Latest / Pod Save America / Trump's Gaza Ceasefire Takes Hold

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Trump's Gaza Ceasefire Takes Hold · Pod Save America

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  Speaker 3: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Tommy Detour.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: I'm Jon Levitt.
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: Favreau is off today. On today's show, it's a huge
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: moment for the world as the Israeli hostages come home
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: and a ceasefire begins in Gaza. We'll explain how this
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: deal happened and what comes next. Then we got some
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: new court rulings on Trump's invasion of America's cities, a
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: crackdown on free speech at the Pentagon. And of course,
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: we are still stuck in a government shutdown. But there
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: are some key dates coming up that might force action. Finally,
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: Levitt catches up with Leah Greenberg from Indivisible. one of
• 2:22
  Speaker 3: the organizations helping to organize the No King's Day protests
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: this weekend, and not unrelatedly, one of the groups being
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: targeted by the Trump administration as a domestic terror front.
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: It's getting to be a long list, huh?
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: Wild.
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  Speaker 3: Long list of domestic enemies.
• 2:35
  Speaker 4: Indivisible.
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  Speaker 2: The most good-hearted and civic-minded organization that you could imagine.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, just encouraging people to care about what's happening and
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  Speaker 3: get involved. But let's start with the latest from the
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: Middle East. We are recording this on Monday afternoon at
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: about 3.30 Pacific time, Overnight, all 20 of the living
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: Israeli hostages came home, as did the remains of four
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: of the deceased Israeli hostages. Nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners were
• 2:58
  Speaker 3: released by Israel. That breaks down to about 1,700 people
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: who were picked up in Gaza since October 7th and
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: held there without charges, and about 250 others who were
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: serving prison sentences, including for violent attacks on Israeli citizens.
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: Trump arrived in Israel on Monday to a hero's welcome.
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  Speaker 3: He gave a speech at the Knesset. It was a
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  Speaker 3: mix of a justifiable celebration, and then the usual hyperbole
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  Speaker 3: and bullshit. Let's listen to an excerpt.
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  Speaker 5: If you think we settled eight wars in eight months,
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  Speaker 5: I'm now including this one, by the way, if that's okay.
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  Speaker 5: They may say, well, that was quick, because yesterday I
• 3:34
  Speaker 5: was saying seven, but now I can say eight. The
• 3:36
  Speaker 5: hostages are back. The forces of chaos, terror, and ruin
• 3:40
  Speaker 5: that have plagued the region for decades now stand weakened, isolated.
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  Speaker 2: And totally defeated.
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  Speaker 5: And because of us, the enemies of all civilization are
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  Speaker 5: in retreat. This is the historic dawn of a new
• 3:56
  Speaker 5: Middle East.
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  Speaker 3: Understated.
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  Speaker 2: There's a point where he said that we've been waiting 3,000
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  Speaker 2: years for this.
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  Speaker 5: 3,000.
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  Speaker 2: 3,000 years.
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  Speaker 3: That's a long wait.
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  Speaker 2: That's a long time. It's pretty amazing to solve a
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  Speaker 2: conflict before at least one of the major religions involved
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: was created.
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  Speaker 5: Yes.
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  Speaker 3: He's good. He's that good. So after that appearance, Levitt,
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: Trump flew to Egypt. There was a big summit there
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: on the Middle East piece featuring a bunch of world leaders,
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: minus the leadership of Israel and Hamas. Let's pause here.
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: How are you feeling about all this?
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  Speaker 2: So it is just an unalloyed good to see hostages
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: returned to their families. Cannot imagine what it is like
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: for those families to have their child or their sister
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: or brother, family member, kidnapped, hidden away, not sure if
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: they're alive or dead, not sure if even if they
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: are alive, they will remain so. That is a kind
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: of torture that is an unimaginable circumstance. So that is
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: a beautiful thing to see. Also reports today that aid
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: is surging into Gaza, that humanitarian aid is able to
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  Speaker 2: flow much more than before, to help people, many who
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: are living under famine conditions. That is also welcome and
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: incredibly important. That sort of was my reaction to it.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: And then you start to see the immediate kind of
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: old debate, not old debate, but the kind of beneath
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: the very good news, sort of the contours of like,
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: how hard this is going to be moving forward. The
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: acrimony about those that view what happened in Gaza as
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: a genocide, while those somehow claiming that because Israel was
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: willing to end the conflict at the return of the hostages,
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  Speaker 2: that means its conduct in the war was justified when
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: it was not. The fact that Gaza is leveled and
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  Speaker 2: Trump is signing a document with a bunch of leaders
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: that I don't, have we seen it yet? No. Claiming
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  Speaker 2: that they're all going to take part in the rebuilding,
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  Speaker 2: even as we have no idea what they're even agreeing to.
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  Speaker 2: You just, beneath the surface of what is a very,
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  Speaker 2: very good moment is the reality that Trump can kind
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  Speaker 2: of do his bombastic celebrations around. But this remains a
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  Speaker 2: really difficult and intractable situation. And it's just so unserious
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  Speaker 2: the way he talks about it. It makes you terrified
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  Speaker 2: for what could happen.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's unequivocally a good day. I'm glad the hostages
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  Speaker 3: are home. I'm glad that there's a ceasefire. I hope
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  Speaker 3: it all holds, like, period, full stop, right? I think
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  Speaker 3: the question a lot of listeners are asking is, like,
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  Speaker 3: how much credit do we think Trump deserves or doesn't?
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  Speaker 3: I would argue, like, people might not like to hear this,
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: but I think he deserves a lot of credit for
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  Speaker 3: getting this deal done because Trump clearly put real pressure
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  Speaker 3: on Netanyahu to say yes to the deal, while at
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: the same time, the Egyptians, the Qataris, and the Turks
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  Speaker 3: pressured Hamas to say yes and make some real concessions
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: that I think We can get into it in a minute.
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: But like the broader backstory, if listeners remember, like Trump
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  Speaker 3: laid out this 20-point peace deal. He let Netanyahu kind
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: of like massage and shape the deal before it was
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  Speaker 3: public to make it more advantageous to the Israeli side.
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  Speaker 3: But ultimately what Trump did that I think was really
• 7:18
  Speaker 3: important in that moment was he forced Netanyahu to say yes.
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  Speaker 3: And I think that happened in part because Trump has
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  Speaker 3: a lot of leverage because he's a popular Republican leader
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  Speaker 3: and Netanyahu needs him. But also because the Israelis had
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  Speaker 3: just fired a bunch of airstrikes into Doha, the capital
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  Speaker 3: of Qatar. which pissed off a lot of people and
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  Speaker 3: Netanyahu didn't want to piss them off again. So Trump
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  Speaker 3: pockets this yes from Netanyahu. Then a few days later,
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  Speaker 3: Hamas responds to the plan with kind of like a yes,
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  Speaker 3: but they're like, yes, we do a hostage release. Yes,
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  Speaker 3: we would transfer governance to some technocrats, but we're going
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  Speaker 3: to ignore the rest of your whole proposal, especially the
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  Speaker 3: parts like we have to disarm and no longer exist,
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  Speaker 3: et cetera. And this is the moment where I think
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  Speaker 3: Trump like was really pretty smart. He like, he just
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  Speaker 3: took that yes from Hamas and he ran with it.
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  Speaker 3: He didn't call Netanyahu. He didn't coordinate a messaging. He
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  Speaker 3: didn't let Netanyahu like shape it in the public. He
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  Speaker 3: just said, yeah, this is great. This is historic. This
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  Speaker 3: is world peace. And if anyone asks like, well, what
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  Speaker 3: about the other stuff that you put forward that Hamas
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  Speaker 3: has to do that they ignored? He was like, ah,
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  Speaker 3: it's phase one. You know, like we'll get to that later.
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  Speaker 3: And that allowed all the parties to get into more
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  Speaker 3: detailed talks where I think then surprisingly Hamas gave this
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  Speaker 3: big concession where they said the IDF can remain in
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  Speaker 3: parts of Gaza. There's some reports that they might control
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  Speaker 3: half of the Gaza Strip. And what the Wall Street
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  Speaker 3: Journal says is like Qatar and Turkey said to Hamas, like,
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  Speaker 3: it's now or never. You agree to this or we're
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  Speaker 3: no longer going to give you diplomatic cover. We're kicking
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  Speaker 3: your political office out of the country. And the Egyptians
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  Speaker 3: were like, and on top of that, we're not going
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  Speaker 3: to lobby for you to be part of the future
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  Speaker 3: governance of the Gaza Strip. And so they said yes,
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  Speaker 3: and they agreed to it. And everyone else just like
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  Speaker 3: punted on all the other stuff about Hamas disarming and
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  Speaker 3: having to de-radicalize, et cetera. And also Trump, like he
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  Speaker 3: let Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner meet with Hamas directly.
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  Speaker 3: Usually that's done through intermediaries. That doesn't happen. And that
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  Speaker 3: I think got them over the hump of feeling like, okay,
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  Speaker 3: Hamas that is, if they give up the hostages, as
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  Speaker 3: sick as it sounds, that's their leverage in this deal, right?
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  Speaker 3: And they needed Trump's assurance that he would force the
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: Israelis to go through with the rest of the deal.
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  Speaker 3: So I do, like, I really think he played a
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  Speaker 3: critical role here.
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  Speaker 2: So this is the part that the original Trump plan
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  Speaker 2: required Hamas to disarm, seek exile outside of Gaza, not
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: be part of governance. Is that still what is expected?
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: Do we know what the outcome is going to be
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: for members of Hamas? Are they allowed to remain in Gaza?
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: Do they have to simply not be part of the government?
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: Do they have to declare they're no longer part of Hamas?
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: Do we have any sense of what happens?
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: I think that's all to be negotiated now. And I
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: think you're right. Like, that's why the steel is so big.
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: It's an enormous moment. It's like the entire, everyone in
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: Israel could like exhale for the first time in two years, right?
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: But there's so much work ahead. To your point though,
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: about like how much more there is to do, like
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: it really is a mixed bag for the people of
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: Gaza and the Palestinians because like hopefully the ceasefire holds.
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's been two years of fighting. I assume
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: it will. But like, this is a generational reconstruction project.
