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Trump's Very Convincing Body Double · Pod Save America

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• 2:18
  Speaker 4: Welcome to Positive America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
• 2:20
  Speaker 4: On today's show, Trump's immigration crackdown has expanded to droning
• 2:24
  Speaker 4: speedboats and threatening to strip Americans of their citizenship. Jeffrey
• 2:28
  Speaker 4: Epstein's victims are planning to name names since the Trump
• 2:31
  Speaker 4: administration is still doing everything it can to prevent the
• 2:33
  Speaker 4: release of the files. The president briefly died over the weekend.
• 2:37
  Speaker 4: And later, I talked to strict scrutiny's Leah Lippman about
• 2:40
  Speaker 4: Trump's judicial losing streak and why federal judges are starting
• 2:43
  Speaker 4: to complain to reporters about John Roberts' Supreme Court. But
• 2:49
  Speaker 4: let's start with the predictable consequences of putting a brain
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  Speaker 4: worm addled, animal carcass collecting, vaccine denier in charge of
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  Speaker 4: America's health and well-being.
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  Speaker 3: Who are you talking about?
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  Speaker 4: I'm talking about RFK Jr., Kennedy Skyhawk. In his short
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  Speaker 4: tenure as Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
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  Speaker 4: has fired thousands of federal health workers today. severely weakened
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  Speaker 4: programs to protect people from things like heart attacks, strokes,
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  Speaker 4: and lead poisoning, canceled a half a billion dollar investment
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  Speaker 4: in mRNA vaccines that were being developed to potentially cure cancer,
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  Speaker 4: stacked vaccine advisory boards with anti-vax kooks who want to
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  Speaker 4: pull COVID vaccines from the shelf, and then forced out
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  Speaker 4: his own pick for CDC director, along with the agency's
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  Speaker 4: top doctors and scientists, when they refused to rubber stamp
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  Speaker 4: whatever recommendations his anti-vax kooks come up with. That isn't
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  Speaker 4: even my list. It's me paraphrasing a recent New York
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  Speaker 4: Times piece by the last nine directors of CDC who
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  Speaker 4: served under Democratic and Republican presidents. Kennedy finally had to
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  Speaker 4: answer for all this in front of the Senate on Thursday,
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  Speaker 4: where Democrats and at least two Republicans who are doctors,
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  Speaker 4: John Barrasso and Bill Cassidy, came loaded for bear. Here's
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  Speaker 4: how it went.
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  Speaker 5: Secretary Kennedy, in your confirmation hearings, you promised to uphold
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  Speaker 5: the highest standards for vaccines.
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  Speaker 4: Since then, I've grown deeply concerned.
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  Speaker 3: The public has seen measles.
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  Speaker 5: Outbreaks, leadership of the National Institute of Health questioning the
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  Speaker 5: use of mRNA vaccines, the recently confirmed director of Centers
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  Speaker 5: for Disease Control and Prevention fired. Americans don't know who.
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  Speaker 4: To rely on.
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  Speaker 5: If we're gonna make America healthy again, we can't allow
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  Speaker 5: public health to be undermined.
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  Speaker 6: Would you accept the fact than a million Americans died
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  Speaker 6: from COVID?
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  Speaker 2: I don't know how many died.
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  Speaker 6: You're the Secretary of Health and Human Services.
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  Speaker 3: You don't have any idea how many Americans died from COVID?
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  Speaker 3: I don't think anybody knows that.
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  Speaker 6: Do you think the vaccine did anything to prevent additional deaths?
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  Speaker 7: Again, I would like to see the data and talk
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  Speaker 7: about the data.
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  Speaker 3: You've had this job for eight months, and you don't
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  Speaker 3: know the data about whether the vaccine will save lives? No,
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  Speaker 3: and that's the problem. Mr.
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  Speaker 6: Secretary, do you agree with me that the president deserves
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  Speaker 6: a Nobel Prize for Operation Warp Speed?
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  Speaker 3: Absolutely, Senator. Let me ask you.
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  Speaker 6: But you just told Senator Bennett that the COVID vaccine
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  Speaker 6: killed more people than COVID. Wait, I did not say that.
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  Speaker 6: I would say effectively we're denying people vaccine.
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  Speaker 3: Senator Cantwell, I hate you wrong.
• 5:34
  Speaker 4: So good for Bill Cassidy there. Would have been really
• 5:37
  Speaker 4: nice if that Bill Cassidy had checked in with this
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  Speaker 4: Bill Cassidy back in February when RFK Jr. was about
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  Speaker 4: to be confirmed and he cast one of the deciding votes.
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  Speaker 3: Mr.
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  Speaker 6: Kennedy and the administration committed.
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  Speaker 3: that he and I would have.
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  Speaker 6: An unprecedentedly close, collaborative working relationship if he is confirmed.
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  Speaker 4: Looks like that worked out pretty well for him and us, huh? Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, it was so obviously predictable from the very beginning.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, RFK Jr. has been one thing. He is
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  Speaker 3: a megalomaniacal, narcissistic, inveterate liar who has been pushing vaccine
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  Speaker 3: conspiracy theories for years, and they put him in charge
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  Speaker 3: of America's vaccine supply, and these people all went along
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  Speaker 3: with it in The thing that's so frustrating is every
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  Speaker 3: single one of them, at least Cassidy wrestled with this publicly,
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  Speaker 3: but almost to a person, all of these Republicans in
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  Speaker 3: private thought this was an insane fucking idea. And they
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  Speaker 3: all went along, not just willingly, but enthusiastically because Donald
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  Speaker 3: Trump told him to do so. And now we are
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  Speaker 3: all suffering the consequences of that obsequious allegiance to Trump.
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  Speaker 4: And this isn't even like, this is the tip of
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  Speaker 4: the iceberg. We are not, I mean, there's going to
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  Speaker 4: be another pandemic. We're not going to be ready. We're
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  Speaker 4: not ready for any kind of bioweapon that might come
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  Speaker 4: our way. We have all of these promising cures that
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  Speaker 4: scientists and medical researchers all over the country, both in
• 7:01
  Speaker 4: the government and outside of the government, have been working on.
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  Speaker 4: And he's just like a bull in a China shop,
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  Speaker 4: just going through cutting funding, firing people, infectious diseases. They're
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  Speaker 4: studying at the CDC. Now we've lost the best leadership
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  Speaker 4: at the CDC, scientists, doctors. And, you know, all these fucking,
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  Speaker 4: I was, of course, we were watching Fox News, of course,
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  Speaker 4: through this. And then they cut to the panel afterwards.
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  Speaker 4: And it's Ari Fleischer and Kayleigh McEnany and Harris Faulkner. And,
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  Speaker 4: you know, they have enough shame to not go in,
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  Speaker 4: all in on the vaccine denial. So instead of addressing that,
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  Speaker 4: which was the crux of the hearing that even Republicans
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  Speaker 4: like Cassidy and Brasso went on, all they could say is, yeah, well,
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  Speaker 4: they lied to us about the masks. And these Democrats
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  Speaker 4: just don't like RFK Jr. They just hate RFK Jr.
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  Speaker 4: So that's why they're going after him right now. Okay,
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  Speaker 4: what's next? And they moved on, not even addressing the
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  Speaker 4: vaccine stuff.
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  Speaker 3: Of course they can't, right? They absolutely can't. It's an
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  Speaker 3: indefensible position. And you said, we're not ready for the
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  Speaker 3: next pandemic. We're becoming less ready for several pandemics ago.
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  Speaker 8: Yeah.
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  Speaker 5: Right?
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  Speaker 3: We are not preparing for the threats of the 21st century.
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  Speaker 3: We are unpreparing for the threats of the 20th century
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  Speaker 3: right now. I mean, it is- I mean, we're going
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  Speaker 3: to talk about this a little later in the show,
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  Speaker 3: but we are headed in a very, very dangerous place.
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  Speaker 3: And props to Cassidy and Barrasso for being the first
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  Speaker 3: Republicans in any hearing since Trump was elected again to
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  Speaker 3: express any dismay or disagreement with a single thing that
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  Speaker 3: a Trump cabinet member has done. But what good is
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  Speaker 3: that doing us now? And where were the rest of them?
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  Speaker 9: I know.
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  Speaker 4: Tillis was there. He was asking a few questions that were,
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  Speaker 4: I would say they were not as tough as Cassidy
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  Speaker 4: and Barrasso. There was some other jackass there. I don't
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  Speaker 4: even know his name. Oh, Todd Young, Todd Young, who's
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  Speaker 4: also can sometimes be a little more, you know, he
• 8:50
  Speaker 4: was asking some questions, but it was more just like,
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  Speaker 4: this doesn't seem totally on the up and up. So
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  Speaker 4: what do you have to say? And, you know, RFK Jr.,
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  Speaker 4: he's just got a few, he's got a few tricks
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  Speaker 4: whenever he's asked questions like this, which you just heard, right?
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  Speaker 4: Where he's like, I don't want to, I don't want
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  Speaker 4: to just talk, I want to argue with about the data, right?
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  Speaker 4: And then you present him with the data. He disagrees
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  Speaker 4: with the data because he says the data that you
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  Speaker 4: show him that just, that, that, takes an opposing view
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  Speaker 4: of his, is politicized. And then he brings you data
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  Speaker 4: from a bunch of kooks that he says is right.
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  Speaker 4: And then he says, well, I'm not the expert here,
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  Speaker 4: but this data says this and your data has been debunked.
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  Speaker 4: So what can I say? What can I say? And
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  Speaker 4: it's just all, it's never like, oh, I'm going to
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  Speaker 4: take all the vaccines off the shelf and I'm anti-vax
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  Speaker 4: and I'm just going to do all, he never does that, right?
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  Speaker 4: It's always just, you know, he's playing a shell game
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  Speaker 4: the whole time.
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  Speaker 3: It's like arguing with Jell-O. Because he never takes the
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  Speaker 3: strong position. Then he just vomits up a surface level
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: set of anecdotes or data. I was watching the clip
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  Speaker 3: going around today from an interview he did with Lex
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  Speaker 3: Friedman last year, I think, where he argues essentially that
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  Speaker 3: the polio vaccine killed more people than polio. But he
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: does it in a way that if you didn't know
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: any better, it would– like, oh, that might be a
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: good point. That might be a good point. And then
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  Speaker 3: he does this whole other– like, this is the narcissism
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: of megalomania is– in this hearing, he does this whole
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  Speaker 3: few good men thing where he's like, I'm not out
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  Speaker 3: of order. The whole healthcare system's out of order. I'm
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  Speaker 3: going to be the person who tells you the truth.
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  Speaker 3: And it makes for good TV, but it should give
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  Speaker 3: you some concern that that is also the person making
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  Speaker 3: healthcare decisions for the American people.
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  Speaker 7: Yeah.
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  Speaker 4: He knows the buttons to push, right? Which is all
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  Speaker 4: he has to do is sit there and be like, oh,
• 10:41
  Speaker 4: was that a defense of the drug industry that I
• 10:43
  Speaker 4: just heard, Senator? And the Senator's like, no, I was
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  Speaker 4: asking you how many people died of COVID. He's like,
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  Speaker 4: so you must be in the pocket of big pharma,
• 10:51
  Speaker 4: which Bernie was good. There was a clip of Bernie
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  Speaker 4: being like, oh, you took a bunch of money from
• 10:55
  Speaker 4: big pharma over the years. Does that mean that you're
• 10:57
  Speaker 4: in their pocket as well? And of course he was
• 10:59
  Speaker 4: all offended by that. But yeah, that's one of his
• 11:02
  Speaker 4: tricks too.
