The following is a transcript from the Pro America Report.
Welcome, welcome, welcome! Ed Martin here on the Pro America Report. We have a special show today. I’m going to spend some time with Geri Perna. Geri Perna has become something of an activist on the issues of January 6 prisoners. She’s a really a a very good speaker and a very compelling presence. I don’t know how old she is. I mean, she’s probably in her 50s and she comes across very how to say regular and matter of fact attractive speaker, charismatic and she’s speaking about the death of her nephew, Matt Perna, who took his own life a year ago, on February 25th, and terrible, haunting tragedy in her family’s life and something that she’s never obviously recovered from, but she’s turned into a touchstone to talk about what’s gone on. So we’re gonna mark that event and talked to her about that. And so I’m looking forward to that conversation and be respectfully engaged.
I will warm that up by saying that earlier this week, I went to the sentencing of one of the defendants in the January 6th cases in Washington, DC, and it was interesting enough. Happily, it was a relatively good, I think, a good, more lenient than not in terms of what could have happened, although still crazy, what’s happening. But I don’t wanna get into the specifics necessarily to talk about it because I want to say this next part. Afterwards I had a chance to visit with the mother and father of that defendant and the brother of that defendant and a couple of friends of that, that defendant. But mostly to sit with the father of that man, who is now convicted and is gonna go to jail for a little while more. But listening to this gentleman in his maybe 70s retired business type engineer type and what struck me after we covered the ground of, you know, sorry for your son and what he’s going through and it must be hard was how normal he was. How he talked about his family not not even no, talked about where he lived and what he worked on and what he thought of work. We had some friends or some not friends, but some overlapping work environments in St. Louis. He had worked at a company that had worked with a company I had done some work with so. We had these overlapping contacts and we had this discussion. I remember thinking, you know, his son’s going through this whole thing.
Their family is just devastated and he’s normal. And he had normal concerns. Normal things going on and it just reinforced to me that this is very hard for people and it’s always hard for people facing jail and facing prosecution. But in this case it’s really been celebrated. By the fake news. And it’s been celebrated by the left to make people suffer. And it’s been celebrated by the prosecutors. It’s really terrible stuff. It’s really mean. And I know so out there, maybe there’s listeners who say, hey, you know what, the justice system has been mean to poor people before. It’s been mean to minorities, there’s there’s lots of ways, maybe I’m, maybe my eyes are being opened, but it’s really terrible. It’s really tough and it was eye opening, so we’ll talk with Geri Perna in a little while, alright?
What you need to know today though, I want to get to this one. This is important to me. I want you to hear me when I tell you what you need to know, that there is an ongoing industry. Of fake history that is built into fake news and it’s just despicable. So Joshua Zeitz is a Politico magazine contributing writer, which means he probably gets $10,000 for writing a a piece in political magazine like the one that I’m reading. He’s author of a book called Building The Great Society: Inside Lyndon Johnson’s White House, and if you go to his Twitter feed, you’ll see it read. It’ll say Joshua M Zeitz, contributing writer and author and and but the first word is historian. Historian. And he is supported in his writing and his work and his books and his columns and his efforts he ran for Congress, as a partisan Democrat, and he’s called a, and his he calls himself a historian and everyone goes along with it and he writes an entire piece in Politico magazine, the title of which is The Church, The GOP’s Church Committee Wannabes. And then the subtitle is, the GOP has compared the new committee to their new committee to the Church committee, which uncovered rampant crimes in the ’70s. Then the next thing. really? Question mark. As a writer, it’s in the magazine, political magazine under the history department.
So you see a guy that’s a political hack. He’s a political hack. Is, is called, is given accolades as a historian and he’s given book deals and he went to Swarthmore College and he got a PhD at Brown University and he he’s we’re gonna call him a historian and his piece at Politico in the magazine at the history department is bull, it’s it’s bull feathers. I mean, top to bottom.
In the I think it’s the third paragraph. It says. Oh, no, 4th paragraph, it says the the drama is that he was able to talk to Gary Hart, who’s the last surviving member of the Church committee. That’s the wrong wrong word by the way. Surviving member? what is surviving? What do you have to survive the church committee? And if you’re a historian. At Brown University. Otherwise you should be able to use language. I think he means the last living member. You don’t have to survive the Church committee. And it’s Gary Hart. Ohh Gary Hart. So 4 paragraphs in after Gary Hart has been given the authority. He was a junior. He was a junior guy. He’s the guy in the Church committee by definition. He’s been given all these quotes and then it says this., Jordan Jim Jordan’s panel has barely begun its work, but early indications suggest it will blah blah blah. So this dude is writing a history as a mind reader. He gets to say what he thinks the Church committee did, and we’re supposed to believe him ’cause he’s a historian. So what he tells us the Church committee did was what Gary Hart says they did. And then he says what he thinks, maybe, Jim Jordan’s going to do. Even though he admits Jordan’s panel has barely begun its work, and then he goes on to say. He thinks when he’s reading their mind that they may look into things that are really out there. Did the FBI strong arm Twitter and Facebook into suppressing a news story about Hunter Biden’s laptop? Well, why isn’t that important? I I don’t understand. The Church committee was formed because the people in the Senate, the Church committee, Senator Church and others thought that there was real abuses. There were things going on in intelligence community and there were abuses. It’s abusive for the FBI. If they did strong arm on Twitter and Facebook, it certainly looks like they did.