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: And you mentioned all these leaders who got together today
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: who assigned some deal that we haven't really seen yet
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: that says they'll fund it, but it's going to require
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: a lot of focus, a lot of money.
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: A lot of governance, right? Like, we don't know what
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: it's going to look like for, like, what does Israel's
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: security look like on the border of Gaza now? How
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: big of a, like, buffer zone are they going to
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: demand and keep? Like, how much are they going to
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: require in terms of, like, visibility into what becomes of Gaza,
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: who is going to oversee it. It's supposed to be
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: Tony Blair last week. I don't know if it's still
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: going to be Tony Blair next week. Uh, Trump is
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: going to lead the board of peace still, I assume. Uh,
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: and then it's, you know, it's like, who is contributing
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: this money? Who is overseeing this rebuilding? The place has
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: been leveled. You know, there's been like, like an effort
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: to say like, Oh, you know, you know, Joe Biden
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: was in a different position, uh, than Trump. He could,
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: you know, that, that this is not because Joe Biden
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: failed to put pressure on Netanyahu in a way that
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: Trump did. I don't know about that.
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: Uh, But.
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: Netanyahu was sending the IDF into parts of Gaza, taking it,
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: leaving it, retaking it, leaving it more level than it
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: was before. They have razed all of Gaza to the ground.
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: By the end, this seemed to be a conflict in
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: which Netanyahu was just having the military kind of move
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: up and down this kind of leveled place while claiming
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: that they are fighting this brutal war because it's the
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: only way to secure the release of the hostages, while
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: at the same time claiming that Hamas doesn't care whether
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: their own civilians live or die. So now Gaza is
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: completely destroyed. There are still millions of people there who
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: have no place to go. It needs to be rebuilt
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: from the ground up. If there is some security threat
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: that Israel views as taking place inside of the Strip,
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: are they going to send uh, more, more, uh, military backing.
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: Like we just have no fucking idea. Or just airstrikes
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: in perpetuity. Like it's just a, like the, the next
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: phase is so, uh, um, uh, tenuous.
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And it's so right. Exactly. Like it's, it's a
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: huge relief for Israelis. I think it's much more mixed
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: bag for the people in Gaza and for Palestinians more broadly,
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: because look, this is like the biggest ceasefire that's been, uh,
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: brokered because of just the scope and duration of the
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: fighting since October 7th. But it's one of like a
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: half dozen ceasefires that have been brokered in Gaza between
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: Israel and Hamas in the last 20 years or so. Right.
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: So you think these things get broken and it's this
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: generational reconstruction project. You're right. Like Gaza is unlivable. Something
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: like 70 to 90 percent of the structures are destroyed.
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: There's no plumbing. There's no water. There's no food for
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: like there's no way to sustain life there without aid.
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: And I think there has to be an effort by
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: the international community to make sure that what's happened like
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: a year from now, that is not just nicer tents
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: across the Gaza strip, but there's actually a process put
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: in place to like begin to rebuild for people. And
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: it's also, this is what's frustrating me a little bit
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: is it keeps getting called a peace deal. It's nothing
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: close to a comprehensive peace deal that would lead to
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: a Palestinian state. That's not even being discussed. It's, it
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: does nothing to stop settlement construction in Gaza. Like obviously
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: like those are big, those are big, more challenging tasks
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: that wasn't you know, not everyone was seeking to solve
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: through this ceasefire agreement, but Trump is like, it's a
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: new tawn for the Middle East.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: Well, that, that, so what was it a few months
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: ago that Mahmoud Abbas is denied entry to the United States?
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: He's not, he's not a right to come to the
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: United Nations because he's a security threat. Now he's in
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: Egypt meeting with Trump and shaking his hand. So like that, like,
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: it's like part of what makes this also kind of
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: confusing is it's so much based around Trump's ego and
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: specific relationships and the job people are doing to kind
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: of make Trump feel like he's on their side or
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: to make them feel like they're on Trump's side. Uh,
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: like I guess, you know, a boss had posted something about, uh,
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: about the, the, the, uh, the threat on Trump's life
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: during the campaign. And now, now all of a sudden
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: they're kind of shaking hands and he's trying to like
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: lift him back up to what end?
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: That relationship is very odd. Um, I think there's a
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: real question of kind of Netanyahu's future and what happens
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: with him. I mean, well, on this Biden question, I
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: think it's worth talking about. Like I talked to a
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: couple of people on Biden's team about this over the years,
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: like the kind of outlines of this plan. I don't
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: think it was special. It wasn't some like perfect 20
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: point plan that was like the red jigsaw puzzle that
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: picked the lock. I think it was Trump using his
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: leverage in a way that Joe Biden wouldn't that kind
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: of change things. Now the politics are different. Like Trump,
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: let's see what cough and Jared Kushner talk directly to
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: Hamas and Imagine if a Democrat did that, right? The
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: entire Republican party would light itself on fire and probably
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: prosecute that person. But like Trump, no one will say
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: anything about it. I like, we don't want to relitigate
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: all the Biden of it all, but like the times
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: Biden pressured Netanyahu, it was usually about like humanitarian access
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: and aid getting into the Gaza strip. It was not
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: about real pressure to end the war. I wish he'd
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: done that. But I think what the Biden people would
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: say is, well, you know, Biden knew that Netanyahu wanted
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: Trump to win the election. And in this case, you know,
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: Netanyahu knew that if he pissed off Trump, he would
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: lose not only support from all the Democrats who are
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: already gone, but also from Republicans if Trump turned on him.
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: So he felt pressure in a way he didn't. Now,
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: I don't I don't know that I agree with that. Like,
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: I think Biden had way more leverage. He just never
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: really used it. But that would be the argument from them.
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah. And there's some truth to that. There's also
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: I do think time matters.
• 15:55
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: It's now it's been two years of brutal conflict. And
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: you have. like just the, again, Gaza being leveled, the, the,
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: you have hostages, families, the families of hostages protesting outside
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: of Benjamin Netanyahu's home. The only, the other than a
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: few like rescues, which I'm glad took place, the, there
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: was a big hostage exchange in November of 2023, very
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: early in the conflict. There was another one in January
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: of this year. Why during a, during a ceasefire, during
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: a negotiation, right? Like this was always going to require
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: a negotiation. Could Joe Biden have gotten to this point sooner?
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: I have no idea, but I, like the, the, the,
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: we are in part of the, we are in the
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: mess we're in with Trump domestically is, is because we're
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: constantly being told how Joe Biden was not responsible and
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: was constantly overtaken by events. Like, does Trump have more
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: room to maneuver? Absolutely. Why, why is Donald Trump able
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: to maneuver more than a Democrat, right? Why is Joe
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: Biden's leadership so fragile and brittle that he doesn't have
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: the space to take chances and push BB or, or
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: send emissaries to meet with Hamas in a way that
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: Trump does? How does he have the flexibility that a
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: Democrat doesn't. And like, why don't answer that rather than
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: say how much easier of a job Trump had? Why didn't,
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: you know, I don't believe the job of being president is,
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: is easy, but Joe Biden certainly doesn't make it look possible.
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I think you're right. Like, look, it's been
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: two years, right? Both sides were exhausted by two years
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: of war. But I also think Biden missed a big
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: opportunity when the Israelis killed Yaga Sinwar, the mastermind of
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: the October 7th attacks. That was about a year ago.
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: You know, that could have been a good window to
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: try to push to end the war Trump also missed
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: an opportunity, right? I mean, he brokered that ceasefire in January.
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: The Israelis and Palestinians were supposed to negotiate phase two
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: of that ceasefire, which would lead to a permanent end
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: of the war during the first ceasefire that they had brokered,
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: and they just never did it. They just never engaged.
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: And part of this also is Netanyahu, we know, his
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: political interest required the war to continue. That might explain
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: why it had gone on for as long as it did,
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: but it doesn't allow for the war to go on forever.
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: Right, right, right.
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• 19:32
  Speaker 3: The issue of Netanyahu's political problems was front and center today.
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: Presumably now that the fighting is over, the pressure could
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: start rising again on him, on his corruption trials, on
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: his leadership and the push for elections. though Trump had
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: a helpful idea for how to handle those corruption charges.
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: Let's listen.
• 19:50
  Speaker 5: Mr.
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: President, why don't you give him a pardon?
• 19:53
  Speaker 5: Give him a pardon.
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: I happen to like.
• 19:59
  Speaker 5: This gentleman right over here, and it just seems to
• 20:01
  Speaker 5: make so much sense. Cigars and champagne, who the hell
• 20:05
  Speaker 5: cares about that?
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: So cigars and champagne, that's a reference to Case 1000,
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: which is one of the several corruption cases against Netanyahu.
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: In that case, he and his wife are accused of
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: taking like hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of cigars
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: and champagne from, you know, donors, et cetera, friends in
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: exchange for political favors. So love it. Like the conventional
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: wisdom shared by yours truly as well was that Netanyahu
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: wouldn't take this deal because he would lose the right
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: flank of his governing coalition. They would then pull out
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: of the government. And for Netanyahu, that would mean losing
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: power and also the risk of prosecution. But he did
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: take the deal, which leads you to wonder why and
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: about his political standing. I noticed Netanyahu was booed when
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: Steve Woodcuff mentioned his name during a speech at Hostages
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: Square over the weekend. But then, as we heard a
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: minute ago, Trump was like, give the guy a pardon
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: and he all but endorsed him. Do we think like
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: Israel can finally get rid of this guy? How are
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: we feeling?
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: You know, that that. We have to see what, like,
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: this is just a, like, as you said, there's a
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: moment of, like, some profound relief, right? Like, kind of
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: the end of, well, hopefully the end of, like, this war.
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: Part of the reason Netanyahu felt political pressure to prolong
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: the war is that once the war was over, the
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: attention would then turn not just to his corruption, but
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: to his abject failure to protect Israel from the worst
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: act of violence in its history.
• 21:35
  Speaker 4: Yep.
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: And the fact that he had his attention focused elsewhere,
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: the fact that even internal documents from Hamas make clear
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: that the division and internal conflict over his effort to
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: take over the judiciary had made Israel look weak to
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: its enemies.
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: That's real.
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: That is real. And that will start, that will once
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: again come to the fore. But the bigger, I think,
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: issue here, and this will be part of what we
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: talk about in terms of Israel's place in American domestic politics, too,
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: is the damage to Israel's standing in the world will remain.
