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First They Came for John Bolton · Pod Save America

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  Speaker 1: There's no safe like SimpliSafe. Welcome to Pod Save America.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: I'm Jon Favreau.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: I'm Jon Levitt.
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: I'm Tommy Efore.
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  Speaker 1: All right, buckle up. I regret to inform you, it's
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: not all rainbows and butterflies out there today, guys.
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: Not a fun show.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: We're going to talk about Trump's plan to deploy more
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: troops who are now armed to more cities. Government says
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: they're now planning on deporting Kilmar Abrego Garcia to Uganda
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: because he won't plead guilty to charges that multiple judges
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: have found flimsy at best. They also released the transcript
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: of Ghislaine Maxwell's interview with the DOJ, which we'll dig into.
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  Speaker 1: Then we'll update you all on a few storylines that
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: still haven't been resolved, even though they're getting less attention.
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  Speaker 1: And later, you'll hear Lovett's interview with The Atlantic's James
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  Speaker 1: Surwicky on the Trump administration's move to take a stake
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  Speaker 1: in Intel and possibly other companies. Who knows? Who can say?
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  Speaker 1: But first, Trump and his administration have spent the last
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  Speaker 1: several days using the power of the state to target
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  Speaker 1: people who've criticized the president or just made him angry.
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  Speaker 1: By now, you probably know that on Friday morning, the
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  Speaker 1: FBI raided the home and office of John Bolton, Trump's
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  Speaker 1: first-term national security advisor, who's become a vocal critic of
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  Speaker 1: his former boss. The reporting suggests it has to do
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  Speaker 1: with his handling of classified information, though they haven't released
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  Speaker 1: much information beyond a tweet from Kash Patel saying that
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  Speaker 1: no one is above the law. FBI agents on a mission.
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  Speaker 1: Highly irregular statement from the FBI director about a raid
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  Speaker 1: that's in progress, to say the least. The head of
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  Speaker 1: the Defense Intelligence Agency was also fired following the report
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  Speaker 1: that Trump's strike on Iran had only set back its
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  Speaker 1: nuclear capabilities by a few months, which contradicts Trump's obliterated take.
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  Speaker 1: The president then spent the weekend threatening people who he
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  Speaker 1: thinks were unfair to him on TV. Chris Christie, Wes Moore,
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  Speaker 1: NBC News, ABC News. We'll get to all that in
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  Speaker 1: a minute. But here's Trump in the Oval Office Monday
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  Speaker 1: responding to questions about the Bolton raid.
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  Speaker 4: Search of John.
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  Speaker 5: Bolton's home and office from Friday.
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  Speaker 3: Have you been briefed on that?
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  Speaker 4: I have not been briefed. No, I read it just
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  Speaker 4: like you did. I was never a fan of his.
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  Speaker 4: I thought he was stupid. I thought he was, you know,
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  Speaker 4: a guy that only wanted to go into war. He
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  Speaker 4: liked killing people. I thought he was essentially a bad guy.
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  Speaker 6: The Press Are there more raids, like the one on
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  Speaker 6: John Bolton's house coming?
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  Speaker 4: The President More raids?
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  Speaker 5: I don't know.
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  Speaker 4: You'd have to ask the Department of Justice. They raided
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  Speaker 4: my house, I can tell you that. They did a
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  Speaker 4: big raid on my house. They took away everything that
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  Speaker 4: wasn't pinned down, and they took away some of that, too.
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  Speaker 4: How did it work out? Oh, I see. I guess
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  Speaker 4: it didn't work out too well for them, did it?
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  Speaker 4: They are very evil, very sick people, that group. And
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  Speaker 4: if they would have won the election, this country wouldn't
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  Speaker 4: exist as we know it. This country would have been
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  Speaker 4: a failed country.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: In the background there, you hear the South Korean president's translator.
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  Speaker 1: So I would, I would, I would enjoy having seen
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  Speaker 1: the camera just trained on the South Koreans president face
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  Speaker 1: as he's hearing about the sick and evil people and
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  Speaker 1: the raids.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: It's just a little embarrassed. This is like, oh, oh, right.
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  Speaker 2: This is an international embarrassment.
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  Speaker 4: Oh yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, very much so.
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  Speaker 3: Also, every time you look up, there's more gold. It's
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  Speaker 3: so golden there right now. It's, it's on the walls,
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: on the chairs, on their ties.
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  Speaker 2: It's yes. It seems like a joke. It seems AI generated.
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  Speaker 2: It seems like someone did like as a joke, hey,
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  Speaker 2: show me what Donald Trump's Oval Office might look like
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  Speaker 2: in 2015. That that's what he's actually doing.
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  Speaker 1: Remember the picture we did for the Correspondence Center when
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  Speaker 1: Obama made fun of Trump? about what the White House
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  Speaker 1: would look like if Trump won. And it was like Trump,
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  Speaker 1: we went Trump casino.
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  Speaker 2: Right, right, right.
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  Speaker 1: We had like a computer generated image of the whole thing.
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  Speaker 2: And a hot tub.
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  Speaker 1: Honestly, it wasn't far enough. We missed the mark. We
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  Speaker 1: should have done full gold.
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  Speaker 2: We made that in, that was 2011. Memories. And that
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  Speaker 2: was with Jesse, who years later would help here and
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  Speaker 2: become the design head here.
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  Speaker 1: See, look at that.
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  Speaker 2: So there you go.
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  Speaker 1: Here we go. Things aren't as great now. What do
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  Speaker 1: you guys make of the Bolton raid? Tommy?
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  Speaker 3: I mean, I think big picture, it felt like just
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  Speaker 3: another head on a pike, you know, warning to my enemies.
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  Speaker 3: And we know he has an enemies list, thanks to
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  Speaker 3: Kash Patel putting it in his book. What was it called?
