Very often when on this program we look at clips from congressional hearings, particularly

clips of Republican members of Congress who have an inflated sense of self-importance

and ego trying to make themselves look like they are smart and well prepared. It's merely

disaster porn. And what I mean by that is it's not particularly instructive. It's sort

of like, wow, they looked really dumb, but there's not that much to learn from it. Today

I have a very different example for you that is extraordinarily instructive and we're

going to link it actually to this recent report on the origins or oranges of COVID from

the Department of Energy. But before I even do that, let's talk about what we're talking

about. A radical and repugnant Republican Congressman Matt Gates was called out yesterday

in real time for citing Chinese propaganda. Now what happens here is extraordinarily instructive

with regard to confirmation bias and not only the willingness, but the eagerness of these

right wingers to accept any source uncritically if it confirms what they already believe. So

let's take a look at this clip. This was a moment during the House Armed Services Committee

where Matt Gates tried to sort of gotcha, Colin call, who's the US Defense Undersecretary

for Policy and talk about the azov battalion getting access to American weapons. Colin

call says, I don't have any evidence of that. And Matt Gates says, well, what about this?

And it turns out that it is over Chinese propaganda. You will also notice if you're watching

this clip that some of the folks sitting in the audience really seem to be enjoying this.

Okay. So let's take a look and then we'll talk about it. Is the azov battalion getting

access to US weapons? Not that I'm aware of, but if you have information, I see

that sense entering the record, the Global Times Investigative Report that talks about

training. It's from the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensics Research Lab citing the

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