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  Speaker 3: And just the absolute lie when he was asked about
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  Speaker 3: the firing of the CDC director said, we have to
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: fire them all because America has gotten less healthy and
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: therefore I have to hold them accountable. As we learned
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: today in the op-ed that Susan Menares, the fired CDC director,
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: wrote in the Wall Street Journal, she was fired because
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: she refused to preemptively accept the recommendations of the anti-vax
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: kook panel that he's put together to be in charge
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  Speaker 3: of vaccines in this country.
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  Speaker 4: Also, I didn't hear anyone ask him this question, but
• 11:29
  Speaker 4: this whole thing is so fucking stupid because he keeps saying, well,
• 11:31
  Speaker 4: I had to fire these people at the CDC because
• 11:34
  Speaker 4: they fucked up during the Biden administration during the pandemic.
• 11:38
  Speaker 4: First of all, most of them are there in the
• 11:39
  Speaker 4: Trump administration, the first Trump administration. But regardless, he picked
• 11:44
  Speaker 4: the CDC director. It was his person. So he fired
• 11:48
  Speaker 4: the person who just a couple weeks ago said her
• 11:53
  Speaker 4: credentials were impeccable, that her scientific judgment, all that stuff
• 11:58
  Speaker 4: was impeccable. She was great. But then she wouldn't accept
• 12:00
  Speaker 4: the anti-vax kooks. Not even she wouldn't accept them. He
• 12:03
  Speaker 4: basically told her, I will fire you. unless you don't
• 12:07
  Speaker 4: accept their recommendations, which haven't happened yet. So no matter
• 12:10
  Speaker 4: what they say at the September 17th and 18th meeting,
• 12:13
  Speaker 4: I want you to rubber stamp it. And she said, no,
• 12:15
  Speaker 4: of course not. Like I have to take the recommendations
• 12:18
  Speaker 4: and then make sure we review them and go through
• 12:20
  Speaker 4: a scientific process. And he was like, no, then you're fired.
• 12:23
  Speaker 4: That's what happened.
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: That's how you should run medicine in this country.
• 12:27
  Speaker 4: So, you know, you all might be wondering, what does
• 12:30
  Speaker 4: the president of the United States think about this ongoing disaster?
• 12:34
  Speaker 4: Here are some highlights from a post of Donald Trump's
• 12:36
  Speaker 4: earlier in the week before this hearing. Quote, it is
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: very important that the drug companies justify the success of
• 12:43
  Speaker 4: their various COVID drugs. Many people think they are a
• 12:47
  Speaker 4: miracle that saved millions of lives. Others disagree. With CDC
• 12:53
  Speaker 4: being ripped apart over this question, I want the answer
• 12:56
  Speaker 4: and I want it now. I hope Operation Warp Speed
• 12:59
  Speaker 4: was as, all caps, BRILLIANT... as many say it was.
• 13:04
  Speaker 4: If not, we all want to know about it. And why?
• 13:08
  Speaker 4: Question mark, question mark, question mark. What do you make
• 13:11
  Speaker 4: of that? He's just, you know, he's just, he's just
• 13:13
  Speaker 4: a guy watching this unfold. And boy, he would love
• 13:17
  Speaker 4: someone to get to the bottom of this so that
• 13:19
  Speaker 4: the buck can stop somewhere in this country. If only
• 13:23
  Speaker 4: we know where.
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: But like, what do any of those sentences mean together?
• 13:29
  Speaker 4: It just, it means he is, he is struggling with
• 13:32
  Speaker 4: the fact, he's like, On one hand, Operation Warp Speed.
• 13:35
  Speaker 4: Even Democrats say it's my greatest accomplishment and I'm brilliant.
• 13:38
  Speaker 4: And then I heard someone, you know, people have been
• 13:40
  Speaker 4: floating another Nobel Prize. I'm trying to, he's trying to
• 13:42
  Speaker 4: collect them all. Peace, whatever, I guess Nobel Prize for medicine,
• 13:46
  Speaker 4: whatever this might be. And so he wants to get
• 13:48
  Speaker 4: this one too. He's like, so on one hand, I
• 13:50
  Speaker 4: kind of like that. On the other hand, the fucking
• 13:53
  Speaker 4: kook faction that put me in the White House, the
• 13:56
  Speaker 4: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. voters, the Maha Coalition, I got
• 14:00
  Speaker 4: to keep them on board, even though I think they're
• 14:02
  Speaker 4: fucking crazy personally. But, you know, they got me here.
• 14:05
  Speaker 4: So I don't know what to do.
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, if you take this literally, which is quite a leap,
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: I would say. But if you were to take it
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: literally as something more than just like words vomited up
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: on social media, it probably does speak to the political
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: tension at the heart of this issue for Trump. Because
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: you remember during the primary when Trump brought up the
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: COVID vaccines and he got booed? I think it was
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: in Alabama. And that is a thing that Trump never
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: gets booed. Never. And like, you can sort of, I
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: remember us podcasting or talking or doing something about that
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: when it happened. And like, he was like, seemed legitimately
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: shocked when it happened. And you can see him like
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: sort of processing it in his lizard brain. And so
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: like on one hand, he does know that there is,
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: as you said, the kook faction. There is this element.
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: It's the Maha people. It's the far-right anti-vax people. That
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: is a group of people. I think he probably also
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: knows that in most polling, 75% to 80% of people
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: support vaccines. Now, while the COVID vaccines are certainly politicized,
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: the rest of them, you're looking at like 90% of
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: people who think the measles vaccine is safe and plan
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: to get the measles vaccine, or if they're having kids,
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: plan to get it. So I think he is sort
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: of like wrestling. He's trying to have it both ways
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: at the same time. But I think the question is
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: being called now because of how public RFK's actions have been.
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: And they're going to be when people can't get the
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: COVID vaccine this fall.
• 15:29
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: But what comes next? Because it starts with the COVID vaccine.
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: It doesn't stop with the COVID vaccine. What happens when
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: the flu vaccine is messed up next year? Or they
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: have weird recommendations on MMR or any of the other vaccines.
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: Like it's like, this is, this is a big issue
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: and it's one that I think people pay, that people
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: are going to pay a lot of attention to.
• 15:50
  Speaker 4: And again, you know, this isn't about vaccine mandates for
• 15:54
  Speaker 4: COVID vaccine, which got politicized and are unpopular now. This
• 15:59
  Speaker 4: also isn't about like, do you think the vaccine work,
• 16:02
  Speaker 4: the COVID vaccine works, or do you want the COVID vaccine?
• 16:06
  Speaker 4: This is about, do you think the COVID vaccine and
• 16:09
  Speaker 4: other vaccines are, that have been rigorously tested should be
• 16:15
  Speaker 4: available to people who want them. That's all. And if
• 16:18
  Speaker 4: you're going to ask Americans, do you think this vaccine,
• 16:21
  Speaker 4: this medicine that has been approved by doctors and scientists
• 16:26
  Speaker 4: and researchers should at least be available to people? Of
• 16:30
  Speaker 4: course they're going to say yes. Like this is where
• 16:33
  Speaker 4: he's on the absolute wrong side of public opinion on this.
• 16:36
  Speaker 4: Like in a huge way. Because if you walk into,
• 16:38
  Speaker 4: people are going to walk into fucking CVS And it's
• 16:42
  Speaker 4: already happening. And they're not going to be able to
• 16:44
  Speaker 4: get their COVID vaccine. And if they are under 65
• 16:49
  Speaker 4: and not able to somehow prove some comorbidity or underlying
• 16:53
  Speaker 4: health condition, they're not going to be able to get it.
• 16:57
  Speaker 4: People are going to be pissed about that.
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: And we're now in year three or four, I guess,
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: of people sort of getting their COVID booster and their
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: flu shot at the same time.
• 17:05
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: Like it's sort of just, if you were someone who
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: was getting the COVID booster, you'd go to your doctor,
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: they just do both at the same time. You go
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: to CVS and you do both at the same time.
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: And people are going to go in and do that.
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: And COVID is not going to be available. They're going
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: to go on that Walgreens website. They're going to try
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: to sign up for it and they won't be able to.
• 17:18
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 17:19
  Speaker 4: And again, this is also just the tip of the iceberg.
• 17:21
  Speaker 4: We're talking about the COVID vaccine. We're also talking about
• 17:23
  Speaker 4: all vaccines. There's so many other public health issues and
• 17:27
  Speaker 4: issues around protecting people from infectious diseases, outbreaks. there's measles stuff,
• 17:32
  Speaker 4: there's flu. I mean, there's just so many things that are,
• 17:34
  Speaker 4: if this is how they're handling that, it's not like
• 17:36
  Speaker 4: they have just a thing for vaccines, though they do.
• 17:39
  Speaker 4: This is how he treats all public health issues, right?
• 17:42
  Speaker 4: Which is just whoever I, I don't know, whatever I
• 17:45
  Speaker 4: looked up on the internet and found, that's going to
• 17:48
  Speaker 4: raise some questions for me. So let's get another process going.
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: It's whatever the experts said to do, whatever science said,
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: we do the opposite. There was a quote in the
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: New York Times, sorry about this, from the guy who's
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: the director of the vaccine center at the children's hospital, Pennsylvania.
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: And he's talking about how dangerous the whole thing is.
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: And he said, science is not becoming a source of
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: truth in this country anymore. And that's very dangerous when
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: it comes to public health, right? That's where we are.
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: So science is not, is to be debated. Like who
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: is the greatest basketball player of all time? It's not,
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: you can't, if you can't trust the science, a lot
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: of things collapse pretty quickly, right? Where are we going
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: to stop trusting math now?
• 18:22
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: I guess that's that, that was the big lie. We
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: don't trust math that now we don't trust science on vaccines.
• 18:26
  Speaker 4: I mean, that's why the BLS person got fired.
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: That's true.
• 18:30
  Speaker 4: So in case you're wondering where this is going, Florida,
• 18:35
  Speaker 4: the state of Florida, always look to Florida to see
• 18:36
  Speaker 4: how bad it can get. And the rest of the
• 18:39
  Speaker 4: country will probably get there eventually. Florida has announced on
• 18:43
  Speaker 4: Monday that it would be the first state to end
• 18:45
  Speaker 4: all vaccine mandates.
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: All of them.
• 18:49
  Speaker 4: So we're not talking COVID here. We're talking your kids
• 18:53
  Speaker 4: going to school and there's no more mandate for Measles, mumps, rubella,
• 18:58
  Speaker 4: that vaccine for hepatitis B, for all the things, all
• 19:02
  Speaker 4: the vaccines that kids are supposed to get as they
• 19:04
  Speaker 4: go to school and adults. They're just going to try
• 19:06
  Speaker 4: to end all mandates for those vaccines in Florida. Meanwhile,
• 19:11
  Speaker 4: Massachusetts is going to insist on vaccine mandates and California,
• 19:15
  Speaker 4: Oregon and Washington are banding together to form an alliance
• 19:19
  Speaker 4: to basically become a shadow CDC and keep adhering to
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: the science on vaccines. What do you think? Is this
• 19:25
  Speaker 4: a sustainable model for public health in a nation of
• 19:28
  Speaker 4: 330 million some odd people?
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: I do not, Sean. I do not think this is sustainable.
