 On a recent episode of the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, Tulsi Gabbard was there for her second appearance and she's already been a leader when it comes to this issue of Julian Assange, Edward Snowden and this broader issue relating to civil liberties and how little by little our civil liberties are being eroded. So she talks about it here and she makes not just a strong argument for why it was important for what Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden did, but she then says what she would do as president. So the first thing I want to show you is what she says about Julian Assange because this is incredibly strong. She is very clear in making the case as to why we should all be against the arrest and extradition of Julian Assange, not necessarily because we like Julian Assange as a person, but because this has broader implications that go beyond Julian Assange and the 2016 election. Take a look. What happened with his arrest and all this stuff that just went down I think poses a great threat to our freedom of the press and to our freedom of speech. We look at what happened under the previous administration under Obama. They were trying to find ways to go after Assange and WikiLeaks, but ultimately they chose not to seek to extradite him or charge him because they recognized what a slippery slope that begins when you have a government in a position to levy criminal charges and consequences against someone who's publishing information or saying things that the government doesn't want you to say. Sharing information the government doesn't want you to share. The fact that the Trump administration has chosen to ignore that fact, to ignore how important it is that we uphold our freedoms, freedom of the press and freedom of speech and go after him, it has a very chilling effect on both journalists and publishers. You can look to both those in the traditional media, but also those in new media and also on on every one of us as American. It was it was a kind of a warning call saying, look what happened to this guy. It could happen to you could happen to any one of us. So that in my view was important. If you are a leader, what you need to do is educate people because individuals in the United States, they just they don't know about this particular issue. They're bombarded with propaganda from mainstream media. And so it's just embedded in them that they have to hate Julian Assange. But this isn't even about Julian Assange. He was arrested because of the 2010 Chelsea Manning leaks. And what's really odd to me is that people have this visceral reaction. Like I actually attended a town hall just a couple of weeks ago with my senator, Jeff Merkley, and I asked the question to him about Julian Assange and Trump's administration, possibly extraditing him to the United States. And I asked what his opinion was and what he could possibly do as a U.S. senator to kind of influence the situation and protect civil liberties. He completely dodged the question. And I like Jeff Merkley. This is someone who is relatively progressive or in fact, very progressive. You could argue, nonetheless, he dodges the question. And he kind of gave me this generic response about, well, you know, this is really a balance between national security and civil liberties and how we balance that as a country. It wasn't a great answer. But one thing that also struck me is that when I was asking the question and when Chelsea Manning's name and Julian Assange's name came out of my mouth, the people in front of me, they literally scoffed as if I said Voldemort in the Harry Potter movies. Like it was so weird to me that people just instinctively are against Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning. But I think this is because they're not educated, because the mainstream media hasn't been doing their job. And you'd think mainstream media cable news shows would want to do their job because this affects them. If they were to publish leaks that were obtained illegally, they could be penalized if we set this new precedent where Julian Assange is prosecuted. So you'd think mainstream media would do their part and educate people, but they're not doing that. But with Tulsi Gabbard here, what she did and why it was so important was she educated people about this. People don't get it. They just think, oh, well, you know what? He leaked information about Hillary Clinton in 2016. He leaked the DNC emails and he didn't leak the Republican RNC emails, so obviously he's a Republican Party shield, but he's being prosecuted because of the leaks in 2010. He published the Manning leaks, which exposed war crimes that our government was committing. And that's what Tulsi Gabbard communicates here as clear as day, and she's doing a phenomenal job. And she is being a leader on this issue. Now, she also talked about Edward Snowden, which politicians seem to not want to touch with a 10 foot pole, but she does a fantastic job explaining why his leaks were monumental. I don't think we, you know, I remember the very day that I woke up in DC, looked at my phone, started looking through the headlines and saw those headlines about how the NSA was mass surveilling all of us in collecting our phone records, collecting our cell phone records and Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile. And I was I was shocked. So that was something that Snowden uncovered and released, something that I don't know that even as members of Congress, we would have been aware of. So now that we were aware of it, then, hey, we can take action to close those loopholes, to change those policies, to protect our civil liberties, to protect our Fourth Amendment constitutional rights as