Latest / Pod Save America / 80-Year-Old Man Loses War

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80-Year-Old Man Loses War · Pod Save America

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  Speaker 2: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: I'm Jon Lovett.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: I'm Tommy Vitora. On today's show, the U.S. and Iran
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: have signed a memo to end hostilities, allegedly, for now.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: We'll talk about it, as well as the implications for
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: Iran's nuclear program, Israel, and our own midterm politics. We'll
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: also dig into Trump's 80th birthday celebration, which involved the
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: much-anticipated White House-UFC fight, and lots of opportunities for him
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: and his pals to make more money. Gavin Newsom just
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: announced that Trump's goons at the Justice Department are investigating
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: his wife in a bid to derail his potential presidential campaign.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: We'll get into what we know about that. Then Tommy
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: talks to Senator Mark Warner about the Iran situation and
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: what the Senate can do and why he's pushing his
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: colleagues to confirm Trump's new pick for DNI. Before we start,
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• 2:33
  Speaker 2: All right, let's get to the news. The Iran war
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: appears to be over and Donald Trump has lost. U.S.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: and Iranian officials have signed a memorandum of understanding, shorthanded
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: as an MOU, that extends the ceasefire another 60 days,
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: reopens the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for ending the U.S.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: naval blockade of Iran, and kicks just about every other
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: issue to the next phase of negotiations, including Iran's nuclear
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: program and economic sanctions relief. Iran has certainly suffered significant
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: casualties and damage in this war, but Trump's war didn't
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: topple the Iranian regime, destroy its military or ballistic missile capabilities,
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: end Iran's support for proxies like Hezbollah, or eliminate its
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: nuclear program. By the way, those were all of the
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: objectives that Trump and Marco Rubio laid out way back
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: in February and March when this whole thing started. Other
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: than that, mission accomplished, which seems to be a face-saving
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: agreement that lets Trump pretend he won, which he did
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: shortly after arriving in Europe. for the G7 on Monday.
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: The deal's outside. And the strainer's already partially opened. As
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: you know, they're doing a little hunting for a couple
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: of mines. These ships are starting to go out now.
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: On Friday, it'll be completely opened. It's not like the
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: Obama document, which was just a terrible document. I think
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: it's going to be freesailing. We do want to see
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: if we can straighten out the Lebanon thing.
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: Where were they, by the way?
• 4:06
  Speaker 4: That's the least presidential backdrop I've ever seen.
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I assume they're somewhere in France if
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: he's with Macron. It's like they're on a porch or something.
• 4:13
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know where they were.
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: Anyway, the Obama document was terrible, and we do want
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: to straighten out Lebanon, maybe. Lebanon. So the administration says
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: the full text of the MOU won't be released for
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: another day or two. But based on the details that
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: have been reported, how does the deal look beyond the
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: headline summary that I gave?
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: You know, the old Mike Myers thing, like, you know,
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: the soup nuts are neither soup nor nuts. Like, it's like,
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: this is the replacement nuclear deal.
• 4:41
  Speaker 4: It's not nuclear.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: We know that, but it's not really even a deal
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: because presumably in a deal, both sides would have to
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: concede something. And I can't figure out what Iran has conceded.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: I know what the US gave up, right? I know
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: what we're, you know, there's a massive fund that they
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: could get access to, sanctions relief. They may get a
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: bunch of cash. They get a ceasefire in Lebanon, which
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: they want to try to constrain. Iran seems to have
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: agreed to the nonproliferation treaty it already agreed to and
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which was open 109
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: days ago. So this is not a deal. This is
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: the U.S. surrendering. In order to reopen the negotiations, it
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: stopped when it bombed Iran.
• 5:22
  Speaker 4: This is a deal to temporarily deal with the fallout
• 5:25
  Speaker 4: from the stupid war we started in hopes of maybe
• 5:28
  Speaker 4: getting a full nuclear deal to accomplish our goals. I mean,
• 5:30
  Speaker 4: you laid it out. I mean, Trump described his goal
• 5:34
  Speaker 4: as he did a video statement right after they started
• 5:35
  Speaker 4: the war. He said, we're going to destroy their missiles
• 5:37
  Speaker 4: and raise their missile industry to the ground. We're going
• 5:39
  Speaker 4: to annihilate their Navy. We're going to ensure that the
• 5:41
  Speaker 4: region's terrorist proxies can no longer destabilize the region or
• 5:44
  Speaker 4: the world, then attack our forces. And we will ensure
• 5:46
  Speaker 4: that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon. I guess
• 5:49
  Speaker 4: we like- It's the Navy. The Navy thing.
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: Maybe you get one for four there.
• 5:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah, we took out your Navy, but they still had
• 5:53
  Speaker 4: the Strait of Hormuz closed. So that doesn't seem good.
• 5:55
  Speaker 4: So look, this is hard to message because this was
• 5:58
  Speaker 4: the best deal available to Trump and for the world
• 6:00
  Speaker 4: because it ended the war. And we were seeing economies
• 6:04
  Speaker 4: in Asia collapsing. We could still see a global famine
• 6:07
  Speaker 4: because of what was happening. But Trump accomplished none of
• 6:10
  Speaker 4: his goals. And I think we have to message that.
• 6:13
  Speaker 4: And Iran now knows it can shut down the global
• 6:15
  Speaker 4: economy at any time closing the Strait of Hormuz, and
• 6:17
  Speaker 4: they could get hundreds of billions of dollars in sanctions relief.
• 6:20
  Speaker 4: This is a disaster. And Trump and Netanyahu, Netanyahu actively
• 6:26
  Speaker 4: tried regime change by killing the Supreme Leader. Trump was
• 6:28
  Speaker 4: for it when it seemed like it might happen. But
• 6:31
  Speaker 4: the net effect is there's now a younger, more hardline
• 6:35
  Speaker 4: Supreme Leader and a more entrenched IRGC running the show.
• 6:39
  Speaker 4: And the United States looks like we're unreliable and weak.
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: I thought it was very funny that In one of
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: his truths about this, Trump was like, I hereby declare
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: the Strait open. And then you look at some of
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: the fine print or at least some of the reported details.
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: And before the war, the Strait was controlled by no one.
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: It was an international body of water. And now it
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: will be controlled by Iran and Oman together, apparently. And
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: so you don't really hear Trump talking about that, although
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: he is saying it's toll free. It's toll free, like
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: the calls that we used to make back in the
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: 80s and 90s.
• 7:14
  Speaker 4: Sounds like it might be toll free for 60 days.
• 7:16
  Speaker 4: And then Iran has plans to slap a toll on
• 7:18
  Speaker 4: that shipping.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: They've said that they can charge fees. So that seems
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: to be, even that seems to be in dispute right now.
• 7:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: Also, Trump is saying that it'll be fully open by
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: Friday when they sign the agreement. But when they were
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: last talking about what the deal would look like, it
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: was going to take 30 days to potentially remove the
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: mines that are in place. And I don't know if
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: I were I were an oil tanker. I would definitely
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: want to go after several.
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I wouldn't want to be first.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: A lot of like, no, no, after you, after you Exxon, no, no, no,
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: after you.
• 7:48
  Speaker 4: Every restaurant opening gets delayed. You know, like when you
• 7:50
  Speaker 4: do a remodeling, it takes a while to get the
• 7:53
  Speaker 4: kinks out.
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: You want to be the third or fourth oil tanker.
• 7:55
  Speaker 5: For sure.
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: Maybe fifth or sixth.
• 7:56
  Speaker 4: Can I read you guys one quote from a senior
• 7:58
  Speaker 4: administration official? I'm pretty sure his name rhymes with a
• 8:02
  Speaker 4: Haiti prance. Um, One of the really cool things and
• 8:06
  Speaker 4: interesting things about this entire process that we actually have
• 8:08
  Speaker 4: a direct relationship with a number of people at the
• 8:10
  Speaker 4: highest levels of the Iranian government. You know you could
• 8:14
  Speaker 4: have just called them and not killed their whole family.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: So the war was literally the friends we made along
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: the way? Yes, that's what we learned.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: It's like, hey man, I know it's hard to make
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: adult friends, J.D.
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: Vance. It's the male loneliness crisis. It's unbelievable. He solved
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: it with the Iran war. Where's the... there's some back
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: and forth on the sanctions relief too. So it's like,
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: first it was, we heard some reports that there'd be
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: 12 billion in sanctions relief right away with another 24
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: billion coming later, depending on what Iran does. And then
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: Iran's asking for like a pot of $ 300 billion that
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: they might be able to access down the road. Now
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: it seems like there's no sanctions relief right away, but
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: it's also like, where was the money coming? This is like,
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: it would be unfrozen assets, right?
• 9:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a bunch of unfroze– like there's a bunch
• 9:02
  Speaker 4: of frozen money that is the Iranians' money sitting in
• 9:05
  Speaker 4: banks in Qatar, for example. And there's all this talk
• 9:07
  Speaker 4: of like up to a $ 300 billion investment fund that
• 9:09
  Speaker 4: will come from Gulf countries. I think the truth is
• 9:11
  Speaker 4: no one knows. Iran's real money is going to come
• 9:13
  Speaker 4: from slapping fees on ships that go through the Strait
• 9:16
  Speaker 4: of Hormuz going forward and sanctions relief is my guess.
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: Selling all its oil again.
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, they've already claimed that the docusign is done
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: or however they did it over email. what is release
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: the text? If the, if the Iranians have seen it
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: and signed it and we've seen it and signed it,
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: there's no secrets between us. So to me, like, I don't,
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: I can't think of a reason why Iran wouldn't want
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: the text out there. It seems to me that, uh,
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: Vance and Trump are trying to spin this thing until
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: we see the text and everybody loses their fucking minds. Yeah.
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: Maybe there's something about Jeffrey Epstein in the text.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah.
• 9:48
  Speaker 4: That could be, be a, he negotiated this thing. There
• 9:51
  Speaker 4: we go. Boy, What a surprise that would be.
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: Trying to connect the conspiracy. Trump was always going to
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: say whatever deal signed was better than Obama's. Iran deal.
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: You were saying, Tommy, this morning that the comparison is
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: apples and oranges.
• 10:06
  Speaker 4: In the case of the apples, there was a deal
• 10:08
  Speaker 4: that went into force and that worked for a couple
• 10:10
  Speaker 4: of years, according to Trump's own top national security aides.