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: I think it's quite bad. The entire vaccine system is
• 19:37
  Speaker 3: being cross-pressured in a lot of very dangerous ways that
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: could cause it to unravel right before our eyes. So
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: Florida does this, right? And what that generally means in
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: Republican politics, which is really all about keeping up with
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: the Joneses, is it's other states are now going to
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: have to prove their MAGA bona fides by doing the
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: same thing as Florida, because only true MAGA patriots would
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: let children die of measles. That's how you prove your
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: fealty to the MAGA brand. And so maybe it'll be
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: Texas next or Oklahoma or just pick your Republican state.
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: They're all going to start heading in this way. It's
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: going to be a race to the bottom. Then at
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: the same time, you have RFK Jr., this anti-vax guy
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: in charge of our vaccines, which is restricting access to vaccines,
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: raising questions about them, which is fueling both two things
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: at the same time, both anti-vax sentiment against people who
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: are already sort of prone to being anti-vax But also
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: for very well-meaning people who want to protect their children,
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: they look at what's happening in the CDC, the FDA, HHS.
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: They look at RFK Jr., look at Donald Trump. They say,
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: how can I trust my newborn baby to get a
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: vaccine managed by these people? And those are real questions
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: people ask. That's why I think it's good that the
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: Western states are doing what they're doing so that there
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: is an expert to go to. And I've talked to
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: epidemiologists like Caitlyn Gentilino. She's talked about the private– groups
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: who will try to serve the functions of the CDC
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: and the FDA in making vaccine recommendations. But it is
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: sowing distrust in every direction, and I think it is
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: quite dangerous. And we're already, in some parts of the country,
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: falling below herd immunity numbers in terms of vaccines because
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: of this rampant spread of anti-vax conspiracy theories.
• 21:20
  Speaker 4: They are cutting... There's so many... We dip into the
• 21:26
  Speaker 4: public health disaster every once in a while on this show.
• 21:29
  Speaker 4: And obviously the Kennedy stuff in CDC has really made
• 21:33
  Speaker 4: it worth talking about in recent weeks. But there's so
• 21:36
  Speaker 4: many of these stories of what's going on with health care.
• 21:38
  Speaker 4: And it's not just access to health care or premiums
• 21:42
  Speaker 4: or coverage like we always talk about. But what has
• 21:44
  Speaker 4: happened to the National Institute of Health? What's happening with
• 21:48
  Speaker 4: Trump going after all of these universities on their research
• 21:51
  Speaker 4: grants because he doesn't like colleges? and universities because, you know,
• 21:55
  Speaker 4: they want to be educating people. They're dangerous to educate
• 21:58
  Speaker 4: too many people with all of their, because they do
• 22:01
  Speaker 4: a lot of the medical research in this country through
• 22:02
  Speaker 4: contracts with the government. And as we, I think we
• 22:05
  Speaker 4: brought up on the mailbag episode, Tommy brought up the
• 22:08
  Speaker 4: pediatric brain cancer group that's going to lose federal funding.
• 22:13
  Speaker 4: We got the AI death panels for Medicare that you
• 22:15
  Speaker 4: brought up. So, like, just the sheer scale of what's happening, like,
• 22:19
  Speaker 4: I know that it's like, oh, our kid, Junior, he's
• 22:20
  Speaker 4: doing his kooky thing off at HHS, but This is
• 22:23
  Speaker 4: going to be a huge effect on people.
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: Oh, don't forget we're gutting Medicaid all across the country
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: and rural hospitals will be closing. I mean, that was
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: another crazy moment this hearing when– I can't remember. Maybe
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: it was Mark Warner who was asking RFK Jr. RFK Jr.
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: was like, people need to eat healthier. And he's like,
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: so you need nutritionists, right? He's like, well, how are
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: people going to get nutritionists if you're cutting Medicaid? He's like,
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: there are no Medicaid cuts. We're not cutting Medicaid. It's like,
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: what the fuck are we talking about?
• 22:46
  Speaker 4: Did you see that when Tommy tweeted about that story
• 22:49
  Speaker 4: with pediatric brain cancer?
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: Oh, that– yeah. Oh, trust me. I saw it.
• 22:53
  Speaker 4: The Department of Health and Human Services.
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: A government agency.
• 22:57
  Speaker 4: A government agency. Their official account quote tweeted Tommy's tweet
• 23:02
  Speaker 4: of the New York Times story about the pediatric brain
• 23:05
  Speaker 4: cancer groups losing funding. And they wrote, for 25 plus years, NCI,
• 23:12
  Speaker 4: the National Cancer Institute, backed the Pediatric Brain Tumor Consortium.
• 23:16
  Speaker 4: That work continues. What's changing? We're streamlining. First of all,
• 23:21
  Speaker 4: not a very convincing story. lie or response. Like how many,
• 23:25
  Speaker 4: how many people do you think the word streamlining is, uh,
• 23:28
  Speaker 4: is actually going to fool at this point? Like they
• 23:30
  Speaker 4: should like learn about trolling from their friends at ICE
• 23:33
  Speaker 4: and DHS because this is just a very weak troll.
• 23:35
  Speaker 4: And then it was like, you know, we're expanding and
• 23:37
  Speaker 4: there's going to be stronger research. There's, and then it
• 23:40
  Speaker 4: just says no funding gap, no funding gap. Of course,
• 23:42
  Speaker 4: there's a huge funding gap. Everyone sees it. It's in
• 23:44
  Speaker 4: the fucking budget. You can look it up. Just progress.
• 23:47
  Speaker 4: Something Obama pod bros wouldn't know about. You're trolling a
• 23:51
  Speaker 4: fucking podcast about your cuts to fucking kids' brain cancer research?
• 23:59
  Speaker 4: You fucking– oh, my God.
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's just worth taking a step back because
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: we all hate the term Obama pod bro. I hate it.
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: I've always hated it. I've hated it from the beginning.
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: But now the official– it's now official U.S. government policy
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: that we're Obama pod bros. Like the Twitter account of–
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: as we learned when Twitter became a government communications– medium
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: is that that counts as like an official statement. So great,
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: great use of taxpayer dollars, people.
• 24:35
  Speaker 4: Pod Save America is brought to you by Bombas. Fall
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  Speaker 4: slash crooked. Code crooked at checkout. Let's talk about immigration.
• 25:47
  Speaker 4: You may be wondering, dear listeners, how Trump's decision to
• 25:50
  Speaker 4: blow up a Venezuelan speedboat is connected with his desire
• 25:54
  Speaker 4: to strip American-born Rosie O'Donnell of her citizenship. Well, you've
• 25:59
  Speaker 4: come to the right place. We're going to connect the
• 26:01
  Speaker 4: dots for you. Just bear with us. Let's start with
• 26:06
  Speaker 4: the boat. The president announced that a U.S. military strike
• 26:08
  Speaker 4: killed all 11 people on a boat in the Caribbean
• 26:11
  Speaker 4: that he claims were Trenderagua terrorists transporting drugs. In the past,
• 26:17
  Speaker 4: our government has chosen to stop boats suspected of trafficking drugs,
• 26:22
  Speaker 4: not blow them to kingdom come. Congress has not declared
• 26:25
  Speaker 4: war on Venezuela. The administration has not provided any evidence
• 26:28
  Speaker 4: that the boat posed an imminent threat to the United States,
• 26:31
  Speaker 4: nor has it offered any legal rationale whatsoever for the strike,
• 26:36
  Speaker 4: unless you account this response from J.D. Vance. Well, I'm
• 26:40
  Speaker 4: sure there's going to be an after report.
• 26:41
  Speaker 8: I mean, the legal authority, and I want to talk
• 26:42
  Speaker 8: about these kids, is that there are people who are bringing...
• 26:46
  Speaker 8: literal terrorists who are bringing deadly drugs into our country.
• 26:49
  Speaker 8: And the president of the United States ran on a
• 26:51
  Speaker 8: promise of stopping this poison from coming into our country.
• 26:54
  Speaker 4: That's what a Yale law school education gets you right there, Dan.
• 26:59
  Speaker 4: The legal authority is there's terrorists out there and they're
• 27:01
  Speaker 4: bringing drugs to the country. And you've just got to
• 27:04
  Speaker 4: trust us that that's true because we do not have
• 27:06
  Speaker 4: to provide any evidence or any explanation. Marco Rubio was
• 27:10
  Speaker 4: down in Ecuador today. He's kind of said something similar. Basically,
• 27:13
  Speaker 4: he's just like, yeah, they're terrorists. We're going to go
• 27:15
  Speaker 4: after them. We're going to blow up more of them.
• 27:19
  Speaker 4: So that clears that up. So we've moved a bunch
• 27:22
  Speaker 4: of warships to the South Caribbean near Venezuela, I guess
• 27:26
  Speaker 4: in case any other speedboats are out there thinking about
• 27:30
  Speaker 4: doing anything. A former U.S. official who used to fight
• 27:33
  Speaker 4: drug cartels also told the New York Times they think
• 27:36
  Speaker 4: it's more likely that the boat was carrying migrants on
• 27:39
  Speaker 4: a human smuggling run since Tren de Aragua isn't known
• 27:44
  Speaker 4: for transporting fentanyl or coke. And usually drug smugglers don't
• 27:48
  Speaker 4: crowd 11 people into a small speedboat when they're trying
• 27:52
  Speaker 4: to make room for the drugs.
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 27:55
  Speaker 4: I'd say all of this seems pretty alarming. What do
• 27:57
  Speaker 4: you think?
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: I mean, the whole thing is so sketchy. So this
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: military strike happens. There's no information about it. Trump tweets
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: out the snuff video for everyone to see.
• 28:06
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah, forgot about that.
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: Marco Rubio originally says the boat was headed to Trinidad.
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: which makes sense because Trinidad is like 12 miles from
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: parts of Venezuela. Trump says it's headed to the United States,
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: which is 1,200 miles from the coast of Venezuela to
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: the Florida Keys.
• 28:24
  Speaker 4: Small speedboat, a lot of drugs, 11 people.
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: You'd have to refuel even with the most fuel-efficient speedboat
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: like five times to get there. So it seems unlikely
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: that this was headed to the United States. But because
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: Trump posted it on social media, that then became the
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: official story the United States was sticking to.
• 28:39
  Speaker 4: And then Marco Rubio went back and said, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 28:42
  Speaker 4: United States.
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
• 28:43
  Speaker 4: Sorry, sorry, sorry.
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: Which is an absurd proposition.
• 28:44
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: And there is this incredibly dangerous logic here that is
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: just embodied in what Van says, which is, as the
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: President of the United States, we have the authority to
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: declare anyone or anything that we view as a threat
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: to be a terrorist or terrorist organization. And also, we
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: as the President of the United States have the power
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: to do anything we can to protect America from from
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: said terrorist or terrorist organization. So without consulting Congress, without
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: a vote from the Congress, without the American people weighing in,
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: without any sort of transparency, without a war powers report,
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: we are just– we say something is a terrorist, we
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: can blow it out of the sky, blow it out
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: of the water, whatever else. I mean declaring Trend de
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: Aragua a terrorist organization was the rationale for invoking the
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: Alien Enemies Act to send a bunch of people who
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: as it turns out were not members of Trend de
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: Aragua to a torture prison in El Salvador.
