Matthew Tyrmand, an investigative journalist, shares his journey from Wall Street to journalism, covering Europe, Latin America, and the US. He discusses the lack of trust in the media, the need for alternative sources, and the power of citizen journalism. The conversation covers a wide range of topics, including media bias, cultural problems, the breakdown of honest journalism, the EU's history, democracy, New York, and personal life. The Karol Markowicz Show is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network - new episodes debut every Monday & Thursday.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio.
I'm on vacation this week, so no monologue today, but
stay tuned for an interview with Matthew Turmond.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio. My
guest today is Matthew Termont, investigative journalist, founder and head
of V twenty four Investigations.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Hi. Matthew, he Carol. I have to say, it's an
honor to be with you. I'm such a fan of
your work for so many years, and now we get
to be friends. That we're in the free state of Florida,
which is like such a.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Bonus it really is for you, really.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Such a New Yorker.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Obviously it's mutual. I have followed your work for a
long time and getting to know you has been amazing.
I feeling we don't see each other actually enough, which
is funny because we are both in South Florida and
you think, you know, we'd run in the same circle
for sure. So so you're wearing a cool shirt. Show
me your shirt it says buck Hamas got.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
That in Israel in January, and I've had I had
an order of Bolsceonaro was He was with me for
a bit here in South Florida and we filmed the
video and he said, oh, I want to wear that shirt,
so awesome, that's really great.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Yeah, I mean I meet a lot of Brazilians in
South Florida. Do you also know a lot of Brazilians here? Oh?
Speaker 3 (01:27):
Yeah. Well, I was covering Brazil pretty pretty hard for
in ahead of the election. During the election, I was
on Tucker a lot and doing all sorts of media.
I think I was sort of the only English language
voice and Western voice who was voicing some of the
chicanery going on there on the ground. So my Brazilian
network is of Righty's is pretty good. The lefties there
hate me. There have been articles that I was to
(01:50):
blame for catalyzing and causing January eighth. There January sixth,
which was also a setup, and I did a lot
on that as well. But I can't go back to
Brazil for a while. Gotten.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
A lot of indications are the British leftists in America
or in Brazil.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
In Brazil, h I mean, there's they are leftists everywhere.
It's like a cancer. So it does spread and we
have not excized or chemo that that metastasis as of yet,
so they're everywhere, But most of the Brazilians who are
expatriated who are here are here for that reason of
they see the hostility to freedom that has taken shape there.
And so there have been people here for generations, certainly,
(02:28):
but there's been you know, and some of these journalists
we've seen Alan de Santos, Palo Figorito, who have now
started to do a lot more media and they even
did testimony on the Hill a couple of weeks ago.
They they're here because they've basically claimed asylum and they're
in very tenuous positions.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Is this Do you enjoy this kind of covering this
kind of stuff? Is it foreign policy? Would you say
that that's your beat?
Speaker 3 (02:49):
Yeah, you know, that's something where I just kind of
organically ended up deep in that muck because of my
involvement in Europe. I started going back and forth to
Poland about fifteen years ago and got citizenship and been
very deeply involved as a Polish journalist, had weekly columns,
was doing TV contribution on the main channel. So I'd
been covering Europe and a lot of the right right,
(03:10):
right wing sovereignty movements across the continent. For the better
part of the last decade, you know, involved wrote for
bright Bart London, which was instrumental with Nigel Farage and
the Brexit movement, and so I got very involved in
these things and across you know, Spain, Sweden, France, Germany,
obviously Potland and Hungary in Central Europe which is sort
of tip of the spear and fighting back on globalist
(03:31):
and European Union integration and overreach into sovereignty. And then
it just sort of naturally happened that I started covering
Latin America more. I went to Brazil, I spoke at
Seapack there, we were detained at the airport, and that's
when I started digging into the Supreme Court there and
the elect the election and what was going on, all
the chicanery that took place. And so then I started
(03:51):
covering more Columbia and Chile because they had moves to
the left which was unforeseen. And then now Argentina. I
was at Malaise in Augrey in December, which was magical
and amazing and I think providential that there's a bulwark
now taking new shape in South America and Latin America
with Malay and Argentina, which gives us hope. So it
just kind of happened. I mean, I do this, you know,
(04:13):
my background is on Wall Street. Didn't set out to
be a journalist, even though my father was a journalist
and an anti communist dissident and writer in Poland. So
I guess it's a little bit in the bloodstream. And
then Israel, you know, after October seventh, and then spending
all of January in Israel and working with the Visigrad guys,
Visograd being Stephan Thompson and the social media news aggregation
platform and multiple accounts across social Media've been working with
(04:36):
them because they're based in Poland informally for years, and
then in January in Israel, it took shape to launch
the investigative unit I was building to focus on stuff
going on in the US, especially Visa VI, the anti
semitism and radical terrorist apology on university campuses. It just
made sense to put that in as part of the
Visigrad agis. So there's sort of two different verticals. But
(04:58):
I've been very, very involved in sort of all facets.
I was involved in undercover journalism in the US for years,
on the board of a nonprofit focused on it that
we won't get into. But it's that's too long a
pod that.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
We only have twenty five minutes.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
Yeah, I'm working on a book on that one. So
it's just kind of in the blood. And I still
do finance stuff to pay the bills. I don't really,
it's it's more of a passion and vocational certainly, but
it's not my full time career that you know, puts
bread on the table, so to speak, which actually gives
me a little bit more independence. I can cover what
(05:32):
I want to cover. I can cover it the way
I want to cover it because frankly, I don't get
paid to do it, so I do it because I
believe in these things. So when I gets wild, I
didn't know that agent. You know that, don't noise the
hell out of me.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Yeah, I had no idea that you do this like
for free. You do this for.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
Free pretty much.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
Why you know, if they don't pay you, you can't
say that you're bought, So.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
That's really crazy. I had no idea. You know. Actually,
I feel like I've learned a lot of things about
you recently. So I went to Israel in March and
I went via Poland because the flight was cheaper. So
I had a day in Warsaw and our mutual friend
Josh Hammer said, you know, you should talk to Matthew
and I was like, well why, and he said, you
don't know who he is, Like, you don't know his history.
(06:17):
So you mentioned your dad? Who was your dad?
Speaker 3 (06:21):
So my father's name was Leopol Tairemont. He was a
mid Central mid twentieth century anti communist dissident and writer,
and probably the main writer who never bent to the
communist censors. He was blacklisted, they never martyred him because
they knew that that would create a movement around him.
He was sort of a cultural figure. He introduced jazz
to Central Europe, started the Warsan Jazz Soapa Jazz festivals.
(06:43):
So he was more than just you know, the political
science of anti communism, but also the culture. And he
was saying that politics is downstream from culture in the
seventies when he come to the US and saw the
countercultural revolution in the late sixties. So he was, you know,
thirty thirty five, forty years before Andrew Breitbart, saying that
he was born in nineteen twenty in Warsaw, so much older.
It was sixty one when he had my sister and
(07:04):
I and he was in college at university in Paris
when the war broke out and his entire family was
put in the Warsaw ghetto and he wasn't going to
go back to Warsaw, so he went to Vilnius, then
part of Poland, Vilno and he was imprisoned by the
NKBD for being a subversive as a journalist who's nineteen
years old. He was only in university for one year
when the war broke out, and then he escaped when
(07:26):
he was being shipped to Siberia and ended up in Frankfurt, Germany,
which was the capital of the Reich, and he passed
himself off as a Polish Frenchman even though he was
a Jew and was a waiter serving the highest ranking
Nazi officials at the restaurant at the Grand Hotel for
over two years, almost three years. And then he and
his theory on this was it was safer to be
in the eye of the storm than the path of
(07:47):
its destruction. Nobody was suspect than Jew would be there
serving Nazis. We actually just did a movie about it.
I co produced. It's on Netflix. It's called Philip and
I highly recommend it to your audience. So a phenomenal,
phenomenal movie has won a lot of awards at film
festivals around Europe. We were able to get it onto Netflix,
which speaks of its merit, and so that's on Netflix currently.
Fil Ip. And that's a story that he had written
(08:09):
one of his novels about his wartime experience as a
Jew in Frankfort as a waiter, and then after the war,
I mean, he fled Frankfurt when the Allies bombed the
hell out of Frankfort, ended up in Copenhagen working with
the Danish Red Cross, obviously as a spy and a courier,
was arrested knowing to be not known to be a Jew,
and was sent to a camp in Norway called Outside,
(08:31):
also called Greene. And then after the war was over,
he went back to Poland and they started fighting the Communists.
So he used to say, you know, I didn't let
the Nazis beat me. I didn't let the Communists beat me,
and I sure as hell wouldn't let the New York
Liberals beat me. And he said that they were all similar,
they all wanted gulags, The only thing preventing that third cohort,
the New York Lives, from creating a gulag was the
US Constitution, which he was very thankful for. And he
(08:52):
became a very close friend and advisor to Nixon and
Reagan on defeating communism. He was run out of New
York in the late sixties early seventies and ended up
in Rockford, Illinois, where I was born, where he founded
the Rockford Institute of Conservative think tank, and he founded
the magazine that's now Chronicles that he hadn't entitled Chronicles
of Culture. And he died unfortunately nineteen eighty five when
(09:12):
I was a kid, and that's why I ended up
growing up in Brooklyn like yourself, because my mother was
from Brooklyn and that's where her family was. So I
ended up my whole childhood from four years old on
in New York, which obviously shaped me quite a bit
and my aggressive as sort of ambrasive personality.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
No, what are you talking about? What abrasive personality?