Here’s the next one. And that historian, great historian Zeitz says. Did the FBI surveil and intimidate conservative parent activists at local PTA meetings? Now let’s say it differently. Is the FBI surveilling and intimidating anyone at board meetings or otherwise? What we know is Merrick Garland put out the word, the bat signal to do that, to PTA meetings, and I don’t think, by the way, it’s not local PTA meetings. PTA meetings are parent teacher association meetings that that’s a way to be. Like I guess be a historian at local PTA meetings. There’s no such thing as a national PTA meeting. So he’s a writer. He’s a historian who can’t write and local. What he means is school boards. People talked about school boards. They didn’t talk about PTA meetings. They talked about the school boards, where elected officials who serve on school boards, are, were not allowing people to speak, and they complained and Merrick Garland said the FBI should look into it. That isn’t that something that we would worry about, the abuse of the American citizens. Why not?
Here’s the best one. This makes me nuts. Did Hillary Clinton collude with Russia in 2016 to sabotage Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. And question mark. Now this is Joshua Zeitz writing this. He’s saying that the the Jordan panel may take on really crazy things and then in brackets this one says if that last one doesn’t make sense, that’s because it doesn’t. What are you talking about? All of the evidence that exists now shows that it was Hillary Clinton’s campaign that paid political operatives. To put together the dossier, Steele. To do a political, to sabotage Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Nobody denies that. Hillary Clinton’s campaign paid a fine for having spent money on something that wasn’t clearly delineated. The only question in that is whether Russia was involved and if you think that Hillary Clinton’s people didn’t think Steele was using Russian, Russian sources, you don’t know what you’re talking about, Maybe he didn’t. Steele, might have made it all up. He appears to be a really dishonorable dude. But he sold his wares to Marc Elias and the Fusion GPS and all those. And by the way, to a Republican before. The Republicans, before Steele got snapped up by Hillary’s people, there was a Republican, and I think it was related to Rubio’s campaign. Maybe, or maybe it wasn’t Rubio’s campaign, but just a donor had been doing this research and Steele. The Steele dossier, which was used to sabotage Trump’s campaign. That’s true. To damage his campaign, that’s true. That’s not in dispute, Steele said he had Russian sources. Maybe he didn’t, but he said that. So why wouldn’t that be an issue?
And my point here. My point is that what happens is the credentialing society, you know, Swathmore, Brown and and and publishers, they credential these people and then they’re allowed to be considered historian. What, and and therefore, then they’re given things to write. And they say the history. And it’s complete. Fake news. It’s fake history. It’s fake history that is meant to do what?
Well, one it’s meant to mislead us so that the future people don’t really know what happened. They think, well, Hillary Clinton, somehow she she they they actually they want to say that Hillary Clinton had her election stolen, that somehow it was her election was stolen, but nobody else steals elections but still.
But the second thing is they do this because it becomes the authority they can point to, Joshua Zeitz, and he can be an authority. And he can say things like ohh yeah. Ohh
And his his Twitter feed, he said he wrote a couple hours after I started to look at his note. The first seminar I taught as a professor was on the history of whiteness. You get it? You get it. I mean critical race theory, all this stuff. It’s washed. It’s like it’s like where you white wash or you or or you money launder you ideas launder you historian launder you history launder through all these different places and when you’re done. Most Americans don’t even know how to fight through the narrative.
This guy is a partisan hack. In my opinion, well, let me say it differently. I’ve never met the guy. I can’t. I don’t want to mind read like he thinks he can mind read. I wanna say, I see what he’s written. I see how he’s misleading. I see what he’s lying about, and I know his background. He ran for Congress and I and you know he’s a Democrat partisan and I think. That’s not a historian. That’s a hack. He’s not even faking it. He’s not even faking it. And in this modern era, used to have to fake it, used to have to pretend you were a serious historian type and you would be honored and you would look like Michael Beschloss. They would trot you around, you’d get paid a lot of money and you’d look cool. You didn’t, part of Michael Beschloss went off the deep end himself, but you Used to fake it. This guy, young guy. He’s not even faking it. He’s just lying. He’s just making fake news.
But again, let me say clear. I don’t know whether he he might be. He might he might himself be brainwashed. He might himself think this stuff. That’s one of the things that you have to understand. This is not even the people with PhD’s. Are not immune. From being misled. But they’re given the ability. To mislead the rest of us. And it’s terrible.
And one of the worst examples of this to take this full circle is the people who are claiming authority to talk about January 6th. The Select Committee, the people who got the the the access early and now they don’t want Tucker or anybody else to have the access because they’ve decided what the narrative is. It’s it makes you doubt. Well, let me say it differently. It makes me doubt any history. I’m not sure I believe any of it. Because I see now what’s been happening so obvious, so blatant. All right, that’s what you need to know.
We’re gonna, we’ll run. We’ll come back and we’ll talk with Geri Perna. Be right back. It’s Ed Martin here on the Pro America Report, back in a minute.
