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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection · Pod Save America

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  Speaker 4: You come to the New Yorker Radio Hour for conversations
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• 2:13
  Speaker 3: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: Lovett is taking President's Day seriously.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: I guess.
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: Good. Good for him.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: I don't know where he is.
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: He's honoring it. He's not here.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: Maybe he'll come in at some point. He's not on
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: Survivor again, everyone.
• 2:25
  Speaker 5: No, yeah.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: That's good. I know what you're thinking. Good disclaimer. He's
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: not on an island. He's not doing the traders or
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: whatever the other stuff is.
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: The truth is, we didn't bother to know where he's going.
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: We could have asked him.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: That would have been nice.
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: So, on today's show, Trump and the White House spent
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: the weekend promoting a quote attributed to Napoleon that, quote,
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: he who saves his country does not violate any law.
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: and then set about proving they believe it by indiscriminately
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  Speaker 3: firing thousands of workers, including hundreds of people who oversee
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  Speaker 3: our nuclear weapons and handle air safety for the FAA.
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: We'll talk about all that and why I'm never flying again.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: I feel the same way, man. I don't have any
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: of your flying anxiety, but how many plane crashes do
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: we have to watch on TV?
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  Speaker 3: I mean, we were prepping for this while one happened,
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: another one from a Delta flight from Minneapolis to Toronto.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: How does it get upside down? I don't know.
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: I guess there's bad winds, but I don't know. We'll
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: talk about why, yeah. why the FAA is being hollered
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: out at this moment. We'll also talk about how Donald
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: Trump now essentially owns the Democratic mayor of New York City,
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: thanks to a corrupt deal that led even Trump-appointed conservative
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: prosecutors to resign from the Department of Justice. Then, Tommy
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: talks to Stephen A. Smith, the legendary sports commentator turned
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: political pundit, now one of the Democratic Party's top critics,
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: about what he thinks the party needs and why he
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: hasn't completely ruled out running for president.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: That's right. Is that right? That's right. I mean, for
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: those who don't watch sports or ESPN or listen to
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: sports talk radio, like Stephen is a legend in the
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: game of winning arguments and shouting down opponents in the
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: most entertaining way possible. And there's been all this chatter
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: about him potentially running for office is sort of like
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: the reason I wanted to reach out. But also he's
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: a guy who understands the digital economy and the tension
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: and how to get it and drive a narrative and
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: keep it better than almost anyone. And so, look, listeners,
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: there's going to be a lot of criticism of the
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: Democratic Party. Some I agreed with, lots I didn't. You
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: will repeatedly think, why isn't Tommy interrupting him and pushing
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: back on this? And to you, I say two things. One,
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: Stephen A. is legendarily difficult to interrupt. There's bodies littered
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: across ESPN of people who have tried. And two, that's
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: not what I wanted to do. Sometimes it's good to
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: hear criticisms that are Wrong, but like a widely held perspective.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: And not everything he said was wrong. Even if it
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: makes you mad, like it's good to hear where people
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: are coming from and what they're mad at the Democratic
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: Party about. And you can learn something.
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: You can't Daniel Dale everyone throughout the interview, you know? Otherwise,
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: people aren't going to get much.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: It's a long interview, too.
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  Speaker 3: Also, it's impossible to interrupt him. I went on his
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  Speaker 3: podcast before the election, and that was slightly different because
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: he had to ask me some questions because he was
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: hosting the podcast. But it was the full Stephen A.
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  Speaker 1: Treatment.
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  Speaker 3: And it was just.
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  Speaker 1: I'll tell everybody, this was everything I wanted and more.
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  Speaker 1: Out of the Stephen A. experience, I felt like I
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  Speaker 1: got yelled at for 30 minutes in a good way. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: And about 10 words in, and that was all I wanted. Perfect.
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  Speaker 3: I can't wait to listen. We are recording this Monday
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  Speaker 3: afternoon on President's Day, soon to be known as President
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: Trump Day, probably. I'm shocked he hasn't renamed it.
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  Speaker 1: That's funny, but real.
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  Speaker 3: Our dear leader has sent a U.S. delegation to Saudi
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  Speaker 3: Arabia to begin negotiations with Russia on to end Putin's
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  Speaker 3: unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, which over the last three years
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  Speaker 3: has led to the deaths of tens of thousands of
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  Speaker 3: Ukrainian soldiers and civilians, the kidnapping by Russia of tens
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  Speaker 3: of thousands of Ukrainian children, and a global alliance led
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  Speaker 3: by the US and Europe to isolate and deter Putin
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  Speaker 3: from expanding the war and potentially using nuclear weapons, both
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  Speaker 3: of which Russia has expressed interest in doing at some
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  Speaker 3: point during the conflict. Ending this war is, of course,
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  Speaker 3: a worthy goal to pursue. We all want that. But
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  Speaker 3: what's scaring the shit out of Europe and Ukraine is
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  Speaker 3: that Trump has so far excluded them from the negotiations
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  Speaker 3: with Putin and hinted that, wittingly or not, he may
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  Speaker 3: give the murderous dictator most of what he wants. Meanwhile,
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  Speaker 3: French President Emmanuel Macron called a last-minute meeting of European
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  Speaker 3: leaders in Paris to talk about how to handle all this.
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  Speaker 3: I guess they'll just be watching Twitter for updates like us.
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  Speaker 5: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: Is that about right, Tommy? What did I miss there?
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  Speaker 3: How big of a deal is this and why are
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  Speaker 3: Europe and Ukraine so freaked out right now?
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  Speaker 1: Doing it in Saudi Arabia is a nice touch. It's
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  Speaker 1: kind of like an autocratic human centipede. You know what
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  Speaker 1: I mean? Hopefully you don't know what I mean. There
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  Speaker 1: was a lot of activity on Ukraine last week. It started,
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  Speaker 1: it kicked off when Trump called Putin for 90 minutes
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  Speaker 1: and they set up this series of peace talks between
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  Speaker 1: the U.S. and Russia on the future of Ukraine. Not
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  Speaker 1: a part of those talks is Ukraine or the Ukrainians
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  Speaker 1: or Zelensky. Zelensky got a call after the Putin call.
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  Speaker 1: where Trump informed him that this was going down.
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  Speaker 3: More of an FYI.
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  Speaker 1: Hey, man, heads up. 20% of your territory is being
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  Speaker 1: occupied by the Russians. We're going to figure out who
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  Speaker 1: gets it.
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  Speaker 3: This is the first time a U.S. president has spoken
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  Speaker 3: to Putin since the war began.
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  Speaker 1: Since the invasion. Basically, this effectively ended three years of
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  Speaker 1: trying to isolate the Russians by the West, basically, this call. And,
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  Speaker 1: you know, The Europeans are also not invited to these talks,
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  Speaker 1: which again is nuts because the EU and its member
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  Speaker 1: states have given something like $ 145 billion worth of support
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  Speaker 1: to Ukraine over the past few years. And they're obviously
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  Speaker 1: more threatened by a Russian military operation than we are
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  Speaker 1: because we have an ocean in between. So it was
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  Speaker 1: really messy. And then on top of that, Pete Hexeth,
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  Speaker 1: the Secretary of Defense slash America's designate if there's ever
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  Speaker 1: a case race to decide the future. But not to
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  Speaker 1: get home. Not good at flip cup, though. Surprisingly bad.
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  Speaker 1: You and I can take them. But so, Hegseth announced
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  Speaker 1: at a meeting in Brussels, a NATO meeting, that it
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  Speaker 1: was unrealistic for Ukraine to join NATO or get back
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  Speaker 1: all the territory it lost since 2014, which is maybe
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  Speaker 1: true and a fair thing for an analyst to say.
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  Speaker 1: But everyone was like, hey, man, you're part of the
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  Speaker 1: team now negotiating with Putin, and you just gave him
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  Speaker 1: massive concessions before these talks even started. And then he
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  Speaker 1: walked it back, and then they kind of walked back,
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  Speaker 1: they walked back. So it was like, Amateur hour left
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  Speaker 1: and right from Hexeth.
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  Speaker 3: And then Trump said he potentially supports readmitting Russia to
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  Speaker 3: the G7.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, G8. We're G8ing it up. Bring it back.
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  Speaker 3: He said many people on both sides were to blame
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  Speaker 3: for the war in Ukraine.
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  Speaker 1: Just a callback. Never says.
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  Speaker 3: Callback to the first term.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, never says Russia invaded. Very strange.
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  Speaker 3: I also thought it was amazing that, I'm sure you
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  Speaker 3: guys talked about this. I don't know when it happened, though.
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  Speaker 1: No, it all happened after we recorded. It happened. Okay.
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  Speaker 3: How about the fact that Trump was going around being like, okay, okay,
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  Speaker 3: I know that I'm, it seems like I'm going to
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  Speaker 3: give Russia what they want, but hey, Zelensky, if you
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  Speaker 3: give me half of your minerals, maybe. Maybe I'll give
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  Speaker 3: you more of what you want, but there's a deal
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  Speaker 3: to be done there. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: I forget who handed this sort of proposal to Zelensky,
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  Speaker 1: but it basically said Ukraine gives the United States half
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  Speaker 1: of its deposits of rare earth minerals in exchange for Nothing.
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  Speaker 1: There was no security guarantee. There was nothing.
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  Speaker 3: He was like, what do I do with this? He's
• 9:18
  Speaker 3: really focused on these rare earth minerals. You notice that too. Again,
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  Speaker 3: like a feudal lord.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: He wants them from Canada. He wants them from Greenland, Canada, Ukraine. Well,
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: you know what they're very important for is electric vehicle batteries.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: And I wonder who might be talking about that in
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  Speaker 1: his ear.
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  Speaker 3: I thought we hated electric vehicles now. I thought we
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: were able to drive our gas customers.
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  Speaker 1: No, they're cool.
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  Speaker 2: Okay.
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  Speaker 3: So why should Americans care about all.
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  Speaker 1: Of this right now? Well, I mean, as you mentioned
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  Speaker 1: the topic, hundreds of thousands of Soldiers and civilians have
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  Speaker 1: been killed or wounded or missing because of the war.
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  Speaker 1: The war led to inflation, energy prices skyrocketed across Europe,
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  Speaker 1: and all those impacts rippled out across Europe and destabilized
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  Speaker 1: all these governments. And Biden gave all this direct support
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  Speaker 1: to Ukraine. rallied the world behind Ukraine, and now Trump
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  Speaker 1: is just selling Ukraine out and selling Europe out. And
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  Speaker 1: so there's this enormous fear that division within NATO, weakness
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  Speaker 1: within NATO will lead Putin to do more, to go
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  Speaker 1: into a NATO country like Poland. I mean, think of
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  Speaker 1: the The Danish intelligence services recently said that if Putin
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  Speaker 1: perceives NATO as weak, Russia could launch another large-scale war
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  Speaker 1: in Europe in as few as five years. And the
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  Speaker 1: whole point of NATO is to deter these things. So
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  Speaker 1: this is like a seismic shift in U.S. foreign policy.