Speaker 3 (09:30):
I'm aggressive with a smile, though, So it kind.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Of do you feel like the pressure of who your
dad was in everything that you do? Is it is
it like oh, or do you just feel like you're
doing something totally different and it had nothing to do with.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
That, or you know, I ended up on Wall Street
after I went to Chicago. I was, you know, going
into finance, and I was always political. I was always
political Wall Street. I was a macroanalyst in addition to
sort of sector specific analysis I did as a Wall
Street portfolio manager, but I was a interested in the
political side, and I was running a closed end block
for basically every trading desk on Wall Street and recommending
(10:07):
political you know, coverage, talking and weighing in on the
politics of the day. And I start getting involved, actually
more directly when I joined with the Manhattan Institute started
a Young Leader program and so I got very involved
in that. And then when I got fed up with
Wall Street in twenty eleven twelve, I just moved straight
into journalism and public policy. Started working with a group
called to Open the Books in Chicago that it does
(10:28):
a lot of forensic auditing of the public sector. You know,
I always say that, you know, people, numbers don't lie.
People lie, So you know, let's look at some of
the numbers. And that's why I believe is a journalist
slash activist. Somebody wants to uncover stuff to do what
the fourth estate is tasked with doing, you know, creating
a more honest, ethical society, shine the light on egregious
behavior like we had with the muckrakers in the post
(10:49):
industrial era in the eighteen eighties through nineteen teens, you know,
really exposed things that can then lead to greater outcomes
for society, show the ills that are underneath that not
everybody might know about well. And so my sort of
strategy on it was both the human and the ocin
the undercover journalism as well as the forensic auditing the numbers.
So between the two, hopefully we find the truth and
(11:12):
you know, can then improve the situation for all of us.
With visa via my father, you know, I grew up
understanding his legacy, fascinated by it. I never went to
Poland until twenty ten, and I was a little scared
to go to Poland because there was so much there
in it, knowing his stature there as a figure, and
so I was kind of leary, how do I go
and do it justice? And I just went and I
(11:32):
started going, and I started walking his footsteps and understanding
then the contemporary political situation which he One of his
most famous books is his Diary from nineteen fifty four,
which was published in the Emigray Press in nineteen eighty,
where he called out all the communists for their duplicity
and their you know, the caviar communists who where you know,
Paulitt Bureau connected, who lived like kings while screaming Workers
(11:52):
of the World unite. And this informed a lot of
his criticism in the US of politics and culture, where
you know, whether it was you know, and radical chic,
you know, calling out you know, when ye Leonard Bergstein
had the black panthers while you know, workers of the
World unite, we have top end the order while he's
screaming at his chauffeur and housekeeper. So you know that
(12:14):
kind of like at odds, you know, say one thing,
but behave a different way, which we see. So it's
so prevalent among the left, the sort of double stat
I always say, if the left didn't have double standards,
they have no standards at all. So, you know, I
guess there's a convergence just organically didn't set out to
be this way. I certainly my mother says that I
(12:34):
behave a lot like him. I don't care who I
offend in pursuit of the truth, and I don't. I've
certainly lost a lot of friends and the last year
over certain things, as well as in previous even in Europe,
you know, working with the being in favor of the
right wing government, helping them get elected, helping Morgyevsky the
prime minister, take over Forshidwa, the previous prime minister under
the right wing government, exposing a lot of the corrupt
(12:54):
around them. This did not endear me to a lot
of the Polish right, and I even had I wrote
an article in twenty eighteen about the Holocaust. Build remember
when they said that they're going to go after people
for criticizing Poland's roll or being the Holocaust. And I
wrote a piece for the Jerusalem Post about what was
really behind this initiative, this legislation, which was an internal
(13:15):
political battle where the Justice Minister wanted to unseat the
prime minister that I was friendly with and helped get elevated.
And so I wrote all about the details about the
you know, the back room stuff, and I remember the
head of the party, who's essentially the king of the Poland,
sent me a message through one of his emissaries that
if you're going to be on our team, you cannot
criticize us in the foreign Pressess, I'm not on your team.
(13:37):
I may like you better than the other guys, but
I'm not on your team. I don't get paid by you.
I don't want to get paid by you. I don't
work for you. I may work with you when things
align on issues in philosophy, but we are not you know.
I am not you know, looking for patronage here. I'm
not married to the hip with you guys. And I've
went after a lot of them over especially in the
last three four years of their second term. I saw
(13:59):
so much corruption. I lost my column in a magazine,
had a weekly column that was very widely read because
I was criticizing this justice minister.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
Regularly with the magazine.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
It's called Dogechi means the Things, so to speak, the
largest conservative newsweekly in Poland and sort of the third
largest magazine weekly magazine, and I had the last page
column in the magazine for about three years, and my
criticisms and exposing corruption and what was supposed to be
an editorial column got it yanked by the editorial reaction
(14:28):
because they were getting funded by the state owned enterprises
whose cronies were appointed by the Justice minister. And I
remember when they called me and said, well, nobody reads
the column anymore, we're just going a different way. Said bullshit,
everybody reads this column. In fact, the head of the country,
Yotto Schwakacchinski, who's the head of the political party, he
gave me a book blurb on one of my books
saying I don't always agree with him, but you have
to read them to know what's going on with not
(14:49):
only Poland, but Poland's relationships with Europe, with outside the
war and in the West. And so that was non
a total bs you know stuff they were feeding me,
and I called them out hard. I remember seeing the
editor in chief and the publisher at events that I
would just go up to and be like, you guys
are lying, weasels. So you know the truth, the truth abrasive,
(15:10):
you say, right, a smile though, So we don't know
how to react. Is he making a joke or is
he calling me out? Both?
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Yeah, So you cover all of these different countries, what
would you say is the largest cultural problem? And you
don't have to limit it to just America. I usually
say in the United States, but maybe worldwide.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
Yeah, and it is worldwide. It's the lack of cohesion
that exists within the media complex that existed for hundreds
of years as the fourth estate. They now are political activists.
It started very very I mean it's always been the
case the editorial page, whoever owned a newspaper would weigh
in and say what they believe. That's why you own
a newspaper. But the blending of editorial reaction and news
(15:54):
gathering is so broken. And not just the developed world,
I mean in Central Europe as well. You've got those
communists in Central Europe that are never held to account
for their complicity with the excesses and horrible actions of
the communist apparatuses across the Iron Curtain. And now they
run the newspapers or they sit on the benches. And
then when you know, reformers come in from especially from
(16:16):
a conservative right winger Sovereignis's perspective, and say we want
to uproot them, then it's always rule of laws under attack.
We've seen it in Poland and Hungary and Israel. We
see it in the US the way they cover judiciaries.
Right now, they're attacking Alito over absolute nonsense. Meanwhile, they
were real journalists and they were applying equal standards to
news gathering and exposing. They'd be looking at Soda mayor
(16:37):
they'd be looking at what RBG did over the years
as a political activism. So the double standard is rife.
And I think that the lack of trustworthy information, you know,
I always say that for years. Pugh has done a
study on most trustworthy institutions in society, and the media
over the last ten to fifteen years actually rates lower
than politicians than Congress in the US, which by the way,
(16:58):
they're both very low. You know, in Congress it's anywhere
from you know, twelve to sixteen percent. Trust factor in
the media is ten to twelve percent. But if the
media the prob it is is to hold the politicians
to account, and they have less trust than politicians, who
we know by default are lying. They pandered to get elected.
This is their role is to tell people what they
want to hear, to curry favor and votes. But the
(17:19):
media is supposed to hold them account has a lower
trust than those they're supposed to hold to account. It's very,
very broken, and I don't know the answer to fix it,
but it is at least knowing diagnosing the problem is
it leads and catalyzes people to go to alternative sources.
So that is part of a solution. I don't know
if we're winning that battle. Certainly, the media trust factor
says that people know something's wrong in the state of Denmark,
(17:41):
to paraphrase Hamdlet. But we have alternative media now. And
I've given this lectural over Europe, which is we need
to create parallel, parallel institutions, whether it's the academy, but
specifically the media, those who purport to give information. I
always look at the word news, the whole idea of news.
What is new, What needs to be transmitted to people,
(18:02):
to an informed body politic so that they can make
the right decisions on the micro and the macro, the
micro their own home economics, they're purchasing decisions the way
they raise their family, on the macro, who they vote for,
the legislation they support, with those they vote for, and
so if you're not getting an honest back pattern fed
to you, then you're right for coercion. And that's what
we've seen. That's why we have this incredible divide. But
(18:23):
the answer is alternatives. It is visigrad v twenty four investigations,
the Carol Markrite show, the podcasting, the ability to create
citizen journalism, blogging, Twitter, social media, you know, short form
editorializing that can spread virally on its own merit. This
is why Elon is such a hero for freeing the bird.
Perfect No, but compared to what it was, what we
(18:45):
saw in twenty twenty censoring. You know your paper, The
New York Post, one of the oldest and most sturdy
news organizations in this country's history. The freeze country, ever,
with a supposedly an informed and free media complex. So
having these uh, these these these platforms, these abilities to
get the word out independently of the gatekeepers. I always
(19:07):
say that the media, the professional media class. Immediately they
believe that journalism is a gilded union card carrying activity
or job or profession or you know, special skill. It's not.
Journalism is an action, and we're all journalists. What makes
a journalist. You've got eyes, you've got ears, and you've
got a pen or whatever other vehicle you have to
(19:28):
distribute what you see and hear. We're all journalists. I
always look at the greatest American journalist in history is
Thomas Paine, who is a pamphleteer who in the revolutionary
era put to paper and buyerly printed spread out. These
are the ills. This is why we need to assert
our independence. And this would not be a guild carrying
member of the Press Corps according to the Washington Post
(19:50):
Editorial Board. But we're all journalists. It is an action
and an activity, and we're all capable of doing it.