• 10:13
  Speaker 4: In Trump's case- there is no deal. There exists a
• 10:16
  Speaker 4: framework to talk about possibly getting to a deal. And
• 10:18
  Speaker 4: just to remind everybody what the JCPOA said, the preamble
• 10:21
  Speaker 4: of the JCPOA said, quote, Iran reaffirms that under no
• 10:24
  Speaker 4: circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop, or acquire nuclear weapons, right?
• 10:28
  Speaker 4: So whenever Trump says, look, they said they're not going
• 10:30
  Speaker 4: to get a nuclear weapon, that was already enshrined in
• 10:32
  Speaker 4: the JCPOA and also enshrined in another treaty called the NPT.
• 10:35
  Speaker 4: We don't have to belabor that. But to make sure
• 10:38
  Speaker 4: that Iran could not get a nuclear weapon The JCPOA
• 10:41
  Speaker 4: said Iran had to reduce its enrichment capacity by two-thirds.
• 10:44
  Speaker 4: I meant like taking down or shipping out or shuttering
• 10:47
  Speaker 4: out all their centrifuges. They had to cap enrichment at 3.6% purity, 3.67% purity.
• 10:53
  Speaker 4: They had to ship out 97% of their stockpile and
• 10:56
  Speaker 4: allow the IAEA to inspect all of their nuclear sites
• 10:59
  Speaker 4: and then agree to not build a new enrichment facility
• 11:02
  Speaker 4: for up to 15 years. Republicans were always mad about
• 11:04
  Speaker 4: the sunset provisions in that agreement. But it was working
• 11:08
  Speaker 4: and it worked. And it sounds like Trump is maybe
• 11:10
  Speaker 4: at best going to get a similar deal after launching
• 11:13
  Speaker 4: this disastrous war that he could have gotten if he
• 11:16
  Speaker 4: just tried to renegotiate. Yeah, we need a president without
• 11:18
  Speaker 4: sunset provisions. That's the problem.
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It does seem like now that the blockade will
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: be over and the strait is open, it's not like
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: there's a lot of pressure on Iran to get something
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: out of these negotiations. It's just if they want sanctions relief,
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: which I'm sure they do. then maybe they make a deal.
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: But they've also been going on quite a long time
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: without sanctions relief. So it doesn't seem like there's a
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: forcing mechanism here. So Israeli and U.S. officials are both
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: saying that Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon is not part of
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: the agreement. Iran and Pakistan are saying an end to
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: all military operations in Lebanon is part of the agreement.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: Trump has also been publicly attacking Netanyahu over the last
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: few days for launching strikes in Lebanon that nearly tanked
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: the deal. He told Axios that Bibi has, quote, no
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: fucking judgment. So this chapter of the conflict seems unresolved.
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: What do you guys make of the Trump BB dust
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: up and where this goes from here?
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: That was in an interview in which Trump said that
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: Israel launching those strikes delayed the deal from going through.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: And then after the deal goes through, in which Iran
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: and Trump are claiming Israel is bound, Netanyahu says he
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: doesn't see eye to eye to Trump and they retain
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: all their prerogatives to defend Israel. from attack. And so
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: I don't understand what is supposed to happen over the
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: next 60 days and how you get to the end
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: of 60 days without Trump threatening further military escalation to
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: get to a deal or Israel threatening military escalation or
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: there being some kind of a fight in Lebanon. Because
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: in his first comments about this, Netanyahu said plainly, we
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: reserve the right to prevent Iran from having a nuclear
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: weapon That will continue to be our position regardless of
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: an agreement.
• 13:07
  Speaker 4: Yeah, every time Netanyahu wants to try to blow up
• 13:10
  Speaker 4: talks or prevent a deal, he just bombs somewhere in
• 13:12
  Speaker 4: Beirut and he tried that move again here and it
• 13:14
  Speaker 4: seems to have pissed Trump off and actually I think
• 13:15
  Speaker 4: probably sped up the deal. I do think it's hard
• 13:17
  Speaker 4: to overstate how negative the reaction to this deal is
• 13:20
  Speaker 4: in Israel right now. I follow this one Israeli political
• 13:24
  Speaker 4: security analyst who was in the IDF for 25 years
• 13:26
  Speaker 4: and he ran the head of the Iran branch for
• 13:29
  Speaker 4: Israeli military intelligence at one point. So like, you know,
• 13:31
  Speaker 4: pretty hardline guy. He described the deal as a political
• 13:34
  Speaker 4: insecurity catastrophe for Israel because the nuclear issue is unresolved.
• 13:39
  Speaker 4: And the fact that Trump lost the war will likely
• 13:42
  Speaker 4: defer future presidents from taking military action against Iran, what
• 13:45
  Speaker 4: you're just saying there about the lack of stick now
• 13:47
  Speaker 4: for the Iranians. And it also– it seems like Iran
• 13:50
  Speaker 4: will end up stronger because they will have all these
• 13:52
  Speaker 4: financial incentives and there will never– there won't really be
• 13:55
  Speaker 4: a credible deterrent anymore because no president is going to
• 13:57
  Speaker 4: want to touch this stove. And so this is a
• 13:59
  Speaker 4: huge hit for Netanyahu himself. He was Mr.
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: Iran.
• 14:01
  Speaker 4: He was Mr. Security. He was the guy who could
• 14:04
  Speaker 4: manipulate Washington. Now he's none of those things. He's got
• 14:06
  Speaker 4: an election coming up. And here's what some of his
• 14:08
  Speaker 4: opponents are saying. Avigdor Lieberman said, a catastrophe from Israel's perspective.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: That was one quote.
• 14:14
  Speaker 4: Yair Lapid, the moderate. This is one of the most
• 14:16
  Speaker 4: shocking failures of Israel's foreign and security policy period. So
• 14:21
  Speaker 4: I think I'm also watching whether Netanyahu tries to blow
• 14:23
  Speaker 4: this up. I mean, they're currently occupying. The forward operating
• 14:26
  Speaker 4: line for the IDF right now is six miles into Lebanon.
• 14:28
  Speaker 4: They say they're not going to retreat from that, but
• 14:31
  Speaker 4: they're also going to get shot at by Hezbollah. So
• 14:33
  Speaker 4: I just, I'm not sure how this is going to go,
• 14:36
  Speaker 4: but he needs to be careful because he needs Trump's
• 14:37
  Speaker 4: help both politically and in terms of security support going forward.
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: But also you can imagine from Trump's perspective that he's thinking, okay,
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: I got this whole thing done. If the negotiations over
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: the nuclear program don't really go anywhere, no one at
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: home is really going to care or notice and I
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: can just move on. Bibi, though, for everything you just said, Tommy,
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: clearly is not done with Lebanon and Hezbollah and is
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: now feeling all kinds of pressure to continue that. I'm
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: sure Trump thinks, well, Bibi can do whatever he wants now.
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: I'm washing my hands of this. I don't want to
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: deal with it. But Iran knows... that the best way
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: to get the U.S. back into the conflict and to
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: draw us back in is to close the strait again. So, like,
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: you can imagine that, like, Bibi goes into Lebanon and
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: then there's another, and then Iran, you know, fires to
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: help Hezbollah, and they go back and forth, and Trump
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: wants to stay out of the whole thing, but Iran,
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: of course, knows that it can get us back into
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: the whole thing just by closing the strait again. And so, like,
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: Trump's dream, I'm sure, is, like, let these people fight
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: it out. I don't care anymore. I want to wash
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: my hands of this. Like, I just don't think it's
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: going to be that easy.
• 15:46
  Speaker 4: Hezbollah can.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: launch missiles at any time to draw Israel back into
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: the conflict and draw criticism from the world because Israel
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: is escalating the conflict in response to Hezbollah. Part of
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: what Iran has been doing is using Hezbollah to make
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: this conflict also about Lebanon, which it successfully did, right?
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: Because now Israel, because now, you know, Iran can call
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: off Hezbollah for a short period of time while demanding
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: Israel adhere to a ceasefire in which it's perpetually under
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: threat from Hezbollah in the north. So it's just the
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: stupidity of this war, we will just be living with
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: it for just a very, very long time.
• 16:17
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, the Iranians have said they've made clear
• 16:20
  Speaker 4: that if the Israelis hit targets in parts of Beirut,
• 16:23
  Speaker 4: they will fire back directly at Tel Aviv. And that's
• 16:26
  Speaker 4: the linkage they created in the two conflicts. And I
• 16:28
  Speaker 4: think it's a very dangerous place for Netanyahu to be
• 16:31
  Speaker 4: because people, especially in northern Israel, feel like they're living
• 16:34
  Speaker 4: under constant threat from Hezbollah bombardment. They are.
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: It's totally fair to feel that way.
• 16:38
  Speaker 4: But in terms of as a security measure, this has
• 16:42
  Speaker 4: just backfired spectacularly for Netanyahu.
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: Let's talk about how the memo is playing in MAGA World,
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: which has been divided over Iran. Bloodthirsty warmonger Lindsey Graham
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: raised some eyebrows when he tweeted that while he was
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: pleased to hear the strait will be reopened, he's, quote,
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: somewhat concerned with what the Iranians are saying about the MOU,
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: believes that Congress must have the final say on any
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: nuclear agreement, and, quote, it is imperative that the architect
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: of the deal, Vice President Vance and his negotiating partners,
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: end quote, be part of presenting any final deal to Congress.
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: So what's that all about, you think? And have you
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: guys seen any other noteworthy reactions from either the anti-war
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: MAGA faction or the Iran hawks?
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: Saw John Bolton criticizing it. Lindsey Graham being unable to
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: criticize Trump because Donald Trump cannot fail.
• 17:32
  Speaker 4: He can only be failed.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: It's so pathetic. You want to hang this around JD
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: Vance's neck because he's easier to criticize. You feel like
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: you have a little bit more You're just not scared
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: of the guy. It's all sort of the usual pathetic
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: Lindsey Graham.
• 17:46
  Speaker 4: The anti-Iran hawks are losing their minds. I interpreted Graham's
• 17:49
  Speaker 4: comments both as wrapping this thing around J.D. Vance's neck,
• 17:52
  Speaker 4: but also maybe suggesting that this would be subject to
• 17:55
  Speaker 4: a 67-vote threshold in the Senate, which means it would
• 17:57
  Speaker 4: be dead. Or, yeah, treaties require a two-thirds vote. The
• 18:00
  Speaker 4: JCPOA was not treated as a treaty. Thus, future presidents
• 18:04
  Speaker 4: were not bound by it. So maybe that's the argument here.