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  Speaker 3: I saw in the Financial Times, too, that some of
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  Speaker 3: the Europeans think that Trump wants to potentially remove U.S.
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  Speaker 3: troops from places in Eastern Europe and some of the
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  Speaker 3: Baltic nations.
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  Speaker 1: I think what happened was Hegseth went to Brussels, then
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  Speaker 1: he went to the Munich Security Conference, whatever, some mouth
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  Speaker 1: breather thing that Rhodes would attend or did attend.
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  Speaker 3: And probably has.
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  Speaker 1: And I think he suggested in some of those meetings
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  Speaker 1: that they might pull tens of thousands of U.S. troops
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  Speaker 1: out of Europe.
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  Speaker 3: And so this seems like the broader danger beyond just
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  Speaker 3: the danger for Ukraine, right? Which is just signing some
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  Speaker 3: kind of settlement where they lose some of their territory
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  Speaker 3: and they don't have, they don't get the security guarantees
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  Speaker 3: from the United States so that Putin could just reinvade.
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  Speaker 3: but that now Eastern Europe, now Putin thinks, okay, well,
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  Speaker 3: I got my way here and Donald Trump's a pushover
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  Speaker 3: and is just going to give me what I want,
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  Speaker 3: either a pushover or a fellow autocrat, right? And then
• 11:27
  Speaker 3: starts menacing Eastern Europe and then we're off to the races.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's sort of two really bad, look, this war
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  Speaker 1: is awful. I'd love it to be over. I'd love
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  Speaker 1: for Putin to take his troops and go home, but
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  Speaker 1: it's going to require sacrifices from both sides, I think,
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: to get to a peace deal. And Some of the
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: things Hegsatz was saying are true. I mean, basically, the
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: Bush administration in 2008 set up this construct where they
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: kind of floated Ukraine for NATO membership, but they didn't
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: get into NATO, which left them very vulnerable, sort of
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: the worst case scenario. And I agree, it is unlikely
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  Speaker 1: that Ukraine will be a part of NATO. And it
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: is unlikely that Ukraine will get Crimea back. But I
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: think the worst case outcome here is a negotiation where
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  Speaker 1: Putin keeps a lot of territory. Ukraine is forced to
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  Speaker 1: basically demilitarize Ukraine. It gets no security guarantees. And Putin
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: uses this period of time to reconstitute his forces and
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: then just roll tanks into Kiev. And then after that,
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: maybe he rolls tanks into Poland or somewhere, you know,
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: a Balkan country. And then, you know, there is like
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: a hot war happening in Europe between the Russians and
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: NATO and NATO is weakened. And like that is the
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  Speaker 1: long term nightmare.
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  Speaker 3: Good times.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: Yes, good times.
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  Speaker 3: Well, we should also dig into J.D. Vance's speech at
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: the Munich Security Conference, which is a big part of
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: what has freaked out Europe over the last week. So
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: instead of talking about America's commitment to European security and
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: a free Ukraine, he said that the real threat to
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: the continent isn't Russia or China. It's that Europe's leaders
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: aren't welcoming enough to extremist parties like Germany's AFD and
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: aren't sufficiently committed to free speech. A statement made without
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: a hint of irony from an administration that has banned
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: the Associated Press from covering the White House for refusing
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: So stupid to even say that. And is currently investigating
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: media outlets for coverage that makes Trump mad. Here's some
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: of Vance's speech.
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  Speaker 6: The threat that I worry the most about vis-a-vis Europe
• 13:18
  Speaker 6: is not Russia, it's not China, it's not any other
• 13:21
  Speaker 6: external actor. And what I worry about is the threat
• 13:25
  Speaker 6: from within. The retreat of Europe from some of its
• 13:30
  Speaker 6: most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America.
• 13:34
  Speaker 6: I look to Brussels, where EU commissars warn citizens that
• 13:39
  Speaker 6: they intend to shut down social media during times of
• 13:42
  Speaker 6: civil unrest. the moment they spot what they've judged to be, quote,
• 13:47
  Speaker 6: hateful content. And I really do believe that allowing our
• 13:51
  Speaker 6: citizens to speak their mind will make them stronger still,
• 13:55
  Speaker 6: which of course brings us back to Munich, where the
• 13:59
  Speaker 6: organizers of this very conference have banned lawmakers representing populist
• 14:04
  Speaker 6: parties on both the left and the right from participating
• 14:06
  Speaker 6: in these conversations. If you're running in fear of your
• 14:10
  Speaker 6: own voters, there is nothing America can do for you Nor,
• 14:14
  Speaker 6: for that matter, is there anything that you can do
• 14:16
  Speaker 6: for the American people who elected me and elected President Trump.
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: A stirring defense of freedom from J.D.
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: Vance.
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  Speaker 1: Putting the eunuch in Munich. Thanks, J.D.
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: What was your reaction to the speech, and what do
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: you think Vance was trying to do there?
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  Speaker 1: I have three thoughts.
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  Speaker 2: The first.
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  Speaker 1: Big picture. I think J.D. is cut out of all
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: the big boy meetings. And he saw Pete Hexeth go
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: over to Brussels and screw up these Ukraine negotiations and
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: then get slapped around because Trump didn't like the coverage
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: because he looked like a bad negotiator. Everyone's like, oh,
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: art of the deal guy. You just gave up all
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: these things to Putin. So J.D. decided, I'm not touching
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: the hot stove. I'm not going to talk about the
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: hot war that's happening in Ukraine that matters. I'm going
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: to talk about social media and free speech.
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: I'm going to go to my safe space, which is
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: whining about mean people on social media, which is what
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: he actually, it seems like that's what his job is
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: because he's just posting all the time.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: He's attacking the most random people on social media all
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: day long.
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he's just a professional poster and he's mad about
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: it and he wants to go talk to the entire
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: world about it.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: But seriously, can you imagine like the White House comms
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: meeting where you're like, yes, let's send the vice president
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: to this Munich security conference, first overseas trip, huge deal,
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: and then not talk about the single biggest issue facing Europe.
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: I mean, it seems like there's two different parts to
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: the speech and what we just heard in the clip.
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: The first is he is very upset about the content
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: moderation laws that the EU has passed and adopted.
• 15:40
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: Though I think he is overstating the case of what
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: the enforcement mechanisms are. And look, they are much stricter, certainly,
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: than anything we have in the United States because we
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: don't have anything.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: Well, it's going great over here with no rules. Right,
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: no rules, right.
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: But the EU will define sort of hateful speech, a
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: speech that is inciting violence or hate in sort of
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: an immediate sense. That is the definition that they've done.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: What they can do is find social media platforms and
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: demand that social media platforms take down the free speech.
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: But what he laid out there was like, you know,
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: they're going from house to house and you're not allowed
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: to say anything bad.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, right. Jack booted Facebook thugs. Yes, they are complaining
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: about kind of routine censorship. And remember, this is kind
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: of Mark Zuckerberg's thing that he cried about in his
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: Joe Rogan interview is he wants the American president to
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: be a champion for American companies and just let us
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: do whatever we want. Then there's this question of this
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: Romanian election where there were two rounds. The first round
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: went off. They figured out there was all this Russian interference,
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: so they canceled the second round, which is a more
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: controversial thing. But again, talking about that, let's J.D. say,
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: Russian interference in elections, what a ridiculous thing to care about.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: You know, he likes that. And then I know hypocrisy
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: is irrelevant now, but J.D. Vance didn't have anything to
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: say about Viktor Orban, their buddy, who is the dictator
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: leading Hungary, who's like swallowed up all independent media.
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: Well, also- All their complaints about free speech are such
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: fucking bullshit. Like, they're sitting here in the United States
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: banning the Associated Press. Elon Musk was tweeting today that
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: 60 Minutes deserves a long prison sentence. What?
• 17:18
  Speaker 6: Yes.
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: I guess the whole show.
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: Every episode?
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: Leslie Stahl? Leslie Stahl. She's a treasure. All of them
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: are going to jail.
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: Even the dead ones?
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: I guess not.
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: It's just like, it's such fucking bullshit. They do not
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: give a shit about free speech.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: Speech they don't like. Well, there's another like Germany specific
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: piece to this. Just allow me to geek out for
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: a second. Germany's got an election on the 23rd. So
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: in like a week, they're going to elect representatives to
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: the Bundestag, their parliament, and then they'll choose the next chancellor.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: The most likely outcome is that the CDU wins the
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: most votes. That's Angela Merkel's party, the conservative party, and
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: that they go into a coalition with the social Democrats
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: and that'll be what happens. But, But right now, the AFD,
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: the far right party, is at like 20 or 22%.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: And that is scary because most Germans are repulsed and
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: terrified by the AFD because they are viewed as dangerously
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: close to being neo-Nazis. Members of the AFD downplay the Holocaust.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: They kind of wink and nod and like accidentally, in
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: air quotes, use Nazi slogans. German intelligence has said some
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: factions of the AFD are actually extremist groups. And because
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: of Germany's history with the Holocaust and World War II and,
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm sure everyone's familiar with that. They take
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: this stuff very seriously and all the other major political
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: parties have ruled out working with the AFD. And in
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: his speech, J.D. Vance said, quote, there's no room for firewalls.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: And that's referencing specifically the firewall that these other political
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: parties have between themselves and the AFD. And he also, J.D.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: Vance also met with the leader of the AFD while
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: in Germany. And this comes after Elon Musk has been
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: propping them up on Twitter over and over again and
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: doing like Twitter spaces stuff. So like... This meddling, it
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: might have backfired, but they are openly boosting this far-right,
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: some would say neo-Nazi party in Germany. What?
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: Is there an explanation for this you can think of
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: that is not J.D. Vance thinks it's cool to align
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: ourselves with a far, far-right German party that is like
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: the successor to the Nazi party?
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: It's like... Anti-Muslim, anti-refugee, immigration, fringy, fringy stuff. I think J.D.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: Vance is smart enough to know this is wrong and
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: pretty dangerous, but this is the program and he's going
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: with it.
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: Before we move on, your thoughts on the whole AP,
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: Gulf of America debacle, because this has become a whole
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: thing now here, but it seems like some press is
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: pushing back. I saw the White House Correspondents Association has
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: put out a couple statements.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: Were they strongly worded?
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: They were strongly.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: Very strongly.
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: I did read them and I thought about in the
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: first Trump term, some of the statements from the WHCA
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: were like pretty just terrible, I would say, like pretty limp.
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: And this one was strongly worded, but I don't know.
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: I don't know how the Associated Press gets back on
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: Air Force One, gets back in the White House briefing room.