Americans. But was the NSA going to disclose that information voluntarily on their own? Absolutely not. That was phenomenal, absolutely phenomenal. And it's one of these issues that bugs me because even the most progressive politicians, they won't speak out forcefully about Edward Snowden. What he did there was heroic. He is a hero for what he did. He exposed the NSA and them spying on the American people without a warrant. Our civil liberties can be eroded willy nilly and nobody will really care. And part of the problem is that you can't care if you don't know what's at stake and people genuinely are not educated, which which is why I think it's so important for someone like Tulsi Gabbard to speak about this because nobody knows what's at stake and why the Snowden leaks were so important and why the Manning leaks were so important. So what Tulsi Gabbard is doing here as a public service, she is educating people. Now, education is one really important component. But what really matters is the policy prescription that she's offering. Now, Joe Rogan asked her what she would do in the event she were elected president with regard to Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. What she says here is fantastic. What would you do about Julian Assange? What would you do about Edward Snowden? As far as what would you do? Once you dropping the charges, president of the world right now, dropping the charges. You drop the charges, but they're still going after him for something from Sweden in Julian Assange's case. And so Edward Snowden would be the only one that you would be able to write because unless you would influence the charges that the Trump administration is putting on Julian Assange. Right, exactly. And it remains to be seen whether or not they will push for extradition. Edward Snowden. What he's doing right now is essentially living day to day hold up in Russia and hiding. And the charges against him stem from, again, this illegal operation that he in many ways is very patriotic. I mean, he let us know and at great cost. Yeah. So you would give him a pardon. Yeah. Yeah. And I think address we've got to address why he did the things the way that he did them. And you hear the same thing from Chelsea Manning, how there is not there is not an actual channel for whistleblowers like them to bring forward information that exposes egregious abuses of our constitutional rights and liberties. Period. I mean, there's there was not a channel for that to happen in a real way. And that's why they ended up taking the path that they did and suffering the consequences. That was great. That was absolutely great. She would drop the charges against Julian Assange and pardon Edward Snowden. That's fantastic. She is the first politician besides Mike Ravel to unequivocally say I would pardon Edward Snowden. I would drop the charges against Julian Assange. We wouldn't opt for extradition. She can't control what the British government does. But as US president, she can control how we respond to Julian Assange. And since he's not a US citizen, she can't pardon him. She doesn't have that authority, obviously. So what she can say is we're not going to pursue him. She can also say we're not going to pursue Chelsea Manning. She is pardoned. I mean, Obama already commuted her sentence, but she can choose as a leader to not pursue Chelsea Manning and she can pardon Edward Snowden just full stop. This is really strong. This is incredibly powerful. So this goes to show you what type of president she would be when it comes to this issue of civil liberties, civil rights. And I'm going to link you to the full clip in the description box because she goes on to talk about the FISA court and how this is basically a rubber stamp to violate civil liberties. This was a phenomenal portion of the Joe Rogan podcast. I haven't watched all of it yet, but I did see this particular clip. It's about 13 minutes long. I want to say she does an amazing job here at laying all of this out and she's someone who even if you don't support her as your number one, you want to build her up because in the event Bernie or Warren becomes the nominee, I would like to see Warren or Gabbard, excuse me, in the future administration, because if she's in the next Democratic Party administration, then we know that the standard that she would be pushing for is to protect whistleblowers, is to uphold the Constitution and American civil liberties. And people may not care about this, but regardless, if you like it or not, or want to acknowledge it or not, if you want to live in a democracy, then if we don't abide by the Constitution and we don't protect our civil liberties, that doesn't just mean that the Constitution is being eroded, but democracy itself is being eroded. And for whatever reason, there's only one person that seems to get that and it's Tulsi Gabbard. So kudos to her phenomenal interview here. Great portion of the podcast. I look forward to watching the rest of it because this here is really strong. She is coming out swinging on this issue and it really sets her apart from everyone else who is unwilling to speak about this issue or is saying things that aren't great about this issue. There's been other presidential candidates who are basically just siding with the establishment narrative when it comes to Julian Assange, at least, and will remain silent when it comes to Edward Snowden. But what she's saying here is that we need to reverse course. It's time we actually protect whistleblowers. And that's incredibly powerful. Girlie Mike Fettuccine needs your support on Patreon. What a loser. Visit patreon.com slash humanist report to support the low ratings humanist report. Sad. My views are much higher.