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didn't
want to watch all the post game and the trophy and all that so But I think the between the food and the drink and the revelry.
There's a lot of people who are just like Yeah, but next year friends Super Bowl is on president's day weekend.
So if you usually have president's day off You will have Monday off next year.
It's also on Valentine's Day, right?
Nothing says honey.
I love you like shut up.
I'm watching the game
Who plays
a
roll
And that will do it.
Seattle.
Reigns above them all in the NFL.
The Seahawks.
Super Bowl champions for the second
And I think it's interesting because Sam Darnold is kind of one of those guys in that same vein, right?
That's what I was going to say.
He was the first quarterback to win a Super Bowl after playing for at least five different teams.
And of course, if you're a Packers fan, Bears fan, you know that he was with the Vikings last
year.
Could have been all these teams that didn't think he was doing.
And it was funny because I, you know, I knew Sam Darnold's story to a point, but then last night they kept rehashing the stats.
It's like he was let go after 14 wins seasons.
wait no 14 win seasons most guys would be put on a pedestal
Yeah.
There was, I didn't like the Mike Tyson apple one, because I was like, you guys are rich and you don't realize, yes, it's important to eat real foods, but processed foods are really cheap, which is why America has an obesity problem.
There was one, the Lay's potato chip where the dad
Yeah,
and
I did appreciate.
What about you?
I did appreciate the Ben Affleck Goodwill Hunting for Duncan, of course.
That was an all-star cast.
I didn't think the commercial was that great, but to see Jason Alexander, Matt LeBlanc, Julia White, Jasmine Guy, hello, Alfonso Riviero, Jennifer Anant.
I mean, to bring them all out into one commercial for like 30 seconds, I could appreciate
morning.
Hello, we just told my thunder cuz I look I didn't see the first half I was traveling but the Budweiser commercial with the eagle I thought was just brilliant.
Cuz I didn't
Thank you for calling this morning, Cindy.
If you want to chime in, 1-855-752-4842-185575 Civic.
Now, I also quickly, because I know we have a couple other things we want to talk about here before our first break of the morning.
I also thought that Brandy Carlisle was amazing at
doing
um, so
He was
him on
I'm glad Green Day dropped the F-bomb if they had and I would have been disappointed.
They sounded great.
The whole as the Hall of Famers were there or the MVPs rather from Super Bowls were there and they ended with they just did that one line.
Hope you had the time of your life.
It was and then they
They rocked.
The other commercial that made me laugh, and it was for some sort of body spray, and it was
Lady Gaga
in
I was a little surprised to see her as often as I did, but no, I love Lady Gaga.
I'm always gonna be a fan of Gaga.
She's fantastic.
I thought the entire event from start to finish was fantastic this year.
For so much rhetoric going into this about diversity and culture, I thought the NFL actually leaned into it maybe a little bit more than they had in the past.
And I think the commercials did as well, and obviously the performances were fantastic.
So I was down with this one.
I appreciated it.
Not a
news in the Savannah Guthrie case with her mom and it's Boy, it's starting to look this is just opinion.
It's starting to look bad when you're a week into this case Supposedly the the alleged kidnappers are going to contact them today.
There's another deadline, but they have not been able to They're saying they're going to pay they would pay whatever it takes.
They want to get their mom back
But there's been no proof of life.
There
The sister.
So Nancy is the mom.
But she's in bad health and she needed medication every day and now it's been a week without that medication.
And I don't know about you, Jamie.
I start running different scenarios only because I've seen so many... This is when your mind is influenced by TV and movies.
You go, boy, if there's been no communication, I wonder if it's...
Somebody else
weird things happening, right?
Authorities were at Annie Guthrie's, as we just mentioned Savannah's sister several miles away.
They were collecting evidence from her house the other day.
They're out looking, there was footage, verified footage of investigators in the septic area of Nancy Guthrie's house investigating.
Neighbors tipped authorities off to how clean her roof was.
So they were removing things from the roof earlier this week as well.
So there's, at some point you gotta wonder,
Is this more about Savannah Guthrie and her notable being a public figure?
Like, that's where my mind keeps going.
Is this to kind of get to her?
I don't know.
This is a very, very deeply disturbing case.
And I don't want to make too many jokes, but the fact that Cash Patel is on this doesn't really give me much confidence that we're going to...
have an end to finding music.
I wouldn't want
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Good morning.
Welcome to another week of fact-checking and just shaking our heads I think most people and if you weren't shaking your head over this weekend, I
I really don't want to know you.
And I'm talking only about this one thing.
The president released a video, which he, oh, he loves to go on his true social.
And he released a video that had former President Barack and First Lady Michelle Obama's faces superimposed over.
It was either monkeys or gorillas.
It doesn't
matter.
all the news
And it's been derided by Republicans, Democrats.