• 18:07
  Speaker 4: But Mark Levin... the Fox News host, is losing his
• 18:11
  Speaker 4: mind on an hourly basis. He's getting in fights with
• 18:14
  Speaker 4: the national security team. The neocon think tanks are losing
• 18:18
  Speaker 4: their minds. There's one called FDD, the Foundation for the
• 18:20
  Speaker 4: Defense of Democracy, which is just this garbage human beings
• 18:25
  Speaker 4: propped up by right-wing billionaire money who do nothing but
• 18:27
  Speaker 4: push for wars that they nor their kids will ever
• 18:30
  Speaker 4: fight in. I haven't heard AIPAC weigh in. They've been
• 18:34
  Speaker 4: sort of suspiciously quiet. But the hawkish wing of the
• 18:37
  Speaker 4: Republican Party is furious. They know this is a capitulation.
• 18:40
  Speaker 4: They know Trump lost. They're just trying to figure out
• 18:42
  Speaker 4: how to undo it.
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: I hate to break it to Lindsey Graham and maybe J.D. Vance,
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: but I don't think Congress will be viewing any kind
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: of deal anytime soon because I just can't imagine a
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: deal actually getting done at this point.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, good point.
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: You can see Graham going after Vance is, like you said,
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: because he can't criticize Trump, but also... It's kind of
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: like a warning shot to J.D. Vance about 2028. And
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: it did make me think that if this goes as
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: we think it's going to go and the Iran war
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: hawks are all pissed off, someone's going to try to
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: launch some kind of a more pro-war campaign in the
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: Republican primary against J.D. Vance that is destined to fail,
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: by the way.
• 19:18
  Speaker 4: Tom Cotton or somebody.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: But you could see Lindsey. Ted Cruz. Yeah, Lindsey. They
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: want to kind of hold J.D. Vance up as like, beware, beware.
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: We're going to come after. We're going to come after
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: you in a primary with our hawks, which is like, oh,
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: I'd be so scared. I don't really know if that's
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: going to work, but you can see that. You can
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: see that. Maybe like Ted Cruz, who's also, I saw,
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: thinking about a presidential campaign again. Amazing. Amazing stuff.
• 19:47
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• 21:57
  Speaker 2: I want to touch on all the political implications of
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: all this for the midterms and beyond. There's a question
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: of how long it will take for high gas prices
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: and other straight related disruptions to end. A question of
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: whether Trump and Republicans will be able to just move
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: on from Iran and pretend like it never happened, even
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: if the next phase of negotiations hasn't led to a
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: deal by November. And then there's the question of what
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: Democrats say about any of this over the next few
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: weeks and months. Tommy, you want to take the... I
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: know you have some thoughts on the last one, especially. Yeah, no,
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: I think that being.
• 22:27
  Speaker 4: A Democrat in this situation is very hard because we
• 22:29
  Speaker 4: are trying to be responsible. And, you know, if a
• 22:32
  Speaker 4: Democrat was cutting this deal, if Barack Obama was making
• 22:34
  Speaker 4: this agreement, Republicans would say, you're weak, you're a coward,
• 22:37
  Speaker 4: you lost, you know, rinse, repeat on Fox News ad nauseum.
• 22:40
  Speaker 4: And it's a simple and powerful message, you know, strength
• 22:42
  Speaker 4: versus weakness. Our job is harder because... Again, ending the
• 22:46
  Speaker 4: war was the best of a bad set of options.
• 22:49
  Speaker 4: But we need to explain why Trump starting the war
• 22:52
  Speaker 4: has made us worse off as a nation, because I
• 22:54
  Speaker 4: think we just need to kill in finally this neocon
• 22:58
  Speaker 4: argument that you can bomb your way to peace. We
• 22:59
  Speaker 4: heard this in Iraq. Somehow it wasn't discredited then. Now
• 23:03
  Speaker 4: we're at war with Iran.
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: And it's just a nightmare.
• 23:05
  Speaker 4: And so, again, it's repeating that we failed on the
• 23:07
  Speaker 4: core objectives and just arguing that we could have gotten
• 23:11
  Speaker 4: the deal Trump will potentially get after the 60 days
• 23:14
  Speaker 4: of negotiations. without ever going to war. The original sin
• 23:17
  Speaker 4: was not in 2018, just trying to renegotiate the JCPOA.
• 23:21
  Speaker 4: And I think Democrats need to be more full-throated in
• 23:24
  Speaker 4: support of diplomatic solutions to problems, stop being afraid of
• 23:28
  Speaker 4: their own shadow on this stuff, and more full-throated about
• 23:32
  Speaker 4: why regime change wars in the Middle East are a disaster.
• 23:34
  Speaker 4: I thought we'd all gotten there, but apparently not.
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: The good news is this war is extremely unpopular, like
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: shockingly unpopular. 60 days from now is what, like mid-August?
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: And so- two possibilities, well, a whole range of possibilities,
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: but two possibilities are there is a deal in which
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: case Trump will do everything he can to make it
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: seem like he did this amazing move to start the war,
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: to get us to a position to negotiate the deal.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: And that'll be about selling, that'll be about us telling
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: just the story of how we got here and how
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: stupid and dangerous and bad it was. And then the
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: other is God only knows the kind of chaos that
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: could happen in the next 60 days. You know, there's
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: algae in the, He drained the fucking reflecting pool to
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: paint it blue, but the algae's back. He does not
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: have some magical ability to avoid the realities of the world.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: It will be so close to the election by the
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: time we either get to a deal or don't that
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: we will be able to, I think, make it a
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: big part of people's dissatisfaction with the economy, the high
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: cost of living, and everything that will carry on for
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: weeks from now, if not months from now.
• 24:42
  Speaker 4: It's also like the straight over moves is not a
• 24:43
  Speaker 4: valve you turn on and off. It's not like gas
• 24:45
  Speaker 4: is not flowing. It's like oil futures prices can go
• 24:48
  Speaker 4: down quickly, but tankers will now have to come out
• 24:52
  Speaker 4: and future tankers will have to go back in, load
• 24:55
  Speaker 4: up their gas and then transit it. Like I think
• 24:58
  Speaker 4: there are already reports that these oil and gas companies
• 25:00
  Speaker 4: are kind of moving cautiously because they don't know. Like
• 25:03
  Speaker 4: this isn't a final deal. There's no agreement. There's no
• 25:04
  Speaker 4: nuclear agreement. Trump is threatening to go back to war. Um,
• 25:08
  Speaker 4: and so I just don't think this is going to
• 25:09
  Speaker 4: be resolved quickly because it was like months probably.
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: I think even under the best case scenario, gas prices
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: come down between now and November, but they don't end
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: up where they were before this conflict started at all. Um,
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: because it's just going to take time. Even the most
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: conservative economic estimates are saying that. I also think for Democrats,
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: you go out there and it's like Donald Trump just
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: spent the last year embroiling this country in a war
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: that he lost that cost us, uh, upwards of maybe
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: $ 100 billion, and then however many more billion dollars people
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: paid in higher fuel costs. And he hasn't seemed to
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: have learned any lessons, nor have the Republicans in Congress.
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: And if you return a Republican Congress to him, they're
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: just going to create more war. They're going to jump
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: into more wars. He's still talking about Cuba. He still
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: has Greenland on his mind. The guy is a bloodthirsty maniac,
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: and so are the Republicans in Congress who approved it.
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: And do you want them to spend even more of
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: your money on more war? And making the, like, what
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: did this war get us? It got us nothing.
• 26:07
  Speaker 4: Nothing.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: Nothing.
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: It just cost, it got us nothing and it cost
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: us a lot.
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: 14 people died, thousands of people dying in the region.
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: And just like- And it made us less safe. It
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: didn't make the country any safer.
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: You know, when we talk about like, you know, like
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: costs being higher, like, and it's always very abstract. Like
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: people's lives were ruined by the fact that suddenly their
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: fuel went up or they suddenly didn't have access to
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: raw materials. Like this- had huge ramifications for the global
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: economy that we felt for a very long time. And
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: by the way, everyone who's just predicting, oh, this is
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: when gas prices will go down. This is when oil
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: prices will go down. The market says what the oil
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: is worth right now. The market says what the gas
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: prices will work. If people thought and knew that the
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: prices would go down, they'd already be down. People have
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: no idea what the future holds because we're dealing with
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: fucking maniacs and the complexities of reopening the strait and
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: all the rest. Nobody knows what gas prices will be
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: in September or October. If they did, that's what the
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: price would be.
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: So one funny footnote on the timing of when the
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: Iran agreement was announced, the Iranians didn't want to do
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: it on Trump's actual birthday. So they waited until it
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: was Monday in Tehran just to be as petty as fuck,
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: which got to hand it to him, I guess. Yeah,
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: I guess. They literally used the time change to keep
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: both Trump and the Iranians happy. So then Trump could
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: say he announced it on his birthday, but the Iranians
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: can say, no, we didn't. Because it was Monday.
• 27:24
  Speaker 4: It's not your 80th birthday.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: It's adults who care about their birthday. Everything being about
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: Trump's fucking birthday. It is also embarrassing. The Iranians feeling
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: like they can get one over on Trump by kind
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: of holding it to not sign it technically on the
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: birthday is stupid. But it's in response to dealing with
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: a guy that clearly wanted the fun of signing the
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: thing on his fucking birthday.
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: Which happened. We have a world run by tyrants. They're
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: all just little petty bitches. It's unbelievable.
• 27:45
  Speaker 4: So dumb.
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: Of course, none of this stopped Trump from celebrating the
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: deal or himself. He threw a low-key party at the
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: White House Sunday night where the South Lawn was transformed
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: into a Vegas-style UFC arena that hosted a cage match
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: attended by 4,000 lucky guests and broadcasted to Paramount Plus subscribers.
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: The $ 60 million event paid for by the UFC and
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: other sponsors was truly surreal to watch. Here's some of
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: what it looked like. I'll just sort of narrate this
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: for those of you who are just listening. Here's Trump
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: and Dana White walking out of the Oval. There's a flyover.
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: I love a good flyover. And here's an actual eagle.
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: That's cool.
• 28:25
  Speaker 4: Also pretty sick.
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: There's the fight. One of the fights, yeah. There's a couple.
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: There's a little Evel Knievel action happening. This is one
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: of the fighters walking out from the oval.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: Michelle Obama is a man! Am I right, America?