• 29:37
  Speaker 4: No due process. And that is the connection. between what's
• 29:41
  Speaker 4: happening with like, you know, blowing up fucking speedboats off
• 29:46
  Speaker 4: the coast of Venezuela and sending Andre, you know, Hernandez
• 29:51
  Speaker 4: Romero to a foreign gulag to be tortured is that
• 29:56
  Speaker 4: there's this Tren de Aragua designation, right? So there's a
• 29:59
  Speaker 4: terrorist organization, but there's this organization that's like a drug cartel.
• 30:02
  Speaker 4: We're going to say it's a gang, right? It's a gang.
• 30:04
  Speaker 4: Now we're going to say it's a drug cartel, even though,
• 30:07
  Speaker 4: you know, evidence for that, we don't know. We know
• 30:09
  Speaker 4: they're a gang in Venezuela. We know that there's some
• 30:11
  Speaker 4: of them who've had associates. There's some people who have
• 30:14
  Speaker 4: affiliations with Tren de Aragua who are in this country.
• 30:18
  Speaker 4: The Justice Department has indicted many of them. None of them,
• 30:20
  Speaker 4: by the way, the people that the Justice Department has indicted,
• 30:23
  Speaker 4: have been accused of drug smuggling from Venezuela or South America.
• 30:27
  Speaker 4: But that's neither here nor there. Because now that the
• 30:30
  Speaker 4: president with his own authority has decided to designate a group,
• 30:34
  Speaker 4: a terrorist organization, now you're right. Now his legal rationale
• 30:39
  Speaker 4: is I can detain anyone who I think is Trendy Aragua.
• 30:43
  Speaker 4: I can deport anyone anywhere. Or now I just have
• 30:47
  Speaker 4: the military just kill them. Just blow them up. That's
• 30:51
  Speaker 4: what we're doing now. And so and is it how
• 30:54
  Speaker 4: do we know it's a is it a U.S.
• 30:56
  Speaker 3: Citizen?
• 30:56
  Speaker 4: Is it not a U.S. citizen? The federal government is
• 31:00
  Speaker 4: now making that designation because there's no due process, right,
• 31:04
  Speaker 4: for a lot of these people. They're just getting rounded
• 31:06
  Speaker 4: up by ICE, by masked agents. So do we know
• 31:09
  Speaker 4: if they're a citizen or not? Do we know if
• 31:10
  Speaker 4: they're here legally or not? Do we know if they're
• 31:12
  Speaker 4: part of this terrorist organization that's now a terrorist organization?
• 31:18
  Speaker 4: We don't. We just have to trust the government. Do
• 31:20
  Speaker 4: they have to provide evidence? They do not. What are
• 31:23
  Speaker 4: the courts looking like? Well, here's what the courts are
• 31:25
  Speaker 4: looking like. Not enough immigration judges. So now, this week,
• 31:29
  Speaker 4: we've also found out that the Trump administration has decided
• 31:33
  Speaker 4: to tap military lawyers in the Defense Department to serve
• 31:36
  Speaker 4: as immigration judges. So that's happening. We also learned that
• 31:42
  Speaker 4: they are now arming the employees at U.S. Citizenship and
• 31:47
  Speaker 4: Immigration Services, whose job is actually to issue passports, visas,
• 31:51
  Speaker 4: green cards, all that good stuff. That's their training. They're
• 31:55
  Speaker 4: getting guns now because we want them to join ICE.
• 31:58
  Speaker 4: because we're on a recruitment spree, because ICE now has
• 32:02
  Speaker 4: the largest military budget of any nation other than the
• 32:06
  Speaker 4: United States, larger than the Israeli army budget. So that's ICE.
• 32:12
  Speaker 4: They're on a recruiting spree. So don't worry in case
• 32:14
  Speaker 4: you were worried, oh, why do they have to go
• 32:16
  Speaker 4: to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to get employees?
• 32:19
  Speaker 4: I thought they were on this great recruiting spree. No, no,
• 32:21
  Speaker 4: they're on this big recruiting spree, thousands of applicants. They're
• 32:24
  Speaker 4: hosting job expos. job expos where people can sign up
• 32:28
  Speaker 4: for ICE. Washington Post went to one of these job expos,
• 32:31
  Speaker 4: started interviewing some people. I don't necessarily recommend reading it
• 32:35
  Speaker 4: because unless if you want to sleep well at night,
• 32:37
  Speaker 4: but I will give you a quote from one former
• 32:41
  Speaker 4: MMA fighter turned IT consultant who felt that his career
• 32:45
  Speaker 4: advancement had been stymied by foreign workers, 36 years old.
• 32:49
  Speaker 4: And here's what he told the Washington Post about why
• 32:52
  Speaker 4: he's excited to join Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. Quote, I
• 32:57
  Speaker 4: keep seeing these memes where Indians are bragging about taking
• 33:01
  Speaker 4: our tech jobs. So I said, oh, yeah, well, I'm
• 33:05
  Speaker 4: going to work with these guys that are going to
• 33:07
  Speaker 4: arrest you, slam your face on the pavement and send
• 33:10
  Speaker 4: you home. So this is where we are. Now, if
• 33:14
  Speaker 4: you didn't know all this and the only immigration news
• 33:17
  Speaker 4: you saw this week was Trump's post where he once
• 33:19
  Speaker 4: again threatened to strip Rosie O'Donnell of her American citizenship
• 33:24
  Speaker 4: for being, in his words, a threat to humanity, which was,
• 33:28
  Speaker 4: of course, quickly reposted by the official White House Twitter account,
• 33:31
  Speaker 4: just to make sure it's an all-government action here. We
• 33:35
  Speaker 4: want to make sure that everyone's in on this. It's
• 33:37
  Speaker 4: not just the president doing his own thing. This is
• 33:39
  Speaker 4: official White House policy that Rosie O'Donnell is a threat
• 33:42
  Speaker 4: to humanity, and we're going to again say that we
• 33:44
  Speaker 4: should strip her of her citizenship, even though she was
• 33:46
  Speaker 4: born in this country, okay? You know, you might roll
• 33:49
  Speaker 4: your eyes at the post or maybe even you laugh at, like,
• 33:51
  Speaker 4: what a lunatic president, but He's blowing up boats and
• 33:55
  Speaker 4: he's recruiting violence-loving racists for ICE to his secret police force.
• 34:01
  Speaker 4: So I don't know. Maybe Rosie O'Donnell should be nervous.
• 34:05
  Speaker 4: Anyone in positions of power here going to connect the
• 34:07
  Speaker 4: dots for everyone? Or are we just going to be like, oh,
• 34:09
  Speaker 4: that's a crazy story?
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: I mean, I continue to believe, as I know you do,
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: that we are, as a society, as a Democratic Party,
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: the media, everyone is just underselling the threat we're facing
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: right now. And I know the frog in the boiling
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: water metaphor is so cliche at this point, but it's
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: also very apt because it is exactly what's happening. It's
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: like every single day, Trump grabs a little more power.
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: He does something else that would be seen as impossible
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: to imagine in a pre-Trump era. And he just moves
• 34:40
  Speaker 3: it along, right? So it's like, oh, he's just tweeting
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: about taking Rosie O'Donnell's citizenship away. Well, he was just
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: tweeting about using law enforcement to investigate his political enemies.
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: And now he's got searching for indictments on Obama officials,
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: opened a criminal investigation to Lisa Cook.
• 34:57
  Speaker 4: The Fed governor today. Yeah, didn't even get to talk
• 34:59
  Speaker 4: about that today, yeah.
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: Even though, according to ProPublica, several members of his cabinet
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: also have multiple mortgages and could be guilty of the
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: same crime they think she is. But I'm sure Kash
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: Patel and Pam Bonney will get on that right away.
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: And it's just, it gets worse and worse and worse.
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: But so many people are just trying, people with positions
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: of power and influence in this country are just trying
• 35:19
  Speaker 3: to survive the moment for themselves. If I just stay quiet,
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: he won't target me. He won't mess with my media company.
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: He won't take my tax breaks. He won't regulate my company.
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: And it just gets worse and worse and worse. And
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: we are seeing an absolute failure of every break in
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: the system. Because right now, we're talking about all these
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: horrible things happening, this dangerous stuff that's happening. And what
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: is Trump doing right now as we're recording this? He's
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: having dinner with some of the richest tech CEOs in
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: the world, including Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, I think Tim
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: Cook might be there. All the rich tech people are
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: at the White House just yucking it up with Trump.
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: Even if some of them privately think he is a
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: fucking dangerous moron, they can't say that publicly and they
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: can't turn down the invitation because if they do, he
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: might come after them. And this is the thing that
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: like sort of haunts me all the time. So imagine,
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: let's say that Trump announces tomorrow, he signs the executive
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: order or whatever else, that he is going to start
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: taking citizenship away from a set of Americans, Rosie O'Donnell included,
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: who disagree with him publicly. How many people in the
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: Republican Party would stand up and say that's too far?
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: How many major CEOs or business figures in this country
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: would stand up and say that's too far? How many
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: people who run media companies would stand up and say
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: that's a bridge too far? How many media organizations would
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: just cover it as politics as usual? What's the line?
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: I can't think of what the line is that Trump
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: would do that this group of elites who've gone along
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: with this so far will stop and say that's too far?
• 36:59
  Speaker 4: Raise taxes on the rich?
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: I mean, maybe, maybe, but it's like beheadings in the
• 37:05
  Speaker 3: South Lawn.
• 37:06
  Speaker 4: Well, and here's that, even the Rosie O'Donnell thing surprised
• 37:10
  Speaker 4: me because it's like, she's like, denaturalization is a project
• 37:15
  Speaker 4: that Stephen Miller is quite excited about. And denaturalization is,
• 37:20
  Speaker 4: is basically stripping citizenship from someone who became a U.S.
• 37:24
  Speaker 4: citizen at some point, right? So they were not born
• 37:27
  Speaker 4: here or maybe they weren't a citizen from birth, but
• 37:29
  Speaker 4: they went through a naturalization ceremony. They're a U.S. citizen.
• 37:33
  Speaker 4: That's it. And it is very rare. And in history,
• 37:37
  Speaker 4: it has been rarely invoked. And it's an arduous process.
• 37:40
  Speaker 4: And you have to either prove that the person is
• 37:43
  Speaker 4: you know, a threat to the country, or they lied
• 37:45
  Speaker 4: on their citizenship forms.
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Threat to the country.
• 37:48
  Speaker 4: Threat to the country, right, exactly. Well, it was used
• 37:50
  Speaker 4: during the McCarthy era a couple times for people who were,
• 37:53
  Speaker 4: you know, accused of being communists, right? So they have, which,
• 37:57
  Speaker 4: if you've listened, right, used to be radical Marxists, used
• 38:01
  Speaker 4: to be leftists, there's using communists a lot, he's using
• 38:04
  Speaker 4: communists a lot, and this is where I think it
• 38:05
  Speaker 4: actually could happen, using communists a lot when they talk
• 38:08
  Speaker 4: about Zoran Mamdani, right, who was not born in this country,
• 38:12
  Speaker 4: who was a U.S. citizen, but was not born in
• 38:14
  Speaker 4: this country, who got citizenship in this country when I
• 38:16
  Speaker 4: think he was like seven years old. And Zoran Mamdani
• 38:20
  Speaker 4: wins and becomes mayor of New York. And Donald Trump's
• 38:23
  Speaker 4: upset about it. Like the idea that they could start
• 38:27
  Speaker 4: a denaturalization process, which Stephen Miller has said, oh, it
• 38:30
  Speaker 4: was too small on the first term. We got to
• 38:32
  Speaker 4: ramp up the denaturalization. And this, he's on record saying it.