Now we have these These make it even more of
whether it's points.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
Is phone because this is on audio.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
Also, that's a shame.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Videos only only goes. You know, I have some clips of.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
Video, but my mother did always say I have a
face for radio, so I guess it's appropriate. Uh. But
we you know, having this technology, the barriers to entry
from the nineties on with the Internet revolution have been
broken down. And that's why you see the media become
even that much more monolithic and fight those who would
become citizen journalists, fight those who would independently put their
put words out for the masses to consume. This is
(20:29):
why they Brandy's Adrosney has a job is to you know,
she's an MSNBC NBC hat who goes after anybody on
the right who's at odds with their narrative and their
messaging and then tries to do hit pieces. I mean
when Visa Grant had a hit piece by by NBC
and Brandy's a Drosny, I told the visitare guys, they
were all freakd out by it all it's on her Wikipedia. No,
it's great, this is great, Its leveled up.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
Right, everybody wants an MSNBC hip piece.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
Absolutely wake up every day hoping yeah exactly. I mean,
this is actually validating. It shows that we're over the target.
If those who are monolithic, who are putting forward narratives
you disagree with, are now going to war with you
as a person, not your ideas, that's winning and do
have hope.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
So do you see this cultural problem not happening in
some countries or is it everywhere?
Speaker 3 (21:20):
I think it's everywhere everywhere where. The left has had
a stranglehold on what I call the revolving door of
government think tanks slash NGOs as they call them in
Europe and the rest of the world. The media, the
global bodies that are unelected but appointed by technocrats and
are technocrafts, the wto the WHO, the imat the World Bank,
(21:42):
the United Nations, everywhere where they've gotten a foothold in
they have broken down a sort of honest journalism, because
it's that revolving door between them who are globally technocratically
oriented and those media outlets where they work hand in
glove together to set the narrative, to coerse the people.
I look at the EU sort of an expert on
the EU's history from formation. It was sold as a
(22:04):
trade deal, initially to regulate colon steel the European Colon
and Stee Commission in nineteen forty eight, because those are
the two inputs that that would be necessary for mechanized
warfare as we saw coming out of World War Two.
Sort of noble, but it quickly morphed into French and German,
especially French academics and later German economic interest, into a
control mechanism that they would be able to subtly undermine
(22:27):
free peoples and sovereign nations. We saw that with the
referendum that they've held. You know, they held a referendum
like Lisbon and it didn't go their way. They canceled it,
said that it was it was not done right, and
then they hold it when there would be lower turnout
during Christmas that year. You know, the Austrian election with
Norbert Hoefer was another example. You know, they subverted democracy
in the in the pursuit of their claim of purifying
(22:50):
democracy or protecting democracy.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
To destroy democracy in order to preserve democracy.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
It reminds me of what Pelosi said about the PPACA,
the bomb Care Act in two thousand dollars a healthcare
Portfoying a analyst, you have to pass it to see
what's in it. That is an incredible undermining of democracy,
and that's only gotten worse in at least in the
US and congressional actions where massive bills and nobody gets
to read them. You just have to pass them. You
(23:16):
have to pass them based on whatever you want in it.
But you don't get to see what else you're voting
for if you're elected member, unless you're on the committee
that drafted it. So I'm worried, certainly, but I'm always
I'm eternally an optimist and hopeful because the will of
the people is stronger than the coercion of the technocrafts.
Why we have revolutions. The question is do we get
to a violent revolution. I would hope not. I think not.
(23:38):
Hopefully we can engage in revolution, using ideas and using
the powers that we are endowed with first by our
creator and then codified by the definition of independence and
the Constitution. And that is the strongest, most robust, systemic
codification of natural law that humanity has ever come together on.
It's not coincidental, coming after the Enlightenment and Adam Smith
(23:59):
that this come together as it has. But we have to,
as ed Fulner says, there are no permanent victories, no
permanent defeats, So we always have to be vigilant on
protecting these codifications that protect our rights, because as we
see COVID, great example, it was always going to be
a public healthcare crisis that was going to get people
scared enough to seed over their rights, whether it's to bodom,
(24:19):
the autonomy, or the right to assembly, which is codified
in the First Amendment. Now, of course the right to
assembly was not good for people like us. It was
good if you want to tear down the cities in
the pursuit of racial social justice, then it was convenient.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
Yeah, we're going to take a quick break and be
right back on the Carol Marcowitch Show. So do you
miss Brooklyn, No, not at all. Not even Brooklyn of
our youth.
Speaker 3 (24:43):
Not even a little. And I grew up in the
Brooklyn still in the eighties where it was like stickball
in the street. Yeah, you know, we public school in Knarci,
you know, and then Midwood High School, which is when
he Allen went. I mean, this was a quintessential Brooklyn upbringing.
And Brooklyn obviously changed a lot. But I've been fed
up with New York. I've been trying to get out
of New York for a long long time. It was
(25:04):
just expedient to stay as I got involved more in
public policy and journalism because it was still the center
of the world of modern day Rome and I had
an excel a to d C, which I was doing
pretty much on a weekly basis for about four or
five years. I was very involved with public policy in Washington.
But I was happy to get out of New York.
I've been wanting to move to Florida three years a.
I have a visceral dislike for taxes. I just don't
(25:26):
like them, you know. You know.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
I'm also not pro.
Speaker 3 (25:29):
Yeah, so I like to, you know, within full compliance
of legal statute. I like to avoid them as much
as legally possible, and you know, this is a great alternative.
In Florida. I do a lot of stuff that I
think is remunerative, even though journalism is not one of those.
And I'd like to protect those hard earned earnings from
the federal governments and the state governments as much as
(25:51):
I can. And I'm a warm where the person I
like the carry a gun now regular of course, I
get a million death threats every day, so another reason
to to exercise my Second Amendment right, which exists to
protect the First Amendment, and in my case also you know,
the right to life my life. So I'm very very
happy in Florida. If I never stepped foot in New
(26:11):
York again, I'll be okay with that. Problem is my
mother is still in Brooklyn, and I told him that
I would helped move her, and she said, you'll get
me out of this apartment when you pry my cat
for my cold dead hand. So there's very little So
I still have to go to New York a little
bit to see her because I love my mother and
she's all out my family wise, my mother and my sister.
My sister's still also in New York. She's outside the city.
(26:31):
She's in Rockland or Orange County. But so I do
have to go back a little. But I mean it's
become the cesspool that I've always predicted. I knew Eric
Adams when he was a cop. He was in the
precinct next to mine and in Brooklyn South Acrossman Park.
He was nineteen ninety eight or ninety nine. He started
a radical activist union for black cops called one hundred
(26:52):
Blacks and Law Enforcement.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
And yet he was the most same candidate of the bunch.
It wasn't even close. It was like he was clearly
the only one that we could even.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
Remotely as a dam I mean, Joe Lodo would have
been kind of cool.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
He's well, yes, I mean I'm talking about anybody who listen.
I like myself from Joel Lodo. But I'm saying anybody
who had a shot.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
Yeah, no, I look, I would have voted for him
because at least you figure he's going to be tough
on crime, because he was a career cop and represented
you know, union interest. But he's he goes. Look, I
even view his views on Israel now as sort of faustian.
He doesn't. Look. I don't think he's an incredible file Semite.
I think he's a New York politician now and says
I want Jewish Democrat support. So even his full throated
(27:35):
support of Israel the last six seven months, I think
is predicated on this calculus, not that he has any
you know, moral clarity or you know vision on a
better adjust society. I think he is purely a politician
in the worst case now. And I recognize that in
the nineties when he started this sort of union activist
group along racial lines, that this guy was going to
(27:55):
be very political for a long time. So I don't
miss New York. Happy here. I was living in Chicago
part time, and believe it or not, I actually loved Chicago.
I have missed Chicago. I love Chicago. Struck went to your.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
Chicago worst opinion you have? What do you think.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
I've I've got many bad opinions, Struggle.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
Oh, I know, I'm just saying this is the worst
of the bunch.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
No, Chicago's such an awesome city. I like Midwestern people.
I like the sort of the bottom me that people
in Chicago have versus I was there. Look, I was
there in September eleventh. I watched the second plane hit
from the belt Parkway. It was driving back to Brooklyn
after being a long island that a m and I
watched the second plane hit. So when I see, you know,
the idiots on Twitter saying September eleventh was an inside job.
So I literally watched the second plane. You know, I
(28:34):
come over a rise past JFK. If you're on the
Belt Parkway on the south part of Brooklyn on a
clear it's a beautiful clear day, you could see you
can always see the lowermanhad skylight across Brooklyn, which is
relatively flat, and I'm, you know, big billowing black smoke
because it was a southeasterly breeze coming over Brooklyn, and
so come over a rise. Everybody's out of their car
like in the scene in Independence Day, that movie from
(28:56):
the nineties. Uh. And then just standing there for fifteen minutes,
then all of a sudden, the second plane goes around,
hits the backside of the building, and you saw the
fireball come out. So I mean that is indelibly imprinted
on my mind. And then going back to my neighborhood,
papers were already flying across Brooklyn because of that breeze
from the World Trade Center towers. So I'll never forget that.
(29:19):
But I remember right after September eleventh, people in New
York were really nice and civil. Everybody who's holding the
door for each.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
Other, this is our golden moment.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
Really, it was insane. I'd never seen that. I grew
up in New York. I mean I used to cut
school and just ride the rails, Depression style, just hop
on the subway, go all over the city and just
get to know the city through the subway system, get
off in different neighborhoods and walk around, and you know,
the nastiness of New Yorkers, much like Philadelphians and Bostonians.
I mean, there's a lot of inks filled on the subject.
(29:48):
I mean, had this many people crowded into a small space,
et cetera, et cetera. All the reasonings, but for those
week to two weeks after Supember eleventh, the civility and
warp that people had for their fellow citizens was like
nothing had ever seen. That lasted a couple of weeks
and then it went sort of mean reversion.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
But I always think that the reason that that happened,
and actually I think that that happened right after nine
to eleven. And then we had a blackout in two
thousand and three, And there was also that was also
a very civil moment. People helped their old neighbors, you know,
carry things up, you know, ten flights of stairs and
all that kind of stuff. But I think what it
was was we saw the outpouring of love for the
(30:26):
nine to eleven heroes, and everybody wanted to be a hero.