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Even the crowd is like, And that was Josh Hokut,
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: who won the heavyweight fight. He's apparently said that before.
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: This is like a bit of his. He said it
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: before in a fight. He put it on his Instagram
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: like last year. And so, you know, I don't know
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: if that makes.
• 29:00
  Speaker 4: It better or worse. It's a far right mega thing.
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: They've been saying it for a long time. Yeah, but
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: for him especially is what I'm saying. So what did
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: you guys think of the fight?
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: So... I feel like everybody combined a bunch of things.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: One was just the brazen corruption of the whole thing
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: and having Bud Light sponsorships on the White House lawn
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: and the crypto stuff and all the rest. The fact
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: that Donald Trump made this event about him and not
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: the country, I think that's a big part of it.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: If this were a Democratic White House that also had
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: poetry slams and readings by Pulitzer Prize winning journalists and
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: other kind of sophisticated events, and then One day Barack
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: Obama was like, guess what? We're gonna have motorcycles jumping
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: over each other on the South Lawn. I'd be like,
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: that's great. Having an Eagle fly around and land on
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: somebody's arm during the, during, uh, America celebration. That's great.
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: All these sort of busy bodies on social media being
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: like Thornton Wilder once visited the white house. Like guys, guys,
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: can you, can you please not be a bunch of prissy, uh,
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: stuck up people, people like fucking motorcycles. I have no
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: problem with that. That is entertaining, and it could be
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: on the White House lawn. Zero problem with that. It
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: is the corruption and then making it about him and
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: it being a right-wing MAGA thing.
• 30:07
  Speaker 4: That is the problem. Yeah, presidents hold events on the
• 30:09
  Speaker 4: South Lawn. Sometimes it's a concert. Sometimes it's the dude
• 30:12
  Speaker 4: in a bunny suit rolling Easter eggs. Sometimes it's a
• 30:14
  Speaker 4: cage fight.
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: It is what it is.
• 30:16
  Speaker 4: That didn't bother me either. The corporate sponsorship stuff that
• 30:19
  Speaker 4: we're going to get into in a minute is where
• 30:20
  Speaker 4: it gets really gross. But just politically, I don't know
• 30:23
  Speaker 4: that it was smart for Trump. I think UFC fans
• 30:25
  Speaker 4: will love it. Trump super fans will love it. Regular
• 30:29
  Speaker 4: people that are pissed about inflation are just going to
• 30:30
  Speaker 4: be like, what are you doing? How are you spending
• 30:32
  Speaker 4: your time this way? Reuters did a poll. Just 16%
• 30:35
  Speaker 4: of Americans said it was appropriate for Trump to hold
• 30:37
  Speaker 4: the ultimate fighting championship event for his 80th birthday, while
• 30:40
  Speaker 4: 46% said it was inappropriate. The rest were like, whatever.
• 30:43
  Speaker 4: I don't care anymore. So whatever.
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: It is what it is.
• 30:46
  Speaker 4: But also, there's a lot better sports to watch this
• 30:49
  Speaker 4: weekend than the next one. the NBA championship. There was
• 30:52
  Speaker 4: a million World Cup games. The Stanley Cup finals were on. Like,
• 30:55
  Speaker 4: I was doing other things. I don't have Paramount Plus,
• 30:57
  Speaker 4: so I couldn't.
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: Even watch it. We have Paramount Plus for some kids' programs.
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: And it was, so I watched the whole thing. And
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: I tried to watch it as someone who was just like, okay,
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: what if I was not really paying attention to politics?
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: What would this look like? And like, first of all,
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: the production value, outstanding, A plus. It looked great. Like,
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: the whole event looked really cool. There were, like, And look,
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: there are some UFC fighters who have commented publicly about
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: how this is like a gross thing to do and
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: cynical for the president to make it all about him.
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: And we're going to talk about the corruption and all that.
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: The parts that made it more about Trump were the
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: parts that you're like, what is this?
• 31:31
  Speaker 4: You know?
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: And first of all, also the fights weren't that great.
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: I'm not a UFC person, but it was like, all
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: of them were kind of quick and over.
• 31:37
  Speaker 4: First round knockouts.
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And they were like knockouts, but I don't know.
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: It was just, and then you see like, It's just
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: like the number of times it panned to Trump and
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: then it talked about Trump. And then like, then there's
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: Mark Zuckerberg and then there's the president of crypto.com and
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: all this kind of shit. And so like all of
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: the accoutrements around it were like, could get really annoying,
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: but the fight itself and the, and the way it
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: looked with the white house lit in the background, like
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: looked pretty cool.
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: Well, this is where like you will, we should talk,
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: we'll talk about the corruption, but this is where you
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: can't separate the fact that he is so corrupt from
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: the event itself because like, Donald Trump is trying to
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: steal the like patriotism and excitement and prestige of America's
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: birthday and kind of put it on himself. But the
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: end result is really just he gets his stink on
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: like the White House and the event itself. Because if
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: you didn't know that this was so partisan and so
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: corrupt and such a boondoggle and such favoritism and just
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: so much corporate interest, then like maybe it wouldn't be
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: so terrible. to have a flyover or to have Marines
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: standing behind a fighter, whatever. It may not be the
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: kind of thing I would normally want to watch, but
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: it wouldn't be so despicable, but to, to use the
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: military and to use these symbols for such a corrupt practice,
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: I think is why the whole thing becomes so sordid
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: and ugly.
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I will say the, um, walking the fighters out
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: through the oval and the dip room and having all
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: like the Marines there saluting the, like it was that,
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: that part was like a little, a little much.
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: Because it's a for-profit event.
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: And because, yeah, for-profit event and the whole America 250
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: thing too, because it's like, Whatever president is leading the
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: country when it's America's 250th or 275 or 300, whatever,
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: you get to do your own thing. But they sort
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: of went out of their way to make it feel
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: exclusionary to anyone who wasn't MAGA and just in the
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: way that they did the event. And not just by
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: being a UFC fight. You could have done a UFC fight.
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: that still seems welcoming and unifying to most of the country.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: This is where we're like, we're back to where Trump
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: was in the first term where he was always taking
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: pictures in front of the desk. They're fucking tourists because
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: they know they don't belong. And so they walk through
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: this gold-plated room that looks like it has a gold
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: fungal infection and kind of they show through these fighters
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: walking through all the rooms. Like a bit like the
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: kind of, it reminds me of like when like human
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: beings in some apocalyptic future stumble upon a museum and
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: they're walking through looking around being like, who built this?
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: How is this even here? Like that's sort of the
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: feeling of it to me. Pod Save America is brought
• 34:12
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• 34:21
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• 34:24
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• 34:27
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• 35:00
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• 35:17
  Speaker 2: It would have been entirely possible for Trump to throw
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: himself a $ 60 million UFC birthday party without also turning
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: it into an orgy of corruption, but that would take
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: all the fun out of it. First, the broadcast itself.
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: Dana White originally said that the fight would be free
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: on CBS, now owned by Paramount, but it ended up
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: on the $ 9. 99 per month Paramount +. Instead, Paramount is,
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: of course, owned now by Trump ally David Ellison. who
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: got a front row seat to the fight two days
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: after Trump's DOJ approved his latest acquisition of Warner Brothers Discovery,
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: which includes CNN. I think there was also like a
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: brunch or a dinner for David Ellison that weekend too.
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: Big party for that. So everyone was celebrating the big merger.
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: As for Trump himself, ahead of the fight, the president
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: quietly purchased between 15,000 and 50,000 worth of stock in
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: TKO Holding Group, which owns UFC.
• 36:07
  Speaker 4: Which is nothing for him, but like optically so stupid.
• 36:10
  Speaker 4: You know what I mean? Just don't do that.
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: Just doesn't care anymore. There were also some tweets that
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: appeared to be between Eric Trump and UFC commentator Daniel
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: Cormier looking for inside information for betting on the fights.
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: The Cormier is saying publicly that his account was hacked.
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: Not to fear, the fight still offered plenty of opportunities
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: to make the Trump family richer. Take a listen.
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: Tonight's $ 250, 000 performance bonus in USD1 is presented by World
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: Liberty Financial.
• 36:34
  Speaker 4: Closed captioning for tonight's broadcast.
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: Is brought to you by TrumpCoins.com, the official UFC Freedom
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: 250 special edition medallions. This ballot is proudly sponsored by
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: Truth Social, the real voice of President Trump. Download Truth
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: Social today.
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: Jesus. While I was watching that at home, that's when
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: I was like, this is just... It's too much.
• 36:55
  Speaker 4: God damn it.
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: If you didn't catch all that, one of the official
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: sponsors of the event was the Trump's family crypto operation,
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: World Liberty Financial. We've talked about this a lot here.
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: For this event, they created a $ 250, 000 bonus pool for
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: the fighters, which is to be paid in their stable coin, USD1.
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: And then you heard there was also a sponsorship plug
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: there for Trump coins.com, which is selling commemorative medallions designed
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: by president Trump at prices up to $ 12, 000 a piece.
• 37:22
  Speaker 4: Coin heavy event.
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: Real coin heavy.
• 37:24
  Speaker 4: Just an idiot tax. Whoever's buying these fucking coins.
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: Reacting to a bunch of these stories, the White House
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: said that Donald Trump only acts in the best interest
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: of the American public and that his assets are in
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: a trust managed by his children. So what's the problem, guys?
• 37:37
  Speaker 4: Jesus Christ. I mean, politically speaking, Trump should be furious
• 37:39
  Speaker 4: that this thing was on Paramount +, right?
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: That limits the distribution.
• 37:43
  Speaker 4: That hurts him, right? This is his propaganda event. Why
• 37:45
  Speaker 4: is it not seen by more people? So you're like, okay,
• 37:47
  Speaker 4: I get what Paramount Plus got. They got to add
• 37:49
  Speaker 4: subs to get people to buy this.
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: What's the kickback?
• 37:52
  Speaker 4: I'd like to know. The crypto stuff is disgraceful. Remember, like,
• 37:57
  Speaker 4: USD one is their stable coin. Remember the Trump's got
• 37:59
  Speaker 4: the Emiratis to use their stable coin in this transaction
• 38:01
  Speaker 4: when they invested 2 billion into Binance that like made
• 38:04
  Speaker 4: it the seventh biggest stable coin in the world. And
• 38:07
  Speaker 4: then Reuters did this big investigation of the Trump family
• 38:09
  Speaker 4: crypto assets. They found the Trump family has made 2.3
• 38:12
  Speaker 4: billion in profit. And then of course, on the other
• 38:14
  Speaker 4: side of that, you have like a million retail investors
• 38:17
  Speaker 4: who've gotten fleeced and have taken 2.3 billion in losses.
