President Trump is releasing the JFK Files after decades of secrecy. But Glenn warns: it’s important that we don’t chase the “who.” The question that really matters is, WHAT were they protecting? Was the government hiding the illusion of competence? Do these documents reveal the Deep State of the 60s? Did Lee Harvey Oswald have help? Did elements of our government look the other way? Or were they trying to stop the domino effect? Glenn predicts that the Kennedy Files aren’t about Oswald. They’re about us. If we can stare down 1963, we can demand 2024’s truth too. The “what” they’ve protected has kept us blind. Trump is betting we can handle it.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: All right. I want to talk to you about the JFK files. Which were three hours -- two hours away from being released now.

If you're listening to us live.

Two hours away. And I'm interested to see what's in it.

Tulsi Gabbard is the one who is overseeing it. Representative Anna Paulina Luna. She has been relentlessly pushing for this since February. Trump has seen all the files.

He calls them, quote, very interesting, but he's leaving the judgment up to us.

Now, very interesting is different than when he said, he was talked into making sure, they don't go out. By others.

He didn't name the others.

But here we are, 62 years after Kennedy was killed here in Dallas.

And we're finally getting the vault cracked open?

I think it's important, and I could be wrong on this. I think it's important for us to not look and chase the Who. But there was somebody else in the grassy knoll.

There might have been. I don't know. I don't think that's what we were looking at though. I think we're looking at the "what." Not who they have been protecting, but what have they been protecting?
Why has it taken so long?

And not for names, but for the principles, the systems. The intangibles, that have been buried with these papers.

The steaks are pretty high here. You know, what happens if we get 80,000 pages and there's, meh. I mean, that's a possibility.

That's going to be really bad for the conspiracy theorists.

Because they're going to say, see. They didn't release it all. 80,000 pages, and they didn't release it all.

The question that has to be answered is, why did it take this long?

Let's go back.

Look at the steaks. November 22nd. 1963. Kennedy is shot.

And America changes at that moment.

I mean, our innocence goes away.

We have a president that is killed. And our innocence takes a bullet as well.

And the Warren commission pins it on Oswald.

But the doubts fester. Witnesses. Ballistics. Missing pieces.

The note from Evelyn Lincoln, the secretary of Kennedy.

Who said, I -- my husband, was in a restaurant, two days before President Kennedy was going to Dallas.

And overheard two people in the booth saying, well, he will be dead. He won't come back from Dallas.

Her husband listened to it, called the White House. And said, Evelyn, you've got to tell him not to go. She went in. And told President Kennedy, my husband just overheard a plot.

He said, if -- Evelyn, they're going to kill me in Dallas. They're going to kill me, going to my churchgoing on Sunday.

They will kill me one way or thorough. So I'm not changing my life.

Two days later, he was dead. Now, the witnesses, the ballistics, the missing pieces, tomorrow I am going out. I will do some live thing out, with just -- on, I don't know, X. We have the exact copy of the gun. I don't know if there is another one like it. Because it -- it took -- a friend of ours, Paul Vienes (phonetic). He is from the World War II museum, the Museum of the American soldier down in College Station. And it's this great museum.

And he is -- I mean, you put him on something, and he is like a dog with a bone. He's not going to stop. And it took him like two years to re-create this rifle. And to get exactly the rifle, it's very -- kind of a rare rifle in itself.

It's impossible to find the scope that he used.

And it was augmented in different ways. And so Paul has put this whole rifle together.

He brought it up. Gave it to our museum. And I will take the rifle out. We've had to go order, because it takes special shells as well.

So we will -- we will go out to the range tomorrow or the next day. And we will try to do the shots.

And I am bringing a couple of sharpshooters as well. I know I won't be able to do it. I might be able to hit the shot, but I don't know if I'll be able to hit the time. Maybe a couple of sharpshooters can do it. I don't know!

But it's not an easy shot. It's not an easy shot. But it could be done.

Here's the problem: In 1992, Congress passed a law saying, release everything by 2017, that isn't a national security risk.

Well, that deadline passed over and over and over again. And we got it in dribs and drabs. Now Trump is saying, release all of it.

80,000 pages, unfiltered.

On what's the -- what?

They have been guarded. I don't think it's a who. It's a what.

What have they been guarding?

It's got to be something kind of big, right? So what could it be?

Let's go through some of the options. Maybe what they've been covering or hiding, is the illusion of competence.

What if they've been protecting the myth that the government knows what its doing. We're totally competent.

No, you're really not. Don't ever show any of this stuff.

Because it will show how bad you really were. You had Oswald in your sites, so to speak.

And you did nothing. You just dropped the ball.

That could very well be it.

Just the hiding the illusion of competence.

I suspect we'll find that. 1963 was absolutely chaotic.

Cold War paranoia. CIA plots against Castro. FBI fumbling domestic threats.

Maybe the files just show Keystone Cops. Missed signals. Botched surveillance.

Agencies tripping over. Like the Keystone cops. Or Charlie chaplain follies. You know, okay. George.

Releasing that in the '60s, maybe even in the '90s, could have tanked public faith when we needed it. But we don't have any faith left, does anybody think our government is competent?

Really? Honestly?

Any? Bueller. Vietnam was heating up at the time.