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: I hope this ends.
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: I really do.
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: I hope the ceasefire holds. I hope we're at the
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: beginning of something new. I really do. But it does
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: not end the moral stain of how Israel conducted this war,
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: even if you view Hamas as being responsible for it,
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: which I do. Even if you believe Hamas could have
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: ended the war sooner, they prolonged it. I believe that, absolutely.
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: The fact that Israel was justified in conducting this war,
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: in defending itself, and the fact that it had an
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: achievable goal of releasing the hostages is not like a
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: logic force field that allows you to ignore the brutality
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: of how they conducted it and the collective punishment they inflicted.
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: And that stain will continue. And getting rid of Benjamin
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: Netanyahu will be part of how you move past that.
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: but it won't be enough because Israel will be held
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: responsible for what it did. And like how Israel moves forward,
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: I don't know, but part of it will be moving
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: past Benjamin Netanyahu and the politics he represented.
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I mean, the accountability
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: question is really two parts. It's like Netanyahu has never
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: taken any accountability for October 7th. He has demanded from others.
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: He has fired others. But he's like deferred on his own.
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: He said, oh, after the war, that's when we'll figure
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: it out. Well, It's after the war, buddy. Let's see
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: if you're going to investigate yourself. But also, you have
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: to ask, if a country and a leader can get
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: away with killing 67,000 more people in a conflict like this,
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: periodically starving an entire population, committing war crime after war crime,
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: of being accused of genocide by countless scholars, what does
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: it say if they just get away with it? What
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: is left of international laws and institutions that are supposed
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: to prevent this kind of stuff or achieve some measure
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: of justice, if someone like Bibi Netanyahu faces no accountability,
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: maybe is reelected, gets a pardon because the president of
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: the United States stands before the Knesset, and basically, Trump's
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: argument there is like so perfectly Trump. It's like, you
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: got yours, right? You got your security in exchange. He
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: got some cigars and some bribes. Like, what's the big deal?
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: He just got his beak wet. He just got his
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: beak wet.
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and the ugliness of just like, it's like, I'm here,
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: I'm in a good mood. Like Benjamin Netanyahu's been on
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: my side, I've been on his side. You gotta let
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: these kinds of things go. We're just doing business here.
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: Just a guy doing business. And by the way, he's
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: not been convicted. In the United States, the pardon power
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: is different. You can pardon someone preemptively. Now that is
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: an attack on the rule of law, but it's something
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: that's happened here. It would be unprecedented for an Israeli
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: president to pardon a prime minister before he's even been convicted.
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: of a crime.
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it would be a disgusting. So, okay. And also that, uh,
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: so let's look, look internally. Like we don't make this
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: all about American politics, obviously it's just an enormous moment
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: in the world, but I'm curious, like we've seen this
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: huge shift, um, in us support from Israel over the
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: last two years, especially within the democratic party. Does Gaza,
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: does a ceasefire in Gaza change that? Is this inexorable?
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: Are there too many broader structural challenges like the need
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: for a Palestinian state sort of standing in the way?
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: It mirrors what we were just talking about. The way
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: Israel conducted this war has done so much damage to
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: its standing amongst American Jews, among the American left. You
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: see it in the way in which anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: have a blurry line between them in a way that
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: is very disconcerting for Jewish people, especially Jewish people who
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: are appalled by what Israel has done in this war.
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: At the same time, you see groups like the Anti-Defamation
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: League use anti-Semitism like a cudgel against people with legitimate criticism.
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: And all of that has turned what was an issue
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: that was pretty broadly felt, which is support for Israel's
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: right to exist, now kind of in question. And I
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: don't know what happens from here, but I do think
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: it starts with American Jews being able to hold two
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: ideas in their mind at the same time, which is
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: that Israel absolutely has a right to defend itself, but
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: it does not have a right to commit atrocities. And
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: that an Israel that does not protect human rights of
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: Palestinians is an Israel that is not safe, an Israel
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: that is a pariah. And so that if you believe
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: in Israel's right to exist, if you want to have
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: a safe and prosperous Israel, you have to advocate against
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: its conduct of the war and in going forward a
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: different kind of leadership in that country. And so that's
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: where I'm at on this. But I do think like
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: a lot will depend, I think, on what happens in
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: Israel and also what happens with any plan to rebuild Gaza.
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of talk about uh,
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: Israel's political problems in the U S is, is purely partisan,
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: but I think it's more generational. You know, I think
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: it's like people under 40, they've only seen BB and
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: Yahoo running the country and they've seen him, his corruption,
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: his racism, the, the, the fighting in Gaza, the lack
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: of accountability. And they wonder why does the U S
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: have to funnel arms to this country? Why am I
• 27:19
  Speaker 3: paying to bomb a kid in the Gaza strip? Like
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: there is an older generation of Americans that was raised
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: at a different time and a different era, a different
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: generation of leadership in Israel that views Israel very differently.
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: It's like when you'd always hear Joe Biden talk about
• 27:33
  Speaker 3: gold of my year and this like, you know, beacon
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: of democracy and hope in the Middle East and this,
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: you know, like the story of this like mighty little country, right?
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: Like fighting off its opponents. But I think younger people
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: like just see it very differently. And I think You know,
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: you mentioned it earlier, like the tactic, like the ADL
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: and other groups have taken to try to silence debate.
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: I think it's been really damaging.
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: I do too. And by the way, like if it's
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: alienated me, like, I'm sorry, but I'm, I'm like, I
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: gotta be in the place where you're going to want, like,
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: I feel like I am extremely critical of Israel. I
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: am extremely critical of people that are knee jerk, uh,
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: anti-Israel and who's, and, and who do not see enough
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: of a distinction between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. I have like
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: pretty clear in believing Israel has a right to defend itself. Uh, I,
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: I hold Hamas responsible. And then it like, I see
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: the way in which, uh, uh, they go after Mamdani
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: in a completely, uh, bad faith way and how, when
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: he goes and meets with Jews, it's not the right
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: Jews for the ADL. Uh, I see a lot of
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: shit like that. And I find it very, I just
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: think it's counterproductive because it turns, uh, people who have legitimate, it, it,
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: It makes opponents of people who have real and valid
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: questions about Israel. And you want those people, right? Including,
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: by the way, a lot of Jews, a lot of Jews,
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: especially younger Jews who do not understand how their parents
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: feel about it, do not understand this. And there is
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: a lot of talking past each other, right? Because they
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: go to the story of like Israel founded, you know,
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: and that it is a bastion of Jewish safety in
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: the aftermath of the Holocaust. It is a place where
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: Jews expelled Jews by Arab countries came to find safety.
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: But that is an old story. It's an old story.
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: And an old story about Israel's founding because of the
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: Holocaust is not going to help us any more than
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: an old story about how Israel is some colonialist project
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: is going to help us. How does Israel conduct itself now?
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: How does it defend itself in a way that that
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: upholds a basic defense of human rights now? Like that,
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: that to me is, is, is, is what matters. Yeah.
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: And just like doing this broad brush thing, we're telling
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: everyone that like all anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism is wrong or
• 29:50
  Speaker 3: like passing BDS laws across the country that essentially make
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: speech illegal. Like why is it that people like you
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: and I can be more critical of the U.S. government
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: than the Israeli government in certain settings. And like, by
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: the way, it's not just you and me like having
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: this conversation. It was Charlie Kirk and Megyn Kelly had
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: nearly an identical conversation about their frustration with being screamed
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: at or called anti-Semitic if they didn't agree with, you know,
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: 100% of like Netanyahu's line. And I just think like
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: that's such a bad way to do politics. You're just
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: going to turn people off.
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And by the same token, like there is a
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: lot of like kind of I hear it all the time.
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: It's a very easy thing now to be like, oh,
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: you know, it's because they're in the pocket of APEC.
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: APEC often described as kind of a foreign involvement in
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: the U.S. when it's funded by American Jews becomes about
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: like Jewish money. And like they're like clearly that is
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: a that is a threat of anti-Semitism that exists on
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: the right as well that I think is really dangerous.
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: And at the same time, like that because being anti-Israel
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: became almost like a shibboleth in certain parts of the left,
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: it became so kind of almost casual for people to
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: be chanting things like from the river to the sea
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: and other kind of expressions that while those who say
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: them might claim are not violent or don't speak to violence,
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: it is kind of a, uh, uh, like a, a
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: kind of abstracted idea that just, that if you were
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: to follow to its conclusion would require, uh, uh, what
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: all Israelis to leave a massive, terrible and violent conflict,
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: whatever it might be. But it's like, Israelis are there.
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: The Palestinians are there. They all deserve dignity, peace and
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: human rights. And like everything after that, you know, I
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: don't know.
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just it feels like the two state solution
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: is very far off. And for all the concern, you know,
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: you and I might have about criticism of Israel veering
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: into anti-Semitism or tropes. Then you also have Donald Trump.
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: speaking for the Knesset, giving Miriam Adelson a shout out,
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: talking about how she's worth $ 60 billion and how she
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: was the one who got him to move the embassy
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: or to think about the Golan Heights. And you're just like,
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: oh my God, this is like, we're on another planet
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: right now.
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: By the way, also says to her, like, I don't
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: know if she likes Israel or America more, right? Which
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: by the way, like, like the, and I know it's like, well,
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: you know, he he's because, because Donald Trump is on
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: the right and, and kind of seen as like an
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: ally of Netanyahu. He can make jokes that are basically
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: about dual loyalty, which is exactly like, I don't care
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: what he means or what he thinks. I don't care. Like,
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: like that is a, that's fucked up.
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah. It's really bad.
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: Well, good, healthy Gaza section for us. We are going
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: to take a turn though. Cause Trump, he's over there
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: playing peacemaker in the middle East, but back at home,
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: he's pressing ahead with sending troops into our cities and
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: having ice unleash violence on immigrants and protesters. On Saturday,
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: the court of appeals for the seventh circuit ruled that
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: national guard troops could remain federalized in Illinois and but
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: they maintain for now a lower court's ruling that blocks
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: the troops from being deployed to Chicago streets. But if
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: Trump's plan was to inflame tensions here, he is succeeding.
