A veteran reporter for the New York Post, has been placed on leave after writing a damning report on President Donald Trump's pick for DEA administrator. Now, according to a report from Breaker Media, the journalist in question [00:00:16] is business reporter Josh Kosman, who is actually a 16 year veteran over at the New York Post. And as you guys can imagine, New York Post is conservative leaning. He's been there for 16 years, and he apparently received a tip within the Drug Enforcement Agency [00:00:36] in late February alleging that Donald Trump's pick to lead the DEA guy by the name of Terry Cole had a checkered past that included leading two operations that led to unnecessary deaths. Now, that sounds serious. That seems like an interesting tip. [00:00:52] He looked into it. He says it was a pretty amazing scoop. He explained to Braker. Kaufman briefed multiple editors at the post, including the business features and political editors who all encouraged him to pursue the story. Now he was able to get two sources to even speak to him on the record. [00:01:11] In addition to over a dozen DEA top officials, former DEA top officials. But after it was written, after it was edited and slated to run on Sunday, March 22nd, all of a sudden the publishing of this piece was postponed. [00:01:28] They didn't do it. And eventually Kaufman received an email from the post-political editor saying, there's no good way to say this, so I'll just say it. Keith Poole spiked the story. I sent him the most recent copy, and his response was, nope, [00:01:43] not running this in a way that made clear there was no changing his mind. I'm very sorry. I thought we had the story, but sometimes decisions are made above my pay grade. Now, Jake here at TYT. I think people feel pretty free to say what they actually think, [00:02:00] especially in regard to news stories. I think you have a pretty reasonable red line. You don't want people who work for you going around calling you a bitch for, for instance. But freedom of opinion is obviously something that's allowed here, [00:02:16] but I'm starting to think we might be one of the only places where that's allowed. Yeah. For sure. So, look, let's do general rules, and then we'll talk about us in New York Post a little bit. So, first off, everyone has a bias. And so all media should, to be honest about their perspective. [00:02:36] But, mainstream media isn't they're the most dishonest out of all of the media. And so, I want to be clear about who mainstream media is and why I'm calling them the most dishonest, because I'm not saying that they make up the most amount of lies. Can you find a right wing show that just makes up nothing but lies? [00:02:52] Yeah, of course. Alex Jones is a mess. We're not winning with Alex Jones, right? Let alone a hundred other shows. Right? But you know which side Alex Jones is coming from? Cuckooland. Right. You know which side the right wing shows are coming from, left wing shows, etc.. [00:03:07] Mainstream media says does two problems. One is me bias. No, my perspective is objective. And so I'm going to privilege my own perspective, which is almost always for the status quo, the establishment and corporate rule. [00:03:24] And I'm going to pretend that it's the objective position that is the worst of all scenarios. The then mainstream media has a second problem. There's right wing embedded within mainstream media like Fox News, New York Post, etc. Certainly the editorial section of the Wall Street Journal, by the way, [00:03:41] all of those owned by Rupert Murdoch. And so they hilariously pretend to be neutral and objective when they're not just in favor of corporate rule like the rest of mainstream media, which they are. That's what they share, right? They love the status quo. They love corporate rule. [00:03:57] That's why the Murdoch, companies are always a little skittish about Trump, even, right? And my God, do they despise Bernie Sanders? They they loathe outsiders, populists, etc.. But on top of that, layered on top of that for the Murdoch companies, [00:04:14] including New York Post, they're just right wing, right and right wing and socially, economically, etc.. And and so that's why in this case, Trump has said, oh, I like this Keith [00:04:29] Pool guy at New York Post. Murdoch should put him in charge of the Wall Street Journal. Why? Because he's like Trump loves how biased he is and how he'll kiss Trump's ass and bury stories that might go against Trump. So I need you to understand that the New York Post is a piece of trash. [00:04:46] It's useless. Absolutely. Utterly useless. It's in fact counterproductive because it puts up, puts out nonsense propaganda even if you're in the right wing. Remember he they barely tolerate Trump. This is for giant corporate propaganda. Okay. [00:05:04] So in this case, they trashed this perfectly good