The Soviets were watching.

If the files prove Kennedy died, just because of screwups, not masterminds. They're not hiding the villain.

They're hiding fragility. I think that's the most likely what, that we're going to find. That we are just the Keystone cops!

Okay. Option two. And feel free, Stu, to though an option here.

Option two. I am so sick and tired of carrying this whole show on my back. I carry you every day.

Option two. The architecture of power. This one is structural. What if those 80,000 pages map how decisions got made? How intelligence, military, and politics intertwined in ways that we're not supposed to see? Not a who shot him, but how did we operate? Think about this.

Kennedy was pushing back on the CIA. After the Bay of Pigs.

He was telling the pentagon follow-up, no.

On Cuba.

He was telling the pentagon. I'm going to get rid of all our nuclear programs.

I will negotiate with Russia. I will stop these never-ending wars.

Maybe it's the files revealing a machine that doesn't bend. And a network of influence, that outlasts any president.

Maybe it is go that reveals the Deep State that was happening back then. And they haven't held it back, because they're protecting a guilty party. But to shield the blueprint, you expose that, and you don't just rewrite 1963. You question every power play ever since.

The what, is the skeleton of authority, itself.

That's a pretty good option. Right?

Okay.

As I see it, option number three. The ghost of democracy!

What if they've been protecting the story that we tell ourselves about who we are. Kennedy's death wasn't just a tragedy, it was a mirror.

If those files say Oswald had help. Foreign or domestic. And I think this is the least likely.

If Oswald had help, foreign or domestic, or that elements of our own government looked the other way. That's possible.

It's not just history. It's an indictment. I don't know in 1963, if we could have handled that. Riots were coming. MLK. RFK would fall next. You know, maybe they locked it away, to preserve the what, of American exceptionalism. The belief that we're the good guys.

I shouldn't say that. Because I think we're the good guys. That our government and the&its many, many agencies are the good guy. So the delays about keeping that narrative alive, even if it's a lie! Fourth option.

And this one is pragmatic, but a little profound. What if the what, is the precedent of exposure?

The JFK files, and you can't stop there. We release the JFK files, we're going to say, now release Butler, Pennsylvania. Trump's brush with a bullet. Secret Service whistleblowers are already saying, the shooter wasn't a lone wolf. He was modeled. A product of a tactic that we've used abroad. And the product of a tactic that they say, we're not only using currently. But I say we were using at the time of JFK as well.

And I'm not saying that we did it. But that's what whistle-blowers in the service, is they're now saying, that that's what Butler, Pennsylvania, was all about. So if those 80,000 pages spill secrets, methods, failures, cover-ups.

It's a road map for the next demand.

Butler's files. The 9/11 loose ends.

Every classified corner.

They held it to not hide the Kennedy truth, but to protect the dam from breaking!

The what is the containment of accountability itself!

Keep everything secret.

And, you know, that's -- that's what our government does.

Thee keep, they're overclassifying everything.

Why?

Why?

Why is the left freaking out so much about DOGE?

Because there's a lot to hide there. And that's just in comparison to this kind of stuff.

That's just corruption, or waste, or incompetence.

One of the options. Maybe we're just not competent. We weren't in 1963. We know we're not now. Maybe that's what they're hiding.

Or was it -- was there more going on? Kennedy's era because of the Cold War, it was just nothing, but proxies and shadows.

And what we were doing then, became doctrine. It's why we were still at NATO. Why the hell are we still at NATO?

What is it that we're keeping at bay from NATO?

Why at least are we not demanding that the other countries start defending themselves a little bit more?

Because it's just -- it's the way it's done now.

I -- I have to tell you, the worst thing that will happen, is there's nothing in this. That the average person goes, I don't know what they were hiding.

Because if that happens, conspiracy theories go through the roof.

I mean, remember, this is from the guy who told you in what, 2005.

Or '6. You will see the time. If the government doesn't correct what they're doing right now. This was under George Bush. If they don't correct this kind of secrecy and everything right now. You will see a time where many Americans. 20 percent of Americans. It was at 6 or 7 percent at the time. Will say, we never went to the moon! We never went to the moon! Look at where we are! Look how many people are saying, we never went to the moon. We never went to the moon.


STU: And this is the thing, with like most conspiracy theories, there's no way to disprove them.

GLENN: No, I know. I know.

STU: If what comes out of this, eh, actually, we know most of the story. And it was a major failure.

But there's no -- no big conspiracy behind it. The people who have believed this, this whole time, will do exactly what you said. They'll say, well, they must be hiding all of the real stuff. Somewhere I know. I know.

There's no win.

STU: There's no live forever.

GLENN: That's why you should just release stuff going forward.

Just release it. You hold it back like this. You're not helping. You're just making things much, much worse.

Here's why it matters. Secrets have to be outed. Not for gospel. Not for revenge.

But when you bury the what, competence, power, identity, whatever.

You bury the ability to fix it. The Kennedy files, I'm guessing, not about him. They're not about Oswald.

They're about us. If we can stare down 1963, we can then demand 2024's truth as well. The what they've protected has kept us blind! Tomorrow, maybe we see!

And when we do, we don't just read it. We rebuild!

That's what's at stake today.