 You know, for the past, what, 18 months, well, almost two years now, we've been hearing Trump and listening to his fake news and his falsehoods and lies and deceptions and whatnot. And you think that, you know, like he invented that? No, he didn't invent that. In fact, today's show is about disinformation in America, and it didn't start with Trump. It started, hmm, my goodness, 30 years before that. And Trump, in the seven commandments of disinformation, is actually being used. He, in my opinion, is the useful idiot that is included in the seven commandments. So my co-host, Tim Appichella, hi, Tim. Hey, Jay. Trump week today, okay? And Cynthia Sinclair, oh God, Cynthia, this is perfect. This is chaos. It is definitely chaos, without a doubt. And I wonder if there's any way we can find some respect in this, because it's pretty hard to find in this mess. Well, movie number three, which we will discuss. Okay. There are a number of movies in The New York Times lately, in an article written by New York Times reporters, which is excellent reporting about disinformation in America. And one of those movies tells us the background. One tells us the modus operandi by Vladimir Putin. And one of us, one of them puts it in perspective and tries to show how we can conceivably deal with it. Can you summarize what's in The New York Times right now, Tim? Well, basically, it is the Senate, yourself, and the introduction is the seven commandments. And that's an old Russian KGB strategy on how to basically break apart Europe, the cohesiveness of Europe, break apart, you know, in a long game strategy, NATO, and certainly cause dissension in the United States. And basically, the seven commandments are the following. You've got, the first thing is, find the crack. That is, find the area where you can create division. And here in the United States right now, it's over immigration. It's over race relationships, certainly economic, you know, stratus between certain groups of people and, you know, that live in the United States. Just finding that point where you can break things apart and create dissension amongst the population. The next is the big lie. You've got to put out what your statement is to try to create separation of people and countries, not just people, but also countries. So the big lie is a big part of this. By the way, the big lie was also used in 1920s and 30s in Germany was the big lie. Then you have to wrap around that big lie around what is called the truth. You find something that's 10, 20% true and wrap it around the 80% of the big lie so that there's credibility to the big lie. Right. There's always got to be that element of truth in all of the lies in order for them to work. You know, I need to say, but it's kind of like gossip, you know, in all gossip, there's always a small particle of truth, but the rest of it is this made up or it's not true. Commit. You have to commit to the big lie so that what does this administration do when it comes to commitment, repeat, repeat, repeat that over and over again. And you certainly see that whenever we see a news conference or any kind of statement from the president is you are repeating things continuously. Yep. Yep. And then number five is... Oh, sorry. Go ahead. No, no, no, no. Well, number five is an old Russian term is find a useful idiot. And I'm not pointing any fingers, but there is a whole scheme of social media or even talk shows where that individual is the messenger for the big lie. Alex Jones comes to mind. There's some other radio show hosts that come to mind, but I'll keep it to Alex Jones because he's the furthest one way out there. And he's the messenger for the big lie. And then number six, you have when the press and people do their research, they do their fact finding and they bring that to the table. It's deny, deny, deny. And how many times have we seen that in the last two years? No collusion. No collusion. Witch hunt. You know, witch hunt. So deny, deny, deny. By doing that, you're trying to just reinforce the big lie. And last but not least is it's the slow approach. You know, Russian disinformation campaigns take decades and they were, you know, they were doing this back in the 70s and 80s. It's nothing new. It's just accelerated in today's media marketplace. When I was watching one of the films that we're talking about here today, they had Reagan on there and this is what really kind of struck me. Reagan was saying the exact same things that we're talking about today. In 1980, saying we have to watch out for this and this and this and he went right down the line of all these things. He referred to active measures. That's right. Which is, you know, the long-term plan, the MO by Putin and Russia is so interesting. He knew. Back then they knew. Well, back then Russia was not to be trusted. Somehow Russia is our best buddy with this administration and, you know, what happened? How did that happen? Well, they were criticizing Obama too in one of these three movies for trying to find a diplomatic solution with Russia, not recognizing that Russia was actually had declared war on us by disinformation. That's been going on for a while. And now we have social media that gets involved, which makes it be able to go out to so many more people. But one of the things that struck, another thing that struck me from the movies is they were talking about the flags that were put out and one of them was a