It was like the moment of I want to be
like those men who rushed into the buildings, and you
couldn't be that, So you're going to carry somebody's you know,
groceries up the stairs. It was a smaller level, but
it was the being a hero became something that everybody
wanted to be.
Speaker 3 (30:46):
You know. It was New York's finest and bravest at
their you know, greatest moment. And Juliani was America's mayor
and the world's mayor, you know, as a result of
how he handled that situation. And Funny mentioned the blackout.
I hadn't thought about that while I was looking for
a hedge fund in Midtown. And the blackout happened around
four ten pm because the trading day was over, but
we were reconciling trades and doing all the sort of
(31:07):
post trading day activities and everything went black. We had
generators for lights and stuff in the building, but like everything,
all the systems with the New York Stock Exchange went
down everything, so we couldn't do anything. So we went
to PJ. Clark's on Third Avenue.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
I think I went to PJ. Clarks too.
Speaker 3 (31:21):
It was amazing see you there. Yeah, it was crowded,
I remember, and we were drinking and I, you know,
there was stop lights weren't working. Nothing was working. And
I lived on fourteenth I'm sorry. At that point I
looked on twenty eighth Street and so I slowly made
my way downtown and walked and stopping and they were
giving free beer, they were giving free ice cream, all
the stuff that was ready. Yeah, So I ended up
(31:43):
kind of hanging all night. And I was living with
my friend and all of our friends who had to
commute back to you know, the suburbs of the Outer Burroughs.
They were stuck in Manhattan. So in our apartment we
had like ten people. So I wasn't in a rush
to get back to a small apartment of ten people.
So I ended up like meandering my way through the
city until about five am. Got back and then had to,
you know, walk up the stairs and then the trading
day was canceled that day until the next day. But yeah,
(32:05):
you're right, it was everybody. It was like a party
on the street. I walked down Third Avenue and a
block party, streets, drinking, hanging, it was. It was an
interesting time.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
So you've lived this like exciting life where you've just
a You've done so many different things. I feel like
I've learned like ten new you know, Terman stories during
this interview. Do you feel like you've made it? No?
Speaker 3 (32:28):
You know the I think to suggest, at least for me,
the way I'm wired to say that I made it
would then what do I do. I go play golf
every day, I retire. I don't even like the beach.
I've lived in Miami now for three years and a month.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
Another bad opinion.
Speaker 3 (32:41):
Okay, yeah, I've been to the beach three times because
I had at a town guest who wanted to go,
and I sat there for an hour and it was
like bored. I'm not a beach per. I've got a pool,
which i've also gotten in about three times. I'm hungry
to do the things that I like to do, and
I've got the thing where I think I've made it
is that I've got the luxury of being able to
do what I want to do. I can work with
the people I want to work with. I can cover
the stories, I can engage, you know, work with the
(33:03):
companies doing the corporate finance stuff that I do, the
banking work, the investing and the venture investing. I get
to do what I want to do. But if I
feel like.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
I'm making it though, that's it.
Speaker 3 (33:14):
You know, I'm just every day I wake up, I'm
like t fires.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
I think it's the death threats. But okay, you're fine.
Speaker 3 (33:22):
I you know, as one of my mentors who say,
you're honored by your friends, distinguished by your enemies, I've
got great enemies, and you know, the death threats don't
really bother me. They did last year when they came,
and there's some of them were credible and I had
to have the FBI investigate them and that kind of shit.
But like buying large, that doesn't really I don't lose
any sleepover that I lose sleepover. There's not enough hours
in the day to get done all the things, and
I try and impose realistic deadlines on myself and the
(33:43):
people that I work with, and I am religious about
maintaining like you know, never over promise and under deliver.
Always under promise and over deliver when it's a timeline
or work output. And I'm just always drinking from a
fire hose because I take on too much. So I'm
always stressed. But I have this luxury of doing what
I want to do, so I guess it's my own
fault that I take on too much. I have too
(34:03):
many interesting things that are like grappling for you know,
the ability to do the work entailing committing to these things.
But if I feel like I fully made it, then
it's like, okay, I'm going to retire. I'm not the
type of person who's ever going to retire. I'm never
going to like move to a gated community. I mean,
if I raise a family, sure, but like you know,
South Florida, maybe go raise a.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
Family, you know, family. Where is that, missus Titerman at this.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
Point, Well, you're already taken, and I love your husbands,
so I don't know.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
It's just a good line. It's a good line.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
Find me someone. I mean, all right, I'm on it.
The problem is that I'm like so married to all
the things that I do, and that I need to
find somebody who is similarly wired, independent, intellectual, professional, driven
by the life of the mind, hungry to do things.
I've been in too many relationships where the relationship was
all about the relationship, and that just bores me to
tears and makes me ends up with me being hostile
(34:56):
because it's you know, I've got a lot of things
that I want to do. We're only on this earth
for you know, God willing eighty to one hundred years.
I got to walk more, I think, so I meet
that target that you know, the pie is only this big.
And I am a little bit annoyed with myself. My
mother's really annoyed with me that I'm forty three and
I do not have a wife and kids yet. And
that's definitely on top of the priority list now. But
(35:18):
you know, the idea of retiring, I'm just not wired
that way. I will work to the day I die
because I love what I do. It's reading and writing
and talking and connecting people to get things done and
building companies and creating jobs and exposing corruption. I mean,
I just you know this guy. I'm sure you saw
the AfD story of Maximilian cry the guy who said
that the SS weren't all criminals, and that was the
(35:38):
final straw that broke the camel's back that you know,
got Lapen in the French to push out the a
f D from their their their electoral coalition in the
European Union. I've been covering this guy for two years
about how he was on Russia, China, Iran and guitars payroll.
I've been like exposing the New York and Republicans were
inviting him to shit and I was like, no, you
can't do that. This guy is the most corrupt guy
in Europe. He's literally taking money from the Axis of Evil.
(36:00):
And they're like, no, no, he's famous, we want to
be around him. So I mean that was one of
the reasons I think I broke with that club, as
they were really annoyed about my public condemnation of one
of their famous European parliamentary guests. I know all the
European parliamentarians on the right. They're not the greatest group.
Some of them are Robert rus and Holland is amazing.
Most of them are schmucks, like most politicians. So it's
like there's no like fame is like so sexy and
(36:23):
attractive when you're dealing with politicians, as you and I
have dealt with for so many years. We know politicians.
To know them is to realize, Hey, how vallible they are,
how duplicitous they are, how venal they are. So I'd
rather go after them.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
I'm sexy for sure, yeah, than.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
Be friends of them. So I exposed this guy. Finally
they go after him. His chief aid in Brussels is
a Chinese national who I exposed ages ago. They finally
arrest the Chinese national aid who had chartered a company
in this guy's hometown in Dresden, which was the money
laundering facilitator for the Chinese money going into his pocket.
And I've been covering this for ages. They finally arrested
(36:57):
him a few weeks ago because he got the European
Union election coming up. And I had spread this everywhere.
I sent this to journalists around Europe. I'd sent this
to you know, law enforcement agencies around Europe to you know,
get this guy. And they finally get them, and you
know this, this is what I live for, is you know,
And I've got a big list of targets of people
that should be exposed on their merits. It's not personal,
(37:18):
it's you know. I remember when I met the guy
in a YR event and he offered me his hand,
and so I think maybe the only time in my
life I didn't shake somebody's hand. I said, I'm not
going to shake your hand. I don't want any of
your stink on me.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
Abrasive with a smile. Yeah, I love it well. I
loved having you on. You're a fantastic guest. I feel
like I could talk to you for a few more
hours about all the different things that you've touched on,
but end here with your best tip for my listeners
on how they can improve their lives.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
Friends, family, relationships that are not toxic. If you feel
like you're in hostage to a toxic relationship, get out
of it, even if it's long standing. You will feel better.
That includes relationships you know in terms of you know
spousal or you know boyfriend, girlfriend, like, don't stay in
relationships that are toxic. Very hard for people to remove
(38:08):
themselves from these things, but you will have a much
more happy, fulfilled life if you're not adding to your
own stress by the people around you, and having great
people around you intelligent people, people who you don't have
to agree on everything. I mean, I'm friend, I mean
I argue with Josh Hammer all the time. I mean,
he thinks he knows everything about everything. He's like thirty five.
You know, I'm more of a.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
Feeling like he does know everything about everything.
Speaker 3 (38:31):
But okay, no, no, no, I see you. We can
disagree with this, but he's my brother. I love him
as a groomsman his wedding. You don't. And I tell
him this all the time when he gets heated about stuff,
I say, look, you don't have to agree on everything.
You just have to offer up your views and be
willing to debate them in good faith, not try and
hit people with a sledgehammer and force them to comport
and adhere to what you think or what you believe.
(38:53):
I even have a few lefty friends, not many, but
a few lefty friends. Most of them have purged me out. Okay,
so be it. You know, the people around you make
for a happy life. We are you know. Plato wrote
about this, Like Aristotle, we are social creatures, and we
need the validation of other people. Not the validation of
them agreeing with everything, just the validation of a back
and forth. That keeps a sharp and honest, self critical
(39:17):
at times. That is, to me, the most valuable thing.
And I think people need to walk more. I'm trying
to walk five miles a day, so.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
Yeah, all right, I'm gonna I'm gonna try to work
that into my schedule.
Speaker 3 (39:27):
Look, if you do calls, yeah, I spend most of
my day on the phone. So I've over the last
six months, I've discovered I can do calls while walking.
So all of a sudden, I'll do like seven or
eight or nine calls and I've walked like seven or
eight miles. It's great.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
All right, I'm gonna call you. I'm gonna call you
and we're going to walk.
Speaker 3 (39:42):
Yeah, he is.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
Matthew Turmand. You are fantastic head of B twenty four Investigations.
Thank you so much for coming on the show. And
if you have a nice Jewish girl from Matthew in
South Florida, drop me a line. Let's let's make this happen.