It doesn't matter.
If you have any empathy, if you are not a racist, you know it's bad for the president when the Republican senator from Mississippi, where they killed civil rights workers, call it totally unacceptable.
This was, I thought, beyond the pale.
But, Jamie, I'm sure the president felt bad.
and realized the error of his ways
yeah well no none of those things happen so none if you were wrapped up in the Olympics or the Super Bowl you didn't miss any of that it didn't just get you know pushed down on your your social media feeds the president actually spoke to reporters aboard Air Force One on Friday
night after the video had already been taken down.
Now, he did Friday afternoon, late Friday afternoon.
Now, Trump says that he did not watch the entire video before it was posted and claimed that
he only
media posts that you took down earlier today.
The White House says that a staffer sent it.
Who sent it?
And are you going to fire?
I saw it and I just looked at the first part.
It was about voter fraud in someplace, Georgia.
There was a lot of voter for 2020 voter for that.
I didn't see the whole thing.
I guess during the end of it, there was.
some kind of a bad people don't like I wouldn't like it either but I didn't see it I just I looked at the first part and it was really about voter fraud and the machines how crooked it is how disgusting it is then I gave it to the people so generally they'd look at the whole thing but I guess somebody didn't and they posted and we took it down and we did it yeah but that was a voter fraud that nobody talks about they don't like to talk about that post
We took it down as soon as we found out about it.
Mr. President, a number of Republicans are calling on you to apologize for that post.
Is that something you're going to do?
No, I
White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt initially brushed off any sort of criticism, calling it all fake outrage.
This was actually her written statement, part of her written statement.
Ready for this?
Oh, you'll love this.
This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the king of the jungle and Democrats as characters from The Lion King.
Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.
Caroline
And honestly, here's what I'm going to say about this.
They're all lying.
Let's be real.
Here's what I'm going to say about this.
I don't think this was a mistake.
This was a deliberate distraction.
This was a way to pull attention from so many issues right now where the president is losing public support, things like inflation, the rising cost of living, the growing backlash.
over ICE raids and all of these questions about how the administration has handled the Epstein files.
This
is a
And it should, it should be concerning to everybody that, yeah, and I agree that it's just another distraction.
But the fact that they don't mind, this administration does not mind being labeled racist because that's been, that's been a knock on Donald Trump since way before he was in politics.
You go all the way.
back to him being sued for not renting to African Americans in his properties.
So he doesn't care if you think he's a racist because there's a really good chance by his past actions that he is.
So and we know that Barack Obama lives in his head rent-free every day so anything he can do to slam the Obamas he's gonna do it and it's just one more thing that
Most people who have any sense would have apologized even if they didn't mean it because we know he wouldn't have meant it had he had he apologized But most people care about that public image.
They want to they want to Kind of tamp down on any sort of controversy not him.
He
remember, and
has
This popped over the weekend, and it's no surprise we've been talking last week.
about the odd coincidence that Tulsi Gabbard, who is the national security lead, was in Georgia when this raid on
all the voting materials happened.
And we saw a picture of her very clandestine, the picture she was in a long black coat.
She was sneaking around a corner on her phone.
And then it came out that she had called while she was talking to the FBI agents who were handling the raid.
She had talked to the president and had him talk to them.
Well, there had been reports that there was a whistleblower who had leaked something
Some communications
They were in a vault.
Well, it came out this weekend That the this intelligence was brought to the attention of Tulsi Gabbard when it happened It was about a phone call that happened between two people associated with foreign intelligence and just Someone we don't know who yet close to the president now.
We do know that Tulsi Gabbard is saying she kept this
secretive or covered under executive privilege.
So draw whatever conclusion you want.
There's not too many people who have executive privilege, but it is starting to unravel and again, not surprisingly, the stories of why Tulsi Gabbard was there, who knew Tulsi Gabbard was in Georgia and why this
communication has not gone to Congress earlier is it's gonna well it's gonna be a big story that actually leads to nothing I fear
well what I think is stunning about this is instead of allowing this to move through the normal channels which we'll talk about how whistleblower complaints are supposed to work in a moment
Gabbard actually took a paper copy directly to Trump's chief of staff, Susie Wiles, and then instructed the NSA not to formally publish anything with this report.
And the whistleblower ended up contacting the Inspector General in April, alleging Gabbard blocked the routine distribution of classified intelligence.
A formal complaint was then filed in May.
The information was still kept tightly restricted for months and not shared with Congress until much later.
And then, as this administration likes to do, it was heavily redacted when they received it.
Of course, Gabbard's office is saying she did nothing wrong, saying all actions were legal and called the allegations politically motivated.
Some Republicans have actually backed her handling of the matter.
Just when you think they get a little bit of a spine and a backbone saying that we should not post racist videos on social media, there's some things where they still draw the line.