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: They had to turn in their credentials, and this is
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: all because they refused to call Gulf of Mexico, Gulf
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: of America, even though they are a global news organization,
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: and no one fucking owns the Gulf of Mexico. It's
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: an international water, so other countries are calling it the
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: Gulf of Mexico.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a big body of water. Why are we
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: talking about this? Yeah, shout out Eugene Daniels and the
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: Correspondents Association. This is not an easy one. I mean, no. Well,
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: initially this seemed like stupid and childish. And I kind
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: of thought the Trump people would like be dicks for
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: a couple of days and then let it go. But
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: then Axios had this report this morning where some White
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: House staffer I'd never heard of, like unloaded the clip
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: of anger, things they're mad about in the AP style book.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: And it was like truly Orwellian. And it just read
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: to me like a literally unconstitutional assault on free speech.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: I know the constitution singles out no law written by
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: Congress shall abridge free speech, but that has been applied
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: to the executive branch as well. And you're right, there's
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: been a lot of strongly worded, high-minded statements, but no
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: one's doing anything. And it made me think about in 2009,
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: when we were in the White House, the Treasury Department
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: offered up a series of interviews with this guy, Ken Feinberg.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: Was he like the Pazar?
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he was the Pazar.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: He was the Pazar. And Fox News was left out.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: And all the other outlets came together and they said,
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: we're going to boycott this interview unless you include Fox.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: So we included Fox. That kind of action is what's necessary.
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: That was complaints about a single interview.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: A Treasury aide. Yeah. One interview.
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: Not like we didn't try to kick Fox out of
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: the White House.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: Right. And it was a huge story. Robert Gibbs, the
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: White House press secretary at the time, was getting hammered
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: about it. reporters are doing tons of stories about it.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: And there's been coverage of this. And, you know, Jake Tapper,
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: who like was hammered us hard at the time, was
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: incredibly sanctimonious about it. I've seen him do some, you know,
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: commentaries and things on his shows. I'm not seeing that
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: from any other people.
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: I say that as a compliment to Jake, by the way.
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: He stood up for like the principal there in a
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: strong way.
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: It's a tricky one, right? Because first I thought, okay,
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: maybe they should all just like boycott the White House
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: and stop, you know, and band together and start reporting.
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: It's like, you don't want that, right?
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: And Cat Turd's the pool reporter. Exactly.
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there's already enough of Cat Turd types in there.
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: So you don't want that. But I'm wondering, like, what
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: else you do? What you could do is next time
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: you're in the Oval or next time you're at the
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: White House briefing room, just like pepper Carolyn Leavitt or
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: Trump when you see him with questions about this and like,
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: don't stop, don't move off the topic until they do something. Like,
• 22:52
  Speaker 3: just make it a bigger deal.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: It's really hard. The white, the reporters, when they would
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: take up issues like this with us knew we cared
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: and we cared about what they thought. And they knew
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: the Democrats cared about what these reporters said about how
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: we were treating them. Trump views them as a foil.
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: They want this fight. They love going after the media.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: So it is hard, but like, there's gotta be some
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: sort of collective action that leads to a reduction in
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: coverage somehow, like something Trump doesn't like. And I don't
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: know what it looks like, but they got to find it.
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think, It is indicative of a collective
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: action problem in dealing with Trump, like writ large in
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: this term, right? It's for the press. It's for Democrats.
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: It's for like business people standing up. Like no one
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: wants to get out there ahead of everyone and potentially
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: put themselves at risk, either financially or their safety. I mean,
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: it's like, you know, it's heading into bad territory here.
• 23:44
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 23:54
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  Speaker 3: available by visiting helixsleep.com slash crooked. All right, back here
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: in the United States, Trump celebrated President's Day weekend, a
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: holiday dedicated to a man who believed America should never
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: have a king and another who saved the union, by
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: declaring that it's okay to break the law as long
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: as you think you're doing it to save the country.
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: This is the quote attributed to Napoleon that I mentioned earlier,
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: which was not only posted by Trump, but by the
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: official White House account, just in case we weren't sure
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: if they really meant it. Of course, actions speak louder
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: than words, and there were plenty of those, too. Last weekend,
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: Trump and Elon continued to carry out legally dubious mass
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: firings of nonpolitical federal workers charged with frivolous jobs like
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: keeping our nuclear weapons secure and making sure it's safe
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: for us to fly. And in case you find it
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: troubling that two brain-rotted billionaires are destroying the government we
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: pay for, take it up with Fox & Friends' Brian Kilmeade.
• 26:08
  Speaker 5: Why does the media have such a hard time believing
• 26:11
  Speaker 5: that two powerful, successful, handsome men could work together with
• 26:15
  Speaker 5: one objective? It's happened before, and America accepted it. Remember,
• 26:19
  Speaker 5: for example, lethal weapon? Four separate times. Mel Gibson, Danny Glover.
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: Watch. This is not the biggest problem here at all,
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: but does Brian Kilmeade think that Trump and Elon are hot?
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: How do you wake up? And look at yourself in
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: the mirror and then go to work and be like,
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: I got to do, I got to read this today.
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: It's just the lethal weapon.
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: Like our guy, Jesse Waters, he says the absurd thing
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: with like enough of a wink that you know he
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: knows he's full of shit, but enough of his audience
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: takes it literally that he can like, he doesn't pull
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: it off, but like, Kill Me did not pull that off.
• 26:56
  Speaker 7: Nope.
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: That was just like, is this guy... To get hit
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: in the head with a hammer before this part? Like,
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: what happened here?
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: What is he talking about? No, it's just regime media.
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: That's what it is now. Did you see all the
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: Twitter sleuths who found that Elon is a big Napoleon
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: fan and has tweeted about him all the time? Oh,
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: I did see that. I think that's where this came from.
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's fucking nuts. They're trolling, right?
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: They want us to react. They want us to freak out.
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: But we should.
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: We don't want Napoleon. Again, watch what he does, not
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: what he says. If he wasn't acting in that manner,
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: it would be one thing.
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: It would be a troll.
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: But he's trying to break the law. Now, look, I
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: will say on all the on the Doge stuff and
• 27:33
  Speaker 3: all the cases that are going through the courts right now,
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: the Justice Department, the Trump Justice Department is in their
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: filings basically saying like, yeah, we're going to follow the rules.
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: We're going to follow the laws here, whatever the court decides.
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: That's great. So they are they are so far abiding
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: by the law in their filings. I think the shit
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: hits the fan when, you know, a Supreme Court. ruling
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: comes down that Trump doesn't like. Then we'll see if
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: he still abides by the Napoleon quote that he's stealing.
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: Let's talk about the firings. Maybe you think these workers
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: are just paper-pushing bureaucrats or lefty political hacks or just
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: people who weren't needed or doing a good job.
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: Nope.
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: They fired hundreds of workers at the Federal Aviation Administration
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: over the weekend, the FAA, including people responsible for radar, landing,
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: and navigational aid maintenance. That's according to the AP. Trump
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: and Elon have also fired more than 5,000 employees at
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: our health agencies, according to Forbes, including people who run Medicare, Medicaid,
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: and the Department of Veterans Affairs. More than 3,000 people
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: at the Forest Service and Politico reports that, quote, fire
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: safety projects are already frozen and being canceled all over
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: the West. And maybe the most telling news, Trump and
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: Elon fired about 300 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration.
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: which oversees the assembly, storage, and testing of our nuclear weapons.
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: About 30% of the layoffs were at the Pantex plant
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: in Texas, which is where warheads are actually assembled.
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: That's the bad part of the nuke. That's the bad part. Yeah,
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: you don't want that part.
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: You want to keep eyes on warheads. You want someone
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: to be watching the warheads, for sure. So this happened
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: on Thursday evening, and a lot of the workers didn't
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: even know they'd been fired until they showed up at
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: work the next morning and couldn't get in. But Here's
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: the worst part. There's actually a worst part.
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: The guy who brought a new comb to work on
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: it after hours.
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: Now he can't get back in. So once the absolute
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: fucking morons in charge of our government realized that maybe
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: they shouldn't have fired the people who oversee our nukes,
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: the Trump folks tried to rehire them. But according to NBC, quote,
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: struggled to find them because they didn't have their new
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: contact information and they had completely deleted all of their
• 29:47
  Speaker 3: email accounts and information.
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: That's so crazy. What are we doing?
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: I mean, I'm no pollster, but I have a feeling
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: that the voter support for a more efficient government doesn't
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: extend to the mass firing of the people in charge
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: of our nukes and our air travel.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: But I don't know. What do you think? Yeah. I mean,
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: these are not people working on silly sounding USAID projects overseas.
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: The NNSA, that's a serious organization. I mean, also firing
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: FAA officials in the wake of all of these plane
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: crashes just seem nuts. And it does feel like Trump
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: is kind of playing with fire here. And the question is,
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: do these stories get to people before something bad happens, right?
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: Is this Delta crash in Toronto going to change the
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: TikTok algorithm so that the Chinese think we all want
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: to be fed FAA news and maybe people will hear
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: about this and be like, what are you doing? Or
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: does something really bad have to happen? I hope it's
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: not the latter. I mean, we need to, everyone's always
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: wondering like, what can I do?
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: What can I do? Tell people these stories. Like I,
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: you know, I feel like Twitter is now just like
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: pissing in the ocean posting on Twitter because it's like
• 30:56
  Speaker 3: a right-wing hellscape, but there's still journalists there. So I
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: keep doing it. And I started like posting some of
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: this on Instagram, which I'm just like any platform that's there,
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: like go fucking tell all your friends about this because
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: it's not, first of all, I mean like the press
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: is already struggling for some of the reasons we just
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: mentioned and just larger financial structural reasons that we've talked
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: about for years. And also even if they weren't struggling
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: with all that, there's just so much of this happening.
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: Like you can miss the news for half a day
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: and And suddenly realize that, oh, yeah, the nuclear weapons
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: people were fired. And also FAA people were fired. And, oh,
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: there was another plane crash. Like it just is happening
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: so fast and there's so much of it that I
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: think it's really hard to keep up with.
• 31:36
  Speaker 6: I agree.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: Can I give you my really pessimistic version of how
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: this would go?
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: Sure.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: And one that makes me scared is there's a worst
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: case scenario. Something catastrophic happens. And then there's the thing
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: I worry about is government services just get shittier and
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: shittier and shittier. And in some cases it's small. Like
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: you go to a national park and the bathroom is
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: disgusting because they fired all the people who maintained it.
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: And then there's really, really, really bad things, but won't
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: be like national news. Like a veteran will call the
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: VA suicide hotline and it won't be sufficiently staffed.
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: That happened.
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: Right. Or like the bird flu explodes and we're not
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: monitoring it. But my fear is people have such little
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: faith in government that it might fold into those preexisting
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: feelings and angers. at the government that Trump kind of
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: exploited in the first place, rather than lead them to think, oh, actually,
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: this guy's making it worse. Let's course correct. That's my
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: pessimistic fear.
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: So my pessimistic fear, if you mind, is that I
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: think when government services that people count on break down,
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: they will want to blame someone. I think Trump and
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: Elon and the dogebags and all the rest of them
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: have become very skilled at just blaming Democrats and And
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: even though Democrats don't control everything, there's always some deep
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: state puppet somewhere that they haven't gotten rid of that
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: they can blame. There's always a Democratic governor somewhere or
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: a Democratic mayor or a Democratic- Or Joe Biden. Or
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: Joe Biden, right, that they can blame. So bad things
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: will happen, and I worry that they will continue to
• 33:06
  Speaker 3: blame whoever they can who's not them. Because I think
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: there will be anger when a lot of this stuff happens.