Speaker 3 (39:55):
Yeah, we got to crowdsource this. We got to crowdsource
my family life.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
I think that's that's the way to go. Thank you
so much, Matthew.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
Thanks girl, Thanks so much for joining us on The
Carol Marcowitch Show. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio.
I'm on vacation this week, so no monologue today, but
stay tuned for an interview with Matthew Turmond.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio. My
guest today is Matthew Termont, investigative journalist, founder and head
of V twenty four Investigations.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Hi. Matthew, he Carol. I have to say, it's an
honor to be with you. I'm such a fan of
your work for so many years, and now we get
to be friends. That we're in the free state of Florida,
which is like such a.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Bonus it really is for you, really.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Such a New Yorker.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Obviously it's mutual. I have followed your work for a
long time and getting to know you has been amazing.
I feeling we don't see each other actually enough, which
is funny because we are both in South Florida and
you think, you know, we'd run in the same circle
for sure. So so you're wearing a cool shirt. Show
me your shirt it says buck Hamas got.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
That in Israel in January, and I've had I had
an order of Bolsceonaro was He was with me for
a bit here in South Florida and we filmed the
video and he said, oh, I want to wear that shirt,
so awesome, that's really great.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Yeah, I mean I meet a lot of Brazilians in
South Florida. Do you also know a lot of Brazilians here? Oh?
Speaker 3 (01:27):
Yeah. Well, I was covering Brazil pretty pretty hard for
in ahead of the election. During the election, I was
on Tucker a lot and doing all sorts of media.
I think I was sort of the only English language
voice and Western voice who was voicing some of the
chicanery going on there on the ground. So my Brazilian
network is of Righty's is pretty good. The lefties there
hate me. There have been articles that I was to
(01:50):
blame for catalyzing and causing January eighth. There January sixth,
which was also a setup, and I did a lot
on that as well. But I can't go back to
Brazil for a while. Gotten.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
A lot of indications are the British leftists in America
or in Brazil.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
In Brazil, h I mean, there's they are leftists everywhere.
It's like a cancer. So it does spread and we
have not excized or chemo that that metastasis as of yet,
so they're everywhere, But most of the Brazilians who are
expatriated who are here are here for that reason of
they see the hostility to freedom that has taken shape there.
And so there have been people here for generations, certainly,
(02:28):
but there's been you know, and some of these journalists
we've seen Alan de Santos, Palo Figorito, who have now
started to do a lot more media and they even
did testimony on the Hill a couple of weeks ago.
They they're here because they've basically claimed asylum and they're
in very tenuous positions.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Is this Do you enjoy this kind of covering this
kind of stuff? Is it foreign policy? Would you say
that that's your beat?
Speaker 3 (02:49):
Yeah, you know, that's something where I just kind of
organically ended up deep in that muck because of my
involvement in Europe. I started going back and forth to
Poland about fifteen years ago and got citizenship and been
very deeply involved as a Polish journalist, had weekly columns,
was doing TV contribution on the main channel. So I'd
been covering Europe and a lot of the right right,
(03:10):
right wing sovereignty movements across the continent. For the better
part of the last decade, you know, involved wrote for
bright Bart London, which was instrumental with Nigel Farage and
the Brexit movement, and so I got very involved in
these things and across you know, Spain, Sweden, France, Germany,
obviously Potland and Hungary in Central Europe which is sort
of tip of the spear and fighting back on globalist
(03:31):
and European Union integration and overreach into sovereignty. And then
it just sort of naturally happened that I started covering
Latin America more. I went to Brazil, I spoke at
Seapack there, we were detained at the airport, and that's
when I started digging into the Supreme Court there and
the elect the election and what was going on, all
the chicanery that took place. And so then I started
(03:51):
covering more Columbia and Chile because they had moves to
the left which was unforeseen. And then now Argentina. I
was at Malaise in Augrey in December, which was magical
and amazing and I think providential that there's a bulwark
now taking new shape in South America and Latin America
with Malay and Argentina, which gives us hope. So it
just kind of happened. I mean, I do this, you know,
(04:13):
my background is on Wall Street. Didn't set out to
be a journalist, even though my father was a journalist
and an anti communist dissident and writer in Poland. So
I guess it's a little bit in the bloodstream. And
then Israel, you know, after October seventh, and then spending
all of January in Israel and working with the Visigrad guys,
Visograd being Stephan Thompson and the social media news aggregation
platform and multiple accounts across social Media've been working with
(04:36):
them because they're based in Poland informally for years, and
then in January in Israel, it took shape to launch
the investigative unit I was building to focus on stuff
going on in the US, especially Visa VI, the anti
semitism and radical terrorist apology on university campuses. It just
made sense to put that in as part of the
Visigrad agis. So there's sort of two different verticals. But
(04:58):
I've been very, very involved in sort of all facets.
I was involved in undercover journalism in the US for years,
on the board of a nonprofit focused on it that
we won't get into. But it's that's too long a
pod that.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
We only have twenty five minutes.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
Yeah, I'm working on a book on that one. So
it's just kind of in the blood. And I still
do finance stuff to pay the bills. I don't really,
it's it's more of a passion and vocational certainly, but
it's not my full time career that you know, puts
bread on the table, so to speak, which actually gives
me a little bit more independence. I can cover what
(05:32):
I want to cover. I can cover it the way
I want to cover it because frankly, I don't get
paid to do it, so I do it because I
believe in these things. So when I gets wild, I
didn't know that agent. You know that, don't noise the
hell out of me.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Yeah, I had no idea that you do this like
for free. You do this for.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
Free pretty much.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
Why you know, if they don't pay you, you can't
say that you're bought, So.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
That's really crazy. I had no idea. You know. Actually,
I feel like I've learned a lot of things about
you recently. So I went to Israel in March and
I went via Poland because the flight was cheaper. So
I had a day in Warsaw and our mutual friend
Josh Hammer said, you know, you should talk to Matthew
and I was like, well why, and he said, you
don't know who he is, Like, you don't know his history.
(06:17):
So you mentioned your dad? Who was your dad?
Speaker 3 (06:21):
So my father's name was Leopol Tairemont. He was a
mid Central mid twentieth century anti communist dissident and writer,
and probably the main writer who never bent to the
communist censors. He was blacklisted, they never martyred him because
they knew that that would create a movement around him.
He was sort of a cultural figure. He introduced jazz
to Central Europe, started the Warsan Jazz Soapa Jazz festivals.
(06:43):
So he was more than just you know, the political
science of anti communism, but also the culture. And he
was saying that politics is downstream from culture in the
seventies when he come to the US and saw the
countercultural revolution in the late sixties. So he was, you know,
thirty thirty five, forty years before Andrew Breitbart, saying that
he was born in nineteen twenty in Warsaw, so much older.
It was sixty one when he had my sister and
(07:04):
I and he was in college at university in Paris
when the war broke out and his entire family was
put in the Warsaw ghetto and he wasn't going to
go back to Warsaw, so he went to Vilnius, then
part of Poland, Vilno and he was imprisoned by the
NKBD for being a subversive as a journalist who's nineteen
years old. He was only in university for one year
when the war broke out, and then he escaped when
(07:26):
he was being shipped to Siberia and ended up in Frankfurt, Germany,
which was the capital of the Reich, and he passed
himself off as a Polish Frenchman even though he was
a Jew and was a waiter serving the highest ranking
Nazi officials at the restaurant at the Grand Hotel for
over two years, almost three years. And then he and
his theory on this was it was safer to be
in the eye of the storm than the path of
(07:47):
its destruction. Nobody was suspect than Jew would be there
serving Nazis. We actually just did a movie about it.
I co produced. It's on Netflix. It's called Philip and
I highly recommend it to your audience. So a phenomenal,
phenomenal movie has won a lot of awards at film
festivals around Europe. We were able to get it onto Netflix,
which speaks of its merit, and so that's on Netflix currently.
Fil Ip. And that's a story that he had written
(08:09):
one of his novels about his wartime experience as a
Jew in Frankfort as a waiter, and then after the war,
I mean, he fled Frankfurt when the Allies bombed the
hell out of Frankfort, ended up in Copenhagen working with
the Danish Red Cross, obviously as a spy and a courier,
was arrested knowing to be not known to be a Jew,
and was sent to a camp in Norway called Outside,
(08:31):
also called Greene. And then after the war was over,
he went back to Poland and they started fighting the Communists.
So he used to say, you know, I didn't let
the Nazis beat me. I didn't let the Communists beat me,
and I sure as hell wouldn't let the New York
Liberals beat me. And he said that they were all similar,
they all wanted gulags, The only thing preventing that third cohort,
the New York Lives, from creating a gulag was the
US Constitution, which he was very thankful for. And he
(08:52):
became a very close friend and advisor to Nixon and
Reagan on defeating communism. He was run out of New
York in the late sixties early seventies and ended up
in Rockford, Illinois, where I was born, where he founded
the Rockford Institute of Conservative think tank, and he founded
the magazine that's now Chronicles that he hadn't entitled Chronicles
of Culture. And he died unfortunately nineteen eighty five when
(09:12):
I was a kid, and that's why I ended up
growing up in Brooklyn like yourself, because my mother was
from Brooklyn and that's where her family was. So I
ended up my whole childhood from four years old on
in New York, which obviously shaped me quite a bit
and my aggressive as sort of ambrasive personality.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
No, what are you talking about? What abrasive personality?
Speaker 3 (09:30):
I'm aggressive with a smile, though, So it kind.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Of do you feel like the pressure of who your
dad was in everything that you do? Is it is
it like oh, or do you just feel like you're
doing something totally different and it had nothing to do with.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
That, or you know, I ended up on Wall Street
after I went to Chicago. I was, you know, going
into finance, and I was always political. I was always
political Wall Street. I was a macroanalyst in addition to
sort of sector specific analysis I did as a Wall
Street portfolio manager, but I was a interested in the
political side, and I was running a closed end block
for basically every trading desk on Wall Street and recommending
(10:07):
political you know, coverage, talking and weighing in on the
politics of the day. And I start getting involved, actually
more directly when I joined with the Manhattan Institute started
a Young Leader program and so I got very involved
in that. And then when I got fed up with
Wall Street in twenty eleven twelve, I just moved straight
into journalism and public policy. Started working with a group
called to Open the Books in Chicago that it does
(10:28):
a lot of forensic auditing of the public sector. You know,
I always say that, you know, people, numbers don't lie.