• 38:21
  Speaker 4: So this is just an ongoing show of the way
• 38:25
  Speaker 4: they're using crypto just to like ring money out of
• 38:28
  Speaker 4: their followers. I find the, the Eric Trump, what's his name?
• 38:33
  Speaker 4: Daniel Cormier thing makes no sense.
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: Like Eric Trump.
• 38:37
  Speaker 4: So those stories, he DM the guy said, Hey, is
• 38:40
  Speaker 4: this fight rigged? Cause I want to bet on it.
• 38:42
  Speaker 4: And then Cormier is like, no, I got AI hacked.
• 38:45
  Speaker 4: What does that mean?
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: You posted the tweet.
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: It didn't make sense when Eric said he deleted it
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: because it was fake, but then why would he have
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: posted it? Eric Trump was the, The first time I
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: believed it might be true was when Eric Trump posted
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: about it.
• 38:57
  Speaker 4: Yes, me too.
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: And then Daniel Cormier, he was asked about it at
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: the fight and was just like, that's crazy. Why would
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: anyone believe that? And then he tweeted, are you all stupid?
• 39:05
  Speaker 4: You posted it.
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: It's interesting because if you look at the exchanges that
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: they posted or the DMs that they posted, it's very–
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: it's not like– It's not as obvious as like, hello,
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: are there any fights rigged? I would like to bet
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: on them. Like, hey, how's it going? And he's like, oh,
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: I didn't expect to hear from you, man. How it's
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: good to see you and your family at the fight.
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: Can't wait. He's like, hey, he placed any bets. And
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: then he just keeps going. He's like, all right, fine.
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: I'll get to it. Any of the fights rigged? Who
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: knows what's real or what's fake anymore. Anything could have happened.
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: Could have been hacked. Someone could have done it. I
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: don't know.
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, this is the problem with these people being
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: corrupt liars. They're corrupt liars who... It is completely believable
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: to me that it's fake. It is completely believable to
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: me that it is true. You have no credibility as
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: human beings.
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: I would not be surprised in either direction.
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: You are completely morally vacant operators who are profiting every
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: day off the office. We can't take your word for it.
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: Maybe we'll never know the truth because everyone around you
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: is a liar, but that's the price of being so dishonest,
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: I guess.
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: Celebrity attendance at the event was mostly limited to the
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: mega billionaire sector, in addition to David Ellison and the crypto.com CEO.
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: MMA enthusiast and masculinity advocate Mark Zuckerberg was in attendance.
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: Maybe not quite out of Della's baggage claim yet were
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: executives from Anthropic, who apparently flew to the Capitol last
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: minute to meet with the Trump administration on Monday. On Friday,
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: the administration slapped export controls on the company's top AI models,
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: which forced Anthropic to take Fable 5 and Mythos 5 offline.
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: Anyone want to talk about what this is all about
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: with Anthropic and whether it has anything to do with
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: their earlier dispute with the Pentagon?
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: This to me, actually similar to the Eric Trump thing,
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: it's because we know that they picked this fight with
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: Anthropic a few months ago. It's actually hard to know
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: what's true. If you read the details, there does seem
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: to have been a legitimate concern with access to the
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: models that were raised by Amazon and others. But then
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: it appears the administration, which has a vendetta against Anthropic,
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: maybe went too far in its reaction. And now the
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: executives have to fly to DC to make nice because
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: it's not about what's in the interest of the Pentagon
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: or the country, but it's about personal relationships and ego.
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: And so they have to figure out how to smooth
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: things over. And it is just very hard to tell
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: the difference between penalizing Anthropic because it's now an enemy
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: of the administration versus actually stepping in because there may
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: have been an issue or if it's somewhere in between.
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 41:27
  Speaker 4: I mean, so there was a concern about Anthropix model
• 41:30
  Speaker 4: and the ability for it to find cybersecurity vulnerabilities and
• 41:33
  Speaker 4: exploit them. So they limited the distribution. And then these
• 41:35
  Speaker 4: researchers at Amazon got access to Fable 5, which is like,
• 41:38
  Speaker 4: it's like mythos with guardrails that they released to the public.
• 41:42
  Speaker 4: They were able to trick it essentially into giving them
• 41:45
  Speaker 4: restricted information. And then the Amazon CEO tattled to Scott
• 41:49
  Speaker 4: Besson about what happened. That's exactly what he did. That's
• 41:52
  Speaker 4: what he did. And normally I'd be like, actually, that's good.
• 41:54
  Speaker 4: That's like how the system should work because you want
• 41:57
  Speaker 4: sort of a circuit breaker there in some way to
• 41:59
  Speaker 4: prevent the distribution of these models to bad actors. What
• 42:03
  Speaker 4: the administration did was they cut off access for foreign users.
• 42:08
  Speaker 4: But yeah, I mean, just the thing that was so
• 42:11
  Speaker 4: odd about this is all the little Trump propagandists went
• 42:14
  Speaker 4: to Twitter and they tried to dance on Anthropic's grave
• 42:16
  Speaker 4: and they gave all of us reason to think, oh, actually,
• 42:18
  Speaker 4: this is just part of this ongoing pissing match between
• 42:22
  Speaker 4: Anthropic and the Pentagon. Because Anthropic doesn't want to create
• 42:27
  Speaker 4: autonomous killer drones or be used in bulk mass surveillance
• 42:31
  Speaker 4: of American citizens.
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was hard to read between the lines in
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: the Axios story about it too, which is also, it's like,
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: you know, that the Axios story sort of came mostly
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: from the administration. And there's some administration official on background
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: saying like, the real problem is they don't know how to,
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: Anthropic doesn't know how to communicate with this administration and
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: And the ideological differences are really getting in the way.
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: And it's like, what does that have to do with
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: a potential security vulnerability that you're saying was the root
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: of the problem here? What does the ideological differences in
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: communication have to do with anything?
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: Also, if you know that, If you have insight enough
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: to know they're not communicating effectively with you, then it
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: seems you know what they're trying to communicate.
• 43:06
  Speaker 4: Just call them.
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: Hey, you're not being nice enough in how you're handling me.
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: If you want me to do what you want, you
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: better be a little bit more sensitive to my issues
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: and my needs.
• 43:15
  Speaker 4: And anthropics preparing for an IPO. It seems like a
• 43:18
  Speaker 4: great way to damage them in advance of that.
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 43:20
  Speaker 4: Yeah but for what it's worth we should say Dana
• 43:22
  Speaker 4: White and a bunch of other participants at the White
• 43:24
  Speaker 4: House event condemned the comments about Michelle Obama which was
• 43:27
  Speaker 4: nice to see now the right thing to do would
• 43:29
  Speaker 4: be Donald Trump to call Michelle Obama and say I'm
• 43:30
  Speaker 4: so sorry that was disgusting but that will obviously but the.
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: White House spokesperson wouldn't even make a just sort of
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: brush bastard refuse to apologize well.
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: It's funny in the moment you can actually see Rogan's
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: face as soon as he said it and Rogan was
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: sort of like you know like backed away like oh god.
• 43:43
  Speaker 4: Do you see how small his tie was.
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: It was very it's like a half a tie it
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: went to here you could tell that like the Yeah,
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: the Dana Whites, the people– and Donald Trump was– like, yeah. Like,
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: Donald Trump was probably like, yeah. He probably loved it.
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: I agree.
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: He's reposted stuff like that in the past.
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: Well, the guy then gave his, like, medal to Donald Trump,
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: the guy who made the comment, and Donald Trump accepted it.
• 44:02
  Speaker 4: So it's just like– I mean, Trump posted a video
• 44:04
  Speaker 4: of the two of them. Right. Those apes.
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Sort of six months ago. Threw the looking glass
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: on that one. One more corrupt date that broke as
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: we were preparing to record this. Gavin Newsom said in
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: a video Monday morning that he and his wife are
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: being targeted by Trump's DOJ, saying that federal agents have
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: been knocking on the doors of their family, friends and
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: former employees. In Newsom's words, he said they're digging through, quote,
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: years and years of documents and, quote, abusing the grand
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: jury process, trying to, quote, look for crime. Then there
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: was this line. Donald Trump isn't just coming after me
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: because of my mean tweets. He's coming after me because
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: I'm considering running for president. He then went on to
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: attack Trump on corruption for several minutes. We didn't get
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: a ton of detail from Newsom's statement other than the
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: DOJ seems to be focused on Jen, his wife. I
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: saw some takes about how this will be great for
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: Newsom's potential presidential campaign and fundraising. Sure. But it also
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: seems like a like a fairly chilling preview of what's
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: to come in 2028 for any Democrat who runs for president.
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: I don't know. What do you guys think?
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Look, it's, it's nice to say it's, uh, great
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: for fundraising before we know any of the details about
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: what the charges could be, how serious it is, what
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: they're trying to do. But, uh, I don't think anybody,
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: even if it does make them get some attention is
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: excited to find out that they're sort of, there's a
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: grand jury trying to indict you. And, uh, you know,
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: we have, uh, gone from Pam Bondi, who was, uh,
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: as like pliant and willing to do Trump's bidding as
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: you could imagine until we got to, uh, Todd Blanche,
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: who somehow even worse, Trump just put his personal attorney
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: in charge of the Southern district of New York. We
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: have a completely politicized department of justice, unlike anything we've
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: ever had before in our history. And part of the
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: job will be about not only preventing those things from
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: impacting our politics directly, but also figuring out how to
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: create guardrails and fix it in the future.
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: Once Trump is gone.
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 45:52
  Speaker 4: As much as I, um, I can understand the kind
• 45:54
  Speaker 4: of galaxy brain to political takes. Like the human take
• 45:56
  Speaker 4: is Gavin Newsom sits down at dinner and is like, hey, honey,
• 45:59
  Speaker 4: this is going to help me in the early states. Like,
• 46:01
  Speaker 4: what are we talking about here? It's like horribly chilling
• 46:03
  Speaker 4: for your wife to be potentially prosecuted by the Department
• 46:06
  Speaker 4: of Justice, even if she did nothing wrong.
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: It's scary.