flag of Putin and it was actually on his 64th birthday or 65th birthday, something like that, that hung from the George Washington Bridge, right? And then, and it says, the peacemaker. What? Right. I have a picture of it. I almost tried to bring it. And then just shortly, and this was in October, just before Trump took office. And then just after he took office there was another big giant banner hung again from the Manhattan Bridge. And this time it was Obama saying, exit the murderer. That's what it was, exit the murderer. So it's like they would try these kinds of disinformation things in small ways. It used to be newspapers, right? And then these banners and things that they would hang around in cities for people to see on their way to work. Take a picture and send it out on social media. Exactly. Well, and now it's gone a step further and we've got that social media in everybody's hand. You don't have to drive past a big banner. You just turn on your phone and your notifications will tell you all about it. What we don't have anymore is Radio Free Europe. Yes, absolutely. Do you remember Radio Free Europe? No. NPR, isn't NPR kind of close? Well, no. It depends. It depends on how many commercials they have to run for those shelves. Yeah, right. He said, we here, you know, in the last couple of years, we've seen this with our own eyes and we, you know, maybe we don't give it proper respect. But like, for example, the two crowds in New York right after inauguration where one crowd's not my president and the other crowd was, you know, he's OK. Both of them were created in Russia, OK? There was a like, and there are many, many more, but there was a like incident in Texas and it was racial and it was fighting, you know, the African-Americans and the howlies on the other side of the street, fighting and yelling, epithets at each other. Both sides were stirred up by Russia, according to the New York Times, which I'm sure researched this really well. So what you, we can see this. We can see this and we don't, we don't know what to make of it. We can't necessarily, and this is my question to you, Tim, we can't necessarily connect it with Trump. Where does Trump fit in all this? He's the one who seemed to come up with fake news. He's the one who, you know, is pulling the wings out of the First Amendment. He is the one who, you know, seems to be buddy with Russia. Where does he fit with a campaign that's 30 years old, a campaign of active measures, a campaign that Putin has been, you know, developing for all these years? Well, I think where it fits is the strategy of how do I get elected in the first place? Number two is, yeah, the way I got into this office might have been not above board. And so now what do I have to do to get myself out of it and distract the population and have them basically zombie-like followers? And I'm not saying everyone votes for Trump's a zombie, but there are a certain percentage of people that just follow no matter what, no matter what is said, no matter what is done. And so this strategy, if you will, the seven, you know, the seven commandments worked quite well for his administration. Perfect. And unless you recognize it for what it is, you wouldn't know it's happening. You have a general sense that something's not right, but do you really know what's happening and how it's happening? That's why this thing by The New York Times is valuable. Oh, yeah. Yeah, valuable. But, you know, The New York Times goes beyond just attacking Trump here. Trump is just a piece of a larger puzzle, and I, you know, I commend, I admire them for that. You know, it's like the way we like to do it at Think Tech, take a look at the larger truth. What is the larger picture? So do you think, do you think in his investigation, Mueller knows about what The New York Times is writing and making movies about? Do you think that The New York Times knows what Mueller is doing and is shadowing Mueller's process? I don't think that they know about what Mueller is doing, because I think that Mueller has such a tight lock, and there are no leaks from what he's got going on, but I think he knows everything. I think he knows exactly what The New York Times is talking about. They're finding it on their own. He's already found it, because he's had plenty of agents out there looking for it already and making these connections. And for me, the dangerous thing in all this is that, like you said, he's following this same pattern. Well, this same pattern is what got Putin elected, who will now be the president of Russia forever. Now, if we as Americans don't wake up and make some changes and do something about this, then that's the same path that I see Trump trying to follow. And we hear people say, oh, well, yeah, you know, liking him to Hitler, well, that's kind of a far stretch, but we can certainly like him to Putin, because he's very much following the exact same pattern, except that Putin went through, you know, the intelligence agencies. He was one of the head guys and his specialty. One of the things I learned in this little, these movies, and I recommend them to everyone because they were really informative. But one of the things was that that was his specialty, was cyber intelligence. He spent his whole life on it. Yeah, cyber intelligence is, he wasn't just an intelligence agent, which, you know, sometimes it's interviewing or investigating or this, it's cyber