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: The Times had a great look at how things have
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: escalated just in the past month to the point where
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: agents in tactical gear are firing tear gas and projectiles
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: at reporters and peaceful protesters, including notoriously a pastor. A
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: federal judge imposed new temporary rules on force last week,
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: but it's not clear that they're taking hold. On Friday morning,
• 33:05
  Speaker 3: an employee of the Chicago TV station WGN woman who's
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: a U.S. citizen who is not part of the news department,
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: was tackled and pinned to the ground by masked Border
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: Patrol agents during a terrifying neighborhood raid that was caught
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: on video. But this might not all be enough for Trump,
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: as J.D. Vance suggested to NBC's Kristen Welker on Sunday.
• 33:22
  Speaker 6: Are you seriously considering invoking the Insurrection Act?
• 33:27
  Speaker 7: Well, the president's looking at all of his options. The
• 33:29
  Speaker 7: problem here is not the Insurrection Act or whether we
• 33:32
  Speaker 7: actually invoke it or not. The problem is the fact
• 33:35
  Speaker 7: that the entire media in this country, cheered on by
• 33:38
  Speaker 7: a few far-left lunatics, have made it okay to tee
• 33:42
  Speaker 7: off on American law enforcement.
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: So the media is the problem, love it, not the
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: troops in the streets.
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: There is a point that he's making that I do.
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: There is this strange thing that seems to happen where Trump,
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: does some kind of escalation. He is just sending troops
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: into Portland or Chicago. He's trying to defy court orders
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: by kind of getting around the order by getting troops
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: from California to Chicago and Texas to Portland, whatever he's
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: trying to do. Meanwhile, you've got mass ICE agents on
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: the streets. They are backed up by members of the military.
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: This like unprecedented effort against the wishes of state and
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: local leaders. And then all of a sudden the question is,
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: but is he going to do the Insurrection Act? What
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: about the Insurrection Act? Is he going to do the
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: next one? What about the next one? As if that's
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: the most important question. Vance isn't wrong about that. That
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: isn't the most important question. Whether or not he invokes
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: the Insurrection Act to send troops into American cities or
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: continues to have American troops on our streets protecting ICE,
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: both are very bad. Both are very dangerous. Why are
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: they wearing masks? Why are they there? All of these
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: are the more important questions.
• 34:50
  Speaker 3: I think whether or not he does the Insurrection Act
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: is a pretty damn big escalation though, right? I mean,
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: if suddenly you have like members of the US military,
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: active members conducting law enforcement, like imprisoning people, zip tying
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: American citizens, throw them in jail, like that'd be, it
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: is an escalation. And he's like, oh, well, the media
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: is at fault.
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: I think it is an escalation. Of course, it's an escalation.
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: I think it's very dangerous. Do I think like members,
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: like you have ICE, which is increasingly a collection of
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: people that are kind of ideologically committed to the Trump project.
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: No doubt. They're scary. It's a bunch of three percenters
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: and oath keepers getting recruited and extreme people.
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: And, you know, the U.S. military is a much more
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: diverse group of people who did not sign up to
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: be part of Donald Trump's, you know, urban police squad,
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: which is what they would be. I'm not saying it's
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: not a really serious escalation. I do think it's that
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: what I'm getting at is more this idea that like, oh, boy,
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: but the next thing Trump does, boy, that's going to
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: be crazy. Right. He's already doing crazy shit. Like there's
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: plenty of bad happening that he that J.D. Vance can
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: be questioned about. And like what we've seen over and
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: over again is Trump loves spitballing about the next thing.
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: He loves being asked about like, are you gonna suspend
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: habeas corpus? He didn't even know what it was. He
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: was like, probably who's he? You know, like, so it's like,
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: that's like, I like, I'm not, I like come away
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: with this as just, we're constantly asking the Trump administration
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: officials to spitball on how much worse they're willing to be.
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: And the answer is always worse. Yes, they might do it.
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: Well, so the vibes in Portland are a little different.
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: We got protesters, they're wearing costumes, they're wearing animal suits.
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: There was a naked bike ride. Where do you land
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: on the antics in Portland? Does protesting naked diffuse the
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: idea that there's a violent Antifa army? Does it make
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: us look absurd and fringy, something in between?
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: I don't think Portland's going to do well in the
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: battleground states. I don't really care. Like, naked people on
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: bikes in Portland. You know what? Keep Portland weird, you know?
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: And if it's going to be, let it do its thing.
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: Videos of naked people on bikes, everything that points out
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: how ridiculous it is to claim Portland is a city
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: at war. I believe it was a Chicago marathon this weekend.
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: I think it was like the Chicago marathon, you know,
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: it's like, this isn't these, we're not a conflict zone.
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah. No.
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: And so I like have at it, be weird, be as, as,
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: as long as you're peaceful, be as weird and freaky
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: as you want to be.
• 37:02
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: I think, um, I'm there too. I think if I
• 37:05
  Speaker 3: had my choice between like dressing in a silly costume,
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: weird or a fringe, like nudity bike ride, weird, I'd
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: go with the costume because I think Republicans would like
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: nothing more than to spin the naked people on bikes
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: as going for your children or like whatever the worst
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: version of it is. And you know, look, we don't
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: always have to think like them. I'm not scolding anyone
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: for protesting. If you're gonna protest, more power to you,
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: credit to you for putting your body out there. Get
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: in front of some ice agents. But I don't wanna
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: see your dong either. So that's where I am.
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess here's the thing, it's like, The march
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: of the Pete Buttigieg's will have to take place elsewhere.
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: Portland is going to do it its way. Yeah, I
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: like I hear you. But like my like.
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: It's it is what it is. I'm just saying, like
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: all things being equal, if I could choose one, I,
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: you know, I choose the Yoshi costume. Yeah, for sure.
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: Let's just hear, though, how later on the show you're
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: going to hear from Leah about the no kings protests
• 37:58
  Speaker 3: and all the organizing going into them. But here's how
• 38:00
  Speaker 3: Republicans are already talking about the no kings protests.
• 38:05
  Speaker 8: They have a Hate America rally that's scheduled for October
• 38:08
  Speaker 8: 18th on the National Mall.
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: It's all the pro-Hamas wing and the Antifa people.
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: They're all coming out.
• 38:15
  Speaker 7: The terrorist wing of their party, which is set to hold,
• 38:19
  Speaker 7: as Leader Scalise just commented on, a Hate America rally.
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: No King's protest, Maria. Really frustrating. I mean, this is
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: part of Antifa, paid protesters. It begs the question, who's
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: funding it? Is it Hamas, Antifa? Are we hating America?
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: It's a super group. It's a super group. Yeah.
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: I was at the first No King protest. You were
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: at the No King protest last time. And it was
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: so inspiring. It really was. It was so moving. It
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: was a lot of people with American flags. A lot
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: of people out there with their dogs and their kids
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: and their signs. A lot of people who Mike Johnson
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: doesn't care about. Mike Johnson doesn't care about the concerns
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: of people that don't think exactly the way that he does.
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: He doesn't care. that millions of people are genuinely afraid
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: for their country, also heartbroken by what they've seen in
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: their country, like genuinely upset, not because they hate America,
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: because they love America. Right. And they're upset about it.
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: And they know better. It's like January 6th was a
• 39:14
  Speaker 3: day of love now, right? That we're spinning that terrorist
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: attack against the Capitol as okay now. But like a
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: bunch of people getting together in West Hollywood, holding signs
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: with strollers, listening to speeches, like give me a fucking break.
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: It's so insulting.
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: It's also like just the way they've defined these terms down,
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: like terrorism, pro-Hamas, like terrorism. What are you talking about?
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: What are you talking about?
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: And it's both ridiculous, but also it should trouble everyone.
• 39:40
  Speaker 3: Because right now we're like, terrorists are people you kill, right?
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: Terrorists are organizations that need to be disrupted and dismantled.
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: and taken down by law enforcement or the U.S. intelligence
• 39:52
  Speaker 3: community or what have you, right? And so, like, that
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: is the kind of slippery slope with that kind of
• 39:57
  Speaker 3: language to Stephen Miller's dreams that worries me.
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we're far down it because it's not just what
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: they're describing, how they're describing this protest. I talked about
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: this with Leah a bit, but, you know, Indivisible, which
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: was founded after Trump to just organize people at the
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: local level, little chapters of people getting together to figure
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: out how to do their duty, is on a list
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: of people, a list of organizations to be You have
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: Kristi Noem at this Antifa roundtable last week saying that
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: Antifa is just as dangerous as Hamas and MS-13 and
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: Trende Aragua, right? Meanwhile, as they're blowing up boats without
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: any criminal charges or any other evidence and what they're
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: just sort of kind of reassuring us they know about
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: the people on these boats lawlessly.
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the thing. In Venezuela, right, they're saying, OK,
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: if you're part of a drug cartel, now you're a terrorist,
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: which means we can now kill you. for suspected drug smuggling.
• 40:51
  Speaker 3: Like that's the path.
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: And you are an unlawful combatant from a non-state actor
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: terrorist group of a cartel. It's like, we can kill
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: you from above and then use the footage to make
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: a snuff film that we put on social media because
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: we are murdering, because you're killing us with drugs as
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: if like they're, I don't know, like forcing us to
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: take them at gunpoint.
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really bad. And remember the first boat they
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: hit was traveling off the coast of Venezuela, saw a
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: plane above it or something, turned around to go back,
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: then it was struck, and then whatever, the drone or
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: the airplane or whatever, to the second pass and hit
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: the boat again to kill all the people who survived.
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: And there were so many people on that boat that
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: most experts you talk to think there's no way that
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: it was just drug smugglers, that there's probably also some people,
• 41:36
  Speaker 3: some migrants who are trying to go to another location
• 41:40
  Speaker 3: from Venezuela on that boat who are just innocent victims.
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: So deeply, deeply messed up stuff.
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: And we don't kill drugs, drug smugglers- That's a criminal enterprise.
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: You have to arrest people.
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: Interject the boat.
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: You can capture the boat. You know where it is.
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: You have it on video.