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: And look, there's already stories about federal workers, which- Trump
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: and Elon and everyone assume are all like big libs.
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: And there's some who, you know, because federal workers aren't
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: just in DC, they're in every state in the country.
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: And there's like this one guy from Kentucky who like
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: posted on Facebook or LinkedIn or whatever. It was like,
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: I voted for Trump three times and I just had
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: a great performance report. I've been at this agency forever.
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: I'm trying to help people out. And I can't believe
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: that this president that I trusted would just fire me
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: for no apparent reason. That's the thing is like, there's no,
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: it's not like these people are getting notices that are like, Hey,
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: we have decided to reduce the federal government. And we
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: have decided to get rid of parts of different agencies
• 33:53
  Speaker 3: that we don't need. And so in 30 days, you
• 33:57
  Speaker 3: won't be needed anymore. And here's severance. And then it
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: gives the agency time to make sure, oh, was that
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: person providing critical services? If so, we got to have
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: someone else cover that. And no, no, it's like middle
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: of the night. One woman said that she's pregnant, six
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: months pregnant. And she was one month away from leaving
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: her probationary period. By the way, all these firings were
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: probationary employees. And what that means is if you've only
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: been a federal employee for a year, you don't have
• 34:24
  Speaker 3: the same civil service protections that others have. So they
• 34:26
  Speaker 3: went after the probationary employees first. That's 10% of the
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: federal workforce. Now you might think, okay, well, that's just
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: someone who's new anyway. So maybe they didn't have a
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: big job. Some of the probationary employees are probationary because
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: they move from another job within the federal government. So
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: some of these people are extremely senior and have been
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: there a long time, but just because they move. But
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: of course, Trump and Elon, they don't know any of that, right?
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: So this woman is six months pregnant and was one
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: month away from having civil service protections. And at 1230
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: in the morning, she was just alerted that she wouldn't
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: be working at the FAA anymore, where she was helping
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: protect our safety.
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: Doge first, ask questions later. They also, they talk about
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: government employees like they're subhuman.
• 35:07
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: And it's really.
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: Russ Vogt said in that video that he wants to
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: make them feel traumatized when they come to work. And
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: that is what they're doing. Like they did... This, it
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: is not about fucking government efficiency. And I'm like, I
• 35:19
  Speaker 3: am done doing the throat clearing at the beginning. That's like,
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: we all want an efficient government and that's what people want.
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: Because it's not that. Like, I know the White House
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: has a clip of us, you know, the profoundly misleading,
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: profoundly misleading clip of us talking about government efficiency. And
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: they didn't include the part where we were saying that
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: this is not government efficiency.
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: It's illegal and unconstitutional. No, look, everyone just pause and
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: think about what it means long term. when you make
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: every U.S. government job miserable and no one wants to
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: do it and they hate working there. You're going to
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: get bad people to provide crucial services. And we're just
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: losing decades, centuries of expertise and experience in complicated matters.
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: And it's just to say it's all bureaucracy and efficiency
• 35:59
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• 37:28
  Speaker 3: A couple more examples before we move on, because it's just,
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: it's making me so angry. They laid off energy department
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: staff who handled homeowners electricity bills. So there's no one
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: to take the money that keeps people's lights on. The FDA,
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: a lot of food, you like your food inspected for safety? Well,
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: a lot of cuts at the FDA. Women are being
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: turned away from domestic violence shelters in West Virginia because
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: they're all full and they've had to close those down
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: because the funding freeze that was supposed to be unfrozen
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: in practice really wasn't unfrozen. All but two employees in
• 38:00
  Speaker 3: one state who headed up an agriculture program that was
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: assisting poor rural communities. These are all Trump voters that
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: are getting cut now. And then The reason you know
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: that it's not about government efficiency or making government smarter
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: or whatever, the IRS cuts. And we're going to talk
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: more about the IRS in a second. But Joe Biden
• 38:19
  Speaker 3: hired all these extra IRS agents because all these rich
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: tax cheats were getting away with not paying their taxes.
• 38:25
  Speaker 3: And the IRS didn't have enough staff to do it,
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: so they did it. They started collecting billions more in
• 38:28
  Speaker 3: revenue from rich people who were trying to cheat on
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: their taxes. And they are laying all these people off, right?
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: The amount of money it costs to hire the IRS agents...
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: is paid for five times over by the revenue they're
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: collecting from the rich tax cheats. So it has nothing
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: to do with efficiency. In addition to the mass firings,
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: the dogebags also keep trying to gain access to government
• 38:51
  Speaker 3: systems and databases so sensitive that only a small number
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: of career civil servants have ever been allowed to handle them.
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: We saw this play out at Treasury. Now it's playing
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: out at the IRS, where Gavin Kleiger, who is the
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: doge guy who's retweeted white nationalist Nick Fuentes, is apparently
• 39:10
  Speaker 3: about to get access to a system called the Integrated
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: Data Retrieval System, or IDRS, which includes all of our
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: tax returns and bank account information. It is so sensitive
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: that even IRS commissioners, the people who run the IRS,
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: haven't been able to access the IDRS. It's apparently this initiative,
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: which is being laid out in a memorandum of understanding
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: that isn't finalized yet, rests with just two people, a
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: Doge employee, which appears to be Cliger, and an IRS employee.
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: What is the administration saying is the justification for this?
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: I mean, they're saying waste, fraud, and abuse have been
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: deeply entrenched in our broken system for far too long.
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: It takes direct access to the system to identify and
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: fix it. So does this mean that this one dude
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: is going to be like inspector of the entire country's
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: tax information and go through all our personal stuff and
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: compare it to other records and I guess somehow find waste,
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: fraud and abuse that they will then highlight? And I'm
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: sure a very fair, honest way. Is that what's happening here?
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: Because what is one person going to do with all
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: this access?
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: I mean, and again. Just like the Justice Department, we've
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: talked about Kash Patel, the FBI, the Justice Department. One
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: way they can get revenge on people they don't like is,
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: of course, criminal investigations.
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: And the IRS is how they do it.
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: IRS is another big one, right? And it has been
• 40:29
  Speaker 3: used in the past in our country to go after people.
• 40:31
  Speaker 3: So now we're giving this random fucking guy who likes
• 40:34
  Speaker 3: Nick Fuentes access to all of our bank information and
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: our private tax returns?
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: We just know Elon Musk has just been tweeting lie
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: after lie, misleading information. pretending like, you know, the Doge
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: people are finding all sorts of line items and government
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: spending that seems silly when it's all just been sitting
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: on a public website.
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: They're just mining public data and using it to further
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: their Doge agenda, which is not about transparency or efficiency.
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: It's about just destroying the U.S. government.
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: Democrats are trying to make noise about this. Congressman Jimmy Gomez,
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: who sits on Ways and Means, called it a five
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: alarm warning. Elizabeth Warren and Ron Wyden wrote a sternly
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: worded letter to the acting IRS commissioner about it. How
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: do you feel about this? Are the tweets and letters enough?
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: I appreciate them. I'm glad that they are fighting. And
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: I know I have said the Democrats have limited power.
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: We do.
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: That's just the reality of the situation right now. But
• 41:29
  Speaker 3: it does feel like we should be making more noise.
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know what the tactic is, but I
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: do think this area is eye-catching and scary. I mean,
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: personal tax information, why does this goober need to have that?
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: Why is this little white nationalist loving Doge employee need
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: to know my bank account and routing number? I think
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: that's very scary. I think it's also, you can tell
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: a broader story about firing all these IRS people that
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: are just there to audit the richest people in the
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: country and make them pay their taxes. So I'd really
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: lean into this one because I think it will land
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: in a way that I wish this weren't the case,
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: but talking about USAID cuts just does not.
• 42:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And also- I mean, we've said this and we've
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: seen this throughout history. When there's a government shutdown and
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: government services are cut off, people get mad. And it's
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: always true that the party in control of the White
• 42:23
  Speaker 3: House that shuts down the party responsible for the shutdown
• 42:27
  Speaker 3: ends up getting blamed by the public. And stories about
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: the national parks and food safety and all this other
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: stuff like that resonates with people. And I do think
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: lifting up the stories of both the workers and the
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: services that are cut and the benefits that could be
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: cut and the safety and security that's being put in jeopardy,
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: that should be the top, top priority for Democrats. And
• 42:50
  Speaker 3: they should be telling the stories everywhere they can, on
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: every medium they can, on every show they can, go
• 42:55
  Speaker 3: on Fox, go on anywhere, hold events with some of
• 42:59
  Speaker 3: the people who've been affected by the cuts in services,
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: some of the people who've lost their jobs. People are
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: losing their jobs in the federal government who, and the
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: excuse is, you've had poor performance, and they're like, what
• 43:10
  Speaker 3: do you mean I had poor performance? This is my
• 43:12
  Speaker 3: first day on the job, and you just cut it.
• 43:14
  Speaker 3: And then some people had excellent performance reports, and they've
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: been told that they have poor performance.
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: Like, there's just no rhyme or reason. They're just making
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: it up. They're just firing people. Remember when it was
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: a national story that the Obama administration suspended White House
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: tours during a big budget fight? Like, you can make
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: people care about this stuff.
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I just think that they, I don't know. I
• 43:31
  Speaker 3: don't know. I don't know if it's the tone. I
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: don't know if it's the style, but like, They really
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: just got to be out there and be louder.
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: Be louder. Maybe like the protest and attempt to enter
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: the USAID building was, I think, a good idea. Maybe
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: run it back at the IRS. Yeah. Just do the
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: execution a little better. Yeah.
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: It's time to get a little creative, I think. All right.
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: One more purge we should talk about. This one happening
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: at the Department of Justice. So obviously they're trying to
• 43:57
  Speaker 3: purge DOJ prosecutors who were involved in some way in
• 44:02
  Speaker 3: the January 6th prosecutions, but now we get a whole
• 44:04
  Speaker 3: nother scandal here. Just got kicked up a notch thanks
• 44:06
  Speaker 3: to the case against New York Mayor Eric Adams. As
• 44:10
  Speaker 3: you all probably know, last fall, Adams was charged with
• 44:12
  Speaker 3: taking millions of dollars in bribes and illegal campaign donations
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: from the Turkish government in exchange for allowing a Manhattan
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: skyscraper to open without a fire inspection. Trump said at
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: the time that he thought Adams was getting a raw
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: deal because of his views on immigration. Adams then attended
• 44:27
  Speaker 3: the inauguration and met with Trump, On Monday of last week,
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: Emil Bove, the acting deputy attorney general, who you may
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: remember as Trump's defense attorney in the Hush Money case,
• 44:37
  Speaker 3: ordered federal prosecutors in Manhattan to drop Adams' case based
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: on the argument that his bribery trial would interfere with
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: his efforts to help carry out Trump's mass deportations in
• 44:48
  Speaker 3: New York. The prosecutors refused, and on Wednesday, the acting U.S.