• 38:35
  Speaker 4: This is not just like, oh, sky is falling. Everyone
• 38:38
  Speaker 4: go fucking look it up. Stephen Miller's out there saying
• 38:40
  Speaker 4: he wants to ramp up denaturalizations. So, How many foreign
• 38:43
  Speaker 4: born people are there in this country who are US citizens?
• 38:47
  Speaker 4: And now all of those people are potentially at risk.
• 38:50
  Speaker 4: And what do you say? Oh, well, it's a long process. Yeah,
• 38:52
  Speaker 4: it's a long process.
• 38:53
  Speaker 3: Sure.
• 38:53
  Speaker 4: In normal times, it's a long process. With this government,
• 38:56
  Speaker 4: what's it going to go through the court system? Or
• 38:58
  Speaker 4: do we think it's going to go through some fucking
• 38:59
  Speaker 4: administrative judge here and there and they yank someone's citizenship
• 39:02
  Speaker 4: and then someone sues and then it goes to court?
• 39:04
  Speaker 4: And can you get a nationwide injunction? No, you can't
• 39:06
  Speaker 4: for everyone else who's being denaturalized because the Supreme Court
• 39:09
  Speaker 4: said no nationwide injunctions anymore. So now we're just denaturalizing
• 39:12
  Speaker 4: people And now we're going to start shipping them out
• 39:15
  Speaker 4: of the country. And by the time the Supreme Court says, no,
• 39:16
  Speaker 4: that's fucking unconstitutional. What are you doing? They're already in
• 39:19
  Speaker 4: South Sudan.
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's exactly right.
• 39:21
  Speaker 4: I don't know. Any Democrat going to go out there
• 39:24
  Speaker 4: and be like, what the fuck is happening? It's like,
• 39:26
  Speaker 4: I just, I don't know. I don't know.
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: I don't know. It's bad.
• 39:31
  Speaker 4: It's so weird.
• 39:32
  Speaker 3: It's really bad.
• 39:33
  Speaker 4: It drives me fucking insane that we cannot focus on
• 39:38
  Speaker 4: the thing like for more than a couple days, right?
• 39:42
  Speaker 4: And part of it is, I understand. I'm glad everyone
• 39:45
  Speaker 4: was at the RFK Jr. hearing today, and I'm glad
• 39:48
  Speaker 4: we were focused on that because that is like deeply
• 39:50
  Speaker 4: affects people's health and well-being. And we should be all
• 39:53
  Speaker 4: over that. And by the way, they couldn't all be
• 39:55
  Speaker 4: there and they couldn't all be doing that because there
• 39:56
  Speaker 4: was also another hearing going on at the same time
• 39:59
  Speaker 4: for the nominee for the Federal Reserve so that Trump
• 40:03
  Speaker 4: can get a majority on the Federal Reserve so he
• 40:05
  Speaker 4: can lower interest rates, which would fucking skyrocket inflation for
• 40:08
  Speaker 4: everyone else and destabilize the global financial system. So some
• 40:11
  Speaker 4: of the senators had to be there grilling that guy
• 40:14
  Speaker 4: who said, oh, I'm going to keep my White House
• 40:16
  Speaker 4: job if I'm a fucking Fed governor. just in case
• 40:19
  Speaker 4: there was any confusion whether he'd be independent or not,
• 40:22
  Speaker 4: though he says he'll be independent under testimony, so of course.
• 40:25
  Speaker 4: So I get that there's like a lot going on,
• 40:28
  Speaker 4: but this is like not, this is like, we're close
• 40:33
  Speaker 4: to like, you know, taken to the streets and in
• 40:36
  Speaker 4: a big way, in a sustained way, and having leaders
• 40:39
  Speaker 4: who are going to be screaming about this from the
• 40:41
  Speaker 4: top of their lungs like every day.
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: I mean, we would hope that's where we would end up.
• 40:46
  Speaker 4: We should, that's where we should be.
• 40:48
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: It is moving much faster than anyone imagined with Trump.
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: But it's also moving much faster than it has in
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: other countries that have transitioned from democracy to authoritarianism.
• 41:02
  Speaker 4: Much faster. Usually it's a year-long process. Listen, any people
• 41:07
  Speaker 4: who have been to those countries who've studied this, people
• 41:09
  Speaker 4: are like, oh, he's moving faster than Putin? It took
• 41:11
  Speaker 4: Putin years to get to this point.
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: And everyone is going along to get along.
• 41:17
  Speaker 4: Yeah, no, it's all, it's, you know, it's, oof.
• 41:29
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• 43:07
  Speaker 4: So Rosie herself said that Trump is doing the denaturalization
• 43:10
  Speaker 4: thing to distract from the Epstein files, which as funny
• 43:14
  Speaker 4: as joke as that is, and as cliche as it's become,
• 43:16
  Speaker 4: Might actually be true in this instance. On Wednesday, Jeffrey
• 43:21
  Speaker 4: Epstein survivors showed up on Capitol Hill to say that
• 43:24
  Speaker 4: if the government isn't going to release the fabled Epstein
• 43:27
  Speaker 4: client list, they're going to take matters into their own hands.
• 43:30
  Speaker 4: And apparently they've got help on the inside. Here's one
• 43:33
  Speaker 4: of the survivors, followed by Republican Congressman Thomas Massey.
• 43:37
  Speaker 7: Several of us Epstein survivors have been discussing creating our
• 43:40
  Speaker 7: own list of names.
• 43:42
  Speaker 4: We will confidentially compile the names.
• 43:44
  Speaker 8: We all know we're regularly.
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: in the Epstein world.
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: And it will be done by survivors and for survivors.
• 43:52
  Speaker 9: The reality is if they try to release that list,
• 43:55
  Speaker 9: they're going to be sued into homelessness. And so what
• 43:59
  Speaker 9: my colleague Marjorie Taylor Greene volunteered to do, and I
• 44:02
  Speaker 9: volunteered to do as well, is to read that list
• 44:05
  Speaker 9: on the floor of the House of Representatives.
• 44:08
  Speaker 4: As we've always said, Marjorie Taylor Greene will save us.
• 44:10
  Speaker 4: Massey was appearing there with Ro Khanna to talk about
• 44:12
  Speaker 4: their discharge petition, which would force a vote on releasing
• 44:15
  Speaker 4: all the files. And it's getting closer to the 218
• 44:19
  Speaker 4: signature threshold it needs to go into effect. Meanwhile, story
• 44:25
  Speaker 4: just broke before we started recording, right-wing creep, activist, whatever
• 44:30
  Speaker 4: you want to call him, James O'Keefe, he released one
• 44:33
  Speaker 4: of his patented hidden camera videos. This one was of
• 44:36
  Speaker 4: a senior DOJ official. on a staged hinge date, admitting
• 44:45
  Speaker 4: that if the DOJ ever does release the files, any
• 44:48
  Speaker 4: conservative or Republican names will be redacted and the Democratic names,
• 44:53
  Speaker 4: of course, will stay in. He later said in an email,
• 44:57
  Speaker 4: which DOJ released and tweeted, it's like a 30% iPhone
• 45:03
  Speaker 4: notes app sort of message, that he was speaking in
• 45:07
  Speaker 4: his personal capacity saying, And this was only based on
• 45:11
  Speaker 4: what he's read in the media. He has no insider
• 45:13
  Speaker 4: knowledge that the DOJ was ever going to do such
• 45:15
  Speaker 4: a thing and redact the Republican names and keep the
• 45:18
  Speaker 4: Democratic names in.
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: My belief.
• 45:20
  Speaker 4: Yeah, of course. But it is funny that the DOJ
• 45:23
  Speaker 4: decided to acknowledge this. The Department of Justice official Twitter
• 45:25
  Speaker 4: account decided to acknowledge this in whatever notes app apology
• 45:30
  Speaker 4: this guy wanted to put out. Let's start with the
• 45:33
  Speaker 4: Epstein stuff and what's going on in Congress. What do
• 45:37
  Speaker 4: you think about the discharge petition? Could it work? Mike
• 45:40
  Speaker 4: Johnson seemed to think it won't. Of course, he doesn't
• 45:43
  Speaker 4: want it to work because he's very much trying to
• 45:46
  Speaker 4: do Donald Trump's bidding and stop it. And so is
• 45:48
  Speaker 4: Donald Trump. Donald Trump and the White House are trying
• 45:50
  Speaker 4: to whip against this and tell Republicans that if they
• 45:53
  Speaker 4: sign this discharge petition, it will be treated as a
• 45:56
  Speaker 4: hostile act.
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: They are very concerned, the Trump White House, but whatever
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: is in those Epstein files that they have been through.
• 46:04
  Speaker 3: So that is just something to note.
• 46:07
  Speaker 7: I think it is.
• 46:09
  Speaker 3: It is quite likely that they will get to 218
• 46:12
  Speaker 3: because they're at 215 now. One Democrat has not signed.
• 46:15
  Speaker 3: It's Eric Swalwell who has been home because his mother
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: passed away reportedly. So when he returns to DC, he'll
• 46:22
  Speaker 3: obviously sign it. There are two Democratic vacancies, one in
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: Virginia where the election is quite soon and then one
• 46:27
  Speaker 3: in Arizona where the election is in a couple of weeks.
• 46:31
  Speaker 3: both of those are very democratic seats that would get
• 46:33
  Speaker 3: you to 218. Now it is still possible. You can
• 46:36
  Speaker 3: get your, you can take your name off once it's on.
• 46:38
  Speaker 3: So Trump can be, can lobby these people to, who
• 46:40
  Speaker 3: have signed to take their name off. We have seen
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: these house Republicans.
• 46:44
  Speaker 4: Or, or, you know, don't be taking any boat rides
• 46:47
  Speaker 4: in international waters.
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: Or that, or I had, that had not occurred to me,
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: but that's a good point. So, you know, so we've
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: seen these Republicans declare with great fanfare that one thing
• 46:56
  Speaker 3: and then have get a call from Trump to do
• 46:58
  Speaker 3: the other. But, The numbers are on their side. And
• 47:00
  Speaker 3: if the discharge petition is signed, Johnson really has no recourse.
• 47:04
  Speaker 3: So he's going to have to put the bill on
• 47:06
  Speaker 3: the floor in relatively soon fashion. He can delay for
• 47:11
  Speaker 3: a while, but there's no obvious out to get out
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: of it. So it's interesting, I'd say. It's interesting.
• 47:18
  Speaker 4: So yeah, as you say, let's play this out in
• 47:20
  Speaker 4: the most optimistic way possible, which is, I know, unusual
• 47:23
  Speaker 4: for us. So the discharge petition- Especially today, yes. Especially today.
• 47:26
  Speaker 4: Discharge petition works, and in 30 legislative days, sometime late fall,
• 47:33
  Speaker 4: we get a vote on this, and then the vote
• 47:37
  Speaker 4: passes because everyone who signed the discharge petition votes yes,
• 47:41
  Speaker 4: maybe even more, and it's enough to pass the House.
• 47:44
  Speaker 4: So then we have legislation. Well, then what happens? Then
• 47:48
  Speaker 4: DOJ is compelled.
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: We have to go to the Senate, where the Republicans
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: could theoretically filibuster it, I believe.
• 47:55
  Speaker 4: That's funny.