• 42:04
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• 43:33
  Speaker 3: Speaking of attacks on constitutionally protected speech, let's talk about
• 43:36
  Speaker 3: their new rules for reporters covering the Pentagon. So the
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: Pentagon first announced this policy In a memo released on
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: September 18th, that memo demanded that Pentagon reporters agree to
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: submit their coverage to the government for approval before publishing it,
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: including reports about unclassified information. Those who did not sign
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: risked losing their press credentials. That did not fly with
• 43:58
  Speaker 3: basically anyone in the press corps. So the Pentagon released
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: a revised version of this memo on October 6th that
• 44:04
  Speaker 3: dropped the language about submitting their coverage to the government
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: in advance, but replaced it with a threat to take
• 44:10
  Speaker 3: away press credentials from Pentagon reporters who, quote, solicit information
• 44:14
  Speaker 3: that has not been approved for release, which is what
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: we usually call reporting. Love it. It feels like this
• 44:21
  Speaker 3: couldn't be a more obvious First Amendment violation, no?
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, look, Pete Exeth hates, he's paranoid about
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: people leaking to the press. He's been on a kind
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: of a warpath about this from the beginning. There's all
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: kinds of reports internally have been worried about who's leaking information.
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: against him. He kicked out outlets from their offices to
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: be replaced by people like Newsmax and OAN. They also
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: like kind of changed where reporters ought to walk in
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: the Pentagon. So they couldn't go to as many places
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: as if like these reporters were some kind of security threat,
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: as if this hadn't been just sort of policy for
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: a really long time. And like a good thing, like
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: just a good thing that, hey, like this is the Pentagon,
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: the home of the most powerful military on earth. But
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: guess what? Here, journalists can walk around and ask people questions.
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: Like that's special about us. That's a beautiful and good
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: thing about us that they don't appreciate. And so now
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: they're releasing this. Obviously the New York Times, the Washington Post,
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: other outlets you would expect said no, but so did
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: Newsmax that they didn't want to sign it. That was
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: earlier today. They're refusing to sign it because this is
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: an old line. Journalism is everything that's unauthorized. What's authorized
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: is PR, right? That's what PR, PR is publishing the
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: stuff they want you to say. Everything else is journalism.
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: And they're not going to sign a document. And by
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: the way, you can take away people's press passes. You
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: can tell them they can't go to the briefing, not
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: even holding the briefings anymore anyway. It's not going to
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: stop these people from doing journalism. They're just going to
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: do it from their fucking phones.
• 45:46
  Speaker 3: Exactly. Exactly.
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: I think they have until October 14th, the reporters do
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: to agree to this policy. So we'll see what happens
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: after that, when this comes out.
• 45:54
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: So this is coming out tomorrow. When you're hearing this,
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: it's Tuesday. They have until the end of the day today.
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: Yes, exactly. So yeah, just criminalize it. it just tries
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: to penalize basic news gathering. And I think this is
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: a long-term mistake because there is this anti-war kind of
• 46:09
  Speaker 3: isolationist part of the MAGA movement. They don't want America
• 46:13
  Speaker 3: in foreign wars. They don't want us to nation build.
• 46:15
  Speaker 3: They don't want the Pentagon to waste money. They don't
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: want service members getting killed in Iraq or Afghanistan, right?
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: Far away places. And my arguments, all those people would
• 46:23
  Speaker 3: be like, okay, so you want a strong Pentagon press corps.
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: Like you, this building is spending a trillion dollars a year.
• 46:29
  Speaker 3: They need more oversight. They need more scrutiny. Or else
• 46:31
  Speaker 3: we're going to see more waste, fraud, and abuse. And
• 46:33
  Speaker 3: I'm like, I personally, like when I was on the
• 46:36
  Speaker 3: NSC press team, like I had a lot of arguments
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: with reporters about publishing classified stuff. That ranged from like
• 46:44
  Speaker 3: sitting down with the New York Times and learning that
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: they had a quarter of a million State Department cables
• 46:50
  Speaker 3: from WikiLeaks and just being like, okay, like guess we're fucked.
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: Or like one-off conversations where, you know, you're like, can
• 46:57
  Speaker 3: you please be less specific about how we got that
• 47:00
  Speaker 3: information and just say like, reliable intelligence instead of like
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: intercepted communications or something like that. But when I look
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: back on that, I really think the balance of concern
• 47:11
  Speaker 3: was overly tilted towards national security over and over and
• 47:15
  Speaker 3: over again. And that over classification is still a massive
• 47:20
  Speaker 3: problem that has not been tackled at all. And what
• 47:22
  Speaker 3: these new restrictions will do, like you said, like reporters,
• 47:25
  Speaker 3: they're not going to stop reporting because they can't walk
• 47:27
  Speaker 3: around the hall, but like in totality, it slowly chips away.
• 47:31
  Speaker 3: at their media access and their ability to do their
• 47:33
  Speaker 3: job and their relationships in the building. And it's like
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: you said, replacing like real outlets with fake right-wing ones.
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: And it's just like right now, Pete Hegseth, who was
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: technically a member of the media until like six months ago,
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: is just mocking them on Twitter. Have you seen this?
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: He's doing like hand emoji waving at them. And like
• 47:51
  Speaker 3: the real threat to national security is what this guy's
• 47:54
  Speaker 3: putting in his signal chats. It's not NBC News.
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: Well, also it's like you... He, in one of these things,
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: the Pentagon doesn't belong to the press. It belongs to
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: the people. And I know that Pete Hegseth doesn't understand
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: that the press is meant to be our representative and
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: getting information. But by the way, like he needs to
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: be able to tell the story of what's happening at
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: the Pentagon. He'll continue to do interviews. And that starts
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: by building trust with major, you know, report news outlets
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: that have the resources still to do journalism about what
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: happens in our foreign policy and what happens in our military.
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: You know, like there's, every week it seems like JD
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: Vance sits down for another interview with a major outlet
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: like NBC or ABC and then he gets a question
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: he doesn't like and he's like, why does this even
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: fucking exist?
• 48:43
  Speaker 3: You don't matter, yeah.
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: It's like, you're here, you're here, you're doing it because like,
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: like it or not, like you don't, you see value
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: in being part, in talking to these people and like,
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: Pete can be like waving goodbye like, oh, what a
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: tough guy, you don't need NBC, like, okay, like you're
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: just doing, you're just doing damage to your ability to
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: lead a department that presumably at some point would like
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: to inform the American people about what it's doing, not
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: just the people that are watching OAN, but everybody.
• 49:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just so childish and petty. Speaking of which,
• 49:09
  Speaker 3: by the time you're listening to this, the government will
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: have been shut down for two weeks, celebrating its two
• 49:14
  Speaker 3: week birthday. And as is the case with most two
• 49:16
  Speaker 3: week olds, all we're getting is screaming and lots of
• 49:19
  Speaker 3: shit to clean up. Democrats still aren't signing on to
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: the House funding bill. Republicans still aren't negotiating with Democrats
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: on health care premiums. And Mike Johnson won't even bring
• 49:27
  Speaker 3: the House back into session. Instead, they're trying to extort
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: leverage by firing people. On Friday, Grim Reaper Russ Vogt
• 49:33
  Speaker 3: announced the layoffs of 4000 federal workers, mostly at Treasury
• 49:37
  Speaker 3: and HHS.
• 49:38
  Speaker 5: And J.D.
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: Vance made this promise during his tour of the Sunday shows.
• 49:42
  Speaker 3: Let's watch.
• 49:42
  Speaker 7: The longer this goes on, the deeper the cuts are
• 49:44
  Speaker 7: going to be. And Maria, to be clear, some of
• 49:46
  Speaker 7: these cuts are going to be painful. This is not
• 49:50
  Speaker 7: a situation that we relish. This is not something that
• 49:52
  Speaker 7: we're looking forward to. But the Democrats have dealt us
• 49:55
  Speaker 7: a pretty difficult set of cards.
• 49:57
  Speaker 3: Do you think that the firings are like really putting
• 50:00
  Speaker 3: leverage on the Democrats more than just the whole government?
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: I don't, especially when they like. kind of giddily talk
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: about how they're going after democratic programs and basically explicitly
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: saying it's leverage. The bulwark actually covered one set of
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: cuts that is eliminating our government's capacity to do mental
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: health programs and substance abuse treatment programs, which is sort
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: of ironic as we were just talking about because they're
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: claiming in order to protect America from drugs, they can
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: kill narco terrorists from the sky, but they're eliminating the
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: programs that have helped reduce opioid deaths, which actually happened
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: from 2023 to 2024, which actually a great, I mean,
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: still too many, but a good thing. But now they're
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: decimating the programs that actually help people who are addicted
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: to those drugs. But we only know that because reporters
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: are piecing it together because this is so ham-fisted and
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: haphazard and they're not really interested in telling us what
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: they're doing. No, everything that they're doing is only underscoring
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: that while this is a fight over healthcare, this is
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: an administration that is lawless and doing kind of an
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: authoritarian takeover. It should only make people more resolved to
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: continue holding the line on health care at the very least.
• 51:10
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: And the next big inflection point is Wednesday when troops
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: will start missing their paychecks. But Trump announced Saturday that
• 51:16
  Speaker 3: the Pentagon is going to be moving funds around to
• 51:18
  Speaker 3: make sure that there's no gaps in pay. So like
• 51:21
  Speaker 3: part of me hears this and I'm like, OK, it's
• 51:24
  Speaker 3: really bad that Trump is doing this without Congress being involved.
• 51:27
  Speaker 3: The other part of me is like, OK, well, it's good,
• 51:29
  Speaker 3: I guess, that service members are getting paid. But also
• 51:31
  Speaker 3: Trump is kind of giving up what seemed like what
• 51:34
  Speaker 3: they thought was their biggest point of leverage against Democrats.
• 51:38
  Speaker 3: But I don't know. Where do you come down?
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: I don't know. This seems to me more in the
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: kind of like quotidian way in which administrations during shutdowns
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: and outside of them kind of like blur the lines
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: and kind of move money around semi-legally. Like Trump, in
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: the way that like, you know, there was a Congress
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: passed a law that said after a shutdown, people have
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: to get paid what they missed. The law is crystal clear.
• 52:05
  Speaker 3: And so the- It was signed in 2019.
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: 2019 by Donald Trump. And the OMB puts out, OMB
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: under Russ vote puts out a memo saying, actually, the
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: law doesn't say that because if you read this clause
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: a certain way, Congress has to actually say to pay
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: people back, which doesn't really make sense because the whole
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: purpose of the law is to make sure people are
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: paid back after a shutdown. If Congress has to also
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: say it, then you don't need the law that was
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: passed specifically to do this. It makes absolutely no sense.