intelligence. He made his career on it. Yes. So this, he is so entrenched already. And the thing I'm very concerned about is we don't see our government doing anything about it. The third movie, which I only got halfway through, but commend everybody to read the New York Times article, take a look at these movies, because they will inform you about things you don't know. And they will help to put it in perspective. And they will scare you. Yeah. They will scare you. The third movie has some pieces that are really interesting about Estonia and Ukraine. Okay? So Russia doesn't do this only to us. I mean, it is a weapon. And they're good at it. And they know how to find the flaws, what do you call them, the breaks, the cracks, the cracks. Cracks. Part of the seven commandments. They know how to perform the seven commandments, and they have done it in many places. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't work. But as you said, Tim, there's a long plan, always a long plan, and they double down on everything. And they see if it works. And they have refined this through the point of making it very effective. So one of the places, their training ground, if you will, has been Estonia and Ukraine. I mean, they're all kinds of terrible things they have done to both of those places. So there's some footage there in the third movie about a TV program in Ukraine. And there are two, you saw this part? There are two news commentators. And it's like an hour a day, every day. And they spend that whole hour talking about what fake news Russia has tried to promulgate in the Ukraine that day. And they hit them right back. And the point of the story is the best way, same thing in Ukraine, Estonia, the best way to deal with this kind of fake news campaign, this disinformation campaign, which is intended to wreck your society, and I think it does, then is to hit them right back. Now the New York Times will say about Trump, they will say, the president lied when he said this or that. Well, the president falsely asserted when he said this or that. But I'm not sure they catch all the other stuff that the president is not necessarily involved in. For example, the Hillary Clinton claim on the pizza parlor. You remember that one? So when we come back, we're going to talk about Hillary Clinton and the pizza parlor. Pizza gate. Remember that? It was called pizza gate. Pizza gate. And we're going to debunk that right in front of your eyes. We'll be right back. Right. Yeah. Aloha and mabuhay. My name is Amy Ortega Anderson, inviting you to join us every Tuesday here on Pinoy Power Hawaii with Think Tech Hawaii. We come to your home at 12 noon every Tuesday. We invite you to listen, watch for our mission of empowerment. We aim to enrich, enlighten, educate, entertain, and we hope to empower. Again, maraming, salamat po, mabuhay, and aloha. Hey, aloha. My name is Andrew Lanning. I'm the host of Security Matters Hawaii airing every Wednesday here on Think Tech Hawaii live from the studios. I'll bring you guests. I'll bring you information about the things in security that matter to keeping you safe, your co-workers safe, your family safe, to keep our community safe. We want to teach you about those things in our industry that may be a little outside of your experience. So please join me because Security Matters. Aloha. Okay. We're back. And the cliffhanger was the pizza parlor. This is like a few days before the 2016 election. All of a sudden, there was a scandalous thing about a pizza parlor in New York, so in New York, I think it was. And Hillary Clinton was involved and in the basement of the pizza parlor. This is so, you know, mysterious. She was running some sort of illegal business as well. No, no. Child pornography. Child pornography. Yes. Yes. The basement under the pizza parlor. Yes. I mean, it's got all the touchstones of American culture. Child pornography, big issue. Pizza. Everybody likes pizza. Hillary Clinton, you know, the candidate you love to hate. So what happened? Well, the bottom line is people believed it. And the bottom line is... It was from Russia. That's correct. This was one of those planted news stories. The big lie, repeated enough times, beat it to an audience that are loyal followers and it didn't hurt that people didn't like Hillary Clinton. That didn't hurt at all. And you just keep repeating it over and over again and before you know it, before talking about a rumor, that wasn't true. And it resulted in, unfortunately, one individual bringing a gun and shooting up the pizza parlor. Right. And that wasn't good. And they didn't even have a basement in that pizza parlor that they claimed had this sex ring going on in it, this child sex ring going on. They didn't even have a basement. They had to do things in a basement that doesn't exist. Doesn't exist. Yeah. Right. What interested me about that was that, OK, so they spread the story wherever they seeded it. I don't know where they put it. Some newspaper, maybe some odd, most circulation newspaper somewhere. And it bubbled up, got into bigger circulation, got on the Internet, got into social media. But then after it was debunked and after somebody found some journalist took a look for a basement and found there was no basement and it was debunked. It was still in the ether. It was still being passed around, including by rappers who were singing songs about it after it was shown to be untrue. And