he's got like dinosaur eggs, meteorite.

1:26:00 Speaker 2: Oh, he actually just gave me this. Okay.

1:26:05 Speaker 1: Um, this, this is a lightning bolt. So this is Fulgurite. Yeah.

1:26:14 Speaker 2: So when, when, so for anyone who doesn't know when lightning hits sand, Whoa, dude, isn't it fucking rad?

1:26:24 Speaker 1: And it's so light. This is like molten glass. But yeah, in Saudi Arabia, there's a dad and a son who sit out there at night when there's a storm and they just track where the light is. And my dad's like, yeah, that's what I used to do in Vietnam. I was just doing it for the bombs. Where the mortar rounds were coming from. But so like, we've been up there parents retired were from illinois but retired in michigan when we would go to upper peninsula michigan with the snow lights and we just stare at the stars yeah all you can do is wonder all right this pre uh james webb space telescope which is like blew our minimal understanding of what the universe is out completely it's like we've seen like crazy things like.

1:27:19 Speaker 2: Meteor I think you muted yourself. Your sound just kicked off.

1:28:00 Speaker 2: He's like, that's a wrap then. Yeah, it's showing me as you being, it says, can't unmute the guest. There you go.

1:28:11 Speaker 1: So I just, I guess, adopted a kiddie. She was pulling an all-nighter last week. I think this little kitty just muted me. Oh.

1:28:28 Speaker 2: Hello, kitty kitty.

1:28:30 Speaker 1: This is Shadow.

1:28:32 Speaker 2: Hi, Shadow.

1:28:33 Speaker 1: I'm holding an all-nighter, working at 5 a.m. with my dog. It's like, hey, we need to go outside. i was like oh that's not my music there is a cat meowing and so oh.

1:28:47 Speaker 2: Ever since hey oh i love that.

1:28:50 Speaker 1: She loves my keyboard.

1:28:54 Speaker 2: I think it might have switched it. No, no, no. It's okay. It's okay. We're going to wrap up. We'll wrap up soon. I'd love to have you back after the midterms. Yeah.

1:29:07 Speaker 1: Maybe early January, once we ping me, that would be right after the election. This Congress will come back for their lame duck session. There's also... I've covered this for Washingtonian Magazine and for The Atlantic. There's this depressing dance that happens. There's a spot in the basement of one of the house office buildings that's called the Departed Member Service Center. These lawmakers have to get out of their office and instead of having a staff of like 10 in the house, they go to one assistant and they have a cubicle, one phone.

1:29:49 Speaker 1: So like Lawmakers, usually those retiring ones, are usually at the bar or at holiday parties. Right. Kind of checked out. But then I'll be like, they'll also have the freshman orientation for the new members, like over the weekends and stuff. So it'll be two weeks. So I'll be there getting to know all the new members. If any of you all out there have heard any, yeah, any interest, candidates in your area like ping me ping us at askapolluap any questions you have for like incoming lawmakers absolutely one race I'm watching is Alaska because Begich whether you love him or hate him he's been I think he's still in his first yeah he's still in his first term because I met him at the Republican convention in Milwaukee and he pulled me aside and was like hey I'm running he's like I love what you're doing with ask a poll UAP.

1:30:52 Speaker 1: And like he, uh, whatever. But like initially he was wise, you know, he's like, I'm really not going to join UAP caucus right away. Like didn't want to talk about it ahead of it. But he's like, I've got the same question. And it's like in Congress, you slowly saw him started, you know, work more with the UAP caucus. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, no. And it's usually like, what was it? Dick Cheney. He always wanted to work on foreign policy, intelligence stuff. But he said, I'm not going to do that until I get 67% of the vote in Wyoming.

1:31:33 Speaker 1: And so he was always working on oil and gas issues, all that. Once he got two thirds, 67%, then he started to get a foreign policy footprint. And so like, That's what I'm curious with someone like Fetterman, because Fetterman, he's just on none of the committees that touch this, but he's like, oh, I'm always watching that issue. He's like, yeah, I've got so many questions. So like Cory Booker, not so much him, but he's like, my staff can't get enough of this issue. That's where the staff will keep him plugged in.

1:32:06 Speaker 1: But again, he's not really on those committees. And so that's where, when we see this changing of the guard in both chambers, you might have some committee shuffling that goes on that might put a Fetterman or a Booker on one of these committees. Well, heck, one of them might get put on Intel.

1:32:24 Speaker 2: Right.

1:32:25 Speaker 1: And so like the reshuffling usually takes a few months for it to settle out. But yeah, it's just going to be a new day come January 3rd.