piece. But look, if you're in the right, why do you. This piece was not political. The guy, the things that he found out about this person who was being nominated was apparently enormous incompetence that got people killed. [00:05:21] So why would you not want to know that? Why don't you just pick a different right winger who is not enormously competent, incompetent, but with Donald Trump, know he's Trump, thin skinned. And so he just cannot ever, ever, ever tolerate being wrong about anything. [00:05:39] So when they spiked this story and they buried the truth, Trump's going to love it. And that's why they did it. Now we're never going to know exactly what was written in Kaufman's piece. However, a day before Kohl's Senate Judiciary hearing, [00:05:57] a different publication broke the story. Write a similar article with a similar subject matter, so we get a sense of what was likely going to be reported by the New York Post. But that story got spiked. So CNN wrote on April 29th, years ago, [00:06:14] the Drug Enforcement Administration was shaken by a pair of particularly deadly overseas incidents a botched operation by a US vetted Colombian police squad that left ten local officers dead, and a cartel's brutal retaliation in a small Mexican town that killed dozens. [00:06:33] The first of the deadly overseas incidents noted in the letter came in 2006, in Bogota, where Cole was stationed as a special agent. According to his online resume, an elite group of ten Anti-narcotic Colombian [00:06:49] police officers who were polygraphed by the DEA as part of its vetting process and worked directly with Cole, according to agents who served with him were gunned down by a platoon of Colombian soldiers later convicted of working for drug traffickers. [00:07:07] So, according to CNN, in 2011, Cole was working in the DEA's field office in Dallas supervising a probe into the leadership of the Mexican drug cartel known as the Zetas. And in early 2011, the Zetas carried out a mass murder [00:07:25] that was later the subject of a year long investigation published jointly by ProPublica and National Geographic. That report found that the border region violence was sparked when DEA officials shared intelligence produced by Agent Cole or produced by an agent Cole [00:07:44] supervised with Mexican Federal Police, who then leaked it to the cartels. So, yeah, I mean, going back to what you said, Jake, incompetence is a perfect word, and that incompetence is something that, you know, the Senate should be aware of as they're considering confirming [00:08:00] this guy as DEA administrator. But I guess the New York Post didn't think so. But luckily, CNN ended up reporting the story. - Any final words on this? - Yeah, definitely. So look, I always think shoe on the other foot. If it was Bernie and he's, putting this guy in charge, I'd want to know. [00:08:18] So don't put that guy in charge. And by the way, if you're on the right, you like that this guy's information got to a drug cartel, and then the drug cartel, did a massacre with that information. Why is that a right wing position? That's not a right wing position at all, right? That's just okay. I love Donald Trump. [00:08:33] And if Daddy Trump picked this incompetent loser who got people killed and accidentally helped a Mexican drug cartel, then I'm going to be in favor of daddy. Okay, if that's your position, have at it, Hoss. But that's not principle. That doesn't make any sense. Lastly, I said, you know, what are our standards here? [00:08:48] Look, there's three simple standards that I, to me, make sense for any news organization. One is you cannot play with the facts. Yeah. We did tell people I our hosts, have different positions. I'm. I'm on the left. I'm an economic populist. No one is confused about that. Everybody knows it. [00:09:06] In fact, I'll say it. And then people on the left won't even believe it. They're like, no, I think you're something else. All right. I don't really care. So they can go do whatever the hell they want. But we but you cannot play around with the facts. I don't care what your ideology is. Facts are paramount. It's. [00:09:21] They're not paramount in a news organization. It's not a news organization. Okay, number two, you're not allowed to call for violence. And number three, you're not allowed to do random weirdo attacks against your colleagues. These are not complicated rules. They make a lot of sense. I wish all news organizations had this. And then outside of that, do the news. [00:09:39] Do your and give me your real opinion. There's nothing wrong with your opinion, no matter where it is on the political spectrum. You know, as long as we're having an open, honest conversation that's respectful of one another. Every time you ring the bell, an angel gets its wings. Totally not true. [00:09:55] But it does keep you updated on our live shows.