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: attorney at SDNY, a Trump appointee who clerked for Antonin Scalia, resigned.
• 45:00
  Speaker 3: A number of her colleagues then resigned as well, including
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: the lead prosecutor on the case, who wrote in his
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: resignation letter that the move was an illegal effort to
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: influence Adams and, quote, I expect you will eventually find
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: someone who is enough of a fool or enough of
• 45:14
  Speaker 3: a coward to file your motion, but it was never
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: going to be me. On Friday night, Bovey gathered the
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: attorneys from DOJ's Public Integrity Unit and gave them one
• 45:23
  Speaker 3: hour to figure out who would sign the dismissal motion
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: or that they would all be fired. Eventually, one senior
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: attorney agreed to do it to spare his colleagues. A
• 45:31
  Speaker 3: few hours before we recorded, four of Adams' remaining staffers
• 45:34
  Speaker 3: resigned in protest. And in case the quid pro quo
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: between the Trump administration and Adams wasn't clear, here's a
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: clip of border czar Tom Homan on Fox & Friends
• 45:43
  Speaker 3: sitting next to Adams in a joint interview.
• 45:45
  Speaker 5: If he doesn't come through, I'll be back in New
• 45:47
  Speaker 5: York City, and we won't be sitting on the couch.
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: I'll be in his office, up his butt, saying, where
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: the hell is the agreement we came to?
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: What a fucking embarrassment. When pressed about this, Homan said
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: he and Adams were talking cop to cop and that
• 46:00
  Speaker 3: the press was making too much of it.
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: What do you think?
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: Would you say it's good for democracy that the president
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: of the United States essentially owns the mayor of our
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: largest city?
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: It's a real bold move to shake down the DOJ
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: public integrity unit, you know?
• 46:12
  Speaker 3: I mean, that, yeah, and I should have mentioned that
• 46:15
  Speaker 3: in the prompt, but it was, there's two sets of
• 46:18
  Speaker 3: resignations here. There's one at SDNY, the Southern District of
• 46:21
  Speaker 3: New York, and- the woman who was running SDNY, she
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: was a Trump appointee. She had just risen to the ranks,
• 46:28
  Speaker 3: to the top of the ranks at SDNY. Again, clerked
• 46:31
  Speaker 3: for Scalia, Federalist Society member. So this isn't some like
• 46:34
  Speaker 3: liberal squish. And the fact that she finally gets this,
• 46:37
  Speaker 3: a dream job, what I can only assume is a
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: dream job, and then resigns because it's this bad.
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think everyone saw this play coming, this pardon coming.
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: Because Eric Adams started kissing Trump's ass, flew down to Mar-a-Lago,
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: just made a fool of himself. But the way this
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: was structured- So that Trump can essentially rescind the pardon
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: if Adams gets out of line is brazen even for Trump,
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: I think.
• 47:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, and it's not even technically a pardon, right?
• 47:04
  Speaker 3: It's dismissed without prejudice. They could have gone with the
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: pardon or dismissed with prejudice, meaning they couldn't refile the charges.
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: But obviously, the reason they don't want to do that
• 47:13
  Speaker 3: is because if Adams doesn't do what Trump says, they
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: will charge him again.
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: They'll go back. So now Trump owns the mayor of
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: the largest city in the country. You can say inherit
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: my talking points or you're going to jail. Because it
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: sounds like Eric Adams, the DOJ, the US Attorney's Office,
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: they have him dead to rights. They'd spell out some
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: of their feelings on the evidence in these resignation letters.
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: And I do think it's worth emphasizing, no one is
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: defending this. Right.
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: No.
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: You have all these conservatives at the US Attorney's Office,
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: at DOJ. These resignations for these people could be career endings.
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: You know, this is like the pinnacle of achievement for them.
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: Like being the U.S. attorney in some of these New
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: York offices is a huge deal. You see huge cases.
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: You try huge cases and they're walking away from it.
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: And on top of that, I mean, four New York
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: City deputy mayors are resigning. Like in the short term,
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: that is going to severely impact the management of the
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: biggest city in the country. And there's eight total deputy mayors.
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: Four of them are now gone. And this is coming
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: after a wave of disruption. and resignations and dysfunction during
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: the investigation of Adams. So it is really, it's like
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: a disaster for New York City, like one on top
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: of the other.
• 48:28
  Speaker 3: Also, and you would think that the resignation of those
• 48:33
  Speaker 3: four deputies to Adams would put more pressure on Governor
• 48:37
  Speaker 3: Kathy Hochul, who, by the way, has the authority to
• 48:40
  Speaker 3: remove Eric Adams. And the fact that she hasn't yet
• 48:43
  Speaker 3: is baffling to me.
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: Me too. I mean, it feels like it's going to happen, right?
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: Every Democrat's kind of lined up.
• 48:49
  Speaker 3: And you get all these resignations. I will say, though,
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: when we were just talking about collective action problems and
• 48:54
  Speaker 3: people being afraid to step up, like Danielle Sassoon, who
• 48:57
  Speaker 3: was the prosecutor that was running SDNY that resigned, and
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: then Hagan Scotten. Hagan Scotten. I mean, if that name
• 49:04
  Speaker 3: doesn't sound like a conservative to you, this guy was
• 49:07
  Speaker 3: graduated top of his class, Harvard Law, won two Bronze
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: Stars in Iraq, and clerked for not just Roberts, but Kavanaugh.
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: Solid Yeah.
• 49:16
  Speaker 3: That's the guy who said like, you'll find a fool, uh,
• 49:19
  Speaker 3: you know, you'll eventually find someone who's enough of a
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: fool or a coward to follow your motion, but it's
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: never going to be me. Like those two stepping up is,
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: I'd like to see a little more of that from, uh,
• 49:29
  Speaker 3: some people, you know, who are Republicans in Congress who
• 49:31
  Speaker 3: just aren't doing anything or basically like they Ezra Klein
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: had a great column over the weekend. He called them NPCs,
• 49:36
  Speaker 3: non-player characters, the whole Congress. Republicans have just decided, like, no,
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: we're not going to do anything.
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: They are NPCs, yeah.
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: I mean, Bill Cassidy put out a statement about Tulsi
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: Gabbard's nomination, why he was voting for her. They basically said,
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump nominated her, thus I will vote for her.
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: Just giving up his power. But yeah, this is an
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: area where I agree with you. I'd like to see
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: Republicans doing more, but I think Democrats do have some
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: power here. Like, Hochul should remove Adams.
• 49:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: Hopefully that happens. In the near term, that might mean
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: that Andrew Cuomo is back in our lives, and that's,
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: you know, tough... from another perspective.
• 50:05
  Speaker 3: Someone else, right? It's a big city. You guys don't
• 50:06
  Speaker 3: have more people in New York to run for office?
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: There's a scenario here where this is such an overreach
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: that it weakens Trump. And I think Democrats in New
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: York have to help us get to that point.
• 50:16
  Speaker 3: Well, you heard, I mean, Trump's like, I don't know
• 50:17
  Speaker 3: anything about this. And then Beauvais was trying to walk
• 50:21
  Speaker 3: back the initial, he was like, this isn't a quid
• 50:22
  Speaker 3: pro quo. It's like the original memo says that, oh,
• 50:26
  Speaker 3: he can't stand trial because then he can't help enforce
• 50:29
  Speaker 3: President Trump's immigration policies. I mean, it's like, of course
• 50:32
  Speaker 3: it's a fucking quid pro quo.
• 50:33
  Speaker 4: It's nonsense.
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: It's an obvious quid pro quo. Can I read you
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: a headline that you might like? Jan 6th rioters argue
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: pardons apply to charges including murder plot, child porn. Defendants
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: argue that Trump pardons should absolve them of additional crimes,
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: some discovered during investigations of the Capitol riot. That's right.
• 50:48
  Speaker 3: That's right. Trump, Donald Trump has let out of jail-
• 50:52
  Speaker 3: People who've tried to commit homicide, who were plotted to
• 50:55
  Speaker 3: commit homicide.
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: He had a kill list.
• 50:56
  Speaker 3: And sexual predators. Child sexual predators. One of these guys
• 51:00
  Speaker 3: had a literal kill list. Coming to a community near you,
• 51:03
  Speaker 3: thanks to Donald Trump.
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 51:04
  Speaker 3: Because he wanted to pardon his Jan 6 buddies. And
• 51:07
  Speaker 3: we got, you know, people who, you know, getting caught
• 51:10
  Speaker 3: up with a lot of child porn and plotting murders.
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: Those are the kinds of people that Donald Trump is
• 51:15
  Speaker 3: releasing into your communities.
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: MAGA. MAGA.
• 51:18
  Speaker 3: All right. When we get back from the break, you're
• 51:20
  Speaker 3: going to hear Tommy's interview with Stephen A.
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: Smith.
• 51:22
  Speaker 3: About why he thinks we're all so wrong and whether
• 51:24
  Speaker 3: he's going to run for president himself. Two quick things
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: before we do that. If you're an offline fan, heads up,
• 51:29
  Speaker 3: starting this week, you will find new episodes of the
• 51:32
  Speaker 3: show in your feed every Thursday.
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: Oh, changing, nice.
• 51:35
  Speaker 3: Instead of every Sunday, because, you know, we have the
• 51:38
  Speaker 3: special Pod Save America every other Sunday now that we're
• 51:40
  Speaker 3: doing the interview. And so now we're trying to move
• 51:43
  Speaker 3: offline to Thursday. That means your parasocial relationship with me
• 51:46
  Speaker 3: and Max just got a new time slot. You can
• 51:48
  Speaker 3: catch new episodes of Offline every Thursday wherever you get
• 51:50
  Speaker 3: your podcasts and on YouTube. Also, a reminder, the best
• 51:54
  Speaker 3: way to support our work is to subscribe to Friends
• 51:56
  Speaker 3: of the Pod. You'll get 25% off new annual subscriptions
• 51:59
  Speaker 3: now through Saturday, February 22nd. If you're a monthly subscriber,
• 52:02
  Speaker 3: upgrading is quick and easy. Just visit cricket.com slash friends
• 52:06
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• 52:09
  Speaker 3: get all kinds of stuff. You get access to the
• 52:11
  Speaker 3: fantastic Discord community of all of our subscribers who are
• 52:14
  Speaker 3: always just talking and debating and leaning on each other
• 52:17
  Speaker 3: and just a wonderful community of subscribers. You also can
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: listen to ad-free episodes of Pod Save America, which is awesome.
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: You get Dan's Polar Coaster show, which is fantastic. Terminally Online,
• 52:27
  Speaker 3: which is the funniest show that we do here at Crooked.
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: So check it out, crooked.com slash friends. When we come back,
• 52:33
  Speaker 3: Stephen A. Pod Save America is brought to you by Haya.
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• 54:18
  Speaker 1: My guest today is a commentator at ESPN, the host
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: of the Stephen A. Smith Show, and arguably the greatest
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: sports debater of all time, Stephen A.