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: But they're putting out the draft memo. Why? To intimidate people,
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: to make people think they might not get back pay,
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: to kind of make the shutdown more painful, to make
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: Democrats feel like they're responsible for more pain. And so
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: like the kind of moving money around to pay troops fine,
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: trying to kind of lawlessly figure out ways to hurt people.
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: That is exactly why it was necessary to kind of
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: draw the line on this shutdown.
• 52:56
  Speaker 3: And Republicans keep saying, you know, whatever things we agree
• 52:59
  Speaker 3: to with Democrats, we'll just use the rescissions process to
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: claw back money anyway. So it's like, I don't know
• 53:03
  Speaker 3: what we're supposed to trust from these guys. There's also
• 53:05
  Speaker 3: like a bigger point, which is I, I feel this
• 53:08
  Speaker 3: in my life. I hear it from others. I feel
• 53:10
  Speaker 3: like doing this show, this shutdown is just not commanding
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: people's attention the way previous ones have. And I've kind of,
• 53:18
  Speaker 3: I thought about why that might be like part of
• 53:20
  Speaker 3: it is because the The drama around whether the government
• 53:25
  Speaker 3: will shut down is a big deal. And then once
• 53:26
  Speaker 3: it's shut down, it's kind of like every day is
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: just the same terrible shit. But also maybe it's because
• 53:32
  Speaker 3: Trump is just kind of like causing chaos in so
• 53:35
  Speaker 3: many other ways. I guess today he just wants to
• 53:37
  Speaker 3: be talking about whatever's happening in the Middle East. And
• 53:39
  Speaker 3: that's for once kind of good news. But it is
• 53:42
  Speaker 3: notable that like I'm sure it's impacting a lot of people.
• 53:45
  Speaker 3: I don't mean to minimize that in any way. I'm
• 53:46
  Speaker 3: sure there's like government workers listening or like, screw you.
• 53:49
  Speaker 3: I'm not getting a paycheck. I'm scared. I'm not. dismissing
• 53:52
  Speaker 3: that at all. But in terms of just like the
• 53:54
  Speaker 3: broader media conversation, I just don't know that many people
• 53:57
  Speaker 3: are noticing.
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it doesn't feel like what it would have. It
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: feels like it's less of a like concentrating event than
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: it was in the past. Like in previous shutdowns, it
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: was like that was all the news was shutdown day, whatever,
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: like everything was focused on that. I do think part
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: of this is just like Trump is a chaos agent.
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of shit happening. You've got you've got ice,
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: mass ice agents on the streets like causing chaos. You've
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: got troop deployments. You have what's happening in the Middle East.
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: You have just the, he's charging his political enemies. You
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: look at the list of things and like, yes, it's
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: not getting as much attention as it used to be.
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: I wonder the same thing because I do feel it, like,
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: which is this used to be a bigger deal. I mean,
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: it is true that over the years they've kind of
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: chipped it. They've like, they've passed laws to make shutdowns
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: less impactful, right? Like to allow certain checks to go
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: out to provide capacity. So like it has, because it is,
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: it's a smaller share of the government than what it
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: used to be. I mean, last, you know, shutdown in
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: the 90s, that's where shit went down. I mean, that
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: changed the course of history, that one in 1998.
• 54:59
  Speaker 3: Yes, that's well said.
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: But add to your list.
• 55:02
  Speaker 3: I do remember that. I do remember that, yeah. Add
• 55:04
  Speaker 3: to your list of things that are kind of just
• 55:07
  Speaker 3: not making news that Trump is doing. On Friday, he
• 55:09
  Speaker 3: threatened a 100% tariff on Chinese imports and then gave himself, like,
• 55:13
  Speaker 3: until November 1st to enforce it and then seemingly walked
• 55:16
  Speaker 3: it back. So, yeah.
• 55:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 55:19
  Speaker 3: This is where it's like constant.
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: It's constant. You never know. You never know. Like, like what, what,
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: what was the, what was the like precipitating incident to
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: cause him to say this, to walk it back. It
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: causes the stock market to do a dip and then recover.
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: You wonder who's making money on that. Who's aware he's
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: going to do that. Who's aware that he's going to
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: undo it. Like, there's just like, Oh, like he's just
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: like the, the amount of like, he's a chaos agent
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: in the markets. And now it's like, once again, you know,
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: he sees that I, Who knows?
• 55:46
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: He threatens this thing. He sees the market. He realizes
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: it goes too far. He walks it back. Who knows?
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: And some of it, by the way, like you look
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: at the like Trump in in this sort of summit
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: that he's called together and you see all these leaders talking.
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: There was one moment caught where he's talking to one
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: of these leaders and that leader brings up meeting with Eric.
• 56:07
  Speaker 3: Oh, Indonesia, right?
• 56:09
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 56:09
  Speaker 3: Indonesia's leader brings up that he's going to be with it.
• 56:11
  Speaker 3: Was it with Eric and Don? Who are not involved
• 56:13
  Speaker 3: at all in anything government related. They don't touch anything
• 56:15
  Speaker 3: government related. There's no reason that they would need to
• 56:18
  Speaker 3: meet with the head of a foreign state. But yeah,
• 56:21
  Speaker 3: Trump's telling them to go talk to Don.
• 56:23
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: And then and then you have leaders kind of going
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: up there and saying, God, we got to get this
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: fucking guy the Nobel Peace Prize. He made a joke
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: at Norway's expense, which I thought like he handled it fine.
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: Like it's better than bombing Norway over this. But like,
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: it's just also personal. So you just never fucking know. Yeah.
• 56:37
  Speaker 3: Everybody trotted up to the microphone was like, give this
• 56:39
  Speaker 3: man the Nobel Peace Prize. Even I was like, I'm
• 56:42
  Speaker 3: going to give you Israel's greatest prize. It's never gone
• 56:44
  Speaker 3: to a non-Israeli citizen. And then you'll get that other one.
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: It's like, okay, we get it.
• 56:48
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 56:48
  Speaker 3: One last thing before we get to Levitt's conversation with
• 56:50
  Speaker 3: Leah Greenberg. If you flew on a plane over the
• 56:54
  Speaker 3: holiday weekend, you may have seen a video of Kristi Noem,
• 56:56
  Speaker 3: the Secretary of Homeland Security, playing at TSA checkpoints, blaming
• 57:00
  Speaker 3: travel delays on Democrats. Let's watch.
• 57:03
  Speaker 8: It is TSA's top priority to make sure that you
• 57:06
  Speaker 8: have the most pleasant and efficient airport experience as possible
• 57:09
  Speaker 8: while we keep you safe. However, Democrats in Congress refuse
• 57:13
  Speaker 8: to fund the federal government. And because of this, many
• 57:16
  Speaker 8: of our operations are impacted and most of our TSA
• 57:19
  Speaker 8: employees are working without pay. We will continue to do
• 57:23
  Speaker 8: all that we can to avoid delays that will impact
• 57:25
  Speaker 8: your travel. And our hope is that Democrats will soon
• 57:28
  Speaker 8: recognize the importance of opening the government.
• 57:33
  Speaker 3: Airports in Seattle, Portland, Cleveland and other places said they're
• 57:35
  Speaker 3: not going to air that video because it obviously violates
• 57:38
  Speaker 3: the Hatch Act, which prohibits the use of federal assets
• 57:41
  Speaker 3: for political purposes. Meanwhile, a separate Farmers Fund known video
• 57:45
  Speaker 3: is making the rounds as well. Let's watch that one.
• 57:48
  Speaker 6: Our government agents are working without pay. Luckily, my boys
• 57:51
  Speaker 6: at ICE don't mind.
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: They're in it for the love.
• 57:54
  Speaker 3: Of the game.
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: And how did I find them?
• 57:56
  Speaker 6: By running ads like this.
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: Do you need a job now?
• 58:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: Are you a big tough guy?
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 58:03
  Speaker 7: Tough enough for the army or police?
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: No.
• 58:06
  Speaker 2: But do you take supplements that you bought at a
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: gas station? Daily. Do you like to use zip.
• 58:12
  Speaker 8: Ties because people in your life don't trust you with keys?
• 58:15
  Speaker 6: You know it.
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: Then buckle up and slap on some Oakley's Big Boy
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Ice.
• 58:22
  Speaker 3: She nailed that one.
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: I like that Tina Fey, somehow the accent runs from
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: North Dakota to Alaska.
• 58:26
  Speaker 3: Sort of like one kind of loose... mountain accent. Yeah,
• 58:30
  Speaker 3: it was basically a long O's. Sarah Palin with a
• 58:33
  Speaker 3: hat on. But I didn't see that. You flew over
• 58:35
  Speaker 3: the weekend, I flew over the weekend.
• 58:36
  Speaker 2: I didn't see that ad, did you?
• 58:38
  Speaker 3: No, I didn't see it.
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: No, but I doubt they would play it in Minneapolis.
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: I feel like Minneapolis is such a bastion.
• 58:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I flew out of Burbank, which a couple days
• 58:46
  Speaker 3: earlier had had no air traffic controllers on duty.
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, in the evening. In the evening. In the evening. Yeah,
• 58:51
  Speaker 2: I talked about it. I'd love to leave it. For
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: a brief flickering moment, LAX was the best airport in
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: Los Angeles.
• 58:55
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: It was only those four hours.
• 58:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Hannah texted me. It was like, uh, did you
• 58:59
  Speaker 3: see these reports? Is this true? Are we really going
• 59:01
  Speaker 3: to do this?
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: My flight was delayed getting back here today, but only
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: because a pilot called in sick. So I can't really
• 59:05
  Speaker 2: blame no one for that. Yeah. It's like, it is
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: such a, like, uh, it's a small thing. Doesn't really matter.
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: Do I think that like, you're going to really get
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: people on the line at the airport to say like,
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: you know what? I am going to change my party registration.