• 47:56
  Speaker 3: I don't know that to be sure, but I don't
• 47:58
  Speaker 3: know how the provision would prevent them from doing it.
• 48:01
  Speaker 3: So they'd be in a position to– would there be
• 48:04
  Speaker 3: enough Republicans to get you to 60?
• 48:06
  Speaker 4: But then doesn't Donald Trump just veto it?
• 48:10
  Speaker 3: I don't think he can– oh, huh. That's an interesting question.
• 48:14
  Speaker 4: Is it a– it's a bill, right? What is it,
• 48:17
  Speaker 4: a law? It's a law to compel the Department of Justice?
• 48:21
  Speaker 4: And then Trump says no? I don't know. I thought
• 48:25
  Speaker 4: the whole point of this was to show that Trump
• 48:28
  Speaker 4: wants to cover this up, which point made.
• 48:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah. So it may not end, I guess, that's
• 48:33
  Speaker 3: a really good question, the veto. It may not end
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: in actually the release of the records, but him vetoing,
• 48:41
  Speaker 3: that'd be his first veto, would be a veto, a
• 48:44
  Speaker 3: law forcing him to disclose records related to his relationship
• 48:46
  Speaker 3: with America's most notorious child sex trafficker, would be a moment.
• 48:50
  Speaker 3: That would be a moment in politics.
• 48:52
  Speaker 4: It would be a moment.
• 48:53
  Speaker 3: I think that would get people's attention.
• 48:54
  Speaker 4: Well, well, that would be a moment where whatever he
• 48:57
  Speaker 4: does that day, that's a big deal, would be to
• 49:00
  Speaker 4: distract from the Epstein files.
• 49:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah. In that case, he is probably going to distract
• 49:04
  Speaker 3: from the Epstein files.
• 49:04
  Speaker 4: That would be a big old, big old sign that
• 49:07
  Speaker 4: he's going to distract from the Epstein files.
• 49:08
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 49:08
  Speaker 3: If I was Rosie O'Donnell, I would....
• 49:11
  Speaker 4: Again, I would not be on a boat in international waters.
• 49:13
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 49:14
  Speaker 4: That's just one thing I would avoid.
• 49:15
  Speaker 5: All right.
• 49:16
  Speaker 4: One last thing before we get to my conversation with
• 49:17
  Speaker 4: Leah Lippman, we did want to do an in-memoriam section
• 49:21
  Speaker 4: for Donald Trump, who did pass away for about three
• 49:24
  Speaker 4: days before sadly rising again. As happens sometimes. Over the
• 49:31
  Speaker 4: long weekend, the internet started blowing up with all kinds
• 49:33
  Speaker 4: of conspiracies about Trump's health because he had no public
• 49:37
  Speaker 4: events Wednesday through Friday, and then took Labor Day weekend off.
• 49:43
  Speaker 4: There were also plenty of pictures of Trump's bruised hand
• 49:46
  Speaker 4: and swollen cankles. He's got a real cankle issue these days.
• 49:50
  Speaker 4: The fun lasted until Trump appeared on Tuesday and took questions.
• 49:54
  Speaker 4: I don't know, Dan, are you a bruised hand truther?
• 49:57
  Speaker 4: What do you think? What do you make of the...
• 49:59
  Speaker 4: This was one where I... You know how online I am.
• 50:04
  Speaker 4: I had seen a couple things, like a couple jokes
• 50:06
  Speaker 4: about Trump dying or whatever, or where's Trump? And I
• 50:09
  Speaker 4: just didn't dig in and pay much attention because I
• 50:12
  Speaker 4: was like trying to spend time with my family over
• 50:14
  Speaker 4: the weekend. And I was getting texts from friends and
• 50:18
  Speaker 4: other people like, hey, what's going on with Donald Trump?
• 50:21
  Speaker 4: Do you think there's any truth to this? Like he
• 50:23
  Speaker 4: might have died or you might be sick rumor. And
• 50:25
  Speaker 4: I was like, what the fuck? How is this? How
• 50:27
  Speaker 4: is this real?
• 50:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, I would say it is unusual for
• 50:32
  Speaker 3: Trump to be out of sight for like six days.
• 50:36
  Speaker 3: That's unusual. I'm not saying that he was dead. I'm
• 50:39
  Speaker 3: definitely not saying that.
• 50:42
  Speaker 4: It turns out he sat down on Friday for an
• 50:44
  Speaker 4: hour with the Daily Caller to do one of his,
• 50:46
  Speaker 4: so they could fluff him for an hour on one
• 50:48
  Speaker 4: of those interviews, like it's a cabinet meeting.
• 50:50
  Speaker 3: It wasn't in public, though. We don't know. We didn't
• 50:52
  Speaker 3: know at the time. It's a Labor Day weekend. People,
• 50:56
  Speaker 3: they were curious. Here's where I am on this. I
• 51:00
  Speaker 3: don't think he died. I just want to make very clear.
• 51:02
  Speaker 3: I think he is definitely alive. I do think.
• 51:05
  Speaker 4: It's been a body double since last week.
• 51:08
  Speaker 3: I made this joke that when he appeared, I was like,
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: on Twitter, I was like, the wonders of AI or something,
• 51:14
  Speaker 3: and people took me quite seriously. Not Republicans thinking that
• 51:19
  Speaker 3: I was being serious.
• 51:20
  Speaker 4: Right, right, right.
• 51:22
  Speaker 3: Not that there weren't liberal accounts being like, you're right.
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: I see the way his hands... He has six fingers.
• 51:28
  Speaker 3: He's not real. It must be an AI. A bad AI.
• 51:31
  Speaker 3: I do think that there is not enough coverage of
• 51:35
  Speaker 3: our very old, very unhealthy president's health. I think the
• 51:39
  Speaker 3: Bruce hand is weird.
• 51:41
  Speaker 4: It's fucking bruised hand. Everyone's like, Oh yeah, Joe Biden,
• 51:44
  Speaker 4: Joe Biden. Here's the thing. My qualms with Biden running
• 51:48
  Speaker 4: for election had little to do with, um, he had
• 51:52
  Speaker 4: a foot thing. And so now he's, his, his staff's
• 51:54
  Speaker 4: got shoes with lifts or whatever the fuck it was.
• 51:57
  Speaker 4: And Biden was shuffling around and he has got a
• 51:59
  Speaker 4: spinal thing. And, all that. I'm like, I don't get, like,
• 52:03
  Speaker 4: that's not what I was worried about. I thought that
• 52:05
  Speaker 4: was all fine. It's the fact that he could barely communicate.
• 52:09
  Speaker 3: Well, those are two separate issues. I think if we
• 52:12
  Speaker 3: are going to have really, really old presidents, because in
• 52:15
  Speaker 3: the late stages of America, we've decided to embrace gerontocracy,
• 52:19
  Speaker 3: there should be a lot of transparency and accountability reporting
• 52:22
  Speaker 3: about the health of presidents, particularly when you have a
• 52:26
  Speaker 3: president who you cannot trust to tell the truth. disclose information.
• 52:32
  Speaker 3: And so I think it should be a subject of
• 52:36
  Speaker 3: great curiosity for the press. And I know it's hard
• 52:39
  Speaker 3: because real reporters are not allowed to see him very
• 52:41
  Speaker 3: often anymore because the White House has cut off access
• 52:43
  Speaker 3: to them. But I think it should be a really
• 52:45
  Speaker 3: big discussion. I think it's a fair discussion about Biden.
• 52:48
  Speaker 3: I mean, there is something below the unfair Republican caricature
• 52:53
  Speaker 3: of Biden attending to mention a sleep at the wheel
• 52:54
  Speaker 3: and all of that. But if we're going to have
• 52:57
  Speaker 3: these old presidents, it matters a lot. like how healthy
• 53:00
  Speaker 3: they actually are. And New York people should know, have
• 53:03
  Speaker 3: information about it. And so like the bruised hand is weird.
• 53:06
  Speaker 3: The White House should answer questions about it.
• 53:08
  Speaker 4: Didn't they give us an explanation on the bruised hand?
• 53:10
  Speaker 3: Well, they gave us explanation on the cankles. They did.
• 53:14
  Speaker 4: No, I thought it was, I'm just laughing at cankles. Don't,
• 53:17
  Speaker 4: I'm not laughing at your answer there. Trump bruised.
• 53:22
  Speaker 3: They might be related.
• 53:24
  Speaker 4: White House explanation.
• 53:25
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 53:26
  Speaker 4: Look at this. I'm like RFK Jr. looking up the
• 53:29
  Speaker 4: safety of vaccines right now.
• 53:30
  Speaker 3: Do you run research, people?
• 53:33
  Speaker 4: Frequent handshaking and his use of aspirin. That's what they're saying.
• 53:38
  Speaker 3: Aspirin is a blood thinner, but do you really think
• 53:40
  Speaker 3: he shook his hand into that bruise?
• 53:42
  Speaker 4: Isn't he a famous germaphobe? Yeah, I was going to
• 53:45
  Speaker 4: say famous germaphobe.
• 53:47
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 53:48
  Speaker 4: I don't know. I'm just asking questions. Who knows what
• 53:50
  Speaker 4: could have happened? But I do think there's something underlying this,
• 53:53
  Speaker 4: which is, and this is pure conjecture, But the reaction
• 53:57
  Speaker 4: to it, people getting so excited by the possibility, like, look,
• 54:01
  Speaker 4: there's a couple of reasons for that. We don't have
• 54:03
  Speaker 4: to get into it. It's quite obvious. But to me,
• 54:06
  Speaker 4: it's like a symptom of everyone wanting a shortcut for
• 54:09
  Speaker 4: this to be over. Like we used to joke about
• 54:11
  Speaker 4: the hamburger from heaven thing. And there is this like,
• 54:14
  Speaker 4: maybe I don't have to march in the streets and
• 54:16
  Speaker 4: organize and do the hard thing about trying to win
• 54:19
  Speaker 4: back power from these authoritarians who have taken over the
• 54:22
  Speaker 4: fucking country. And maybe we can just hope that that
• 54:26
  Speaker 4: hamburger from heaven, it's coming. And it's like, you know what?
• 54:31
  Speaker 4: It's just not, that's not the way to pay attention.
• 54:34
  Speaker 4: Don't tune in when you've heard rumors that maybe Donald
• 54:37
  Speaker 4: Trump is sick and potentially dead. Tune in of all
• 54:41
  Speaker 4: the rest of the news when there's something you could
• 54:44
  Speaker 4: be doing to try to push back on this. And
• 54:46
  Speaker 4: I'm not talking to any of you who are listening
• 54:48
  Speaker 4: because I know you guys are all paying very close attention,
• 54:50
  Speaker 4: but you all know there's people in your lives who
• 54:52
  Speaker 4: are just sitting around and not paying attention to this
• 54:54
  Speaker 4: shit who may have gotten a little excited over Donald
• 54:57
  Speaker 4: Trump being dead for just a couple of days.
• 55:00
  Speaker 3: Are we chastising non-news consumers right now?
• 55:02
  Speaker 4: Is that what we're doing? Yeah, I am chastising. I
• 55:05
  Speaker 4: am very much chastising.
• 55:06
  Speaker 3: Chastising really has become, yeah. Here's what I'd say. No
• 55:10
  Speaker 3: matter what your news diet is, if you hear at
• 55:13
  Speaker 3: the coffee shop from a relative in a family group
• 55:16
  Speaker 3: chat that the president may be dead, whoever that president is,
• 55:18
  Speaker 3: turn on the TV, open the internet, Try to find
• 55:22
  Speaker 3: some information. I'm okay with that.