• 54:26
  Speaker 3: Smith.
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: What's going on, man? How you doing? How's everything?
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: It's good. Thank you so much for doing this. I'm
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: a big fan, have been for a very long time,
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: so this is exciting and fun for me. Let's just
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: get right into it. There's been a lot of chatter
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: about you potentially running for president in 2028, and you've
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: had to kind of tell folks to pump the brakes
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: a bit. If I could briefly sum up what I
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: think your position is, it's that you know the process
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: of running sucks. You don't want to go through it.
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: But if drafted to serve, you would be open to it.
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: Is that fair?
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: I think it's fair.
• 54:57
  Speaker 7: I don't have any desire to do it. I have
• 54:59
  Speaker 7: no desire to be a politician whatsoever. But if the
• 55:02
  Speaker 7: country was in a bad place and you told me that, somehow,
• 55:06
  Speaker 7: some way that I'm favored to win an election and
• 55:09
  Speaker 7: be the president of the United States, I don't think
• 55:12
  Speaker 7: anybody would summarily dismiss that personally because we all live
• 55:16
  Speaker 7: in this country and we all understand what comes with it.
• 55:19
  Speaker 7: And as much of a headache as it would be,
• 55:22
  Speaker 7: as stressful as it would be, as much of a
• 55:25
  Speaker 7: compromise it could potentially be to my quality of life,
• 55:28
  Speaker 7: make no mistake about it, what kind of quality do
• 55:30
  Speaker 7: we really have if the country sucks? if it's just
• 55:33
  Speaker 7: in a very, very bad place with no reprieve in
• 55:36
  Speaker 7: sight whatsoever. So again, for me personally, with what I
• 55:40
  Speaker 7: have going on in my life, with how happy I am,
• 55:43
  Speaker 7: with the fact that I'm more interested in remaining a
• 55:45
  Speaker 7: pundit and a commentator rather than a politician, those things
• 55:49
  Speaker 7: still stand. I'm very authentic in saying that. I have
• 55:51
  Speaker 7: no desire to be a politician whatsoever. But my God,
• 55:55
  Speaker 7: if you came to me and said, listen, there is
• 55:57
  Speaker 7: nobody else, And America is clamoring for you, which I
• 56:00
  Speaker 7: sincerely doubt would ever happen. But if that were to happen,
• 56:04
  Speaker 7: would I give it strong consideration?
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: I won't lie. Yes, I would. I would give it
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: strong consideration.
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: I love that you're talking about politics all the time
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: now because you are a blunt, candid guy. You tell
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: it how it is. And especially when it comes to
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: the Democratic Party, because we're all trying to figure out
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: what happened, why we lost to Trump a second time.
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: Sometimes I think that Democrats like myself, we're too close
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: to the issue. We overthink shit. We read too many
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: polls and focus groups. and miss the big picture. So
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: big picture, in your mind, what is the simplest explanation
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: for why Democrats lost?
• 56:34
  Speaker 7: You forgot about what got you here. Black folks got
• 56:38
  Speaker 7: you here. Hispanics got you here. The working class got
• 56:42
  Speaker 7: you here. The most egregious thing that you could say
• 56:45
  Speaker 7: about the Democratic Party right now is that the Republican
• 56:47
  Speaker 7: Party seems to be more identifiable with the working class
• 56:51
  Speaker 7: than the Democrats.
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: Who would have ever thought in our.
• 56:53
  Speaker 7: Wildest dreams that anybody would be able to get away
• 56:56
  Speaker 7: with saying that? Remember, a lot of times people that
• 57:01
  Speaker 7: are in the know, that are highly, highly knowledgeable about
• 57:04
  Speaker 7: the intricacies that involve politics, they lean on that. They
• 57:08
  Speaker 7: keep forgetting the voters don't know what they know. The
• 57:11
  Speaker 7: voters live on perception. Whatever issue touches them is what
• 57:15
  Speaker 7: touches them. And that decides who they're going to vote
• 57:20
  Speaker 7: for or whether they'll vote at all. And a lot
• 57:22
  Speaker 7: of people don't get that.
• 57:24
  Speaker 2: I laugh.
• 57:25
  Speaker 7: When folks try to challenge my knowledge of the intricacies
• 57:30
  Speaker 7: of politics, I'm like, you're clearly not listening.
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: I tell you all the time, I don't study it
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: like that. I read the newspaper. I watch news.
• 57:37
  Speaker 7: I'm a conscientious observer, but I'm not entrenched in it
• 57:40
  Speaker 7: the way somebody that lives it every day would be.
• 57:43
  Speaker 7: But I'm an American citizen and I'm a voter. And
• 57:46
  Speaker 7: I'm watching what's going on in the streets of America.
• 57:49
  Speaker 7: And I'm telling you, certain things ain't going to work.
• 57:52
  Speaker 7: When you looked at the Democratic Party, certainly there's probably
• 57:56
  Speaker 7: policies that they pushed forth and battles that they have
• 58:00
  Speaker 7: fought that would have benefited working class Americans. But that
• 58:04
  Speaker 7: ain't what they were talking about. They were talking about LGBTQ.
• 58:08
  Speaker 7: They were talking about transgender rights specifically. They were acting
• 58:11
  Speaker 7: as if there was no problem at the borders involving
• 58:14
  Speaker 7: illegal immigration.
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: Nobody was believing that.
• 58:18
  Speaker 7: Because if you travel, if you see footage of the
• 58:21
  Speaker 7: streets of America, you're like, what's going on?
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: It wasn't just Fox News. It was everybody. ABC, NBC, CBS.
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: Everybody was talking about the border.
• 58:31
  Speaker 7: When it was crimes in the streets and people were
• 58:33
  Speaker 7: being let out the same day that they were getting arrested.
• 58:36
  Speaker 2: But everybody was talking about that.
• 58:38
  Speaker 7: When you had stores that were allowing three people in
• 58:41
  Speaker 7: it at a time because they were afraid they were
• 58:44
  Speaker 7: going to get robbed and the repercussions weren't severe enough.
• 58:48
  Speaker 7: So there was a level of fearlessness that the lawless
• 58:51
  Speaker 7: in our communities.
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: Were, you know, that they possessed. People were talking about that.
• 58:57
  Speaker 7: And the Democrats were talking about something else. And so
• 59:00
  Speaker 7: when you look at it from that standpoint, you just
• 59:03
  Speaker 7: say to yourself, they really, really forgot. They forgot what
• 59:07
  Speaker 7: got them here, what made them so popular. What got
• 59:10
  Speaker 7: Clinton in office? What got Barack Obama in office? Hell,
• 59:14
  Speaker 7: to some degree, what got Jimmy Carter in office before
• 59:17
  Speaker 7: Reagan arrived?
• 59:18
  Speaker 2: They forgot all of these things. And to forget that.
• 59:23
  Speaker 7: Against Donald Trump, of all people, who's claiming elections are rigged,
• 59:28
  Speaker 7: who's calling y'all crooks, who are saying that y'all are nasty,
• 59:32
  Speaker 7: evil people, questioning how duplicitous you can be, how corrupt
• 59:36
  Speaker 7: you can be, even while he's getting impeached, even while
• 59:40
  Speaker 7: he's being convicted of felonies, all of this stuff.
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: And y'all just ignored it. Not you.
• 59:47
  Speaker 7: I'm not talking about you, Tommy, but I'm just saying
• 59:49
  Speaker 7: the Democratic Party, it boggled the mind. It boggled the mind.
• 59:55
  Speaker 2: It still does.
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: I feel like there's two parts to the criticism. Part
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: of it I agree with, which is there were some
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: issues like the border where it wasn't just Republicans talking
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: about concerns. It was a broader set of voters and
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: Democrats tried to be like, oh, that's a distraction. Actually,
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: we should be talking about this thing. It didn't speak
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: to those fears. I think Joe Biden got there late.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: when he did what he supported, this bipartisan bill in
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: the Senate that got killed by Trump and then did
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: a bunch of executive orders to try to shut down
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: the border. But he got there late and people were
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: pissed and it didn't change the perception. But the other
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: half of this, I think, is that Donald Trump captures
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: attention and keeps it on himself in a way that
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: no other president in history has, for better or for worse.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: And I think this is where I wanted your advice
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: because you're someone, you are incredible at crafting a narrative,
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: making news. breaking through on social media. You've created your
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: own sports media empire at a time when people were like, oh,
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: you can't leave ESPN or do something on your own, right?
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: Because it's all about the mothership. What advice do you
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: have for Democrats about how to get heard and reach
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: people in this digital age?
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: Get Trump-like.
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 7: What I mean by that, Tom, is Be your real, true,
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 7: authentic self for better or worse. Can you genuinely tell
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 7: me as a person who covers this stuff for a
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 7: living that Trump surprises you?
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: What?
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 7: Think about how he acts. Think about the things that
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 7: he says. And then he goes and he tries to
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 7: do it. For better or worse, he's letting you know,
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 7: I don't care. I'm not a politician. I'm not a
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 7: career politician. I don't, listen, the man doesn't even want
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 7: to be in the White House. Every chance he gets,
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 7: he's at Mar-a-Lago.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 2: He doesn't even want to be there. Okay.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 7: He wants to run the country from his resort for
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 7: crying out loud.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: He might want to use the Air Force One plane. Okay.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 7: So he don't have to spend his own money with
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 7: his gas and everything else, but he'd rather, but that's
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 7: about it.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: The mayor wants to be where he wants to be.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: He wants to do what he wants to do. He
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 2: wants to.
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 7: Show you every chance he gets that he is nothing
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 7: like the career politicians. He is nothing like what you
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 7: have witnessed for decades on Capitol Hill. He says Capitol
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 7: Hill needs to be purged.
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 2: What is he doing? He's trying to purge Capitol Hill.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: You understand? Meanwhile, we had Kamala Harris, Ms.
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 7: Prim and Proper, tries to say the right things, listening
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 7: to her party, talk to her about this is the
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 7: way to go over the last 107 days to win
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 7: an election, et cetera.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: And guess what? It wasn't resonating.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 7: You go on The View, and The View says, is
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 7: there anything, anything at all, about Joe Biden.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: That you would do differently, that you would change? And
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 2: she looked into the cameras and said, I can't think
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 2: of any.
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: What?
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 2: What?
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: What?
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: I mean, are you kidding me?
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 7: I mean, you can't do that because it's not just
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 7: about your answer.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 2: It's about the believability factor.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 7: You see, even when Trump is lying, you believe that
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 7: he believes what he's saying and what he says he's
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 7: going to do. Even if he's lying to himself, you
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 7: look it up. Look, man, you can't just. eradicate departments
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 7: like that. You can't just violate civil liberties. You can't
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 7: just sit up there and make your own rules and
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 7: subvert the Constitution and try to get a.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 2: Third term in office, whatever. But who doubts he's going
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: to try? Who doubts that he's going to try to
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 2: pull that off?