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: Democrats are a bunch of fucking assholes. You know, like
• 59:19
  Speaker 2: I don't, not really that worried about it, but there's
• 59:21
  Speaker 2: such a, like, uh, there was a, there was a, uh, uh,
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: like a, a meme going around that said, hey, like,
• 59:28
  Speaker 2: I have a theory. Everybody's 12. And it's like, why
• 59:30
  Speaker 2: are people eating only red meat and french fries? Because
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: they're 12. Like, oh, there's crime? We should put the
• 59:35
  Speaker 2: army on it. You're 12. You know, and it's like, oh, like,
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: you're mad at the Democrats and you're ahead of the
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: Homeland Security. You can make a video and show it
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: to everybody. And you're really mad because you're going to
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: express it.
• 59:44
  Speaker 3: Like, you're 12.
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: You're supposed to be a fucking adult.
• 59:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's one of those things where it's like, It is.
• 59:50
  Speaker 3: We're from the before times, before Trump. It is a
• 59:53
  Speaker 3: shocking violation of the law for people who had to
• 59:56
  Speaker 3: worry about the Hatch Act and try not to violate
• 59:58
  Speaker 3: it and actually be concerned about these kind of things.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 3: To see that video, it just makes you realize that
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 3: it's just absurd. I'm kind of of the view that
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 3: propaganda works in aggregate in the long term and that
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 3: videos like this and that all the other ways That
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 3: government officials are just blaming Democrats through government channels and
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 3: official communications, through emails and letters to workforces. Like, I
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 3: worry that's up.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: I do, too. I do, too, jokes aside. But there's
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: something about, like, Mike Johnson saying it's a hate America
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 2: rally or Kristi Noem feeling like, you know what, I'm
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: going to make a video where I blame the Democrats
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: and I'm going to play it at all the airports.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 4: Right?
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: Like, it's... I didn't realize how important like forbearance was, right?
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: Like we talk about the way in which Republicans are
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: shameless all the time and how powerful shame was as
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: a way of preventing terrible politics. But there was also
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 2: just this idea that, you know what, like I may
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 2: be mad, I may be angry, I might fight Democrats annoying,
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: I may want to beat them, but I'm just going
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: to like, I can be a little bit reserved and
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: I cannot say everything and go all the way because
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: we're sharing a country. And there'll be a Democrat in
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: this job one day and Presumably, I would rather them
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: not attack Republicans on the screens while you're waiting to
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 2: go through the airport. That said, when you're waiting in
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: line at the airport and you see the person responsible
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: for the line, I don't think it's always helpful. That's
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: a really good point.
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 3: I know.
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 2: Like when Eric Garcetti used to welcome me at LAX,
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 2: he'd be like, we got to get.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 5: Rid of it.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: I was like, if you're responsible for this airport, we
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: got big problems.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 3: I had the same exact thought about it. No, it's like, ma'am,
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 3: you don't want to be seen in this setting. This
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 3: is not good for anybody. Okay, in a second, we're
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 3: going to get to Levitt's interview with Leah Greenberg. But
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 3: before we do, we want to tell you about some
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 3: big news. Crooked Media Reads is releasing our next book
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 3: on January 27, 2026. It's called Hated by All the
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 3: Right People, Tucker Carlson and the Unraveling of the Conservative Mind.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 3: It's by an incredible journalist named Jason Zengerle. You know
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 3: him from New York Times Magazine, lots of other places,
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 3: just one of the best in the business. The title
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 3: comes from Tucker himself. When he visited Hungary in 2021,
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 3: he praised Viktor Orban. for being hated by all the
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 3: right people. And Jason wanted to write this book about
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 3: Tucker because the key to understanding the Trump age is
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 3: understanding how we as a society stopped seeking truth and
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 3: started seeking outrage. And Tucker's path from one of the
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 3: best magazine writers or long-form writers in the business to
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 3: what he is today kind of traces that path. So
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 3: it's an excellent book. I've read it. You will all
• 1:02:27
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• 1:02:29
  Speaker 3: by All the Right People at crooked.com slash books. Also,
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 3: California voters, on November 4th, you'll vote on Prop 50.
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  Speaker 3: It is a ballot measure to stop Trump from power-grabbing
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  Speaker 3: So check it out. All right, when we come back,
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 3: you'll hear Lovett's conversation with Leah Greenberg from Indivisible about
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 3: the No Kings protests.
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  Speaker 2: the co-executive director of Indivisible, one of the organizations behind
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 2: this weekend's No Kings protest. Leah Greenberg, welcome to the pod.
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 6: Great to be here.
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 2: So the last No Kings protest was on June 14th.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 2: It was time to counter Trump's military parade. Several million
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: people turned out. It was genuinely surprising just how much
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 2: enthusiasm there was. Maybe that is a poor reflection on me.
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 2: I don't know how surprised you are by the turnout.
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: But what led to the second No Kings protest? What
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 2: is this organized around? Why this weekend?
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 4: Well, one of the things that we heard and we
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 4: felt from the first No Kings protest was people needed
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 4: to be part of a movement. People came out in
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 4: the numbers that we saw because There is growing understanding
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 4: in this country that something extraordinarily dangerous and threatening is happening.
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 4: And there is a need for broad, popular mass defiance
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 4: of that.
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 6: And so over the summer, as we have.
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 4: Seen these repeated escalations, right, the passage of the one big,
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 4: beautiful bill that rips health care away from so many people,
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 4: the attacks on D.C., on Chicago, on Portland, the ways
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 4: in which this administration is escalating attacks on the First
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 4: Amendment across civil society. You know, we've been feeling collectively
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 4: that it's time to bring together again everybody across the
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 4: country who will take that stand against authoritarianism, against corruption, against.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 6: Attacks on our neighbors.
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 4: And so, you know, it was an understanding that we
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 4: had a moment that we could collectively build on and
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 4: we had a frame that we could collectively build on
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 4: and that it was going to be important to continue
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 4: to foster that sense of mass popular opposition and defiance
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 4: as the administration tries to consolidate control. So.
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 2: You've been getting a lot of free press. Mike Johnson
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 2: called it a hate America rally. Why do you hate America?
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 4: I mean, look, this is honestly, it's ridiculous and it's
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 4: sinister in equal parts. I think it's notable that he
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 4: called it a hate America rally because he can't bear
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 4: to say out loud the name of the actual rally,
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 4: which is No Kings, which is about the most American
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 4: sentiment in the entire, in the world. Personally, as somebody
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 4: who led the crowd in the Pledge of Allegiance of
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 4: about 100,000 people in Philadelphia at our last rally, it
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 4: was a little bit of a surprise to hear that.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 4: But I think we can also be really clear about
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 4: what's happening, right, which is that, one, they are flailing.
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 6: They are panicking.
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 4: They don't have a message on why they are shutting
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 4: down the government to stop people from getting health care.
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 4: So they're just trying to grab for anything they can.
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 4: And two, they're trying to legitimate and set up for
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 4: the broad attack on civil society that Donald Trump and
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 4: Stephen Miller have very clearly signaled that they are going
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 4: to wage.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So speaking of that, we've seen this effort to
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 2: tie a whole bunch of peaceful, progressive organizations to a
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 2: nefarious organization called they're calling Antifa, which claiming that all
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 2: these disparate groups are connected and inciting terrorism and violence,
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 2: that is obviously chilling. And then it turns out Indivisible
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 2: is specifically named as one of the groups potentially being investigated.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: What was your reaction to that? And are there any
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 2: signs that this is anything beyond just something in a
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 2: document somewhere inside the White House or the Justice Department?
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 4: Well, Look, I think we have to understand it first
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 4: in the context of the authoritarian playbook, which is that
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 4: across a bunch of different fronts in society, they push
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 4: as hard as they can, and they claim powers that
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 4: they don't have, and they see whether people allow them
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 4: to do it, allow them to get away with it,
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 4: whether they fold in advance. And we saw that in
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 4: how they interact with businesses. We see that in how
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 4: they're interacting with higher education and law firms.
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 6: We're seeing that now in how they're interacting with civil society.
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 4: And so I was not surprised as they started to escalate.
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 4: I have not been surprised that they are targeting a
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 4: bunch of the entities that they perceive as mobilizing their
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 4: political opposition. And it's also really clear that this is
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 4: a moment when collectively we have to, we have to
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 4: stay rooted in, you know, who we are, what we value,
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 4: what we stand for and say, we are simply exercising
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 4: our first amendment rights. There is a first amendment right
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 4: to protest this government and the harm it is doing
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 4: to regular Americans. And whether or not they're going to
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 4: try to assert powers that they don't have to wage
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 4: this unconstitutional crackdown, somebody's got to stand firm and say,
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 4: we're here and we're going to exercise our rights. And
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 4: the best way to push back against this kind of unlawful,
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 4: unconstitutional overreach is more free speech.
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 2: So, yes, I hear that. But they could try to
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 2: hurt organizations with process, right? Indivisible is... an incredible organization
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 2: that popped up in response to Donald Trump. And it
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 2: has mobilized people and engaged people entirely peaceful in every
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 2: way humanly possible. But that wouldn't stop them from trying
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 2: to put the government on organizations they don't like. And
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 2: I am genuinely curious. I think that two things can
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 2: be true. One, you have to be defiant of something
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 2: like this and not allow it to change what you're doing. Well,
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 2: at the same time, organizations on the left need to
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 2: be ready and buttoned up and figure out how they're
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 2: going to be prepared for anything that may come. And
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 2: I just want to understand how you're preparing.
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 6: Absolutely.
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 4: Well, I mean, the short version is we take these
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 4: threats seriously. We prepare in advance. We think about what
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 4: we need to do, both to make sure that we're 1,000%
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 4: intensively clear on our own values, on our commitment to
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 4: peaceful protest and nonviolence, that we train and support people
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 4: all over the country for something like No Kings intensively
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 4: to make sure that they are capable of holding peaceful,
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 4: joyful events everywhere. And that we're, you know, we're preparing
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 4: our own organizations in the event of some kind of
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 4: unlawful or unconstitutional effort to shut down peaceful protest and
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 4: organized opposition. So we take it seriously, but we also
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 4: understand that part of the purpose of this cycle of
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 4: threats is to throw you off your game. It's to
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 4: distract you. It's to make you back down in advance
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 4: and not do things that you previously would have done
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 4: out of the fear of repression. And so A big
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 4: part of what we are trying to collectively do, both
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 4: as an organization and as we call for and move
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 4: forward with the No Kings protests, is break that cycle
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 4: of anticipatory obedience, is say, we have these powers, we
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 4: have these rights, we are going to continue to assert them.