Now, the contents of what was in these files, as you mentioned, is...
is still very unknown, in part because the administration has now cited executive privilege.
Now that alone, according to the whistleblowers attorney, suggests that the matter may involve the president of the United States.
Members of Congress are now trying to obtain all of the underlying intelligence directly from the NSA, bypassing the director of national intelligence altogether.
Again, this is actually truly stunning when you think about it at its core.
And when we warn, when people talk about this administration drifting towards authoritarianism, this is exactly what we're talking about, right?
Because there's a process for all of this when it comes to these whistleblower complaints.
And on average, especially when you're talking about national intelligence, it should only take 21 days for a claim like this to make it to Congress.
We're talking eight months
Shame on, first of all, shame on Tom Cotton and anybody else defending this action.
You are, as Republicans, you are all about national security.
You're all about making sure we are safe from our enemies.
Well, it doesn't seem like our enemies are enemies.
Our enemies have now become our friends.
And by our, I mean...
the administration's not the American public and our friends slash allies have become our enemies.
It's it's all backwards.
So to not think this is a big deal and to back the fact that proper channels were not used is an abdication of your duty.
Again, we'll put it on your tab and the public will remember.
But this is this is something that needs to be paid attention to and
As you mentioned Jamie and I had said it too executive privilege only extends to one person Mm-hmm So if you're using that if you're using that as cover you're not doing a very good job, right?
Because you pretty much tipped your hand when you say We're using executive.
We're not releasing it because of executive privilege.
All right Well, what what the president say then we didn't say it was the president.
Well, you did You're just too dumb to know it
Right, right.
this is
If
senior officials are unwilling to follow the rules, do their jobs and report potential concerns involving the president or even people close to him, to Congress, that puts every single one of us at risk.
I don't care how you vote.
Every single one of us is at risk because of actions like this, because we don't know.
who these foreign entities were.
We don't know what these communications were.
We don't know who in the president's orbit was in these files, but each and every one of us is at risk when it comes to Congress not doing their jobs in this administration, just doing what is convenient to them to protect individuals.
I saw someone, it was on one of the Sunday morning shows yesterday, had this suggestion that, listen, we need to just clean house.
The Senate and the House just need everybody needs to go both sides.
We need to start from scratch.
We need to rebuild because this Congress is not doing their job.
They are not representing us.
They are not protecting us.
They are not providing the checks and balances that this whole system was designed on.
I wouldn't have any problem.
There's a lot of Democratic legislators that I like.
Everybody's got to go.
We're going to find each state.
We're going to have the governors find their representatives, and we're going to send some new blood, and we're going to see what happens.
And maybe we get the same result.
And then you go, OK, now it's time to actually give up hope.
Tell
And I think that's why voters get so excited when somebody new jumps into the race every single time in their district or their voting precinct.
Because I think it is exciting to get new voices in there and to get people who haven't been in Congress for, you know, obviously a little hyperbole, but it feels like a hundred years in some cases.
because of the discussion we're having right now.
I am a huge Term Limits fan for the Supreme Court.
I don't believe that should be a lifetime appointment.
I believe for Congress.
I believe in Term Limits.
It works for the presidency, hopefully fingers crossed, depending on how the next few months go.
But I believe that that is something that we should have.
And back to your point about if it still ends up in the same process with new people in there.
And to me, then that's an overhaul of the entire system, right?
that would be the argument that if, even with new legislators in there, a brand new Congress in there, if that were something to ever happen, which let's be realistic, but if that were to
That would be an overhaul then of the entire system to the point where I would have to say then maybe we need to relook at some of our constitutional amendments and figure out the best path for 2026 and beyond versus where we were at when that was written.
But let me also be clear on something.
Every administration is gonna keep some information from the public.
Not everything is meant for public consumption.
I mean, let's be honest, right?
And I've said this when they're talking about operations where the military or the intelligence agencies have quashed potential attacks.
We don't need to know every little thing.
I want the government to be able to operate and to carry out operations.
We elected them for a reason.
They're supposed to handle that stuff But when it comes to something like this when it is as you said and rightfully so it affects all of us Every every person in this country can be affected if the government is compromised by a foreign intelligence agency We know that we've seen it forever.
It's been the backbone of
this country to make sure we protect ourselves.
That's why we have men and women in these intelligence communities who put themselves in danger every single day.
And if someone has betrayed that, we need to root them out.
And that's not overly dramatic.
It's the truth.
And if you don't believe that, I don't know where you moved here from.
I don't know... I don't think any country...
would put up with this.
No.
No country would put
No.
I mean, and there's a big difference between protecting sensitive information and actively bearing it.
And if members of President Trump's cabinet are willing to suppress intelligence because it might reflect poorly on the president or his inner circle, we should all be worried about that.