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 7: Whatever it is that he says, there is an authenticity
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 7: That comes with it in terms of how it resonates
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 7: to the American people who are salty and skeptical with
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 7: vile feelings towards Capitol Hill.
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 2: That's where the connection happens.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 7: Well, if you are somebody on the Democratic side and
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 7: you feel that way, where's your vitriol?
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 2: Where's your disgust?
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: I think that's right.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 7: To the status quo and what you aim to do
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 7: about it.
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 2: That's what people want to see.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: And you're right. I mean, his message is burn it
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: all down. And he somehow gets a pass for having
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: been in charge for four years when all the problems
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: he's complaining about now still existed. But Democrats were boring.
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: We're the NBA skills competition where Wemby's cheating. while Trump
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: is the USA Canada hockey game where there's three fights
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: in 10 seconds and you can't look away. And like,
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: I just, I don't know how to compete with that.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: We don't have a leader who can compete with that.
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: We don't have a party that can compete with that.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: We don't have a message that can.
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 2: Compete with that. But tell why.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 7: You don't have, you can't compete with that and you
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 7: don't have that.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 2: I'm not talking about you specifically, of course.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: I know, I know.
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: About Democratic Party.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 7: You don't know that and you can't compete with that
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 7: for the biggest reason of all. Because y'all are too
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 7: busy trying to pick candidates for the American people instead
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 7: of listening to the American people tell you who they want.
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 7: The last Democrat that the American people told you they wanted.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 2: Was Barack Obama. Hillary Clinton. It's her turn. Bernie Sanders
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 2: had momentum. It's Hillary's turn.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 7: Joe Biden captured momentum because Representative Clyburn got involved in
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 7: South Carolina, saved his behind. But it's really, really his turn. OK,
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 7: he has no business running for reelection. But everybody went
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 7: for it, knowing he was supposed to be transitioning. He's
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 7: going to be 81 years of age. Then you sit
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 7: up there. He doesn't have a primary. Then he goes
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 7: on the debate stage, embarrasses himself. Then y'all still let
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 7: him take three damn weeks to walk away instead of
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 7: getting the hell out there immediately. So you can see
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 7: if there's somebody other than Kamala Harris who could be
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 7: the Democratic nominee.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: Then she gets the nomination and everybody wants to act
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 2: like she's the rock star. All y'all wanted all along. Oh,
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 2: my God.
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 7: Let's throw up our hands and just say, hey, she
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 7: is the one. When you know good and damn well
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 7: that wasn't the truth. Meanwhile, Trump has been around since 2015.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 7: They had Christie. They had Kasich. They had, what is it, Fiorini,
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 7: I believe.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: Her name is. Yep, probably Fiorini.
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: Later on, you had DeSantis. You had Nikki Haley. You
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 2: had Ramaswamy. You had all of these people. It didn't matter.
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 2: We went through law and all this stuff. It didn't matter.
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 7: They looked the public in the face and they said,
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 7: we want him. We don't care what y'all want and
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 7: forced the Republican Party to capitulate to the demands of
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 7: their constituency. That's what they did. The Democrats somehow, some
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 7: way have gotten away. with ignoring the constituency and compelling
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 7: the constituency to capitulate.
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: To what they want as a party. And that is
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 2: the problem. And that's why I said.
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 7: It all needs to go. Some of those candidates need
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 7: to go. The pundits, the strategists, they need to go.
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 7: Whoever was involved with the latest election, from a strategy standpoint,
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 7: every one of them should be fired.
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 2: Every one of them.
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: We're cleaning house. Look, I think Joe Biden running for
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: re-election was a catastrophic mistake. We will not recover from
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: it for a long time. And I completely agree with
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: you there. But I mean, I want your thoughts on this.
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump is using sports in a really smart way politically.
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: I think he went to college football games and UFC
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: fights during the campaign. He went to the Super Bowl.
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: He did a loop around the track of the Daytona
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: 500 in his limo over the weekend. It feels like
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: he's creating a bond with these audiences here. that Democrats
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: don't have. How do you think Democrats can be a
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: part of that conversation? I can't think of anyone who
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: would go to a game, except for Barack Obama going
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: to NBA games because he genuinely loved the sport, but
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: who else?
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: This is why I'm a candidate. I don't want to be,
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 2: and that's why I am one.
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 7: Because you see, I wouldn't go to the Daytona 500,
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 7: but I'd have been at the Super Bowl I'd have
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 7: been at the.
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: Hockey All-Star game.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 7: I'd have been at NBA All-Star weekend. I'd be at
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 7: the World Series. I'd be at All-Star weekend for baseball.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 7: I'd be at a boxing match. I'd be at a
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 7: UFC match, et cetera, et cetera. The point is, you're
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 7: a politician. You're supposed to be able to do.
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 2: what the people want you.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 7: To do as a politician.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 2: See, this is just.
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 7: You're giving me damning evidence I didn't even think about.
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 7: I didn't think about it until.
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 2: You brought it up. I'm going like this. Wait a minute.
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 7: Aren't they politicians? Isn't it their job to recognize and notice...
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 7: What their constituency finds appealing and catered to that.
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: But let me tell you, if Obama went to the
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: Super Bowl, Fox News would be like, how dare he?
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: This cost $ 10 million. He put Secret Service there like
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: they would go after him.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 2: Nope, that doesn't work. Here's why.
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: You don't think so?
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 7: Because Obama's not looking for their vote. He knows he's
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 7: not getting it. You're talking about the other side and
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 7: the independents. And the independence wants— here' s what the independence wants,
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 7: because I'm a registered independent.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 2: I'm not a Democrat.
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 7: I'm a registered, I'll vote for a Republican in a heartbeat.
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 7: I might not have voted for Trump, but I'm not
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 7: averse to all conservative policies. I have some conservative policies
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 7: I support. I have a lot of liberal policies I support.
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: You don't like taxes.
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 7: I don't like high taxes. I don't like high taxes.
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 7: I don't like open borders. I don't like open borders.
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 7: I think that those kind of things affect the economy
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 7: in a negative kind of way, no matter how we
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 7: try to slice it. Look at Mayor Eric Adams in
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 7: New York City complaining about the billions of dollars it
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 7: cost him and what it's deprived him of in terms
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 7: of what he has to contribute to the system in
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 7: terms of homelessness and other issues that are permeating in the.
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 2: City of New York City. Because why?
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 7: He had to spend money on the illegal immigration issue,
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 7: it being a sanctuary city.
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 2: So all of those things come into play. But the
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 2: point that I'm trying to make is this.
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 7: If you're around, if you're looking at somebody and you're
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 7: saying to yourself, what is it going to take? How
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 7: can we find that candidate? The first order of business
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 7: is finding a candidate that recognizes the importance of appealing
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 7: to not only his own constituency, but those who are
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 7: undecided and playing to win.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 2: If you're a centrist, what you're saying is I'm willing
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 2: to compromise.
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 7: I'm willing to walk across the aisle and work with people.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 7: I'm not interested in all of this chaos. If it
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 7: has to get chaotic, so be it. But that's not
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 7: the objective. That's not the goal. We're Americans. We can
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 7: come together. We can work together. Don't look at black, white, Latino, Asian,
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 7: whatever the case may be. Don't look at all of
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 7: that stuff and think that that's a license to dismiss
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 7: and alienate others just because they don't look nor feel
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 7: like you do. You might have a shot at convincing
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 7: them if you talk to them. You could go to
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 7: them and talk to them about what their desires are.
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 7: what they wish for their communities, what's the kind of
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 7: thing that plagues their community and how we can alleviate
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 7: those concerns.
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 2: That's your responsibility. And see, to me, I'm sitting there again.
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 2: I have no desire to be in politics. Zero. My
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 2: life is pretty good. My life is pretty damn good.
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 2: But guess what? I'm looking at it and I'm saying,
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 2: this isn't hard. This isn't hard.
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 7: I'm talking about compared to the Democratic candidates.
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 2: That you have available. It's not hard. Look at their roster.
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: Who do you like? You like Wes Moore, Josh Shapiro?
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: You talked to them both recently, right?
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 2: Who's on your top five?
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 7: Listen, I was very impressed with Josh Shapiro. Very impressed
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 7: with him. And I love me some Wes Moore. No
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 7: doubt about it, right? And if there's anybody, but I
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 7: would be concerned. I think that one could easily argue
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 7: Trump would never have been president if Barack Obama hadn't
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 7: been president. And Barack Obama's presidency caused a white backlash. OK,
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 7: because you had people in this country that didn't like
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 7: his policies, didn't like him, was walking around crying about
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 7: how he's trying to indoctrinate our children just because he
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 7: was speaking to elementary school kids and stuff.
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 2: This ridiculous stuff that people came up with.
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 2: Which is far beyond the pill. No excuse for.
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 7: OK, but people were really feeling like their way of
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 7: life was being compromised because, again, they didn't know everything
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 7: that he was doing. They were going by what they
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 7: were being told by the other side. And then here
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 7: comes Trump saying, we're going to purge this whole system.
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 7: We're going to throw this all aside because these folks
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 7: ain't strong enough, ain't good enough. Remember, Jeb Bush, low energy.
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 7: Marco Rubio, small hands and all of this other stuff.
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 7: Little Marco and stuff like that.
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 2: Or, you know, Carla Fiorini and, you know, she's this
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 2: or that.
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 7: Or Doug, Chris Christie and getting on him.
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 2: We saw Kasich. I thought I was a huge fan
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 2: of Kasich. But guess what?
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 7: He wasn't resonating with the constituency out there. So they
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 7: their side chose who their side chose. You don't get
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 7: an opportunity to do that as Democrats because they pick
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 7: who they want exposed instead of saying, let's put everybody
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 7: out there and see.
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 2: Who the constituency gravitates towards.
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 7: That's the problem, and that's the real reason why somebody
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 7: like little old me is polling, which makes no damn
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 7: sense whatsoever.
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 2: It's embarrassing. It's embarrassing. It really is.
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: It makes sense to me. I like it.
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 2: I think it's good to the Democratic Party.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: Well, listen, I on one level.
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: But also, I think I'm with you. I think primaries
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: are good. I think the rubber meets the road in
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: primaries and that, you know, you could do polling all
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: you want. But until you actually ask people to vote
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: for someone, then you don't really know who they support.
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: But let me talk about Trump's action so far. I mean,
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: I saw you say Elon Musk is a problem. Do
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: you think he's Trump is overreaching? Is he doing things
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: that might offend those moderates or are those moderates just
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: not even hearing about the details? Of course he's overreaching.
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 7: Of course he's overreaching. But why is he overreaching? Because
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 7: he has the license and a mandate to do so.
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 7: Because you see on the left, you've got Democrats saying
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 7: there's no mandate.
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 2: He didn't receive 50 percent of the vote. Are you
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 2: kidding me?
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 7: He won 49.8% of the vote. He had over 77
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 7: million people vote for him. He beat you by nearly
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 7: 3 million votes if you're the Democratic Party. He beat
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 7: you by nearly 3 million votes.