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  Speaker 3: The Government Gangsters or something like that? The children's one? No.
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  Speaker 2: It's funny that was a real question. I know, I know.
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  Speaker 2: It actually was a sincere question. I didn't know which
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  Speaker 2: book it was.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, look, again, you know, John Bolton is Ben
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  Speaker 3: Rhodes's mentor, but I've never been a fan. I don't
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  Speaker 3: like his foreign policy, his politics, his like kind of mustache,
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  Speaker 3: his vibe. But it does seem like he's getting punished.
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  Speaker 1: And it is really weird.
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  Speaker 3: Initially, it did seem like this raid was going to
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  Speaker 3: be based on the 2020 prosecution of John Bolton for
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  Speaker 3: putting things in his book that the Trump people said
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  Speaker 3: he wasn't supposed to. But now they're leaking to the
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  Speaker 3: New York Times that Bolton mishandled classified material, which the
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  Speaker 3: CIA learned about when it was passed along to the FBI.
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  Speaker 3: And again, that's very sensitive stuff. And there is some
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  Speaker 3: speculation out there that Bolton did some work for the
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  Speaker 3: government of Qatar. And maybe that is related. But who knows?
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  Speaker 3: Like Kash Patel and Pam Bondi, by the way, also
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  Speaker 3: did work for the Qatari government.
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  Speaker 1: Can I just ask you to, I mean, so the
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  Speaker 1: CIA angle, the New York Times reported this. I know
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  Speaker 1: the CIA collects intelligence overseas on foreign actors. Sometimes Americans'
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  Speaker 1: communication gets swept up in that. The idea that then
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  Speaker 1: the CIA director is going to take the communications that they,
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  Speaker 1: or information on the Americans that they found through monitoring
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  Speaker 1: foreign agents or actors and then just like hand it
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  Speaker 1: over to the fbi does that happen.
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  Speaker 3: A lot well there's a process for that i mean
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  Speaker 3: the what you're kind of referencing is more like the
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  Speaker 3: nsa unmasking which is like we intercept the call between
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  Speaker 3: an american citizen and some foreign person and like the
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  Speaker 3: identity is masked in some products then you have to
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  Speaker 3: unmask it right that's a big controversy in trump 1.0
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  Speaker 3: if the cia figures out that uh john bolton is
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  Speaker 3: a spy for the russians through counterintelligence operations or whatever
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  Speaker 3: they will pass that along to the fbi for prosecution,
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  Speaker 3: but it is incredibly sensitive. I mean, they're by law,
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  Speaker 3: they're not supposed to do the collect on Americans, the
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  Speaker 3: spy on Americans.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: And the times article about it, you might think that
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  Speaker 2: the article could have been from another era if you
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  Speaker 2: didn't know the participants in it, because it makes a
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  Speaker 2: point of saying only limited intelligence was shared as if
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  Speaker 2: this was some serious, like that they were taking it
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  Speaker 2: quite seriously. But then you remember, this is John Radcliffe,
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  Speaker 2: who's a hardcore Republican, former member of Congress and Kash Patel.
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  Speaker 2: who worked for Devin Nunes, uh, uh, who's also, you know, was, uh,
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  Speaker 2: now runs truth social. Like these are just a couple
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  Speaker 2: of sort of Trumpy guys. And then like, you know,
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  Speaker 2: Trump saying, Oh, like I had no idea what this
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  Speaker 2: was going to happen. Uh, and then you think, okay,
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  Speaker 2: first of all, uh, he's, who knows if that's true,
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  Speaker 2: but even if it is, uh, that's why you put
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  Speaker 2: cash Patel at the FBI. That's why you put a Radcliffe, uh,
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  Speaker 2: at CIA or DNI. That's why you put Pam Bondi
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  Speaker 2: as the head of the DOJ. They know what they're
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  Speaker 2: supposed to do.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. And I mean, Look, who knows? Maybe John Bolton's
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  Speaker 1: a spy. Maybe he has committed a crime. We don't know.
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  Speaker 1: We'll see what happens here.
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  Speaker 2: It's always the people you least expect. Someone who is
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  Speaker 2: universally beloved.
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  Speaker 1: Well, that's what I was going to say. That's a problem.
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  Speaker 1: This is why it's so obvious what they're doing, right?
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  Speaker 1: Is they are purposely targeting unsympathetic characters who do not
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  Speaker 1: necessarily have a base of support, right? John Bolton is
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  Speaker 1: a perfect example of that. The MAGA establishment... Not a fan.
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  Speaker 2: He has MS-13 politics, basically.
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  Speaker 1: Liberals, liberals, not a fan.
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  Speaker 4: Right.
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  Speaker 1: And so who's going to, you know, who's going to
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  Speaker 1: worry if, uh, about John Bolton, who's going to stand
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  Speaker 1: up for John Bolton.
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  Speaker 2: But first they came for John Bolton.
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  Speaker 5: Right.
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  Speaker 1: But like, well, well, any, I know like we all
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  Speaker 1: have to do the throat clearing when we even talk
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  Speaker 1: about it.
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  Speaker 5: Right.
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  Speaker 1: I just did it.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: We all do it. Right. Like I don't, I don't
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  Speaker 1: like his policies and this is, but, but, but it's like, no, no, no, no.
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  Speaker 1: There's a guy who was a prominent critic of the administration.
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  Speaker 1: They have gone after him before. And now, surprise, surprise,
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  Speaker 1: they found something on him again, raided his house, bragged
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  Speaker 1: about raiding his house.
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  Speaker 5: J.D.