People lie, So you know, let's look at some of
the numbers. And that's why I believe is a journalist
slash activist. Somebody wants to uncover stuff to do what
the fourth estate is tasked with doing, you know, creating
a more honest, ethical society, shine the light on egregious
behavior like we had with the muckrakers in the post
(10:49):
industrial era in the eighteen eighties through nineteen teens, you know,
really exposed things that can then lead to greater outcomes
for society, show the ills that are underneath that not
everybody might know about well. And so my sort of
strategy on it was both the human and the ocin
the undercover journalism as well as the forensic auditing the numbers.
So between the two, hopefully we find the truth and
(11:12):
you know, can then improve the situation for all of us.
With visa via my father, you know, I grew up
understanding his legacy, fascinated by it. I never went to
Poland until twenty ten, and I was a little scared
to go to Poland because there was so much there
in it, knowing his stature there as a figure, and
so I was kind of leary, how do I go
and do it justice? And I just went and I
(11:32):
started going, and I started walking his footsteps and understanding
then the contemporary political situation which he One of his
most famous books is his Diary from nineteen fifty four,
which was published in the Emigray Press in nineteen eighty,
where he called out all the communists for their duplicity
and their you know, the caviar communists who where you know,
Paulitt Bureau connected, who lived like kings while screaming Workers
(11:52):
of the World unite. And this informed a lot of
his criticism in the US of politics and culture, where
you know, whether it was you know, and radical chic,
you know, calling out you know, when ye Leonard Bergstein
had the black panthers while you know, workers of the
World unite, we have top end the order while he's
screaming at his chauffeur and housekeeper. So you know that
(12:14):
kind of like at odds, you know, say one thing,
but behave a different way, which we see. So it's
so prevalent among the left, the sort of double stat
I always say, if the left didn't have double standards,
they have no standards at all. So, you know, I
guess there's a convergence just organically didn't set out to
be this way. I certainly my mother says that I
(12:34):
behave a lot like him. I don't care who I
offend in pursuit of the truth, and I don't. I've
certainly lost a lot of friends and the last year
over certain things, as well as in previous even in Europe,
you know, working with the being in favor of the
right wing government, helping them get elected, helping Morgyevsky the
prime minister, take over Forshidwa, the previous prime minister under
the right wing government, exposing a lot of the corrupt
(12:54):
around them. This did not endear me to a lot
of the Polish right, and I even had I wrote
an article in twenty eighteen about the Holocaust. Build remember
when they said that they're going to go after people
for criticizing Poland's roll or being the Holocaust. And I
wrote a piece for the Jerusalem Post about what was
really behind this initiative, this legislation, which was an internal
(13:15):
political battle where the Justice Minister wanted to unseat the
prime minister that I was friendly with and helped get elevated.
And so I wrote all about the details about the
you know, the back room stuff, and I remember the
head of the party, who's essentially the king of the Poland,
sent me a message through one of his emissaries that
if you're going to be on our team, you cannot
criticize us in the foreign Pressess, I'm not on your team.
(13:37):
I may like you better than the other guys, but
I'm not on your team. I don't get paid by you.
I don't want to get paid by you. I don't
work for you. I may work with you when things
align on issues in philosophy, but we are not you know.
I am not you know, looking for patronage here. I'm
not married to the hip with you guys. And I've
went after a lot of them over especially in the
last three four years of their second term. I saw
(13:59):
so much corruption. I lost my column in a magazine,
had a weekly column that was very widely read because
I was criticizing this justice minister.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
Regularly with the magazine.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
It's called Dogechi means the Things, so to speak, the
largest conservative newsweekly in Poland and sort of the third
largest magazine weekly magazine, and I had the last page
column in the magazine for about three years, and my
criticisms and exposing corruption and what was supposed to be
an editorial column got it yanked by the editorial reaction
(14:28):
because they were getting funded by the state owned enterprises
whose cronies were appointed by the Justice minister. And I
remember when they called me and said, well, nobody reads
the column anymore, we're just going a different way. Said bullshit,
everybody reads this column. In fact, the head of the country,
Yotto Schwakacchinski, who's the head of the political party, he
gave me a book blurb on one of my books
saying I don't always agree with him, but you have
to read them to know what's going on with not
(14:49):
only Poland, but Poland's relationships with Europe, with outside the
war and in the West. And so that was non
a total bs you know stuff they were feeding me,
and I called them out hard. I remember seeing the
editor in chief and the publisher at events that I
would just go up to and be like, you guys
are lying, weasels. So you know the truth, the truth abrasive,
(15:10):
you say, right, a smile though, So we don't know
how to react. Is he making a joke or is
he calling me out? Both?
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Yeah, So you cover all of these different countries, what
would you say is the largest cultural problem? And you
don't have to limit it to just America. I usually
say in the United States, but maybe worldwide.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
Yeah, and it is worldwide. It's the lack of cohesion
that exists within the media complex that existed for hundreds
of years as the fourth estate. They now are political activists.
It started very very I mean it's always been the
case the editorial page, whoever owned a newspaper would weigh
in and say what they believe. That's why you own
a newspaper. But the blending of editorial reaction and news
(15:54):
gathering is so broken. And not just the developed world,
I mean in Central Europe as well. You've got those
communists in Central Europe that are never held to account
for their complicity with the excesses and horrible actions of
the communist apparatuses across the Iron Curtain. And now they
run the newspapers or they sit on the benches. And
then when you know, reformers come in from especially from
(16:16):
a conservative right winger Sovereignis's perspective, and say we want
to uproot them, then it's always rule of laws under attack.
We've seen it in Poland and Hungary and Israel. We
see it in the US the way they cover judiciaries.
Right now, they're attacking Alito over absolute nonsense. Meanwhile, they
were real journalists and they were applying equal standards to
news gathering and exposing. They'd be looking at Soda mayor
(16:37):
they'd be looking at what RBG did over the years
as a political activism. So the double standard is rife.
And I think that the lack of trustworthy information, you know,
I always say that for years. Pugh has done a
study on most trustworthy institutions in society, and the media
over the last ten to fifteen years actually rates lower
than politicians than Congress in the US, which by the way,
(16:58):
they're both very low. You know, in Congress it's anywhere
from you know, twelve to sixteen percent. Trust factor in
the media is ten to twelve percent. But if the
media the prob it is is to hold the politicians
to account, and they have less trust than politicians, who
we know by default are lying. They pandered to get elected.
This is their role is to tell people what they
want to hear, to curry favor and votes. But the
(17:19):
media is supposed to hold them account has a lower
trust than those they're supposed to hold to account. It's very,
very broken, and I don't know the answer to fix it,
but it is at least knowing diagnosing the problem is
it leads and catalyzes people to go to alternative sources.
So that is part of a solution. I don't know
if we're winning that battle. Certainly, the media trust factor
says that people know something's wrong in the state of Denmark,
(17:41):
to paraphrase Hamdlet. But we have alternative media now. And
I've given this lectural over Europe, which is we need
to create parallel, parallel institutions, whether it's the academy, but
specifically the media, those who purport to give information. I
always look at the word news, the whole idea of news.
What is new, What needs to be transmitted to people,
(18:02):
to an informed body politic so that they can make
the right decisions on the micro and the macro, the
micro their own home economics, they're purchasing decisions the way
they raise their family, on the macro, who they vote for,
the legislation they support, with those they vote for, and
so if you're not getting an honest back pattern fed
to you, then you're right for coercion. And that's what
we've seen. That's why we have this incredible divide. But
(18:23):
the answer is alternatives. It is visigrad v twenty four investigations,
the Carol Markrite show, the podcasting, the ability to create
citizen journalism, blogging, Twitter, social media, you know, short form
editorializing that can spread virally on its own merit. This
is why Elon is such a hero for freeing the bird.
Perfect No, but compared to what it was, what we
(18:45):
saw in twenty twenty censoring. You know your paper, The
New York Post, one of the oldest and most sturdy
news organizations in this country's history. The freeze country, ever,
with a supposedly an informed and free media complex. So
having these uh, these these these platforms, these abilities to
get the word out independently of the gatekeepers. I always
(19:07):
say that the media, the professional media class. Immediately they
believe that journalism is a gilded union card carrying activity
or job or profession or you know, special skill. It's not.
Journalism is an action, and we're all journalists. What makes
a journalist. You've got eyes, you've got ears, and you've
got a pen or whatever other vehicle you have to
(19:28):
distribute what you see and hear. We're all journalists. I
always look at the greatest American journalist in history is
Thomas Paine, who is a pamphleteer who in the revolutionary
era put to paper and buyerly printed spread out. These
are the ills. This is why we need to assert
our independence. And this would not be a guild carrying
member of the Press Corps according to the Washington Post
(19:50):
Editorial Board. But we're all journalists. It is an action
and an activity, and we're all capable of doing it.
Now we have these These make it even more of
whether it's points.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
Is phone because this is on audio.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
Also, that's a shame.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Videos only only goes. You know, I have some clips of.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
Video, but my mother did always say I have a
face for radio, so I guess it's appropriate. Uh. But
we you know, having this technology, the barriers to entry
from the nineties on with the Internet revolution have been
broken down. And that's why you see the media become
even that much more monolithic and fight those who would
become citizen journalists, fight those who would independently put their
put words out for the masses to consume. This is
(20:29):
why they Brandy's Adrosney has a job is to you know,
she's an MSNBC NBC hat who goes after anybody on
the right who's at odds with their narrative and their
messaging and then tries to do hit pieces. I mean
when Visa Grant had a hit piece by by NBC
and Brandy's a Drosny, I told the visitare guys, they
were all freakd out by it all it's on her Wikipedia. No,
it's great, this is great, Its leveled up.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
Right, everybody wants an MSNBC hip piece.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
Absolutely wake up every day hoping yeah exactly. I mean,
this is actually validating. It shows that we're over the target.