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 2: Okay?
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 7: He won every swing state. He went up in 50
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 7: different counties across the country. Didn't drop in any of them.
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 7: And oh, by the way, the black vote, the Latino vote,
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 7: and the young vote, he basically got an increase in
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 7: that regard.
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 2: You look at all of those different things.
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 7: In a blue state like New York City, that in 2016.
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 2: I think it was Hillary.
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 7: She got like 62% of the vote in New York City.
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 7: It was like 53% for Biden. It was 37% in
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 7: this particular situation for Trump.
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 2: He got 37%.
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 7: What are you talking about? You're listening to these people
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 7: and you're saying, Trump, there's no mandate. No, he does
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 7: have a mandate. And because he has that, he's pushing
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 7: the envelope. And why is he pushing the envelope? Because
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 7: he knows something that Democrats better pick up on. Democrats
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 7: are strongest usually during the national election. During those midterms,
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 7: most of the time Republicans are seen as going to
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 7: the polls more so than Democrats. If Trump can somehow
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 7: some way win the midterms, he'll be able to do
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 7: whatever the hell he wants because they'll get even more
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 7: seats in the Senate and the House come midterm elections.
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 2: He sees this.
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 7: He knows exactly what he's doing and he's pushing the
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 7: envelope because he knows he has the Republican scared shitless
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 7: to go against him. So as a result, do whatever
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 7: I want to do right now. I think this is
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 7: going to win me additional seats for the party. In
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 7: the midterms, which is why he was talking about Gavin
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 7: Newsom the way that he was talking about Gavin Newsom.
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 7: Because for the first time in a while, they sense
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 7: they can take California. They can shift. They can turn
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 7: it into, if not red, turn it into at least
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 7: a purple state.
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 2: You understand? Do something.
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 7: He's sensing all of this, and he sees an opportunity,
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 7: and that's what's going on. So I'm not surprised by
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 7: what he's doing at all. It's perfectly understandable, and most
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 7: people in that position of power, if they have an agenda,
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 7: they will go to whatever extent necessary to do that. Remember,
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 7: Barack Obama, I think it was 2012, he sat up
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 7: there and said to the American people, not just 2018, 2008, 2012.
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 7: So the American people have spoken. They elected us. And oh,
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 7: by the way, we don't need Congress to get everything
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 7: we want done. Barack Obama said that in 2012.
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 2: How do I know that?
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 7: Because Trump has sent his surrogates out to remind everybody
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 7: what Obama said back in 2012.
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 3: You're right.
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: I mean, well, the reason he said that, though, look.
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: You're making a lot of points I agree with. Actually,
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: the Democrats have done better more recently in the midterms. Yes,
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: they have. And I have confidence that we can, because
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: we're now the nerds that read the newspaper and we're
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: highly informed and we knock on doors and we go
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: out and we vote in midterms, whereas sort of the
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: broader electorate that Trump brings in, which is why he
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: kicks our ass in these presidential elections, they're more sporadic voters.
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: But to your point about the mandate, like, of course
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: he has a mandate. He won the election. He won
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: by a bigger margin than he did last time. Of
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: course he has a mandate. I think that doesn't give
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: you a mandate to do everything you want to do.
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: Because Obama won in 2008 with 52.9% of the vote
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: and 365 electoral votes, and Republicans tried to block literally
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: everything he did. So I do think there's space between, yes,
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: Trump has a mandate, but the suggestion you see sometimes
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: that Democrats shouldn't be fighting back or that we're the
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: problem for fighting back, that it's the wrong optics or messaging,
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: if you know what I'm saying.
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 7: Well, what I would say to you is that.
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: You're wrong.
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 2: And the reason you're wrong is.
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 7: Because never before has the Democratic Party been this damaged.
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 2: This is bad, bro.
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: 2004 was bad. We got our asses handed to us
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: by Bush. Lost seats in Congress.
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 2: But listen, John Kerry wasn't that strong. You know what
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 2: I mean? He didn't necessarily appeal that much. This was different.
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 7: Because the reason why it's never been this bad, George W.
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 3: Bush.
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 7: for whatever it is that you want to say, the
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 7: Republicans didn't really have that much of a problem with him.
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 7: And if you look at America at that particular moment,
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 7: we might not want it to be in the war
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 7: in Iraq. We might not want to be chasing around
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 7: Osama bin Laden and all of that stuff. That might
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 7: be true. But in the end, it wasn't like it
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 7: is now. How it is now is there's a president
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 7: that was convicted on 34 felony counts and impeached twice.
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 7: Back in the day, this man wouldn't have even been
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 7: allowed to run for office. How do we know that
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 7: to be true? Let's take into account the whole hush
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 7: money trial in New York. According to the courts and
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 7: according to what we've seen, Donald Trump hooked up with
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 7: a porn star. Donald Trump didn't want that get out
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 7: before the election. So he paid some hush money to
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 7: silence him.
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 2: That's it.
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 7: And he was scared. For that to be found out.
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 7: Think about that. That is what he was scared about
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 7: before 2016. Now he gets convicted of 34 felony counts
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 7: after being impeached twice. And he has no fear running
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 7: for reelection in that short period of time. Look at
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 7: how things have changed. It's not the same.
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 2: It's the Democratic Party's got to wake up. It has
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 2: it has changed drastically.
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 7: You know, somebody said to me, I said I said
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 7: I joked around because I've been single all my life.
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 2: And I said I said, look, man, I don't need
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 2: to be running for no damn office.
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 7: I've been single. I've been single all my life. I've
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 7: been doing some things in my lifetime. I don't need
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 7: to do that. And somebody said to me, quote.
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 2: Please, after Donald Trump, who cares? What did Al Sharpton
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 2: just say?
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 7: What did Al Sharpton just say about Andrew Cuomo running
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 7: for the mayor's.
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 2: Seat in New York? He said everything's.
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 7: Changed because Donald Trump got reelected. He said the bar
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 7: is so low, I don't even know if we can
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 7: find it. The point that I'm trying to make to
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 7: you is that you're dealing with a different beast. You're
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 7: dealing with a different time. This is not politics as usual.
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 7: And let me tell the Democratic Party something else, because I.
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 2: Hope you're not one of these people. I hope you're
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 2: not one of those people out there wasting your time
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 2: knocking on doors. I hope you're not doing that. Whoa, whoa.
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: Yes, I am. Knocking on doors is good during midterm,
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: Stephen A. No, no.
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 2: Here's what I mean. Stop wasting your time.
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: I personally knocked on doors.
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 3: It was great.
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: I had good conversations. I got people to give me
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: their ballots. We delivered them.
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 2: Listen to what I'm saying to you.
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 7: If they voted for you, they were going to vote
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 7: for you anyway.
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 2: If they didn't vote for you, they weren't going to
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 2: vote for you anyway. That's not true.
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: I had conversations with people who were not going to
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: vote unless I was there at their door getting them.
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 2: I don't give a damn what they told you.
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 7: I'm telling you right now, because the media and the
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 7: platforms that we have available to us now, podcasting, YouTube shows,
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 7: linear television, cable, streaming, there are too many outlets to
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 7: watch that influence your thinking.
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 2: Don't waste your time knocking on doors. Don't do it. Stop.
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: Get out there. Make some content. Well, listen, Stephen A.,
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: this was a lot of tough love for our audience
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: who doesn't always hear it. I really appreciate this. Also,
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: it was fun and entertaining and good to talk to you.
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: And I think we need to emulate some of this
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: in Democratic Party. You guys at Sports Radio talk about
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: the GOAT debate, like MJ versus LeBron. We need our
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: own version of that, like Lincoln, Washington, Obama, Reagan. Maybe
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: you can help me workshop this. We get something fun.
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: Make this interesting. Make this more accessible to people. But
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: I'm very grateful you came on.
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 7: Let me end it by saying this to you. Covering sports,
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 7: you can have great players, right? Why would the owner
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 7: not be satisfied?
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 2: Because they're always looking for somebody box office.
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 7: Winning is one thing that's very, very important because obviously
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 7: you win during the regular season, you win through the playoffs,
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 7: you play more games, you generate more revenue because you
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 7: have more games to play. But nothing beats somebody who's.
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 2: A box office attraction.
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 7: Because folks walk through the turnstiles if for no other
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 7: reason to see him. And what I'm saying to you
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 7: is I'm not talking about a bunch of manufactured audiences
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 7: like you had at the DNC in Chicago.
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 2: That's not what I'm talking about. OK, I'm talking about somebody.
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 7: That Obama was, for example, in 2008, where ultimately he
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 7: elevated to rock star status where no matter where he
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 7: went or what he had to say, the camera was
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 7: a magnet for him. And then obviously you got to
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 7: follow through with the message and you got to follow
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 7: through with practice. All of that's true. But you got
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 7: to get somebody with sizzle. You got to get somebody
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 7: that when they speak, they influence minds. They influence hearts.
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 7: And they get people to really, really think and spin
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 7: their wheels. I'm talking about not people on the left
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 7: because you got them. I'm talking about the independents. I'm
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 7: talking about the centrists. You got to get somebody that
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 7: can speak to that audience, that can go across the
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 7: aisle and dare Republican constituency to bet against them.
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 2: Because guess what?
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 7: I'm better than the candidate that you have because I'm
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 7: a lookout for you better.
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 2: Than the candidate that you have.
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 7: Because that's what Trump was telling Republicans. A bunch of
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 7: black folks, Hispanicals. What do you have to lose and
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 7: all of this other stuff? This is what Trump did.
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 7: He was fearless with it. Where are those Democrats? I
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 7: don't see them around. That's why I'm a damn candidate.
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 7: Because of that.
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 2: It's embarrassing. I want to make sure America understands this.
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 7: I believe it is an utter embarrassment to the Democratic
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 7: Party that I am a candidate. in people's eyes for
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 7: the presidency of the United States. It's an indictment against them,
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 7: and they need to get their act together before somebody
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 7: like me or somebody else takes it real seriously and
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 7: says to hell with y'all, because the roster that I'm
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 7: seeing right now, y'all don't have anything. You don't have
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 7: anything that's going to sizzle with the national audience. I
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 7: love Wes Moore, and I love Josh Shapiro. I think
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 7: both of them got a chance, all right? But I
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 7: need somebody that was national appeal, and maybe it is
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 7: one of them.
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 2: I hope so. I really do.
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 7: Because the Democratic Party is in a bad state right now.
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 7: The whole damn thing needs to be purged. I'm dead serious.
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 7: They need to go. Those strategists fire every damn one
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 7: of them.
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 2: Get rid of them. Get rid of them. They serve
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 2: no purpose. Find somebody else.
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: It's good.
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 2: It's good.
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: Tough love. We got to step up. Stephen A., thank
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: you so much for doing the show. I really appreciate it.
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 2: All right, man. Take care.
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 3: That's our show for today. Thanks so much to Stephen
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 3: A for coming on. Dan and I will be back
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 3: with a new show on Friday. Talk to everybody then.
• 1:24:33
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