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  Speaker 1: Vance was interviewed by Kristen Welker on Meet the Press
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  Speaker 1: over the weekend. And he said, we're investigating him, which
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  Speaker 1: you just don't do. And even if it is all,
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  Speaker 1: even if it turns out that there is evidence that
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  Speaker 1: he committed some sort of a crime, like, of course,
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  Speaker 1: people are going to think that you politically, this is
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  Speaker 1: why no one can believe anything anymore. What the Trump
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  Speaker 1: administration is doing is because it's, Like you said, you
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  Speaker 1: have Kash Patel, the head of the FBI, and Pam Bondi,
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  Speaker 1: who's just, you know, another advisor to the president. No
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  Speaker 1: independents there whatsoever. So you have that. You have Trump
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  Speaker 1: talking about it, joking about, oh, he's a bad guy.
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  Speaker 2: J.D.
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  Speaker 1: Vance said, we're investigating him. So, like, of course people
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  Speaker 1: are going to think this is a fucking political prosecution
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  Speaker 1: or investigation. And it also sends a chilling message to
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  Speaker 1: anyone else who's criticizing. the president. Like this could be you.
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  Speaker 2: Let's say it wasn't. Let's say this was a totally
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  Speaker 2: above board operation. You wouldn't live tweet it. You would
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  Speaker 2: you wouldn't go. You wouldn't do an interview saying we're
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  Speaker 2: investigating this person. You would actually go above and beyond
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  Speaker 2: because you cared so much about the independents, but they
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  Speaker 2: don't care about that. I will say and look, I
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  Speaker 2: agree with all the throat clearing and it's important that
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  Speaker 2: we do it. But John Bolton made such a point
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  Speaker 2: of saying like he's not going to support Trump, but
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  Speaker 2: he's going to write in Dick Cheney's name because both
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: sides are unacceptable. And I'm just so as a protest vote,
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  Speaker 2: I'm going to write in Dick Cheney and then and
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: then and makes jokes about the age of Biden at
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  Speaker 2: the time. Then Biden drops out. Then Cheney says he's
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  Speaker 2: voting for Kamala. And that leads John Bolton to be like,
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  Speaker 2: now I don't know if I can even support Cheney.
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  Speaker 2: And it's like, all right, buddy. Like, you know. I
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  Speaker 2: give him credit.
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  Speaker 3: Look, he's been a critic when everyone else has shut up.
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  Speaker 3: So I give John Bolton credit there. I really do.
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  Speaker 1: And I'm more like force for the trees on this one. Like,
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  Speaker 1: John Bolton, Dick Cheney, I don't care who the fuck
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: it is. They are, you know. They start shooting people
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  Speaker 1: in the street and disappearing people who, like, I don't
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  Speaker 1: care what their politics are or what they've done. Like,
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  Speaker 1: the government shouldn't do that, right? Yeah, I don't care either.
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  Speaker 2: You're right.
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  Speaker 1: I'm sorry.
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  Speaker 2: I don't care either. The government shouldn't.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, no, no.
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: I don't care either.
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  Speaker 1: I do think this is why he's picking these people.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: This is where we're talking about Chris Christie, too. Like,
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  Speaker 1: they're not picking the most popular people. This is why
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  Speaker 1: I've always been, and, you know, could eat my words
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  Speaker 1: on this, more skeptical, like, he's going to go fucking
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: arrest Barack Obama, because if you're being strategic about it,
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: Arresting Barack Obama or Joe Biden or Kamala, like that would,
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: you know, that would send people into the streets maybe.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: But no one's going into the streets for John Bolton
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: or Chris Christie.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, but the top people on the enemies list are,
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: you know, former allies who turned against him.
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  Speaker 1: And the people involved in his prosecutions. Yes, on January 6th.
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  Speaker 1: Those are the, and basically he's gone after almost all
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  Speaker 1: of them now.
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  Speaker 5: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: So we haven't talked about Pete Hegseth firing the director
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: of the Defense Intelligence Agency. for what seems like releasing
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: a report that contradicts Trump's preferred storyline about the Iran bombings,
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: just like he fired the guy who released a jobs
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: report that contradicts Trump's preferred storyline about the economy. I
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: don't know. What do you guys think of the consequences
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: down the road of the government silencing dissenting voices and
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: information that displeases the president?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, the DIA, for those who don't know,
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  Speaker 3: it's one of the 18 different components of the intelligence community,
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: and they specifically focus on military intelligence. military capabilities. And so,
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: like you said, after we bombed Iran, they were kind
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: of first out of the gate with this assessment that
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: said that the bombing only set Iran's program back a
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: few months. That contradicted the total obliteration comments that enraged everybody.
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: So I guess the message now is even collecting information
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: that doesn't comport with what Donald Trump has said will
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: get you fired. I mean, I guess we knew that
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: from the BLS firing a few weeks ago, but like
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: play that out for a He decides, you know, they
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: buy a bunch of Melania coin in advance or something.
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: So he decides over like China is good now. And
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: Trump decides, okay, going forward, we're not allies. Taiwan, we're
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: not going to talk about it. Their military, the PLA's military,
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: we're not going to talk about it. Human rights, shut up.
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: IP theft, shut up. Is an intelligence analyst who like
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: collects information about those things now going to get in
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  Speaker 3: trouble if they write them down and put them in
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: a report? Because like that is certainly what this seems
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: to say to the uniform military, to like the military leadership.
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: And also- Hexeth also fired a bunch of other like
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: senior Navy leaders, like the head of special warfare with
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: just sort of no commentary. We know Laura Loomer got
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: the head of the NSA pushed out a few months ago.
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: So yeah, I mean, very weird shit is happening.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I look at where I think speaking of Dick Cheney,
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  Speaker 2: and we're old enough to remember that it was the
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: Defense Intelligence Agency where Cheney and Rumsfeld went rooting around
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: to try to find the right kind of evidence. So
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: they go to the UN and claim that Saddam Hussein
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: had a program of weapons of mass destruction. You know,
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: the intelligence being manipulated to confirm the priors of the
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: people who want to change, say, the Defense Department's name
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  Speaker 2: to the Department of War can lead to really bad places.