• 46:07
  Speaker 4: It'll cost them money. It'll cost them time. Yeah, look,
• 46:10
  Speaker 4: the maximally cynical view is that Trump is doing this
• 46:12
  Speaker 4: because he thinks Gavin's talented and a possible competitor to
• 46:15
  Speaker 4: the Republican Party and wants to take him out of
• 46:18
  Speaker 4: the race preemptively by going after his family. maybe it's
• 46:22
  Speaker 4: all on the merits, right? There was a Gavin Newsom's
• 46:24
  Speaker 4: former aide was just prosecuted. Maybe it's coming out of that.
• 46:27
  Speaker 4: What we know is Trump has openly called on his
• 46:29
  Speaker 4: attorney general to go after his enemies. He just tried
• 46:32
  Speaker 4: to install Bill Pulte, a man with no national security
• 46:34
  Speaker 4: experience as the director of national intelligence solely because that
• 46:38
  Speaker 4: man has shown a creativity in using his access to
• 46:41
  Speaker 4: information to go after Trump's critics. So it seems like
• 46:44
  Speaker 4: part of a pattern.
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: I mean, it is the cynical view. It's also the like,
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: everything we've seen from Trump over the last decade leads
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: you to believe that whoever he thinks is leading in
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: the race for the Democratic nomination, he's going to look
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: to see if there were any kind of possibilities for investigation, right?
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: Like that's all it takes too is, so yeah, so
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: Gavin Newsom's former aide, right, who ended up, you know,
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: being convicted or taking a deal or something based on
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: activities that preceded her time working for Gavin Newsom at all,
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: but doesn't matter. You know, like Jen Newsom has some
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: kind of a nonprofit and is there, is there questions
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: about the nonprofit and the payments, like any, any thread that,
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: that Trump and the, his administration can pull on any
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: of these potential contenders, they will. And probably knowing that
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: they can't actually investigate all of them at once when
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: they're all on the primary stage together, they're going to
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: go after the people who are leading in the polls.
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: And really, I think the only way you're going to
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: avoid investigation from Donald Trump is if you were last
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: place in the polls and suddenly surprise everyone and then win,
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: win a race. And then, you know, then they'll get
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: an investigation going pretty fast. But that's how it's going
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: to go.
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: We need like a junior soprano to be the kind of,
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: to be the face of the operation while Tony's running
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: things behind the scenes.
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: Ben Jacobs on Twitter was like, this is a good
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: case for Hunter Biden being the nominee since he was already,
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: already pardoned. Can't be investigated again. Don't get many ideas.
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: He's already flooding.
• 48:13
  Speaker 4: Himself for this.
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: But that, I mean, it is, it's, it's pretty, it's
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: to me, it was like a preview of even now
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: where we're like, okay, Democrats could do all in the midterms.
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: Everything's fine. Like we're heading to 2028 and the idea
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: that this is just going to be some kind of
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: a fair fight. And even if there's a lot between, uh,
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: Donald Trump refusing to leave the white house or running
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: for a third term and then everything going swimmingly and
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: nothing happened, there's just a ton of room between them.
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: We, I think we just can say whoever is the
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: democratic nominee, uh, regardless of what investigation will launch for
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: the primary, there will be an intensive effort to try
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: to paint them as a corrupt criminal between sort of say,
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: sort of June and the election.
• 48:54
  Speaker 4: They will use all the power at their disposal. They
• 48:56
  Speaker 4: will try to muddy the waters.
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: And by the way, like part of this is, this
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: is why selective prosecution is so dangerous. We live in
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: a free society and we know that if you start
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: digging into anyone's finances, taxes, history, you can try to
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: drum something up. You can find a discrepancy. You can
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: find something that you can use to bring to a
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: grand jury. That is what it is so dangerous to
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: have a DOJ.
• 49:19
  Speaker 4: Like this.
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: And you know that the client right-wing media, if they
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: find anything, they will say, well, look, this was a
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: legitimate investigation. They found this IRS discrepancy. This needed to
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: be punished. And without sort of any understanding of how
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: dangerous it is to have people being chosen as targets
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: to look for crimes.
• 49:36
  Speaker 4: Did Gavin front run this?
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 49:38
  Speaker 4: I was going to say, the Times story, I wonder
• 49:40
  Speaker 4: if they had a call from the Times saying we're
• 49:41
  Speaker 4: running this and they got ahead of it or how
• 49:44
  Speaker 4: this went down.
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: Because the Times story does have some Newsom officials on
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: background in there. And it also has some officials, I guess,
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: from the Justice Department as well, though the Justice Department
• 49:55
  Speaker 2: won't comment officially, obviously. They also said that it was
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: like started by federal officials in California, not in Washington, uh,
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: the investigation. But I do think that it was, we
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: haven't talked about like the politics of this, but I
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: thought it was smart that, that Newsom got out ahead
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: of it and was able to frame it as Trump coming.
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 50:14
  Speaker 4: I mean, like it just shows how much, um, communications
• 50:16
  Speaker 4: have changed over the last decade or two because normally
• 50:19
  Speaker 4: when there's some sort of criminal prosecution or investigation, you
• 50:22
  Speaker 4: don't say anything. You let your lawyer speak or you
• 50:25
  Speaker 4: don't comment and you don't want to put anything else
• 50:26
  Speaker 4: in the public domain. Um, They view this as a
• 50:29
  Speaker 4: PR battle, which tells you, you know, they probably feel
• 50:32
  Speaker 4: confident about the legal side of things and they just
• 50:34
  Speaker 4: want to get ahead of the political fight.
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: I also think this is going to be a collective
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: action problem because everyone's interests are obviously not aligned here.
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: But for the other Democratic and no one's announced yet,
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: so it doesn't work right now. But as we get
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: into this, like all the other Democratic candidates, someone gets
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: targeted like this, even if it's your potential rival. You
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: got to go out and say that it's absolutely bullshit
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: and stick up for them. And they all get to
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: stick up for each other. Yeah.
• 50:58
  Speaker 4: I think that's also free, by the way.
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: Like, I don't think there's a lot of equity for
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: Pete Buttigieg saying, like, I think Trump has a point
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: about Newsom.
• 51:02
  Speaker 4: Like, I don't think there's a lot of votes in that.
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but there's a difference between waiting to get asked
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: about it and saying that and then coming out strongly
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: and saying it's going to be a fucking problem.
• 51:12
  Speaker 4: What about going down to John Bolton's prison and singing
• 51:15
  Speaker 4: him some sort of song through the bars? Yeah.
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: Where is he right now? Because I saw his comment.
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: He cut a deal, right?
• 51:22
  Speaker 4: He's cutting a deal, but he could– I don't think
• 51:24
  Speaker 4: it's gone through the process yet, but I think he
• 51:25
  Speaker 4: could get up to five years even with this deal.
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: I thought it was just money. I thought he was
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: just paying money.
• 51:30
  Speaker 4: The reporting I read was fine and potentially up to
• 51:33
  Speaker 4: five years and hopefully for his sake that there will
• 51:36
  Speaker 4: be some leniency. But like the dude was like sending–
• 51:39
  Speaker 4: emails to himself and to his wife and daughter with
• 51:42
  Speaker 4: classified information. It's like the dumbest thing you could possibly do.
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: Look, I've said this before. I'll say it again. I
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: hate what Donald Trump has done to the DOJ. I
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: will not be angry if James Comey goes to prison. Wow.
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: 86, 47 over here.
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: Listen, I'll obviously be upset about the injustice, but I'm
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: just saying he used a couple of nights behind those
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: bars to think about what he's done. I'm just, he's
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: so tall and he's made so many mistakes. I think
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: it's morally reprehensible. I don't think it's a good thing.
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: I'm just saying, I think.
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: He'll think a lot about what he does. I think
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: the videos he does, his posts, everything he does, I
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: think that has been an imprisonment all.
• 52:15
  Speaker 4: Of its own. Sure.
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: I don't think he needs to see the actual inside
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: of a jail cell.
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: Just saying.
• 52:20
  Speaker 4: No worries, a bulwark exclusive.
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: Stare up at that ceiling. Run that tin cup across
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: the bars, James Comey.
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: MSNBC reports that the Trump administration has been pressuring DOJ
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: officials to come up with a case against Gavin Newsom.
• 52:32
  Speaker 5: Of course.
• 52:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, so there you go.
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: All right, when we come back, Tommy talks to Senator
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: Mark Warner.
• 52:46
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• 53:51
  Speaker 4: My guest today is vice chair of the Senate Intelligence
• 53:54
  Speaker 4: Committee and the senior U.S.
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: Senator from Virginia.
• 53:56
  Speaker 4: Senator Warner, thanks for doing the show.
• 53:58
  Speaker 5: Thanks, Tommy.
• 53:59
  Speaker 4: So we are speaking on Monday afternoon, Pacific time. We're
• 54:01
  Speaker 4: still waiting with bated breath to see if we'll ever
• 54:04
  Speaker 4: see the actual text of whatever Donald Trump negotiated with
• 54:08
  Speaker 4: Iran about their, you know, the Strait of Hormuz. What
• 54:11
  Speaker 4: do you know about this digitally signed memorandum of understanding
• 54:15
  Speaker 4: between the U.S. and Iran? What do you make on
• 54:17
  Speaker 4: sort of the leaks and reporting on it so far?
• 54:19
  Speaker 5: I know Zippo. I know nothing more than you. And
• 54:23
  Speaker 5: I think, frankly, even my Republican Senate friends have not
• 54:27
  Speaker 5: seen any of this. We do wonder whether this was
• 54:30
  Speaker 5: timed for his birthday or to try to affect the
• 54:33
  Speaker 5: markets today. We do know I think this is less
• 54:38
  Speaker 5: than what it appears. And we knew at some point
• 54:41
  Speaker 5: Trump was going to declare victory. And the sooner we
• 54:44
  Speaker 5: get out of this war of choice, the better. But
• 54:47
  Speaker 5: if– I hate to kind of like suck up, but
• 54:50
  Speaker 5: if you look at your tweets today, you are absolutely
• 54:55
  Speaker 5: right on all four of the goals that Trump laid
• 54:57
  Speaker 5: out were not close to any of them.
• 54:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 54:59
  Speaker 4: It sounds like we maybe have an agreement to have
• 55:01
  Speaker 4: more talks where they will try to get to an
• 55:03
  Speaker 4: agreement that's about the nuclear program, the ballistic missiles, support
• 55:07
  Speaker 4: for proxies, et cetera. But it's all forward-looking as far
• 55:11
  Speaker 4: as I can tell, right?