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 4: And if you want to stop us, you are going
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 4: to have to show that you are prepared to do
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 4: unconstitutional things, and then we will continue to push back.
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 2: So let's talk about what that looks like, because we've
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 2: seen millions of people come out at the previous protests.
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 2: I hope we see the same this weekend. I'll be
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 2: out there. I think a lot of people at Crooked
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 2: are going to be out there. We're all going to be...
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 2: The first time, it was an incredibly inspiring day because
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 2: you saw all these people showing up for No Kings
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 2: that was aligning with a bunch of unions that were
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 2: coming out and that had been protesting with immigration groups
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 2: that had come out and were protesting. It was entirely peaceful, patriotic.
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 2: It was a beautiful thing to see. There's two big,
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 2: big reasons. Big corporations... colleges, law firms, media organizations capitulate
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 2: to Trump. One, they give him power he couldn't take, right?
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 2: They are afraid of him and they bend. The other
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 2: is that they're not afraid of the opposition, that they
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 2: don't view the vast number of Americans who don't want
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 2: to live in an autocracy as any kind of political
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 2: problem they have to worry about. We've seen signs that
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 2: that can change. There was a lot of pressure on
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 2: Disney over Kimmel, but for the most part, they haven't
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 2: been wrong. that Trump is a bigger political problem than
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 2: those that don't like Trump in terms of consumers and
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 2: their reaction. How do you make sure, or how do
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 2: you transform this incredible enthusiasm that you have helped reveal
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 2: and show, make clear that exists around No Kings? How
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 2: do we turn that into actual political actions, turn that
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 2: enthusiasm into specific pressure points and changes?
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 6: Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 4: And one of the things that we think about a
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 4: lot at Indivisible is you know, we've moved into a
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 4: stage of authoritarian consolidation and power moves differently as an
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 4: authoritarian starts to take more power. And you have to
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 4: think not only about your formal political representation, right? Your
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 4: member of Congress, your senators, et cetera, but the other
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 4: places in your life where you have some leverage, you
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 4: have some ability to weigh in your faith institution. If
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 4: you have one, your higher education institution, if you are
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 4: a student or an alumni, your workplace institution, your professional association,
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 4: the places where you actually, your role as a consumer,
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 4: the places where you have some power over institutions that
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 4: are making decisions about whether they're going to enable and
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 4: go along with Trump or whether they're going to push back.
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 4: And so after the first No Kings, we trained about 250,000
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 4: people in strategic non-cooperation and how to kind of campaign
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 4: and target and apply pressure to some of those pillars
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 4: of society, those institutions that are not your formal elected officials,
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 4: but that are in fact shaping how power unfolds in
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 4: this moment. And so we're seeing some of that come to.
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 6: Fruition, right?
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 4: There is more organized campaigning getting up and running every
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 4: day as it relates to higher education, bringing together students,
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 4: bringing together alumni, people pushing back on this effort to
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 4: get a bunch of institutions to sign a compact with
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 4: the Trump administration. So we're seeing some of that. I
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 4: think the Kimmel incident was a really important moment for
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 4: people in demonstrating our collective power as consumers. And we're
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 4: definitely looking at how do we continue to apply that
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 4: and support it Things like pushing on the target boycott
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 4: and also figuring out additional ways to use our leverage.
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 4: And I think we also just have to ask people
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 4: to collectively figure out how do they push back within
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 4: their own sphere of influence, right?
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 6: Who are you? Are you a consumer? Are you an alumni?
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 4: Are you a member of an institution locally that has
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 4: some power to push back?
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 6: What are they doing? What could they be doing? You
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 6: actually have to figure out how to work that leverage.
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting. There's a vicious circle that certainly Democratic leaders,
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 2: they just don't have a lot of trust, either morally, right?
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 2: They're not viewed as sort of morally courageous leaders. It's
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 2: the truth. And they're not seen as sort of strategic masterminds.
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 2: And so they have neither kind of strategic or kind
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 2: of moral trust. And so people look around, they don't
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 2: see people doing things. A lot of the times, you've
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 2: helped prove a big exception. And they look up and
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 2: they don't really trust what they're hearing from above, right?
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 2: But you kind of, you can imagine a, like a
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 2: virtuous circle where an organization that produces something like no
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 2: Kings can direct people into a specific action. People heard
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 2: about friends and others and people online canceling Disney plus
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 2: suddenly there's something that was happening organically. And I guess I'm,
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 2: my question is how do we then, how do we,
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 2: how do we get that next step?
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 2: Like, how do you, this is our second no Kings protest.
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 2: I'm very excited about it. How do we then turn
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 2: this into what's the political action we get this big
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 2: group of people to take next?
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, first of all, I wouldn't overlook the value
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 4: of continuing to push Democrats to stand up and to
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 4: push back, right? Because fundamentally, we've been on this journey
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 4: with the Democratic Party over the course of the last
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 4: nine months, where we are trying to move people into
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 4: a resistance posture.
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 6: And it has been a work in progress. And also,
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 6: they are.
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 4: In fact, currently, you know, really actually going out on
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 4: a limb to push back on millions of people losing
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 4: their health care, seeing health care prices rise, holding their
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 4: leverage as it relates to the shutdown.
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 6: That's actually huge progress.
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 4: And, you know, and I think when you get back
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 4: to that question of how do you move institutions from
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 4: being afraid, more afraid of Trump than they are of
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 4: potential consequences for enabling Trump, A big part of that is,
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 4: is there an opposition party that seems like.
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 6: It's actually willing.
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 4: To use its leverage in the future if it regains
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 4: power to investigate, to enact consequences for people who went
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 4: along with this regime of lawbreaking, unconstitutional actions? And we've
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 4: seen a few of those moments where Democrats really start
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 4: to say, and there's going to be consequences, but we
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 4: need to have more. Because part of how we got
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 4: here in the first place is, frankly, senior level Senior
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 4: level MAGA folks did not experience consequences in 2020 after
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 4: they literally tried to overthrow the government. And so they
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 4: have correctly concluded that the modern iteration of the Democratic
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 4: Party is not one that's going to have consequences next time.
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 4: We have to fix that perception problem. Yeah.
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 2: And to your point, right? Why did we end up in...
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 2: Why were Democratic leaders willing to go hard for a shutdown?
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 2: They did it in part because they felt pressure from...
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 2: They're voters who said, hey, I need to see a
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 2: fight from you. And to their credit, right, there are
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 2: a lot of people that were critical, I think, of
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 2: making the fight about health care. There's some people that
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 2: thought there shouldn't be a shutdown. There's some people that
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 2: thought the fight needed to be over the entirety of
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 2: the authoritarian regime.
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 3: Takeover.
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 2: But they focused on this issue, and it does seem
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 2: to have Republicans on their heels.
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 4: And, you know, look, politics is the art of the possible.
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 4: And the ability of the Democratic coalition to successfully align
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 4: around one issue is.
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 6: It's a step forward.
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 4: Is it exactly how, you know, if I were in
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 4: charge of all messaging of everyone, maybe I would do
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 4: something differently.
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 6: It doesn't matter.
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 4: They were actually collectively able to get together around healthcare.
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 4: And I think what we've seen over the last couple
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 4: of weeks is that that was a good gamble. It
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 4: is breaking through in a way that a lot of
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 4: people were really skeptical of.
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 2: You have helped put together with a bunch of organizations
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 2: what is going to be a ton of people, patriotic
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 2: people who love this country and don't want to see
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 2: what's happening to it. continue, who are peaceful, who are
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 2: going to show up with kids and with dogs and
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 2: with signs. And then you have Republicans like Trump and
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 2: Mike Johnson and all these other people claiming it's some
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 2: sort of hate America, Antifa, radical riot. There may be
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 2: places where random people decide to, you know, throw a
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 2: trash can, set something on fire, right? Like they are
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 2: going to try to use those examples. Or there may
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 2: be other people that show up to try to turn
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 2: protests into something chaotic and dangerous, right? How do we
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 2: respond to that? How do we make sure that everyone
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 2: understands that the No Kings protest is a peaceful action
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 2: by people wanting to make their voices heard?
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 4: Well, first, I think we do everything that we can
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 4: to ensure that they are peaceful actions, right? And that
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 4: is training tens of thousands of people in safety and
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 4: de-escalation and making sure folks have safety plans in place
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 4: wherever they are to support peaceful.
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 6: And joyful events. So that's the first piece.
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 4: The second, I think, is pre-messaging this.
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 6: Exact playbook, right?
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 4: It's really clear as Republicans go on the offense against
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 4: millions of Americans coming out to express their First Amendment
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 4: rights that what they are trying to do is create
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 4: the permission structure for a broad crackdown on civil society.
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 4: We can see that coming, and we should be saying
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 4: that right now, right? That they are collectively trying to
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 4: put the wheels in motion to support this Stephen Miller
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 4: vengeful quest to go after anybody who opposes them. So
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 4: I think we can tell people that story in advance
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 4: in a way that helps them understand it if and
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 4: when Republicans put that plan into action. And then finally,
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 4: I think we all have to just collectively understand that
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 4: we're in a moment where there are risks on all sides.
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 4: And the way that we talk about that in this country,
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 4: a lot of times it's about kind of like, should
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 4: I speak out? Should I do something right now? What
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 4: we don't talk enough about is the long-term risk of
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 4: living under a consolidating authoritarian regime, where we are poor,
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 4: we are less safe, our kids are more likely to
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 4: be killed by gun violence, we're all more likely to
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 4: die of communicable diseases because there's no public health infrastructure.
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 6: Risks to all of us are going up all of
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 6: the time. And we have to think about it in
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 6: terms of, you know, what is the path?
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 4: What is the collective action that we can take that
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 4: puts us on a different path for this country? And
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 4: that is actions like No Kings. And that is actions
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 4: like coming out this weekend.
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 2: Leah Greenberg, thank you so much for your time. Everybody
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 2: get out there this weekend. We will see you out there.
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 2: It's going to be fun. I'm going to bring a
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 2: dog or a sign. It's probably going to be a dog.
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 3: That's our show for today. Thanks to Leah Greenberg for
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 3: coming on. John and Dan will be back with a
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 3: new show on Friday.
• 1:22:24
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