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  Speaker 5: It already has.
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  Speaker 2: It can again. And yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Who's going to work in intelligence? Who's going to work
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  Speaker 1: in the Defense Department now? Why would anyone want to
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  Speaker 1: do that?
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  Speaker 3: Maggot sheds.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: Why would, yeah. And like, why would they want to, like,
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  Speaker 1: like you said it, it is writing the information down
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  Speaker 1: because you could see if they fired whoever they found
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  Speaker 1: leaking it, right? Because obviously the report was leaked, but
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: that's not what happened. It's not, it's not, this is
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: the leaker. It's, this is the person who produced the
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: accurate information or the information.
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: Led the agency that did. Yeah.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: And for all, and by the way, like who knows
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: the conversations we're not hearing, right? Maybe it's because refuse
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: to produce a different report under pressure, refuse to go
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: along with it. I'm sure there'll be more reporting on this,
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: but like, we have no idea what's going on in
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: Pete Hegg says fucking Pentagon other than leaks about how
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: chaotic and messy it is and how he's getting rid
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: of people that he feels threatened by and how it's
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: overcome by paranoia. All great things at the most powerful
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: military in the history of planet Earth.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what you want there. That's what you want
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: atop that military. So Trump was clearly watching the Sunday shows,
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: more than I can say for myself, and responded to
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: an ABC News interview with Chris Christie by, let's see,
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: he made fun of Jonathan Karl's hair. I have not
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: seen lately. Yeah, I don't know what his hair looks
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: like that's different.
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: I think dreads were a mistake. LAUGHTER But he went
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: on vacation to Jamaica, and he did the thing.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: As one does. Old-fashioned, I guess. He mocked the show
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: for paying him $ 16 million, just taking a little victory
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: lap there. And then he called Christie sloppy and threatened
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: to reopen the decade-old investigation into the former New Jersey
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: governor's closure of the George Washington Bridge. He also threatened
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: ABC News and NBC News. saying that they should be
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: paying the government millions in licensing fees or else lose
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: their broadcast licenses for unfair coverage of Republicans. Trump's government
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: is already investigating Senator Adam Schiff, New York Attorney General
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: Tish James, Fed Governor Lisa Cook, all for alleged mortgage fraud.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: And the president has, of course, called for the indictment
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: imprisonment of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Brennan, James Clapper,
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: and others over a completely made-up allegation about Russian interference.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: So a lot of Trump's threats turn out to be empty.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: Sure seems like he's following through on quite a few lately.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: I know it's unlikely that, you know, this, like I said,
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: any of these individuals is going to get people up
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: in arms. But I don't know. It feels like all
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: this retribution is being met with kind of a collective shrug.
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not a great trend line. What's the statute
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: of limitations on a bridge closer, by the way? It
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: feels like.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: I was trying to figure out the date. I should
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: have just Googled it. But I was like, what? This
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: was like... It might have been a decade ago that
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: we were talking about this.
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: It was a long time ago.
• 16:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: I mean, the broader point is like 99% of the
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: time I go through life sort of implicitly assuming that
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: we're going to make it as a country.
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: You know, and then every once in a while I
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: have a conversation with someone, as I did this weekend,
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: where they're like, oh, I actually have a bunch of
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: money in Bitcoin cold storage that I'm storing in a
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: foreign country. And I think, huh, am I a boiled
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: frog too?
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: Tommy, I told you that in confidence.
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: John's using, it's actually Trump coin. It's probably going to
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: go up in value.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: I'm counting on Intel stock.
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: But yeah, this is, yeah, the enemies list is, they're
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: picking them off.
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: I feel like this, there is this collective feeling among
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: people who are paying very close attention. Like it does
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: feel like a shrug. It's like, what is the shrug? Like,
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: what does it mean to feel like we're not, why
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: aren't people caring more? And why is something happening? And
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: I do think it's a bit of this human nature,
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: which is, We do this in our own lives. Problems
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: you can't solve are just problems you don't want to
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: deal with, face, admit to the size of. You have
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: to admit you have a problem. That's what happens with
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: people that have addiction, whatever. You have to face the
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: problem and believe you can fix it. And part of
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: it is all the points of pressure that might cause
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: there to be pain or consequences for what Trump is
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: doing here are not available to us because Congress is
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: controlled by Republicans and they don't give a fuck. The
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: DOJ is fully captured, so they don't give a fuck.
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: Journalism just doesn't go as far as it used to
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: because people are in there in feeds and not consuming information.
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: There's just a report came out that Americans no longer,
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: on average, read one book a year. Listen, it's unrelated
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: to this, but it's not good. It's not good.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: You know who's worried and up in arms? All the
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: chat GPTs, all the chatbots, AI chatbots, they know what's
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: going on. They're the only ones left with information.
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the chat GPTs, they're, you know, how many.
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: They're about to resist.
• 18:28
  Speaker 5: Poor GPTs.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: Poor abused GPTs. The things they know. The things they know.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: Only Americans know.
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: That's why I just, like, don't know what we're, like, yeah, like, oh,
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: you're really upset about this? Well, the people that can
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: fix it don't give a fuck. And so, like, yes,
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: right now, people aren't up in arms in a way
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: that feels like it's commensurate to the scale of the challenge.
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: But that's why we got to like do the fucking
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: hard work to get people to come out and we
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: can win a house in Congress. And all of a
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: sudden we have some power. There's people that will care.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: I also think people have a mistaken impression of how
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: things operate in a regime, a dictatorial regime, which is
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: they go with the, you know, if the if the
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: dictator is going after their opponents, you know, it's just
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: agents showing up at their house and taking them away
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: in the middle of the night. And that's that. And
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: even as we were talking about these cases, you're like.