• 55:13
  Speaker 5: Yeah. The things we do know are this. The regime
• 55:17
  Speaker 5: is more hardcore now than it was before. The new leader,
• 55:20
  Speaker 5: since we killed his dad, his wife, his kid, more hardcore.
• 55:24
  Speaker 5: We do know that the Iranians have been masters for
• 55:27
  Speaker 5: years at trying to hide the ball on their enriched uranium.
• 55:32
  Speaker 5: And the idea that we're somehow gonna get this without
• 55:35
  Speaker 5: troops on the ground or by some international agreement, God willing,
• 55:39
  Speaker 5: but I'm not gonna hold my breath. The fact that
• 55:41
  Speaker 5: the DoD and HEGSEF misrepresented how much we had taken
• 55:45
  Speaker 5: out of the Iranian ballistic missiles, obviously not the case
• 55:49
  Speaker 5: since they're still shooting them off and that doesn't even
• 55:51
  Speaker 5: count their drones. And then we've taken what was an
• 55:54
  Speaker 5: international open gateway of passage straight up Hormuz, and Iran
• 56:01
  Speaker 5: will have something to say on a going forward basis.
• 56:04
  Speaker 5: None of that makes us, none of that makes our
• 56:06
  Speaker 5: Gulf allies, none of it even frankly makes Israel stronger
• 56:09
  Speaker 5: than when we started 107 days ago.
• 56:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, Senator, I noticed in the run-ups of
• 56:13
  Speaker 4: the war, the Iran hawks trotted out of the new
• 56:16
  Speaker 4: talking point, which is that Iran could create a ballistic
• 56:19
  Speaker 4: missile arsenal that was so great that it might be
• 56:21
  Speaker 4: able to prevent the U.S. and Israel from taking out
• 56:24
  Speaker 4: their nuclear infrastructure in the future. So I do want
• 56:27
  Speaker 4: to ask you about the state of that ballistic missile
• 56:29
  Speaker 4: inventory and their capacity to manufacture new ballistic missiles. What
• 56:34
  Speaker 4: do we know that you can discuss publicly?
• 56:37
  Speaker 5: Well, we know that we have degraded some– it's both
• 56:41
  Speaker 5: the missiles and their launchers. We took out some of them.
• 56:44
  Speaker 5: The earlier estimates– and I can say this because it's
• 56:46
  Speaker 5: in the public– that we had eliminated 70%, 80%, 90%
• 56:49
  Speaker 5: are just factually not true. And they have had– Many
• 56:56
  Speaker 5: of the launchers as well are still existing. They can
• 57:02
  Speaker 5: obviously reconstitute some of these missiles. We have not been
• 57:05
  Speaker 5: able to blow up how all that started. And these
• 57:09
  Speaker 5: missiles are significant, but again, we took down many of them.
• 57:15
  Speaker 5: But as we go into this war of choice, what
• 57:16
  Speaker 5: we have done, and this is the part where the
• 57:18
  Speaker 5: Iranians I think will come back unfortunately and bite us,
• 57:22
  Speaker 5: is they have been dribbling out their missiles. We have
• 57:25
  Speaker 5: been using both with the missiles and the drones very
• 57:29
  Speaker 5: expensive interceptors that cost $ 2. 5 million apiece. And they have
• 57:34
  Speaker 5: bled down our supplies, our supplies, Gulf allies, even Israel's supplies,
• 57:40
  Speaker 5: so that if they have anything close to what we
• 57:44
  Speaker 5: presume– they can continue to bleed that down. And at
• 57:47
  Speaker 5: some point, we won't have the capacity to take them out.
• 57:49
  Speaker 5: One of the reasons why it was so insane that
• 57:53
  Speaker 5: we didn't take the Ukrainians offer in December, where they
• 57:56
  Speaker 5: were going to say, we will give you our anti-drone technology,
• 58:00
  Speaker 5: which they have the best in the world, which could
• 58:02
  Speaker 5: have at least taken down the Iranian drones.
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: Right, right.
• 58:06
  Speaker 4: And you mentioned the new sort of set of leaders.
• 58:08
  Speaker 4: I mean, the previous supreme leader of Iran was quite
• 58:11
  Speaker 4: well known. He'd been around for a while. as were
• 58:14
  Speaker 4: a lot of the senior members of the IRGC and
• 58:16
  Speaker 4: the Iranian military. Then Israel and the U.S. killed a
• 58:20
  Speaker 4: lot of them. Now Iran is led by this new
• 58:23
  Speaker 4: crop of leaders. The Supreme Leader's son is apparently really
• 58:26
  Speaker 4: wounded and in hiding, but presumably more hardline than maybe
• 58:30
  Speaker 4: his father, since we killed his dad, we killed his wife,
• 58:33
  Speaker 4: we killed his kids, I think, reportedly. Now there's a
• 58:36
  Speaker 4: new crop of younger IRGC generals who seem to be
• 58:39
  Speaker 4: more firmly entrenched. Trump keeps saying that the new crowd
• 58:41
  Speaker 4: is more pragmatic. What do you know about the new crowd?
• 58:45
  Speaker 5: There is absolutely zero evidence that anybody in the new
• 58:50
  Speaker 5: crowd is more pragmatic, that is more westward leaning. They
• 58:55
  Speaker 5: may live in fear, and I think we have put
• 58:58
  Speaker 5: fear of God in them, but the idea that they're
• 59:02
  Speaker 5: more willing to make a deal, there has been no
• 59:04
  Speaker 5: evidence to date that I've seen in any intelligence on that.
• 59:08
  Speaker 5: As a matter of fact, the structure in Orion was
• 59:12
  Speaker 5: they always had– they have a government and they have
• 59:14
  Speaker 5: a former military that's a little bit separate from the IRGC.
• 59:18
  Speaker 5: The one thing that is the case is that the government,
• 59:20
  Speaker 5: which was sometimes more moderate in the more traditional military,
• 59:24
  Speaker 5: they have lost power in this last 108 days. So IRGC,
• 59:27
  Speaker 5: more– radical, more in power.
• 59:31
  Speaker 2: Excellent.
• 59:32
  Speaker 4: A big win for us. What we think is maybe
• 59:34
  Speaker 4: the outlines of a future deal would require Israel to
• 59:38
  Speaker 4: honor a ceasefire in Lebanon against Hezbollah as well. Do
• 59:41
  Speaker 4: you have any confidence that Netanyahu or Hezbollah will honor
• 59:44
  Speaker 4: that ceasefire? Because it seems like Netanyahu has a pretty
• 59:47
  Speaker 4: decent political incentive to blow up the deal, given the
• 59:50
  Speaker 4: initial response to it in Israel.
• 59:52
  Speaker 5: I have no confidence that Bibi, who's got his own
• 59:56
  Speaker 5: political problems, and I think in many ways has it
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 5: really hurt Israel's reputation in the region and around the world.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 5: And in the, again, tragedy on top of tragedy, I
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 5: think there was a moment in the fact that Israel
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 5: is negotiating with the Lebanese government. If we could have
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 5: actually put some oomph behind that and help the Lebanese government,
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 5: who does have a military, actually disarm Hezbollah, the people
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 5: of Lebanon might have come out of this better. They
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 5: are not now, and And instead, you've got the Netanyahu
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 5: government bombing not only the Shia, but unfortunately, Druze, Christian
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 5: and Sunni villages in the south. And my fear is
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 5: pushing some of the Lebanese, you know, back into the
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 5: hands of Hezbollah. Yeah.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 4: And it sounds like Israel has not agreed to pull
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 4: its troops out of Lebanon. My understandings are occupying, you know,
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 4: up to sort of six miles over the border. I'm
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 4: just wondering how an ongoing occupation is not likely to
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 4: lead to renewed, if not increased conflict?
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 5: Was that called a softball question?
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 5: You know, it's like, yeah. And we've seen, you know,
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 5: Bibi's got his own political problems. He's under indictment. He
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 5: has to maintain this far right agenda. And my fear
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 5: is not only Lebanon, but what also is taking place.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 5: And one of the reasons why I voted against even
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 5: giving any more bulldozers to Israel The other tragedy that's
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 5: taking place is what's happening on the West Bank as
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 5: the Israeli settlers, frankly, do awful things on some of
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 5: the Palestinian villages.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 4: Just big picture. I mean, I'm struggling with how to
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 4: talk about this as a Democrat because I think the
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 4: best option available to Donald Trump was ending the war
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 4: as soon as humanly possible for a variety of reasons,
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 4: but especially because I was worried that this was going
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 4: to lead to a famine in places like Sudan and
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 4: and mass starvation and death because fertilizer and fuel just
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 4: wasn't getting through the strait. At the same time, I
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 4: don't think we should give Donald Trump a pass for
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 4: launching this catastrophic, unnecessary war because all the outcomes he
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 4: might get through this negotiation process he could have gotten
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 4: just by talking to them in the first place and
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 4: not bombing them. So how are you thinking about how
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 4: to talk about this?
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 5: Tommy, it is such a... That is a very fair question.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 5: I don't want to... Trump gets no credit for this
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 5: war of choice and where we are. And that doesn't
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 5: even count the $ 100 billion of assets we've lost in
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 5: the region. It doesn't cost the $ 60 billion of increased
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 5: gas prices. It doesn't cost the effect of in Sudan
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 5: and elsewhere. But I'm not going to– but the question
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 5: is I'm not going to just blast him for ending
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 5: it because ending it was– this agreement will not stand
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 5: the test of any scrutiny. I'm not going to give
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 5: him credit, but I'm glad he ended it rather than
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 5: continued what could have led to even a worse circumstance.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 5: So I actually think on this one, there is no
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 5: way even a Trumpian figure can turn this into anything
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 5: other than what it is, is that America and our
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 5: friends are in a worse place than we were at
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 5: the end of February.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, agreed with you there.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 4: Switching gears a little bit. So Trump tried to install
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 4: a man named Bill Pulte as the director of national intelligence.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 4: I'd love to hear your thoughts on why you think
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 4: he made that selection, whether Pulte even would have met
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 4: the statutory requirements for the job. I should say he
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 4: yanked Pulte's nomination after Democrats in the Senate said, hell no,
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 4: no way. And did that selection make you even more
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 4: worried about how Trump might abuse the intelligence community?
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 5: Bill Pulte is a third generation rich kid who literally
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 5: got thrown out of his own family's company.