that's... So they would be the useful idiots to keep the lie going forward. And Alex Jones, he would be the useful idiot to keep something that's been debunked, completely debunked, to keep it going, the myth going forward. Not just Alex Jones. Reminds me of Trump and the birther issue. Right? It just came to my mind as well. Really silly. The only difference is that Trump eventually came out and said, okay, it's not true, whereas Pizza Gate, no one's ever come and said, this has been debunked. No one had ever believed it or was perpetuating the lie. No one's ever come back and said, yeah, I guess that wasn't true after all. Well, if you make a quiet statement like, okay, it's not true, that doesn't change the rappers. It doesn't change the social media. It doesn't change those conservative radio commentators. They keep saying it. So it's in the cultural ether. It's still happening. That's the most remarkable thing of all. So I guess the question I've put to you guys in our remaining time is, do we take a page out of the book from Ukraine, from Estonia? Do we have a radio show or a television show that boldly goes and takes the action that Ronald Reagan was talking about doing something about this, about hitting false news right on the head and spending a fair amount of time debunking these things so that you have as much attention to the debunk as you do to the lie? Well, we have one guy who's doing that specifically with Trump anyway, and all he's doing is fact-checking all the things that he says. And they've come up with now 817 lies in the month of October leading up to this midterm. 814 lies, untruths that he said while he was out there campaigning for this midterm. And so in every lie, I mean every month it's the same. It's way up there. So we're in the thousands now. My reaction to that is we know that. It keeps on going. So it was an article in this morning's paper about something called call-in. And Trump had given a long interview to a reporter from call-in. Oh, he had call-in, right. And they did the count on the roll of lies, and they found that most of what he was saying was outrageously lie, okay? And they went through a number of them. But see, let me throw this at you. Why don't we spend more time on that? Why don't we go through each lie? Well, I think we saw something very similar, actually worse, in the 1950s with a senator named Joseph McCarty. Sure. There you go. That was a big lie. And what did it take? It finally took someone with enough gravitas, Evan R. Murrell, to debunk him openly, okay? I'm not sure we have a lot of people like that anymore that have that kind of weight and gravitas and credibility to say, this is a bold-faced lie. Stop it. And that's what we need. We don't have someone like that. We need, because we've got MSNBC, we've got CNN, they are trying to shine our light. But there's no credibility for the people. But there's no credibility, yeah, because now they're just fake news. Well, there's an 8th commandment, and that is when you are turned out, then you criticize the people who turn you out. Correct. Right. Rachel Madden, you know, let's criticize her. Let's see if we can undo her somehow. But, you know, what I would like to see is regulation also. And this is in the third movie as well, in the New York Times' third movie. And they have some footage of Zuckerberg with that little boy, innocent look on his face. You're a neighbor. You're a neighbor. Here. In Hawaii. Who goes to Congress and says, well, I know I made a mistake. This is like, yeah, I know that the birther issue is really not a birther issue. I know I made a mistake, and I'm very sorry for that. But then the question is, what did he do about it, aside from, you know, Mayor Culpa? What did he do about that? Well, pretty much nothing. Baby steps is what the movie called it. And I don't think they've done anything. And Congress, there was fantastic footage about some of these people, some of these congressmen in these hearings asking him questions about how Facebook works. And they were, what shall I say? Completely ignorant. Right. They had no idea. A clue. A clueless. And he knew that before he testified. Right. And he strung him up by saying, I'm not sure what you mean. You're going to have to explain your level of knowledge to me before I answer that question. Well, they had no level of knowledge, so he made monkeys out of them. He intimidated them before the testimony. Right. That's what it was like. Yeah. Somebody has to get in there and regulate him. You're up to doing a better job than we are. You think we would have the sophistication, the expertise, the sources to ask good questions and then to regulate. He needs to be regulated. Don't you think so? Oh, I know they do. Because there was one employee, and this is what, three years ago, before they got caught and had to come out and before he had to come and put his little innocent face on TV, there was one of the top executives that saw what was going on and said, this is a five alarm fire. We have a serious issue. And still they did nothing but, you know, put it under the rug. They haven't done anything. Just shove it under the rug. Well, congressional hearings going nowhere. But remember, let's not downplay the value and the power of money via lobbyists in Congress. Right. There's probably a reason why Facebook hasn't received any kind of antitrust regulation is because the lobbyists