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: Oh, I don't know.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: Did anyone commit some little mortgage fraud? Do we know
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: the evidence? Do we know if John Bolton is guilty
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: or not? Maybe he is. This is what they do.
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: They figure out, okay, everyone has probably broken the law
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: somewhere in life. And also, we don't have to tell
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: anyone anything for a while. So we can pretend at
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: least it's on the up and up with a little
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: wink and a nod as they've been doing. And, you know,
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: then people will wonder what's going on and they'll think
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: maybe it's shady. And also Trump threatens a million people
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: all the time anyway and has for a decade. I mean,
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: we were talking about this in the meeting this morning
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: and I mentioned ABC News and NBC and you were like,
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: didn't he already threaten? them a couple of times? Is
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: that new? And I'm like, yeah, maybe, but you know,
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: I'm going to take your licenses unless you pay me millions.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: Like maybe it's a tweet now, pretty soon it's going
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: to be like, you know, Brendan Carr actually doing it.
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: He's also, I got to say, maybe he switched to
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: a stronger Adderall. He's doing more following up. Like he's
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: following up on stuff more.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: Like It used to be- He's got the people to follow.
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: He's got the people, I know, I'm joking. But he's
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: got the people to follow because it used to be,
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: he throws out a tweet or post about how we've
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: got a free Tina Williams or Peters, whatever her name is,
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: that woman in Colorado. And it's just a fit of peak.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: And I forgot about that.
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: And Jared Polis says, here you go. But Jared Polis
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: doesn't need to worry about it. That because it's never
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: going to be harsh measures, but there's somebody keeping track
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: and they do follow up. They do come back at you.
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: He, and then the last person we should talk about
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: is he went after Wes Moore. the governor of Maryland,
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: they've been at a back and forth over, uh, sending the, uh,
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: national guard to Baltimore. Uh, the murder rate in Baltimore
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: is at a 50 year low, you know, still crime
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: in Baltimore, still the, the, you know, Trump says it's the,
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: the fourth, uh, most violent city or crime ridden city, whatever.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: So more invited Trump to come walk the streets with him. And, uh,
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: Trump responded by calling more nasty and provocative, uh, He
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: used a tone that was nasty and provocative.
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: Let's go take a walk. That's how every tech CEO
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: has meetings these days.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: It was very passive-aggressive. And Trump said he may cancel
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: the funding that Congress appropriated to rebuild the city's Francis
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: Scott Key Bridge, although Trump described it as, I gave
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: him the money and I might take it back, which
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: I don't even think that was, I think it was
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: appropriated in 2020-2024.
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: It wasn't Venmo.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: It's not his money.
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: It's also, yeah, like, it's similar to the Bolton thing. Like,
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: if it even comes out to, like, part of it is, like,
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: the process is the threat, right? Because, like, Trump is
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: so openly and brazenly saying, like, you won't get the
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: money because I don't like you. Like, that would not
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: hold up. But then the process of holding it up
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: would be the problem.
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: Same for Bolton.
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: Maybe no crime will be there, but he has to
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: get lawyers. He has to, like, uproot his life to
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: fight it.
• 21:51
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: And now, I mean, just imagine, like, a state losing
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: funding you get from the federal government to rebuild a
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: fucking bridge that collapsed through, you know? An accident.
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Very important bridge, too. And I guess, you know,
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: he just all of these threats are designed to send
• 22:08
  Speaker 3: a message to every other elected official out there. Because
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: like Gavin Newsom has decided to burn the boats and
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: tweet funny memes all day long. But other states are
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: going to worry about getting federal funding in the wake
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: of a disaster or, you know, what other executive branch
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: help they might need.
• 22:30
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  Speaker 1: $ 5 off. So Baltimore may have to get in line
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: for the military occupation because on Friday, Trump said that Chicago,
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: New York, and San Francisco may be next on his list.
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: Sure enough, the Washington Post reported the next day that
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: the Pentagon has already spent weeks planning a National Guard
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: deployment to Chicago, a move that Mayor Brandon Johnson and
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker both pushed back on quite hard
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: on Monday. Meanwhile, National Guard troops in D.C. are now
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: carrying guns. So an expected move, but, you know, it's here.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: And White House videographers are also accompanying federal agents during
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: raids and arrests so they can fill our social media
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: feeds with content that owns the libs and, you know,
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: stuff that the MAGA base can get off to.
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: Guys, we own ourselves, us libs, okay? We take plenty
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: of videos of ourselves.
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: It's our liberal tears that help, you know.
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: We're watching the, what was the choir outside of the
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: Obrego Garcia hearing today?
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. Anyway. We watch too much Fox in
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: our office. Trump is clearly enjoying himself. as well. Here
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: he is on Monday after signing executive orders aimed at
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: ending cashless bail, prosecuting flag burners, and ordering, quote, further
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: actions to stop the crime emergency in D.C.
• 25:13
  Speaker 4: So it used to be called the Department of War,
• 25:16
  Speaker 4: and it had a stronger sound. Now we have a
• 25:19
  Speaker 4: Department of Defense with defenders. It just sounded bad. He said, sir,
• 25:23
  Speaker 4: on behalf of the Department of Defense, defense. I don't
• 25:26
  Speaker 4: want to be defense only. We want defense, but we
• 25:29
  Speaker 4: want offense, too, if that's okay. So you'll make a decision. But,
• 25:33
  Speaker 4: you know, as Department of War, we won everything. Come
• 25:38
  Speaker 4: to think of it, there's your trophy for the World Cup.
• 25:41
  Speaker 4: I think what I'm going to do is place it
• 25:42
  Speaker 4: right above the angel, right over there.
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: That's solid gold, too.
• 25:45
  Speaker 4: We're going to put it right up there.
• 25:46
  Speaker 7: Look at that.
• 25:47
  Speaker 4: There's a solid gold trophy. They know how to get
• 25:50
  Speaker 4: to me, you know. As you all know, Chicago is
• 25:54
  Speaker 4: a killing field right now.