That's not how democracy function and it's not how national security is supposed to work.
We have
for these exact type of whistleblower reports.
And when it comes to national, when it comes to our intelligence community, I think it should be.
It's supposed to be.
It's supposed to be raised.
The intelligence community and whistleblower reports are the only ones that have a 21 day span.
The rest
can be,
But the whistleblower for intelligence, anything to do with intelligence is supposed to have a 21 day window and go to Congress immediately.
It's why we have the gang of eight in this country.
And it's also why we have a skiff because that can be then taken up.
We're in the appropriate measures.
This is happening with the Epstein files.
It's happened with everything else and I know we keep beating this horse and sometimes I feel like it's a futile effort to even say it, but I think the more we say it the more People may start to understand when is enough enough right and
What's your line?
Was your line the accusations and the mentions in the files that are redacted because we have to protect people?
Is it that there is now a complaint that someone may be compromised in this government by a foreign intelligence agency?
Is that far enough?
What's your line if you're still supporting this?
It has to be something.
Yeah, Mark from Prairie to Sack chiming in on the text line this morning saying, what if the betrayer is the president himself?
It's a good question.
I guess we'll never know because this administration just buries, buries and buries.
Every single time it looks like it's going to negatively affect the president or anybody in his circle.
648 right now, you are listening to Civic Media Mornings.
My name is Jamie Martenson.
You're listening to Civic Media.
Find the latest news, information, and archives of all your favorite shows on the Civic Media website,
This weekend, there was a lot going on, but I was transfixed for a lot of yesterday and some on Saturday with the Olympics.
I finally realized, I had said the other day when we talked about the opening ceremony, that I am a big Winter Olympics fan more than Summer Olympics.
And it finally came to me exactly why it's the sense of danger.
And the sense
of
Unfortunately, the weekend at the Olympics started with some bad news and we'll cover that first because Lindsey Vaughn, who you know at 41, was trying to make a comeback.
She blew out her ACL a couple of weeks ago on an erase and had been rehabbing and was going to make her comeback.
she had said she was gonna race 13 seconds into her run the other day.
She crashed and she had to be airlifted off the mountain.
She broke her left leg, which is the same leg that she had blown out of ACL, but they say the injuries had nothing to do with it.
Her pole caught or her arm caught on the flag as she went down.
The scene, thankfully they haven't been rerunning the accident.
There were just some stills of her laying still on the mountain.
It was horrible.
The screams were echoing down
the
and it was it was a shame because she had done a trial run just the day before on on that exact course and she she looked great Even with the ACL that she obvious that was heavily braced that knee as you can imagine was heavily braced you could see it under I don't know what the what the suits are that they wear but they don't leave much for the imagination Let's be realistic and so you could see the outline of the brace and she she looked great
you know, the big thing during that trial run, everybody watching, is she gonna be able to have the bounce that she needs because
of
And so there was all sorts of conversation, got through it, no problem.
So a lot of expectations going into that race and it was really, really unfortunate to see that happen.
And she's no stranger to injury.
I mean, Lindsay Vaughn in her career, yeah, she has.
But when you do a sport,
like you said that could kill you at any moment in time.
when she caught
She could have maneuvered a little better, but she was in the air and that's what that's what made it worse And yeah, she has been injured a lot and it just thank goodness.
She's okay.
Yeah, and and then her teammate breezy Johnson goes on and just like Lindsay won her gold medal in her first Olympics breezy Johnson This is her first Olympics.
She won the gold medal So team USA
Happy ending Lindsay Vaughn not but some other some other happy endings yesterday
if
So like you, Jamie, I don't know anything about the quad god, but I'm all about him now.
He did a two leg backflip as part of his short program.
He's a figure skater.
And then Sunday it came down to the on the figure skating team event came down to China versus
the U.S.
and that meant their top skater versus the Quad God.
The Quad God's technical score was over 200, which is what every, I learned a lot, which is what every figure skater shoots for.
So he had the score, he took the lead, the U.S.
had the gold, then it was time for the Chinese skater.
This little guy, he's the talk of Chinese figure skating.
He's a top tier figure skater.
His technical score was 198.
But nobody knew his performance score.
And the quad guy had had one little stumble.
Coming out
I guess I missed all of the excitement.
I do know that JD Vance's motorcade almost delayed Alyssa Liu from the United States because it was taking up so much of the road that she couldn't actually get to her
slotted time to skate and walked in within minutes to spare.
It wasn't even completely in her costume because of JD Vance's motorcade.
And by the way, U.S.
has two gold medals as of this morning.
That's what they have from the Olympic Games as of right now.
We're gonna keep watching the medal count as we come here.
It is 6.59 right now.
You're listening to Civic Media Mornings.
I'm Jamie Martenson.
Network.
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