March 21, 2018

Ari Melber scored a killer interview on his show, The Beat, with a guest that many have tried to book, but all have failed: Randy Credico. Who is this man, you ask? He is a confidante of Julian Assange and a friend of Roger Stone. In fact, he has visited Assange in his exile at the embassy and says he speaks to/emails with Roger Stone "once a week."

So this interview - it is bonkers. Honestly, you have to watch it to fully understand. At some points, Randy tries to avoid answering questions by breaking into Nixon or Bernie Sanders impressions. He panicked a few times when Ari started asking him pointed questions about dates and times about events.

Here is some of the bananas transcript:

MELBER: You're also a character in the Mueller probe, and partly because you do have something that a lot of people want and that is access to Julian Assange. How often do you speak to him? How did that come about?

CREDICO: He did my show way back in 2016, and then I went to London a few months later and then in 2017, I did a 12-part series on my are show at WBAI, and then over the last four months, I have been to London and I visited him three times. So we communicate.

MELBER: What do you think of him?

CREDICO: He's a great guy. He's a great journalist. I look at him the same way I look at Elijah Lovejoy or any of those other abolitionist journalists in the 1830s, 1840s, Elijah Lovejoy, people hated him, he was an abolitionist. I look at Julian Assange the same way, he has never ever published a lie. Nothing has been refuted.

MELBER: You say that his materials tend to be authentic rather than forged?

CREDICO: Absolutely.

MELBER: Do you ever carry messages from him to other people?

CREDICO: Well, depends on what you mean by that. Do I carry messages? If I leave the embassy and he says when you get back to the states, say hello to somebody, yes, that could be something -- randy, do you want me to narrow my question? Yes, go ahead.

MELBER: Do you ever carry messages from Julian Assange about what he might plan to do or to people anywhere else in the world?

CREDICO: No. Absolutely not. I totally deny.

MELBER: You deny that?

CREDICO: I deny it totally.

First of all, Assange is not a journalist. Comparing him to an abolitionist journalist is an insult. Period. He is also a coward, hiding out to avoid sexual assault charges.

Moving on to Roger Stone:

MELBER: Let's see you speaking about Roger Stone.

CREDICO: Okay, here we go.

MELBER: One of Trump's supporters, Roger Stone, who I know, I actually know Roger Stone, he was on this show and, you know, go figure, a couple of weeks back. But he mentioned your name and then he backtracked and said he didn't have any communication with you. But he has tossed things around.

CREDICO: Roger Stone is a rather canny spin master. And we have not had any communications with him whatsoever.

MELBER: In that exchange, you mentioned him and Assange says he doesn't have direct communication. The allegation from Mr. Stone is that you are the intermediary, between Assange and him.

CREDICO: It depends on what you mean by a back channel. I think Roger Stone has downgraded my participation as a back channel into someone who has confirmed. First he said he had direct communications with Assange, and you he's downgraded that and it's to the point where I confirmed. I had Assange on three times and we had a lot of conversations, I did his show and I have no idea some of the things I may have said to him, but certainly did not pass any information from Julian Assange to Roger Stone.

MELBER: You flatly deny that Stone allegation? I want to dig more into that, because before we go deep into that, because you're not only here to talk about Roger Stone, your relationship with Assange, which is newsworthy, I want to play a little bit of Julian Assange in 2016, this is a critical period. He was touted about the upcoming leaks.

Ok, then it gets a bit weird:

MELBER: On August 8, you have Stone saying that he communicated with Assange and that a torrent of Clinton email documents would come out in this so-called "October surprise." That's August 8, are you saying by referencing his timeline, that that's not something Stone would have gotten from you at that time?

CREDICO: You know what? You're going to do a Tricky Dick Richard Nixon on me, I'm going to come right back and do some impressions with you.

MELBER: I know you do impressions.

CREDICO: Are you buying time or are you telling me that that's a lie.

Yes, he did impressions. It got even more nutty in the second interview:

Just watch it to fully absorb it.

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