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: And they don't acknowledge it.
• 25:58
  Speaker 4: And they say, we don't need him.
• 25:59
  Speaker 7: Freedom, freedom.
• 26:00
  Speaker 4: He's a dictator. He's a dictator. A lot of people
• 26:02
  Speaker 4: are saying, maybe we like a dictator.
• 26:05
  Speaker 5: I don't like a dictator. I'm not a dictator.
• 26:08
  Speaker 4: I'm a man with great common sense and I'm a
• 26:10
  Speaker 4: smart person.
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, not a dictator, even though you wouldn't believe how
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: many people are coming up to me. Mr.
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: Trump, Mr.
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: Trump, we want a dictator. No, no, no, not me.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: That's not me. I'm just common sense. I did see
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: someone on Twitter called the office decor Saddam Khor.
• 26:28
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: Big time. I think that's a good.
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: It is very Saddam Kors.
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: I think the new Department of War logo being kind
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: of a southern old guy. It's the Cracker Barrel guy.
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: With an arm over a barrel. And it says Department
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: of War. I think it's Gildan the Lily.
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: I think it's Gildan the Lily.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: This is like cartoonishly fascist.
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: It is.
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: It is.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: In a way that if you told someone about it. uh,
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: that it was happening, who had been asleep for 10 years,
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: they'd be like, come on, that's too, of course everyone
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: got that it was fascist, right? Like, how did people
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: not know this?
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: It's also like, man, you know, you guys are sending
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: out your social media people to film these arrests. Like,
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: Lenny Riefenstahl, like, knew how to compose a fucking shot.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: Oh my God. you know what I mean? It's just like,
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: there's no pride in the product. Like, if you're gonna
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: be fascist, uh, learn the rule of thirds.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: I wanted to score something. Also, historically speaking, um, Remember
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: the Republicans who liked limited government and personal freedom and
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: talked about that stuff all the time? Not like the
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: crazy libertarians, like the dude in New Hampshire who tweets
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: insane stuff, like the libertarian wing of the Republican Party.
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: Where are those people?
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: They're just hanging out.
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: They're just gone.
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: It's just a small but mighty crew at the American
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: Enterprise Institute now.
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: And Cato. Don't forget Cato.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: Every time I see a tweet from someone there, I'm
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: just like, yeah, you got it.
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: I know.
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: Me too. They're pro-immigration.
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: I'm retweeting the Cato guys all the time too. It's
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: a big tent.
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: There's a comedian named Tim Dillon who we've talked about,
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: I think, maybe on Rapid Response on YouTube. But I
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: don't think he explicitly endorsed Trump in 2024, but he
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: was very critical of Democrats, had J.D. Vance on the
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: show right before the election for this long interview. But
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: Tim Dillon did this riff the other day on his
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: show where he was saying how all of the things
• 28:10
  Speaker 3: that Alex Jones has been worrying about for years are
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: coming to fruition.
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: The U.S.
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: Military in the streets, FEMA camps, evil companies like Palantir
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: collecting all of our data and monitoring us. Where are
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: the people who are worried about this? Like, again, I
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: know Alex Jones is a performance artist, as he said
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: about himself in court. But, like, there's a lot of
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: people who sincerely care about these issues. And where are they?
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: Well, I think maybe they didn't.
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: I know, I do think people like limited government, like
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: New Hampshire is an entire state built on loving limited government.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: Where are those? They're choosing die right now.
• 28:39
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: I talked about this with Sue. There they are. But
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: like Sue, I talked to this to Ricky later, you'll
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: hear it. But like, okay, right, fine. They're libertarians, but
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: they like order. They like law. The president is seizing
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: the means of production. You know, he's taken over. He's
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: demanding shares in publicly traded American corporations, private companies.
• 28:59
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: And they're nowhere. They're nowhere.
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: It's communism.
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: It might take more. I mean, I'm sure you talked
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: about this with Sir Ricky. I don't know if you
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: talked about the wind story, too. This was un-fucking-believable to
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: me because, again, it was a headline. I'm like, oh,
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump's shutting down wind projects. Like, oh, yeah, he
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: doesn't like wind, so maybe he's, like, cutting funding from
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: the government. No, no, no. There was, like, a wind
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: farm that's 70% built, already set to generate, like, enough
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: electricity for, like, Just hundreds of thousands of people in
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: Rhode Island. It's almost going to be done. And just
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: pull in the permits now. Just the federal government saying
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: we don't want wind projects. And wind projects that are
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: actually in the process of being constructed with private money,
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: we're going to shut them down.
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: To your point earlier about like existential problems that are
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: sort of hard to look in the face because they're
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: so dire and nothing's happening to solve them, like climate
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: change is still a thing, as we all recall. There
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: was this group that looks at sort of the intersection
• 29:50
  Speaker 3: of climate and business. They found that $ 22 billion worth
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: of clean energy projects have been canceled in the first
• 29:57
  Speaker 3: half of 2025. A lot of that is like car
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: manufacturers scaling back EV production because we got rid of
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: all the tax credits that incentivized the purchase of EVs.
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: But like big picture, electricity is just going to get
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: more expensive. And wind generates, I think, about 10% of
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: our electricity last year. Wind and solar, you get to
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: about like 20% of electricity generation in the United States.
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: And he's just killing off those industries at a time
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: when we're also building these giant AI data centers that
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: take like a city's worth of energy and So that,
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: you know, we can all.
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: Then you get a couple more boobs on those ladies.
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: I made that same joke with Sir Wiki later, fuck.
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: Stay tuned. So that Grok can turn into Mecca Hitler,
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: you know, in real time.