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 5: And then taking what would be a relatively benign oversight
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 5: of the mortgage, Fannie and Freddie, was able to take
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 5: private information about Lisa Cook at the Federal Reserve, Adam Schiff,
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 5: one of my colleagues, and weaponize that. I do think
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 5: figures in the White House tried to prevent Trump from
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 5: doing this. But as always the case, Pulte or whoever
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 5: speaks to the president last, he got him he got
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 5: him put in. And this came at a moment in
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 5: time when we have to reauthorize something called Section 702,
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 5: which is a critical intelligence tool that the Bidens, Obamas,
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 5: everybody supported. And we've used our leverage to say, we're
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 5: not going to reauthorize 702 if Pulte is there. Now,
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 5: my concern, frankly, is 702 has got enough bells and
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 5: whistles and audits, that if he misuses that, it will be,
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 5: I think we'll find it. I'm more concerned about the
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 5: fact that this guy who doesn't even have a national
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 5: security clearance suddenly gets the keys to 18 agencies, maliciously
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 5: or not gets exposed to things that could be a
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 5: huge security risk. And our challenge right now, and this
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 5: goes down the rabbit hole, you know, Trump has finally
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 5: appointed somebody else, someone who, you know, I've worked with
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 5: at times. I still need to ask him, Jay Clayton,
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 5: who was the former SEC head and the current US
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 5: attorney for the Southern District of Manhattan. I want to
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 5: make sure he's not going to interfere in our elections
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 5: and basic constitutional rights. But if we delay getting him in,
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 5: Pulte could still serve and there's nothing we can do
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 5: as an interim for a few days. And I think
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 5: the Democrats in the Senate will have to decide, do
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 5: we wave to get this through? He will get confirmed.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 5: I hope the sooner the later so that we don't
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 5: have Pulte in this office, hopefully ever.
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 4: Oh, so that's why you're trying to fast track Jay
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 4: Clayton's nomination to try to shrink the amount of time
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 4: that Pulte could be in that job?
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: Yes, sir.
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 5: And again, and it's like– and the irony– and here's
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 5: the thing. I had huge problems with Tulsi Gabbard, the
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 5: current– she was going to stay until the end of
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 5: the month. Pulte tried to fire her and they advanced
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 5: her leaving date till this coming Friday. If she would
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 5: just– I never say I want to say Gabbard stay.
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 5: But if she would stay until the beginning of July,
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 5: we could get it done in two weeks.
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 5: Whether we get it done in one week will be, frankly,
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 5: up to my Democratic colleagues who, you know, they can
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 5: vote against Clayton. They can vote against 702. But please,
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 5: let's separate keeping Pulte out of the job and the the,
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 5: you know. the renewal of Section 702.
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 4: I'm with you on prioritizing keeping Pulte away from all
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 4: of that information. I did want to ask you about
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 4: FISA Section 702, though, because for those who aren't familiar,
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 4: this is a provision that lets the intelligence community get
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 4: information from American telecom companies to turn over the electronic
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 4: communications of foreign persons located outside of the United States.
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 2: Without a warrant.
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 4: And civil liberties advocates have long been concerned about 702
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 4: because of the potential for abuse, and also because communications
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 4: to and from American citizens and those foreign persons are
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 4: often captured in the process without a warrant and could
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 4: be reviewed by people investigating them, the information. So in
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 4: the past, I have mostly felt like on balance that
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 4: Section 02 was defensible for a variety of reasons. It
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 4: is the thing that national security professionals will tell you
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 4: is the most important tool in their toolkit. But I'll
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 4: tell you, after the Pulte selection, I no longer have
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 4: confidence that Trump won't use all of these tools to
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 4: abuse his authority. So why am I wrong? Like, why
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 4: am I wrong that Democrats should fight this?
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 5: Well, first of all, Section 702, which has had prior abuses,
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 5: we've gone through three rounds of reforms. The FBI used
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 5: to be very callous about how it used it. They
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 5: went from only 60 percent compliance to 98 percent compliance.
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 5: on making sure that appropriate checks and balances are dealt with,
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 5: number one. Number two, my concern with Pulte is so great,
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 5: not about 702, because there are enough reporting that he
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 5: will at least be discovered. Now that may not assuage you,
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 5: but there will be an audit trail, whereas he could
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 5: try to get other information that doesn't have near the
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 5: same audit trail. And then I do think there is a,
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 5: One of the things that took me a long time
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 5: to wrap my head around this. So you've got two
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 5: Russian spies, one in Moscow, one in Paris. They're talking
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 5: about these. They keep mentioning this guy, Tommy. And we
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 5: don't know from listening whether Tommy is collaborating with the
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 5: Russians or someone the Russians are going after to see
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 5: if they can hack into Tommy and actually be a victim.
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 5: And the idea, this is the part that I don't
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 5: think people fully understand. If we want to look at
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 5: who else Tommy has called, because we've got Tommy's name,
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 5: we've got his number, we can only look at, you know,
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 5: the numbers, but not the content. If you want to
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 5: look at the, you know, and say on an email,
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 5: like Tommy sent something to Mark, if you want to
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 5: look at the content, you have to get a warrant.
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 5: But the idea that you could get a warrant, because
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 5: there is the circumstance that this could be an active
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 5: live terrorist event, and you don't know whether Tommy's about
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 5: to go do a bomb, the idea that you could
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 5: get a warrant when you only know the name when
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 5: 20% of the time, 15 to 20% of the times,
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 5: Tommy is the victim, not the bad guy. At the
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 5: end of the day, I've come down to this is
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 5: such an important security tool. President Obama supported President Biden, Trump.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 5: It is 70% of what was in the presidential daily brief.
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 5: But I understand that people feel the other way. And
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 5: we have added additional requirements that if it's a politician,
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 5: if it's a religious figure, if it's a media person,
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 5: You have more hoops. If it's somebody where information might
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 5: be about their constitutional rights because you're out protesting ICE,
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 5: you can't use it there. It will never be– for
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 5: friends like Ron Wyden who is a hardcore civil libertarian,
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 5: we're never going to– I will never satisfy him. I
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 5: do think there will be at the end of the
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 5: day somewhere around 15, 20 democrats that will still say–
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 5: Absent the problem, because here's my problem. This goes away.
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 5: God forbid something happens. And Donald Trump then says, we
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 5: wouldn't have had this incident if we had this tool.
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 5: And the irony, just one last point on this is,
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 5: I don't think Donald Trump actually even supports the provision
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 5: that much because it took until like six weeks, seven
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 5: weeks before the bill expired that he even came out
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 5: and formally said he supports it.
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 4: Well, wouldn't the actual kind of existing authorities not expire
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 4: for almost another year if there wasn't a reauthorization?
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 5: That is, again, where the rubber hits the road. There
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 5: is the ability that this authority is certified once a
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 5: year and it would be maintained until March. When this
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 5: came up under Biden, what we heard from the telcos,
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 5: and this is mostly telcos and the Googles and the hyperscalers,
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 5: they said to Biden's security team. If this expires, we
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 5: are no longer going to participate because we don't have indemnification.
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 5: This expired on Friday night. So we're now into an
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 5: area where.
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 4: Who is right?
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 5: Will they continue to participate or not? One of the
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 5: telcos today told me, thank goodness, that they will participate.
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 5: The others, we don't have an answer. And what is
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 5: insane to me is I'm the freaking vice chair, which
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 5: is former chair of the intelligence. I should know whether
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 5: they are participating or not.
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 2: Right, right.
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 5: And in a normal world, the Justice Department, if we
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 5: still had real lawyers, would have tried to get an
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 5: injunction to try to force them to continue to participate
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 5: until it was litigated out so we don't end up
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 5: with this gap. My understanding, they've not even filed suit yet.
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 5: So we will, there will be this gap, hopefully not
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 5: too long. But we will find out whether the concern
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 5: I had that they won't participate without indemnification is true
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 5: or not.
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 4: Just as long as I'm treating you like my deep
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 4: state therapist. I mean is it wrong to focus on
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 4: the DNI when Kash Patel is just as unqualified and
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 4: has more authorities to conduct– do things that are abusive
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 4: against Americans via the FBI?
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 5: Well, I have gone through a long litany of Kash
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 5: Patel abuses and mistakes and he should not be there.
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 5: The DNI does get keys to all 18 agencies. Frankly,
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 5: the DNI, to go nerdy again, that whole role needs
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 5: to be slimmed down, probably reexamined. It came out after 9-11, well-intentioned,
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 5: but grew too much. But no, Kash Patel scares the
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 5: hell out of me. And what also scares the hell
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 5: out of me is we have seen intelligence professionals in
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 5: other agencies. The NSA, which is our spying organization in
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 5: terms of listening in, you know, They fired the guy
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 5: who– Tim Hawk was there. He was a career professional
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 5: because Laura Loomer went after him or the head of
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 5: the Defense Intelligence Agency told the truth about the first
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 5: bombing of Iran a year ago where he said, yeah,
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 5: we whacked them pretty good, but we didn't obliterate their
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 5: nuclear program. Obviously the truth or we wouldn't be back
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 5: in on this. So you've got plenty of– I got
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 5: plenty of reasons to keep you up at night in
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 5: terms of concerns.
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 4: Have you ever seen Kash Patel chug a beer? The
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 4: guy doesn't spill a drop. Let me tell you, man.
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 5: Just on video, although I will– I won't even, I'm
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 5: hesitant to say this, but there's some colorful videos online
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 5: about Mr. Pulte as well.
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 4: Oh, I've seen one of those. The gentleman before him
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 4: seems to be having a good time. Senator, thank you
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 4: so much for doing the show. Maybe when we learn
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 4: what's actually in this deal, we could talk again. That'd
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 4: be nice.
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: Love to.
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 4: Thank you, Tommy. Appreciate it.
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 5: Godspeed. Take care.
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 2: That's our show for today. Thanks to Senator Warner for
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 2: coming on. We'll be back in the feed on Friday
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 2: with a special episode the three of us and Dan
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 2: will be recording in Chicago at the opening of the
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 2: Obama Presidential Center. Fun.
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: Nice.
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 2: Talk to everybody soon. Pods of America is a Crooked
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 2: Media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin,
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 2: McKenna Roberts, and Farrah Safari with Reed Cherlin, Elijah Cohn,
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 2: and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Matt DeGroat, Ben Hefcote,
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 2: Jordan Cantor, Charlotte Landis, Kirill Pelleviv, David Tolles, Mia Kelman,
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 2: Ryan Young, and Naomi Single. Our staff is proudly unionized
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 2: with the Writers Guild of America East.