• 55:23
  Speaker 4: Ask your friend, RFK Jr., any of the people in
• 55:26
  Speaker 4: government who are very good sources of information, what's going on,
• 55:30
  Speaker 4: they will tell you. Or any of the many people
• 55:32
  Speaker 4: who cover the White House, who are all crazy influencers,
• 55:36
  Speaker 4: somehow all dating Marjorie Taylor Greene.
• 55:38
  Speaker 3: Do you think we have done enough here to allow
• 55:40
  Speaker 3: Elijah to title the YouTube version of this episode, Did
• 55:43
  Speaker 3: Trump Die Last Week?
• 55:44
  Speaker 4: That's all he's wanted to do. That's all he's wanted
• 55:46
  Speaker 4: to do. So now I think we've done our job. Okay,
• 55:49
  Speaker 4: when we get back from the break, you'll hear my
• 55:51
  Speaker 4: conversation with Strict Scrutiny's Leah Lippman. But before we do that,
• 55:54
  Speaker 4: I've got a special guest here to help me make
• 55:57
  Speaker 4: a very special announcement because Love It or Leave It
• 55:59
  Speaker 4: is coming back to New York City, Eric Adams.
• 56:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, huge get.
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: We got Eric Adams. We said no to Mom Donnie. No,
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: we have a big show in New York at the
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: Crown Hill Theater in Brooklyn. It will be the Wednesday
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: after the election, so we'll cover the New York mayor's race.
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: We can't announce the guests just yet, but we have
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: some very cool people lined up. It's going to be
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: a great show. We're going to do that show in
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: New York and then head down for CrookedCon. So go
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: to crooked.com slash events to get the tickets. They just
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: went on sale.
• 56:27
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 56:27
  Speaker 4: Friends of the Pod subscribers get the best seats in
• 56:29
  Speaker 4: the house and pre-sale access, which is going on now
• 56:33
  Speaker 4: until tomorrow at 9 a.m. Eastern time. That's what I heard.
• 56:35
  Speaker 7: Love it.
• 56:36
  Speaker 3: Is that right?
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 56:36
  Speaker 3: That sounds great. That sounds great.
• 56:38
  Speaker 4: Remember, the show is Wednesday, November 5th, right after the
• 56:40
  Speaker 4: day after the election. General sale tickets go on sale tomorrow,
• 56:43
  Speaker 4: September 6th at 10 a.m. Eastern time.
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: Go get them.
• 56:46
  Speaker 4: Go get them. Go see Lovett and Eric Adams.
• 56:58
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• 58:06
  Speaker 4: Leo, what's up?
• 58:07
  Speaker 7: Oh, only good things.
• 58:09
  Speaker 4: Only good things.
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 58:11
  Speaker 3: That's it.
• 58:12
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 58:12
  Speaker 4: I think the only good piece of news we got was,
• 58:15
  Speaker 4: you know, Taylor's new album, a couple weeks, and an engagement.
• 58:19
  Speaker 4: That's something.
• 58:21
  Speaker 7: I'm hanging by a thread, and the thread is the
• 58:24
  Speaker 7: life of a showgirl.
• 58:26
  Speaker 3: That's good to say.
• 58:27
  Speaker 4: And, yeah, that's it. All right, so Trump administration has
• 58:31
  Speaker 4: been on a bit of a losing streak in the
• 58:33
  Speaker 4: courts over the last week or so. Federal appeals court
• 58:36
  Speaker 4: ruled the tariffs are illegal. Another appeals court rejected Trump's
• 58:39
  Speaker 4: use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport people. A
• 58:42
  Speaker 4: federal judge ruled that Trump's deployment of U.S. troops to L.A.
• 58:45
  Speaker 4: was illegal. And then another federal judge just ruled that
• 58:47
  Speaker 4: Trump's decision to freeze billions of dollars in research grants
• 58:51
  Speaker 4: to Harvard was illegal. I'm guessing all of these end
• 58:56
  Speaker 4: up at the Supreme Court in some form or fashion.
• 58:58
  Speaker 4: First of all, I have a couple questions about all
• 59:00
  Speaker 4: of this. But first of all, what's your sense of
• 59:02
  Speaker 4: what might happen there for these four cases?
• 59:06
  Speaker 7: I mean, it's difficult to know. And on some level,
• 59:09
  Speaker 7: I think it depends. on factors that we just don't
• 59:11
  Speaker 7: know yet. I think it would be a mistake just
• 59:14
  Speaker 7: to resign ourselves to accepting that this court is just
• 59:18
  Speaker 7: going to give the Trump administration anything it wants. I
• 59:21
  Speaker 7: think that the legal claims against what the Trump administration
• 59:24
  Speaker 7: has done are extremely compelling and You know, the lower
• 59:27
  Speaker 7: court rulings that you've described were meticulous and careful and
• 59:32
  Speaker 7: really went through all of the facts to describe what
• 59:35
  Speaker 7: exactly the Trump administration was doing and why they are illegal. So,
• 59:39
  Speaker 7: you know, if I had to venture a prediction, I'm
• 59:43
  Speaker 7: nervous about the ruling about the deployment of troops in L.A.
• 59:47
  Speaker 7: I am less nervous about the ruling on the Alien
• 59:53
  Speaker 7: Enemies Act, for whatever that is worth. And the other ones,
• 59:59
  Speaker 7: I think, are somewhere in the middle.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 4: Interesting. Has the Supreme Court ever taken up a case
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 4: regarding tariffs in our lifetime? Like, has anyone tried?
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 3: Not in my lifetime.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 4: What do we know about how they think about the
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 4: president's emergency powers around tariffs?
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 7: I mean, I think the concern is Brett Kavanaugh has
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 7: been planting some seeds that suggest he is basically creating
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 7: a gerrymandered exception. from the rules the Supreme Court established
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 7: to limit Joe Biden's presidential power and say, well, that
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 7: just doesn't apply to the kind of thing that Donald
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 7: Trump is doing, because our rule that presidents and administrative
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 7: agencies don't really get to do big things doesn't apply
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 7: in the area of foreign affairs. So I worry that
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 7: there are already signs that they have been gerrymandering the
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 7: law to To give Donald Trump what he is asking.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 4: And your concern about the L.A. ruling, is that because
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 4: the president has sort of broad authority, whether it's, I mean,
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 4: I know he wasn't invoking the Insurrection Act here, but
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 4: he can sort of commandeer the National Guard when he
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 4: wants and all that kind of stuff?
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 7: I'm nervous about it for a few reasons. One is
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 7: I think the best defense of that ruling is it
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 7: accurately describes the facts. But this Supreme Court has been
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 7: all too willing to ignore the facts and just discount
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 7: the very careful findings that lower courts have made against
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 7: the Trump administration. The other is that it arises in
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 7: a context where I am concerned that the wingnuts on
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 7: executive power like Brett Kavanaugh are inclined to give the
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 7: president more deference, namely, you know, kind of traditional enforcement functions.
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 7: And in that space, I am just concerned about asking
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 7: the Supreme Court to let stand a lower court ruling
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 7: that finds on the basis of facts that the president
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 7: has gone too far.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 4: Now, the Harvard case is different in terms of these
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 4: sort of, you know, kind of group of enforcement related cases.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 4: Harvard's been the only university to sue Trump over its
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 4: assault on research funding. Others, Columbia, Brown, Penn, have agreed
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 4: to settle with the administration in some way, pay fines.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 4: Do you think this court decision should give more universities
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 4: the resolve to fight back?
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 7: I mean, I hope it does, and I think it should.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 7: I think the legal claims against what the Trump administration
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 7: has been doing have always been very clear and very powerful.
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 7: I mean, it's total bullshit that they were doing this, right, to,
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 7: I don't know, address anti-Semitism. It's always been an ideological campaign.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 7: And they've been quite transparent about this. I mean, Linda
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 7: McMahon has basically gone around to cable TV and says, well, yeah,
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 7: this is just allowing conservatives to do all of the
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 7: things they wanted to do on campus. So, you know,
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 7: these aren't hard cases. I think the gamble and the
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 7: tough spot that places find themselves in is they look
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 7: around and they say, we have winning legal claims, right?
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 7: We are winning in the lower courts. But who knows
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 7: what those fuck weirdos on the Supreme Court are going
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 7: to do. And so it's really hard to bank on
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 7: the fact that you have a winning legal claim when
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 7: this court just sometimes doesn't give two shits about the
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 7: law or facts.
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, there's the question mark over the Supreme Court.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 4: There's also timing issues, right? Like, I feel like even if,
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 4: you know, in the In the most optimistic scenario, right,
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 4: if SCOTUS rules against Trump in all these cases, for
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 4: most of them, with the possible exception of Harvard, it
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 4: feels a little like too little too late. Like he
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 4: keeps doing the bad illegal things he wants to do.
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 4: And then ex post facto, we've got a court somewhere
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 4: being like, that L.A. deployment that happened a couple of
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 4: months ago, that was a big no-no. Shouldn't have done
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 4: that one.
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 7: Well, think about the funding cases in particular. I mean,
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 7: the administration is not releasing these funds to Harvard. They
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 7: are canceling National Institutes of Health grants. They are freezing
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 7: Department of Education funds. What happens if those payments don't
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 7: go out for a few months or a year? You know,
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 7: as Justice Jackson wrote in dissent in the National Institutes
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 7: of Health case, labs are going to shut down. People
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 7: are going to be fired. Studies are going to be
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 7: thrown out. I mean, animal subjects are going to be euthanized.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 7: These aren't things you can just snap your fingers and
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 7: say that disappears when we ultimately conclude that what they've
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 7: done is illegal. This is happening in the foreign aid
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 7: funding case. I mean, the administration has just stonewalled this.
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 7: paying out any of its foreign aid obligations, even though
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 7: it's been months since the district court concluded that their
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 7: funding freezes and cancellations were illegal. So what's happening in
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 7: the interim? People aren't getting food. People aren't getting medicine.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 7: And food and medicine are going to waste because there
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 7: isn't money to distribute them. And that's not going to
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 7: be fixed if the Supreme Court ultimately concludes, yeah, what
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 7: you did is illegal and you have to pay out
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 7: that money that you've now owed for over a year.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 4: You would almost think that in some of these cases,
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 4: it would be valuable to have something like a nationwide
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 4: injunction that prevents the administration from doing some of this stuff.
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 7: Silly, silly John. Brett Kavanaugh reassured us that when the
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 7: Supreme Court limited nationwide injunctions, that the Supreme Court would
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 7: remain willing, able, and available to settle issues on a
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 7: nationwide basis in the interim when that was called for.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 7: You know, I keep checking my calendar, and yet.
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 4: What's going on with the birthright citizenship case? Why don't
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 4: we have a ruling on that yet?
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 7: Well, so we have several lower courts that have concluded
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 7: this order is unlawful and it cannot be applied to anyone.
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 7: The administration is not moving as quickly to challenge those
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 7: rulings as they.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 3: Are on other matters.
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 7: And I think the government is engaged in a lot
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 7: of really shady and manipulative tactics that basically engineer rules.
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 7: when and which cases get to the Supreme Court in
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 7: an emergency posture that if any other litigant besides the
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 7: government was doing, they would be sanctioned. And I think
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 7: the government's chosen timing in birthright citizenship is just an
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 7: example of, you know, they don't want this one to
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 7: go up quickly, so they're not taking it.