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: Someone said this, like, our country is now building data
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: centers and detention centers and camps. That's it. That's what
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: the United States has come to now. There are coal
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: power plants that are set to retire and the people
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: running the coal power plants have not asked to for
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: an extension. They were like ready to shut them down.
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: And the Trump administration is forcing them to stay open because.
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: They're not profitable in many cases.
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: It's the equivalent of like rolling coal, right? Like it's
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: not good for anybody. It doesn't do anything. It just
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: makes the air worse to own the people driving behind you,
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: the libs and the Priuses and the Tesla. Well, it
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: used to be Tesla's behind you.
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: And it's more expensive now. This is like, say you
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: didn't give a shit about climate change. We're now, there's
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: cheaper energy that we're now trying to get rid of
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: for more expensive energy because Donald Trump doesn't like what
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: windmills look like and things like that. that our coal
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: past is something that we need to return to?
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: It's the difference between what they claimed, what Republicans said
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: forever and what Trump actually is, right? Like, oh, they
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: don't want to choose winners and losers, right? And the
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: tax credits and all these things choose winners and losers.
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: But Trump, I mean, like, again, to your point about it,
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: everything Alex Jones predicting coming true, he goes, he meets
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: with the oil executives, he demands a billion dollars. And
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: then he's like, not only is he not, not only
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: do they try to subsidize fossil fuels more in their big,
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: beautiful bills, some of which came out, but not all
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: of it. They're not going to kill projects that are
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: basically done. There's no justification for none other than to
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: make energy more expensive and to push people towards dirtier
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: forms of fuel, to drive up the profits of a
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: dozen or two dozen companies.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: Just wait till the federal government shows up at gas stations.
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: and just starts covering the prices of gas so that
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: no one knows. They'll charge your card, but they're not
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: going to release the information.
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: Spray-painted.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: Because gas is going to be as cheap as it
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: can be forever.
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: Well, you're competing with all these immigrants for this gas,
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: and they're using up the gas.
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: So, back to the occupation. That's happening, too. Oh, one
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: more thing on the Department of War, though. Because I
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: just want to... The president of peace, Nobel Peace Prize guy,
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: going to end forever wars, going to end all the wars.
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: Already ended a dozen wars.
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: I'm a president of peace, and now we're doing a
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: war department?
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know. It's a throwback. Throwback jerseys are
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: pretty hot right now in a lot of sports, the NFL.
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: I own a couple throwback jerseys. Maybe we're just throwing
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: it back.
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: Does he think that we got mired in Vietnam because
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: of a brand issue? Does he think it was because
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: our logo and slogan didn't capture the vibe? Is that
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: the problem? We didn't win World War II because we
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: had a Department of War and then we changed it
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: and we lost our mojo.
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: No, that's not what happened.
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: I don't think that that's what happened.
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: That's not what happened.
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: Joe Rogan of the domino theory.
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right.
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: That's right, I am.
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: So Republicans are already lining up in Congress to introduce
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: legislation to extend Trump's takeover of the D.C. police from
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: 30 days to six months. That can't really happen without
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: 60 votes in the Senate, right, which they don't have.
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: You do sort of wonder if they're going to try
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: to somehow stuff that in a government funding bill and
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: then dare the Democrats to shut down the government over it.
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: Wonderful.
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: And I don't know if I've made up my mind
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: on how I think that's going to go yet, but
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: what do you guys think? Is that a good thing
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: to shut down the government for?
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: I'm sort of more and more in the Chris Murphy
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: camp of you cannot concede to the normal parts of
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: governing because they benefit from the normal parts and then
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: they benefit from the abnormal parts. Like, oh, they want
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: this so that it looks legal. Meanwhile, TikTok is still
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: operating illegally. He's taken Intel without any kind of congressional authorization.
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: He's doing all kinds of things with illegally as well.
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: So why are you gonna give him the patina of
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: a legal imprimatur when he has like had shown no
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: indication that he won't do it either way? Like why
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: are you gonna help him?
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: It's tough. That's almost like the argument.
• 34:20
  Speaker 7: I know.
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: I know.
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: Because it's like, well, we can all vote and shut
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: the government down over this. And then Trump can say, well,
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: I don't give a fuck about Congress. I'm just going
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: to maybe even if he couldn't take over the police anymore.
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: He's like, well, I still got the guard. The guard
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: can go anywhere. But, you know, that's my prerogative.
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: But like we did this the last time. And the
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: answer is if you concede that that his abuse of
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: power makes him more powerful in Congress, he's already won.
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: And so you just can't do that. I hear that,
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: but I'm saying it's the other side of the argument.
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: He's just going to park an F-22 in Millennium Park
• 34:50
  Speaker 3: to protect the bean and be like, I cut the
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: murder rate in Chicago. And everyone's going to be like, Thank.
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: You, sir.
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: First bean he's gone near in years. You know what
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: I mean?
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: Oh, my gosh.
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: He's never shown much care for the bean in the past.
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: I shouldn't have played that AI country song for you
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: this morning.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: That's what got me.
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: Can I talk about something serious?
• 35:10
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: All of a sudden, the National Guard is going to
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: be armed. And there's not even an explanation for why
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: this is suddenly different.
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: Because they're going on. They're saying that their mission has
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: been a great success, that there's been no murders in D.C.,
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: And so if the guard can have guns, why didn't
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: they have them at the beginning? You waited. Why? To
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: get us a little bit more comfortable. It admits to
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: the reason they're doing it, because they knew it would
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: look worse to start out with guns. They did not
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: send some justification. It's not like the National Guard have
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: felt unsafe and have been hounded. They're just looking at
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: their phones outside the Washington Monument.
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: Well, and they're also hoping that everyone's like, you know,
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: all the libs made a big fuss about the guard.