are hard at work. Right. And it's not just Facebook. It's probably other concerned industries, you know, be it Google or whatever, that are concerned about excessive regulation on their industry. Sure. Well, when they talk about Cheryl Sanderberg or Sanderson, I can't remember her last time. But, yeah, there who's the COO, Sandberg is it, yeah. And how she has been hard at work in Congress, like you say, with the money that they got from the Russians. Because they didn't want to stop all those ads. They got a hundred million dollars like that, or more. Or more. I think it was, like, a billion is what it was more like. Okay, okay, fair. I think it was in the billion range when I was reading the article. And yeah, that's why they, it was money. It was all about money. Well, it always has been. It always will be. It always is about money, right? So, you know, we used to say that people have to, you know, with discussions with the School of Journalism, people have to read and use critical thinking on the news that comes at them in social media. I think that doesn't work. Sorry. Social media is intended to get into your mind. And if there's somebody trying to deceive you, that will deceive a lot of people. We need more. I'm sorry to say the government needs to step in and make sure this stuff. So I make you the government, Tim. What do you do? Thanks, Jay. Regulate for me, man. Regulate. Better you than me, dude. Well, first off, you replace the chair of the FCC. That's number one. There you go. Okay, because he's a lackey. And you know, like I said in the last show, I mean, anytime you try to get control of the local media through Sinclair, that's a strategy. I'm sorry. Right. Right. Yeah, I have no connection. I have no connection. It wasn't me as well. That's all. Thank you for pointing that out. You basically have to analyze the problem and start holding hearings and then act on it. Right. And recognize that there's going to be a heavy lobbying effort to stop you. And you have to hold hands and don't break the chain. Do what you have to do to get this addressed. Simple as that. Yeah. Now, in all of that, where does Trump fit? What would he do? Would he stop any effort to regulate? Yes. I'm sorry. Or he might just go through the motions of looking like he's doing it when he's not. Because I think that everything he says now is a lie. You know that what I was saying in that one commentary that I did, you know, false assist in, you know, false assist in omnibus, yeah, it's like false in one, false in all. What that means, everybody, is if it's false in one respect, it's false in all. And it's a standard jury instruction that, you know, that you look at when you are, when you're going, when you're looking at someone that is on trial, or a witness that's coming on there and they tell you to look at it, they lie one time and they're probably lying about everything. So and I, you can apply that to Trump, but there's another thing we can apply to Trump that's like a psychological aspect. He does so much projection. And projection is when you are doing something and you accuse somebody else of it and it's really what you are doing. And that's him. He's a psychologist's dream. Oh, and that's exactly what I was, I wrote that down in my notes even. He is a psychiatrist's dream, because he has every subtle twisted nuance of things. Let me ask you my last question. This is the optimism versus pessimism question. So the Russians have been doing this to us a long time. Trump has accelerated it. Zuckerberg has accelerated it. It's worse than before. And they have driven trucks between, you know, disparate groups on every level on race, on education, on religion, on economics, disparity of income. All those things, they have rendered us, okay, they are rendering us. And they've done a terrific job with Trump's help as a useful idiot in the past couple years. Is it too late for us? Are we going to be able to survive this onslaught, or is there a way that this great nation, I say that with, you know, complete patriotism, because that's how I feel about it, is there a way this great nation can recover thoughts? Absolutely. It already happened on election day. The gears of our democracy is going to work. And if we just saw where the House has now been taken over by the check and balance system, the rule of law will survive. We'll get through this. You know this is on tape and everything. I do. Okay. Yeah, I'm willing to commit to this. I had $20 in my wallet, I'd put it down on that table right now. I don't know if I'd bet on it. I will hope for it. But I don't know if I'd bet on it. Because the people that are in control have so much power right now and have so much ability to pervert the rule of law. And in the same way that the gerrymandered districts were creating, you know, a misinformation of voters, I believe that same theory can be applied to the rule of law. So I'm very concerned. I worry a lot for it. I don't just go, oh yeah, I believe in a standard. Well, I didn't say I wasn't concerned. I am very concerned. But you'll put $20 down. $20 that the rule of law will survive. I only bet on what I'm sure of, so I won't bet. Nathan Hale. Yes. Nathan Hale. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Yeah. There you go. Thank you, Cynthia. Thank you. Great to talk with you on this. Thank you. Thank you, Tim. Great to have you guys. Thank you. Aloha. Aloha. Aloha.