1:32:37 Speaker 2: Right. It's almost like a clean slate, you know, and you get to kind of just, reform you know you've already built relationships with people that are going to be in and around government you know for for foreseeable future and now you know you're it's another class of people that are coming up that'll be that'll make up the congress and you know you'll get to know them as well it's going to be you know it's it's fantastic i think this topic is really one of those ones that does you know it it does bring people across the aisle and And it really amazes me how it's, it has stayed.

1:33:11 Speaker 2: So, you know, bipartisan given the world that we live in kind of one final thing before we, we, we wrap for the day. Burleson has been so grush. Grush is, is leaving, but he talked about that. He's bringing someone else in. A lot of people have a lot of thoughts on who this might be. Any inkling. I don't want you to break any.

1:33:37 Speaker 1: Well, no. So no inkling, because Congress has not been doing their job.

1:33:42 Speaker 2: Oh, that's fair. Fair.

1:33:44 Speaker 1: Do you guys all in the community write this down? Legistorm. Legistorm. You can... It's basically because congressional offices, like Congress, as jackass as they are, exempted themselves from FOIA, which... I hate, and I actually wanted some of these Tea Party-ish Freedom Caucus Republicans to fight to institute that. I'm like, come on, wouldn't you want to investigate Pelosi? But so, I am

1:34:24 Speaker 1: curious when it comes to that. Oh, so, you need a expensive expensive account or subscription or whatever. There's a little bit you can get from a free version, but if anyone out there is at a university, blah, blah, blah, LexisNexis, you guys might be able to get that free version. And that lets you see any staffer's lawmaker or their paycheck by quarter, how much the lawmaker's paying them. One thing you'll see around this time of year is a lot of the congressional staff goes and works on the campaign.

1:35:10 Speaker 1: So then when they won't get a check this month, then at the end of the year, they'll get 20, 30K. So they'll get a bonus. And so keep an eye out there because that might be where it pops first. And I imagine folks have different names that they think it might be. Yeah.

1:35:30 Speaker 2: Yeah.

1:35:32 Speaker 1: Wait, the person who hired Deep State, is he going to have like an FBI agent? And they're like, you know, my secret sapper. Yeah.

1:35:45 Speaker 2: Oh, no, I think he's too hip. I think he's too hip to the whole thing.

1:35:49 Speaker 1: No, he knows you all are too hip. Yes.

1:35:54 Speaker 2: So wrap up, wrapping up. After 20 years of doing this, do you believe David Grush and his claims that the U.S. is in possession of crash-retrieved vehicles and non-human entities?

1:36:18 Speaker 1: That's the beautiful thing about basketball. I don't give a fuck about my position. Like most Republicans I talk to, kind of feel I'm conservative, I'm a liberal, I'm liberal, progressive, so I'm progressive. Because, like, I just read a ton, and, like, my job, and so I'll usually regurgitate them, back to them, and then I'm just looking for them to correct me. So I'm like, I want that conversation. And so, like, on a lot of stuff, I just don't even ever think about what my opinion is.

1:36:56 Speaker 2: Right.

1:36:57 Speaker 1: I want it. to just be your guys' conduit. Like, I literally, after 20 years and all the awards and praise I've gotten, I literally wanted to recede to the background and just be the conduit. Like, there's power. Like, the media, we rightfully have been neutered, rendered useless by much of the American people. It's time for us to shut up. And especially with, like, the failed promise of social media. Yeah. In this post-social media era, slash AI era, come on, let's bring the constituents virtually into the Capitol.

1:37:38 Speaker 1: Because, yeah, these lawmakers can run away from me and be a dick to me. But they're not going to poll that shit. I mean, they're on the line.

1:37:48 Speaker 2: The actual, yeah, right, their representatives.

1:37:51 Speaker 1: Look for us at Ask a Poll UAP. Send us your questions. Send us videos of you asking the questions. And we'll bring them to your lawmaker and let you watch them squirm, lie, or, heaven forbid, say what they're actually fucking thinking.

1:38:08 Speaker 2: What a sentiment. So, yeah, you actually, description for Askapole, or the link for Askapole and all of Matt's social medias are in the description below. I just want to say thank you for being here. I know we were supposed to do this last night. My fault. But this has been really fun. I can't wait to talk to you after the midterms. You are truly one of a kind, Pete. I mean, Matt. Is there anything you want to say?

1:38:44 Speaker 1: Have you seen your testosterone shot today? Have you seen your testosterone shot? Bro. You're teeing up. Oh, wait, you're training? No, no, no. No testosterone for you. Oh, my God. And with that, I'm going to try to not get fired.

1:39:08 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. We don't want you to get in trouble. Everyone out there, happy Halloween. Matt, thank you so much for joining us tonight. We'll see you soon. I can't wait to have you back in, like I said, And hopefully the next time we could do it in person.

1:39:22 Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.

1:39:23 Speaker 2: So thank you so much, man. Everyone else, stay humble, stay kind, and most importantly, stay vigilant. We'll see you next time.