If those who are monolithic, who are putting forward narratives
you disagree with, are now going to war with you
as a person, not your ideas, that's winning and do
have hope.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
So do you see this cultural problem not happening in
some countries or is it everywhere?
Speaker 3 (21:20):
I think it's everywhere everywhere where. The left has had
a stranglehold on what I call the revolving door of
government think tanks slash NGOs as they call them in
Europe and the rest of the world. The media, the
global bodies that are unelected but appointed by technocrats and
are technocrafts, the wto the WHO, the imat the World Bank,
(21:42):
the United Nations, everywhere where they've gotten a foothold in
they have broken down a sort of honest journalism, because
it's that revolving door between them who are globally technocratically
oriented and those media outlets where they work hand in
glove together to set the narrative, to coerse the people.
I look at the EU sort of an expert on
the EU's history from formation. It was sold as a
(22:04):
trade deal, initially to regulate colon steel the European Colon
and Stee Commission in nineteen forty eight, because those are
the two inputs that that would be necessary for mechanized
warfare as we saw coming out of World War Two.
Sort of noble, but it quickly morphed into French and German,
especially French academics and later German economic interest, into a
control mechanism that they would be able to subtly undermine
(22:27):
free peoples and sovereign nations. We saw that with the
referendum that they've held. You know, they held a referendum
like Lisbon and it didn't go their way. They canceled it,
said that it was it was not done right, and
then they hold it when there would be lower turnout
during Christmas that year. You know, the Austrian election with
Norbert Hoefer was another example. You know, they subverted democracy
in the in the pursuit of their claim of purifying
(22:50):
democracy or protecting democracy.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
To destroy democracy in order to preserve democracy.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
It reminds me of what Pelosi said about the PPACA,
the bomb Care Act in two thousand dollars a healthcare
Portfoying a analyst, you have to pass it to see
what's in it. That is an incredible undermining of democracy,
and that's only gotten worse in at least in the
US and congressional actions where massive bills and nobody gets
to read them. You just have to pass them. You
(23:16):
have to pass them based on whatever you want in it.
But you don't get to see what else you're voting
for if you're elected member, unless you're on the committee
that drafted it. So I'm worried, certainly, but I'm always
I'm eternally an optimist and hopeful because the will of
the people is stronger than the coercion of the technocrafts.
Why we have revolutions. The question is do we get
to a violent revolution. I would hope not. I think not.
(23:38):
Hopefully we can engage in revolution, using ideas and using
the powers that we are endowed with first by our
creator and then codified by the definition of independence and
the Constitution. And that is the strongest, most robust, systemic
codification of natural law that humanity has ever come together on.
It's not coincidental, coming after the Enlightenment and Adam Smith
(23:59):
that this come together as it has. But we have to,
as ed Fulner says, there are no permanent victories, no
permanent defeats, So we always have to be vigilant on
protecting these codifications that protect our rights, because as we
see COVID, great example, it was always going to be
a public healthcare crisis that was going to get people
scared enough to seed over their rights, whether it's to bodom,
(24:19):
the autonomy, or the right to assembly, which is codified
in the First Amendment. Now, of course the right to
assembly was not good for people like us. It was
good if you want to tear down the cities in
the pursuit of racial social justice, then it was convenient.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
Yeah, we're going to take a quick break and be
right back on the Carol Marcowitch Show. So do you
miss Brooklyn, No, not at all. Not even Brooklyn of
our youth.
Speaker 3 (24:43):
Not even a little. And I grew up in the
Brooklyn still in the eighties where it was like stickball
in the street. Yeah, you know, we public school in Knarci,
you know, and then Midwood High School, which is when
he Allen went. I mean, this was a quintessential Brooklyn upbringing.
And Brooklyn obviously changed a lot. But I've been fed
up with New York. I've been trying to get out
of New York for a long long time. It was
(25:04):
just expedient to stay as I got involved more in
public policy and journalism because it was still the center
of the world of modern day Rome and I had
an excel a to d C, which I was doing
pretty much on a weekly basis for about four or
five years. I was very involved with public policy in Washington.
But I was happy to get out of New York.
I've been wanting to move to Florida three years a.
I have a visceral dislike for taxes. I just don't
(25:26):
like them, you know. You know.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
I'm also not pro.
Speaker 3 (25:29):
Yeah, so I like to, you know, within full compliance
of legal statute. I like to avoid them as much
as legally possible, and you know, this is a great alternative.
In Florida. I do a lot of stuff that I
think is remunerative, even though journalism is not one of those.
And I'd like to protect those hard earned earnings from
the federal governments and the state governments as much as
(25:51):
I can. And I'm a warm where the person I
like the carry a gun now regular of course, I
get a million death threats every day, so another reason
to to exercise my Second Amendment right, which exists to
protect the First Amendment, and in my case also you know,
the right to life my life. So I'm very very
happy in Florida. If I never stepped foot in New
(26:11):
York again, I'll be okay with that. Problem is my
mother is still in Brooklyn, and I told him that
I would helped move her, and she said, you'll get
me out of this apartment when you pry my cat
for my cold dead hand. So there's very little So
I still have to go to New York a little
bit to see her because I love my mother and
she's all out my family wise, my mother and my sister.
My sister's still also in New York. She's outside the city.
(26:31):
She's in Rockland or Orange County. But so I do
have to go back a little. But I mean it's
become the cesspool that I've always predicted. I knew Eric
Adams when he was a cop. He was in the
precinct next to mine and in Brooklyn South Acrossman Park.
He was nineteen ninety eight or ninety nine. He started
a radical activist union for black cops called one hundred
(26:52):
Blacks and Law Enforcement.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
And yet he was the most same candidate of the bunch.
It wasn't even close. It was like he was clearly
the only one that we could even.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
Remotely as a dam I mean, Joe Lodo would have
been kind of cool.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
He's well, yes, I mean I'm talking about anybody who listen.
I like myself from Joel Lodo. But I'm saying anybody
who had a shot.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
Yeah, no, I look, I would have voted for him
because at least you figure he's going to be tough
on crime, because he was a career cop and represented
you know, union interest. But he's he goes. Look, I
even view his views on Israel now as sort of faustian.
He doesn't. Look. I don't think he's an incredible file Semite.
I think he's a New York politician now and says
I want Jewish Democrat support. So even his full throated
(27:35):
support of Israel the last six seven months, I think
is predicated on this calculus, not that he has any
you know, moral clarity or you know vision on a
better adjust society. I think he is purely a politician
in the worst case now. And I recognize that in
the nineties when he started this sort of union activist
group along racial lines, that this guy was going to
(27:55):
be very political for a long time. So I don't
miss New York. Happy here. I was living in Chicago
part time, and believe it or not, I actually loved Chicago.
I have missed Chicago. I love Chicago. Struck went to your.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
Chicago worst opinion you have? What do you think.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
I've I've got many bad opinions, Struggle.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
Oh, I know, I'm just saying this is the worst
of the bunch.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
No, Chicago's such an awesome city. I like Midwestern people.
I like the sort of the bottom me that people
in Chicago have versus I was there. Look, I was
there in September eleventh. I watched the second plane hit
from the belt Parkway. It was driving back to Brooklyn
after being a long island that a m and I
watched the second plane hit. So when I see, you know,
the idiots on Twitter saying September eleventh was an inside job.
So I literally watched the second plane. You know, I
(28:34):
come over a rise past JFK. If you're on the
Belt Parkway on the south part of Brooklyn on a
clear it's a beautiful clear day, you could see you
can always see the lowermanhad skylight across Brooklyn, which is
relatively flat, and I'm, you know, big billowing black smoke
because it was a southeasterly breeze coming over Brooklyn, and
so come over a rise. Everybody's out of their car
like in the scene in Independence Day, that movie from
(28:56):
the nineties. Uh. And then just standing there for fifteen minutes,
then all of a sudden, the second plane goes around,
hits the backside of the building, and you saw the
fireball come out. So I mean that is indelibly imprinted
on my mind. And then going back to my neighborhood,
papers were already flying across Brooklyn because of that breeze
from the World Trade Center towers. So I'll never forget that.
(29:19):
But I remember right after September eleventh, people in New
York were really nice and civil. Everybody who's holding the
door for each.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
Other, this is our golden moment.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
Really, it was insane. I'd never seen that. I grew
up in New York. I mean I used to cut
school and just ride the rails, Depression style, just hop
on the subway, go all over the city and just
get to know the city through the subway system, get
off in different neighborhoods and walk around, and you know,
the nastiness of New Yorkers, much like Philadelphians and Bostonians.
I mean, there's a lot of inks filled on the subject.
(29:48):
I mean, had this many people crowded into a small space,
et cetera, et cetera. All the reasonings, but for those
week to two weeks after Supember eleventh, the civility and
warp that people had for their fellow citizens was like
nothing had ever seen. That lasted a couple of weeks
and then it went sort of mean reversion.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
But I always think that the reason that that happened,
and actually I think that that happened right after nine
to eleven. And then we had a blackout in two
thousand and three, And there was also that was also
a very civil moment. People helped their old neighbors, you know,
carry things up, you know, ten flights of stairs and
all that kind of stuff. But I think what it
was was we saw the outpouring of love for the
(30:26):
nine to eleven heroes, and everybody wanted to be a hero.
It was like the moment of I want to be
like those men who rushed into the buildings, and you
couldn't be that, So you're going to carry somebody's you know,
groceries up the stairs. It was a smaller level, but
it was the being a hero became something that everybody
wanted to be.