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 4: I want to ask you about this Venezuelan boat incident
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 4: for which the administration has provided zero legal rationale. I
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 4: know the courts, especially Supreme Court, as we just talked about,
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 4: like to give administrations, particularly this administration, sort of broad
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 4: deference when it comes to matters of national security. But
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 4: even if you believe the administration that they took out
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 4: a bunch of Trend de Aragua terrorists headed towards the U.S.,
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 4: which is still a stretch because they have provided no
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 4: proof for that. Aren't the implications of just saying that
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 4: the government gets to decide who's a terrorist and what
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 4: we do about them fairly terrifying?
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 7: Yeah, they are utterly stunning. I mean, what if the,
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 7: you know, Stephen Miller and whoever else is making decisions
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 7: in this White House decides there is a terrorist on
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 7: some flight into the United States? Are they going to
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 7: blow the plane out of the sky? I mean, it's
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 7: utterly shocking. There is no possible legal basis for just
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 7: summarily executing people based on the president's whim and say so.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 7: And yet that is the authority they are claiming. And
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 7: I just want to, since you brought up birthright citizenship,
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 7: let's go back to the immunity ruling. You know, when
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 7: the Democratic appointees warned about a president ordering SEAL Team
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 7: 6 to to assassinate a political rival.
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we're getting close. Right, exactly, exactly.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 7: We're not even a year in.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 4: I mean, that, it is, I saw that and I'm like,
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 4: why isn't anyone, well, also, like, who would challenge that, right? Like,
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 4: who would bring that case that what they did to
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 4: the boat was illegal? Because, like, who has standing to
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 4: challenge that?
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 7: So, I think that the family members of people who
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 7: were executed could conceivably, you know, sue some federal officers
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 7: for damages.
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 6: Hmm.
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 7: Although the Supreme Court wouldn't allow that case to proceed
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 7: for reasons that I explained in my federal courts class
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 7: but will not get into now.
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 4: How are we feeling about military lawyers serving as immigration judges?
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 7: You know, everyone knows that immigration law is super easy
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 7: and not at all complicated, and you don't need any
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 7: training in it whatsoever. Like, you can just pick up
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 7: a book and you'll be fine. so zero qualms about
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 7: this whatsoever.
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 4: Okay cool cool much like much like just giving the
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 4: people whose job it is to issue the uh the
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 4: passports and the visas just giving them guns which we're
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 4: doing now because we need to expand ice Because we're
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 4: not recruiting enough of the random MMA fighters who lost
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 4: their jobs and now want to slam people's heads against
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 4: the pavement, at least.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 7: According to what they told the Washington Post. Right, or
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 7: deploying the military, right, to just engage in normal policing
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 7: in cities, which, again, they have zero training to do.
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 4: Cool, cool. I wanted to ask you about an NBC
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 4: News story. that came out today where 10 federal judges
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 4: went on background to criticize the Supreme Court for issuing
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 4: the shadow docket rulings where the majority.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 3: You shady bitches. I love it.
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 4: The rulings where the majority offers little to no explanation
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 4: or rationale for their rulings. What do you think is
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 4: going on there? First of all, how unusual is that
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 4: for a bunch of federal judges to go on background
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 4: to NBC News?
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 2: It is deeply unusual.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 7: It is striking and it is alarming because it is
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 7: a sign of how bad the Supreme Court is that
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 7: lower federal judges are willing to talk to reporters, even
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 7: on background, about what the Supreme Court is doing wrong.
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 7: I mean, this is unprecedented. And I don't say that
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 7: as a knock against what the lower courts are doing.
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 7: I think we should take it as a sign of,
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 7: how appalling the Supreme Court's behavior is. You know, it's
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 7: not just their lack of explanation on the shadow dockets.
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 7: These lower court judges said, you, Supreme Court, are enabling
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 7: the Trump administration's attacks on lower court judges that have
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 7: precipitated real threats of violence and harassment. I mean, one
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 7: lower court judge said, somebody's gonna die, right? Like, they
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 7: are in fear of the consequences of the Trump administration
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 7: fomenting all of these attacks on judges and that the
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 7: Supreme Court has had nothing to say about. In fact,
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 7: they have fanned the flames with Kavanaugh and Gorsuch writing
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 7: a few weeks ago about how lower federal courts are
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 7: defying the Supreme Court's opinions in matters involving the Trump administration,
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 7: which could not be further from the truth. And it's
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 7: not just these judges speaking on background. You've now had
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 7: judges write in their opinions in footnotes, like in the
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 7: Harvard ruling, for example. You know, we just don't think
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 7: it's that useful for you guys, Supreme Court, to be
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 7: shitting all over us when we try to make sense
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 7: of your shadow docket ruling. So they aren't just speaking
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 7: on background to NBC. They are writing it in their opinions.
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 7: And these are, again, just signs of how alarming this
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 7: Supreme Court is.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 4: Why do you think The majority in some of these cases,
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 4: when they give the Trump administration a win, choose not
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 4: to offer any explanation in the shadow ducker ruling. If
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 4: they're so confident that Trump is complying with the Constitution
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 4: and the law, why not make their case for the public?
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 7: You know, I think a few reasons.
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 8: One is.
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 7: I think on some level, they're not quite sure why
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 7: they disagree with the lower court ruling, but they know
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 7: it has to be wrong. And so they don't bother
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 7: to force themselves to actually articulate what the reason is.
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 7: They just shoot from the hip and go with their
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 7: gut instinct, which is the problem is the lower federal courts,
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 7: not the Trump administration. I think some of it might
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 7: be there's a lack of agreement among the justices about
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 7: why the lower courts are wrong. I think some of
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 7: it is to preserve flexibility for themselves so they don't
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 7: have to bother applying that rationale in the event that
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 7: a Democrat becomes president. They didn't explain why Donald Trump
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 7: basically got to eviscerate the Department of Education. And therefore,
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 7: they didn't write down on the page the reasons why
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 7: a Democratic president might be able to eviscerate ICE. So
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 7: I think there are several explanations, but I honestly think
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 7: the primary one is, They just don't force themselves to
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 7: identify why they think the lower court got it wrong.
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 4: And obviously, in some of these cases, we've seen dissents.
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 4: We've seen some of the liberal judges write dissents.
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 7: Someone's willing to do their job.
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 4: Right. Talk about how you think about the fine line
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 4: that they're walking. Because the liberal justices are writing these dissents.
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 4: They're in public appearances sort of hinting towards the frustration here.
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 4: without saying too much? Like, what must that be like
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 4: for them, do you think?
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 7: I don't think they have a fun job right now.
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 7: I think they are constantly balancing between, you know, trying
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 7: to maintain some, I don't know, sense of a relationship
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 7: with their Republican colleagues such that they can actually cobble
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 7: together majority in some cases. On the other hand, I
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 7: think they legitimately feel compelled to try to inform the
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 7: public and warn the public about what lawless hacks their
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 7: Republican colleagues are. I mean, you have Justice Jackson writing
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 7: explicitly that the court is engaged in Calvin Ball with
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 7: a twist where there's only one rule, the administration always wins.
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 7: They have repeatedly made statements about how their Republican colleagues
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 7: are in the bag for Donald Trump and the Trump administration.
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 7: And I just think that like the lower federal judges,
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 7: lower court federal judges who are talking to NBC on background,
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 7: they are having to engage in behaviors that are somewhat unprecedented, right?
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 7: And happening in a different tone and register simply to
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 7: get people's attention and right, to understand this problem. Because
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 7: if you just say, I dissent, I don't know, reasonable
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 7: argument on the other side, no one's going to pick
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 7: up on how fucked the Supreme Court is.
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 6: Wow.
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 4: I'm going to just read you two quotes that I'll
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 4: let you cook on.
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 7: I'm already at 11.
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 4: I'll get to a 50 real quick. Get to a
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 4: 50 and then I can send you off. All right.
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 4: One is from an Obama appointed judge who talked to
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 4: NBC for the story. Quote, I do sympathize with the
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 4: predicament the court is in, doing a dance with the administration,
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 4: and particularly I'm sympathetic to Roberts. The other is in
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 4: a Politico story, and this is from federal judge Robert Dow,
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 4: who's also an advisor to John Roberts, I understand. Quote,
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 4: the problem for our branch is that we have a
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 4: very tiny megaphone, and if we use our megaphone too often,
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 4: we risk losing what I would say is the long game,
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 4: and the long game is to preserve our independence.
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 7: Let me start with the second. It's like the guy
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 7: in the hot dog suit, right? We're all trying to
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 7: find the guy who did this. You're telling me that
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 7: the problem is acknowledging that the Trump administration is engaged
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 7: in this lawless attack on our Constitution and democracy, and
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 7: it's a problem for you to say that? Isn't that
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 7: your job?
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 8: I mean.
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 7: So that's a little bit of there.
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 4: Also, it's like, what long game? There might not be
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 4: a game. How long do you think we have?
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 7: You know, they're slightly more optimistic than I am, I guess.
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 3: Good to hear.
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 4: We're all going to go down in flames and they're
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 4: going to preserve their tiny, tiny megaphone.
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 7: You know, sometimes in my darkest moments, I run a
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 7: line to myself that runs something like this. As I
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 7: am hauled off to the gulags, Brett Kavanaugh writes an
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 7: opinion that says, ah, but at a later time, now
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 7: that we have held our fire, we will be able
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 7: to preserve the rule of law. And yeah, so that's
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 7: that story. The Obama-appointed judge who expresses sympathy for the
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 7: chief justice, I mean, another part of that quote was,
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 7: That Obama judge saying, I actually do think that some
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 7: of the problem is the lower federal courts. They suffer
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 7: from Trump derangement syndrome.
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 3: Wild.
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 4: Wild to say.
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 7: Not to make this a personal attack on you, John,
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 7: but this is a fairly damning indictment of the Obama
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 7: administration and the kinds of judicial nominees they were selecting.
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 7: If they are so out to lunch and committed to
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 7: this both sides-ism, they cannot acknowledge the reality staring at
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 7: them in the face, which is... The problem is an
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 7: executive branch engaged in systemic, systematic, brazen legal violations, not
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 7: the judges saying that. I know.
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 4: It was an era of let's get these judges confirmed
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 4: with votes from both parties and now not so much anymore.
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 4: So then you probably get a few clunkers like that.
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 4: Give me a.
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 7: Unicorn while you're at it.
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 2: Why not?
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 4: Well, no good news here, but thank you for illuminating
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 4: what's going on with a lot of these cases and
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 4: with our Supreme Court, as you always do, wonderfully and
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 4: brilliantly on strict scrutiny, which everyone should tune into and
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 4: subscribe if you haven't already. Leah, thank you so much
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 4: for taking the time out of your very busy schedule
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 4: to join us, and I'm glad we could... could yell
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 4: about all this.
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 7: Yeah. Anytime.
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 3: Anytime.
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 7: I'll always get up to a 50.
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 3: Awesome. Perfect. Take care.
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 4: That's our show for today. Dan's going to be back
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 4: on the feed on Sunday with a special conversation with
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 4: the one and only Heather Cox Richardson. Check it out. Exciting.
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 3: I'm recording it tomorrow. I'm very excited for it.
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 4: And everyone else, we'll see you next week.
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 3: Bye, everyone.
• 1:19:18
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