Speaker 3 (30:46):
You know. It was New York's finest and bravest at
their you know, greatest moment. And Juliani was America's mayor
and the world's mayor, you know, as a result of
how he handled that situation. And Funny mentioned the blackout.
I hadn't thought about that while I was looking for
a hedge fund in Midtown. And the blackout happened around
four ten pm because the trading day was over, but
we were reconciling trades and doing all the sort of
(31:07):
post trading day activities and everything went black. We had
generators for lights and stuff in the building, but like everything,
all the systems with the New York Stock Exchange went
down everything, so we couldn't do anything. So we went
to PJ. Clark's on Third Avenue.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
I think I went to PJ. Clarks too.
Speaker 3 (31:21):
It was amazing see you there. Yeah, it was crowded,
I remember, and we were drinking and I, you know,
there was stop lights weren't working. Nothing was working. And
I lived on fourteenth I'm sorry. At that point I
looked on twenty eighth Street and so I slowly made
my way downtown and walked and stopping and they were
giving free beer, they were giving free ice cream, all
the stuff that was ready. Yeah, So I ended up
(31:43):
kind of hanging all night. And I was living with
my friend and all of our friends who had to
commute back to you know, the suburbs of the Outer Burroughs.
They were stuck in Manhattan. So in our apartment we
had like ten people. So I wasn't in a rush
to get back to a small apartment of ten people.
So I ended up like meandering my way through the
city until about five am. Got back and then had to,
you know, walk up the stairs and then the trading
day was canceled that day until the next day. But yeah,
(32:05):
you're right, it was everybody. It was like a party
on the street. I walked down Third Avenue and a
block party, streets, drinking, hanging, it was. It was an
interesting time.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
So you've lived this like exciting life where you've just
a You've done so many different things. I feel like
I've learned like ten new you know, Terman stories during
this interview. Do you feel like you've made it? No?
Speaker 3 (32:28):
You know the I think to suggest, at least for me,
the way I'm wired to say that I made it
would then what do I do. I go play golf
every day, I retire. I don't even like the beach.
I've lived in Miami now for three years and a month.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
Another bad opinion.
Speaker 3 (32:41):
Okay, yeah, I've been to the beach three times because
I had at a town guest who wanted to go,
and I sat there for an hour and it was
like bored. I'm not a beach per. I've got a pool,
which i've also gotten in about three times. I'm hungry
to do the things that I like to do, and
I've got the thing where I think I've made it
is that I've got the luxury of being able to
do what I want to do. I can work with
the people I want to work with. I can cover
the stories, I can engage, you know, work with the
(33:03):
companies doing the corporate finance stuff that I do, the
banking work, the investing and the venture investing. I get
to do what I want to do. But if I
feel like.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
I'm making it though, that's it.
Speaker 3 (33:14):
You know, I'm just every day I wake up, I'm
like t fires.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
I think it's the death threats. But okay, you're fine.
Speaker 3 (33:22):
I you know, as one of my mentors who say,
you're honored by your friends, distinguished by your enemies, I've
got great enemies, and you know, the death threats don't
really bother me. They did last year when they came,
and there's some of them were credible and I had
to have the FBI investigate them and that kind of shit.
But like buying large, that doesn't really I don't lose
any sleepover that I lose sleepover. There's not enough hours
in the day to get done all the things, and
I try and impose realistic deadlines on myself and the
(33:43):
people that I work with, and I am religious about
maintaining like you know, never over promise and under deliver.
Always under promise and over deliver when it's a timeline
or work output. And I'm just always drinking from a
fire hose because I take on too much. So I'm
always stressed. But I have this luxury of doing what
I want to do, so I guess it's my own
fault that I take on too much. I have too
(34:03):
many interesting things that are like grappling for you know,
the ability to do the work entailing committing to these things.
But if I feel like I fully made it, then
it's like, okay, I'm going to retire. I'm not the
type of person who's ever going to retire. I'm never
going to like move to a gated community. I mean,
if I raise a family, sure, but like you know,
South Florida, maybe go raise a.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
Family, you know, family. Where is that, missus Titerman at this.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
Point, Well, you're already taken, and I love your husbands,
so I don't know.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
It's just a good line. It's a good line.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
Find me someone. I mean, all right, I'm on it.
The problem is that I'm like so married to all
the things that I do, and that I need to
find somebody who is similarly wired, independent, intellectual, professional, driven
by the life of the mind, hungry to do things.
I've been in too many relationships where the relationship was
all about the relationship, and that just bores me to
tears and makes me ends up with me being hostile
(34:56):
because it's you know, I've got a lot of things
that I want to do. We're only on this earth
for you know, God willing eighty to one hundred years.
I got to walk more, I think, so I meet
that target that you know, the pie is only this big.
And I am a little bit annoyed with myself. My
mother's really annoyed with me that I'm forty three and
I do not have a wife and kids yet. And
that's definitely on top of the priority list now. But
(35:18):
you know, the idea of retiring, I'm just not wired
that way. I will work to the day I die
because I love what I do. It's reading and writing
and talking and connecting people to get things done and
building companies and creating jobs and exposing corruption. I mean,
I just you know this guy. I'm sure you saw
the AfD story of Maximilian cry the guy who said
that the SS weren't all criminals, and that was the
(35:38):
final straw that broke the camel's back that you know,
got Lapen in the French to push out the a
f D from their their their electoral coalition in the
European Union. I've been covering this guy for two years
about how he was on Russia, China, Iran and guitars payroll.
I've been like exposing the New York and Republicans were
inviting him to shit and I was like, no, you
can't do that. This guy is the most corrupt guy
in Europe. He's literally taking money from the Axis of Evil.
(36:00):
And they're like, no, no, he's famous, we want to
be around him. So I mean that was one of
the reasons I think I broke with that club, as
they were really annoyed about my public condemnation of one
of their famous European parliamentary guests. I know all the
European parliamentarians on the right. They're not the greatest group.
Some of them are Robert rus and Holland is amazing.
Most of them are schmucks, like most politicians. So it's
like there's no like fame is like so sexy and
(36:23):
attractive when you're dealing with politicians, as you and I
have dealt with for so many years. We know politicians.
To know them is to realize, Hey, how vallible they are,
how duplicitous they are, how venal they are. So I'd
rather go after them.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
I'm sexy for sure, yeah, than.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
Be friends of them. So I exposed this guy. Finally
they go after him. His chief aid in Brussels is
a Chinese national who I exposed ages ago. They finally
arrest the Chinese national aid who had chartered a company
in this guy's hometown in Dresden, which was the money
laundering facilitator for the Chinese money going into his pocket.
And I've been covering this for ages. They finally arrested
(36:57):
him a few weeks ago because he got the European
Union election coming up. And I had spread this everywhere.
I sent this to journalists around Europe. I'd sent this
to you know, law enforcement agencies around Europe to you know,
get this guy. And they finally get them, and you
know this, this is what I live for, is you know,
And I've got a big list of targets of people
that should be exposed on their merits. It's not personal,
(37:18):
it's you know. I remember when I met the guy
in a YR event and he offered me his hand,
and so I think maybe the only time in my
life I didn't shake somebody's hand. I said, I'm not
going to shake your hand. I don't want any of
your stink on me.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
Abrasive with a smile. Yeah, I love it well. I
loved having you on. You're a fantastic guest. I feel
like I could talk to you for a few more
hours about all the different things that you've touched on,
but end here with your best tip for my listeners
on how they can improve their lives.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
Friends, family, relationships that are not toxic. If you feel
like you're in hostage to a toxic relationship, get out
of it, even if it's long standing. You will feel better.
That includes relationships you know in terms of you know
spousal or you know boyfriend, girlfriend, like, don't stay in
relationships that are toxic. Very hard for people to remove
(38:08):
themselves from these things, but you will have a much
more happy, fulfilled life if you're not adding to your
own stress by the people around you, and having great
people around you intelligent people, people who you don't have
to agree on everything. I mean, I'm friend, I mean
I argue with Josh Hammer all the time. I mean,
he thinks he knows everything about everything. He's like thirty five.
You know, I'm more of a.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
Feeling like he does know everything about everything.
Speaker 3 (38:31):
But okay, no, no, no, I see you. We can
disagree with this, but he's my brother. I love him
as a groomsman his wedding. You don't. And I tell
him this all the time when he gets heated about stuff,
I say, look, you don't have to agree on everything.
You just have to offer up your views and be
willing to debate them in good faith, not try and
hit people with a sledgehammer and force them to comport
and adhere to what you think or what you believe.
(38:53):
I even have a few lefty friends, not many, but
a few lefty friends. Most of them have purged me out. Okay,
so be it. You know, the people around you make
for a happy life. We are you know. Plato wrote
about this, Like Aristotle, we are social creatures, and we
need the validation of other people. Not the validation of
them agreeing with everything, just the validation of a back
and forth. That keeps a sharp and honest, self critical
(39:17):
at times. That is, to me, the most valuable thing.
And I think people need to walk more. I'm trying
to walk five miles a day, so.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
Yeah, all right, I'm gonna I'm gonna try to work
that into my schedule.
Speaker 3 (39:27):
Look, if you do calls, yeah, I spend most of
my day on the phone. So I've over the last
six months, I've discovered I can do calls while walking.
So all of a sudden, I'll do like seven or
eight or nine calls and I've walked like seven or
eight miles. It's great.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
All right, I'm gonna call you. I'm gonna call you
and we're going to walk.
Speaker 3 (39:42):
Yeah, he is.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
Matthew Turmand. You are fantastic head of B twenty four Investigations.
Thank you so much for coming on the show. And
if you have a nice Jewish girl from Matthew in
South Florida, drop me a line. Let's let's make this happen.
Speaker 3 (39:55):
Yeah, we got to crowdsource this. We got to crowdsource
my family life.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
I think that's that's the way to go. Thank you
so much, Matthew.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
Thanks girl, Thanks so much for joining us on The
Carol Marcowitch Show. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
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