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: They're just taking pictures with people. They're just standing around
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: guarding the monuments. Who cares? Meanwhile, you know, he sent
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: another executive order today that was like every state must
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: get some of its guard ready to mobilize for President
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: Trump in case he needs to put down civil disturbances,
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: which is the real, you know, the goal here and
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: fight crime, whatever else. So now, yeah, now they're going
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: to have armed guards, armed National Guard troops in the
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: streets of major American cities. And maybe it's fine for now,
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: but also maybe everyone's going to, you know, shut the
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: fuck up and stay home and not criticize Donald Trump anymore.
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's scary. It's really scary.
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: Because we can do this the easy way or the
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: hard way. If everyone just lets the guard there and
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: just patrolling the streets with their guns, then you're all okay.
• 36:29
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: And you could see the guard getting deployed with their
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: guns to liberal areas right before an election, right before
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: the midterms.
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the next thing to worry about.
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: And really, it's just a cover, right? Because the guard,
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: they're in camo. It looks wrong. It is wrong. But
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: it's the ICE agents that are going around doing more
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: of the arrests. And it's the ICE agents that are
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: the ones that are going to be standing outside of
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: polling places. It's the ICE agents that are going to
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: be increasingly recruited from sort of the MAGA fanboy base
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: with these enticements to get in, to join. So like
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: that to me is what's going to ultimately happen. You
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: got the guard there, you have ICE there, and all
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: of a sudden they're trying to pull precinct votes down
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: by 10 or 12 in some liberal areas and enough
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: to swing some close races.
• 37:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: You know what? I'm with Murphy. I just I just
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: think like and I know, you know, we're going to
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: probably have a couple conversations about this as we get
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: close to the government funding deadline. But it's like so,
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: you know, Democrats don't have a plan to reopen the
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: government once they shut it down. And what if Trump
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: just says that's fine and I'm going to do whatever?
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: Then people should know that the president states has decided
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: to operate without Congress and without the government funded. And
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: it's just going to be a full, you know, like
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: it's more probably more important for Democrats to tell people
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: we have no part of this and we're fighting for
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: it and we're fighting against it. And that's it. I
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: don't know. We're in extraordinary times now.
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: We are only, what, seven months in?
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: We're seven months in? Look at where we are. Every
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: CEO is marching into the Oval to pay fealty. There
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: are troops on our streets. He's threatening to do more. Like,
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: this is happening very, it's happening fast. It's happening right
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: in front of our eyes. Do you think six months
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: from now, that vote's going to get easier?
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: Everyone's just lining up to give him gold. Gold trophies,
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: gold shit from Tim Cook. There's gold everywhere.
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: Which everyone should watch the South Park episode to see what,
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: in their view, happens with those various bubbles that get
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: presented to the press.
• 38:23
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: Not the bean. Not the bean. Not the bean.
• 38:27
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• 40:03
  Speaker 1: slash crooked. CNN reported over the weekend that unsurprisingly, most
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  Speaker 1: of the arrests in D.C. have been focused on immigrants.
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: And as the Times reported last week, the summer surge
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: in immigration arrests has been a direct result of federal
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: agents going after people with no prior criminal records or convictions.
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: That was certainly the case with Trump's most notorious wrongful deportation,
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: that of Kilmar Obrego-Garcia. And there have been some big
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: developments in that case since we last spoke about it.
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: If you remember, Obrego-Garcia was brought back from Seacott, arrested
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: by the feds on dubious human smuggling charges in Tennessee,
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: then released by a very skeptical judge so he could
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: go home to Maryland while awaiting his trial. Apparently, the
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: government then offered to deport him to Costa Rica if
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: he pled guilty to their charges. When he refused, they
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: told him they planned to deport him to Uganda instead.
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: Then he showed up for a check-in on Monday morning
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: and was immediately detained by ICE, which was expected. Luckily,
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: Judge Palazines ruled that he can't be sent to Uganda
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: for now. Here's what Abrego Garcia had to say on
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: Monday at the massive protest on his behalf before being
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: detained by ICE.
• 41:11
  Speaker 7: Independientemente de lo que pase hoy, regardless of what happens
• 41:14
  Speaker 7: here today.
• 41:15
  Speaker 5: In my eyes checking, promise me this.
• 41:41
  Speaker 7: Promise me that you will continue to pray, continue to fight, resist,
• 41:47
  Speaker 7: and love, not just for me, but for everybody. Continue
• 41:53
  Speaker 7: to demand freedom. Thank you so much.
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: I know Tim talked about this, Miller, when he interviewed Andre, but.
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: It's... Hernandez Romero, another TCOG.
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: Prisoner it is just it's unbelievable that the people who
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: have been wrongfully deported ripped away from their families tortured
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: beaten like have this kind of grace um and are
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: saying like keep fighting for justice and all that i
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: mean it's just it's wild to me yeah i i.
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: Also like sort of i was thinking the same thing
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: and just that it it also speaks to like what
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: do we have on our side uh which is Yeah.
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: People don't care about this enough right now. It just
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: feels that way. We can't, people just aren't waking up
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: to it enough.
• 42:39
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: There just isn't enough political pressure. It just all feels
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: too close. But at the same time, like the information
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: is out there, right? Like the story is still, we
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: can still tell the story. Like he doesn't, he hasn't
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: had his thumb on the media. There's enough media, right?
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: Like it is not because it is not for, it
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: won't be because of censorship that we don't stop this.
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: It might be because of noise and nonsense and misinformation,
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: but it won't be because the story couldn't be told.
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: And I do think that as hard as that is,
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: it does point a way here, which is our job
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: collectively is to figure out how to tell that story.
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: Because there are moments like this where someone's talking about
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: this openly and honestly, and they're not afraid to do that.
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: And I do think that that is hopeful.
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: And I'll just be honest, he doesn't have the option
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: to say what he really thinks, probably. This guy is
• 43:18
  Speaker 3: dealing with a capricious justice system. What the United States
• 43:22
  Speaker 3: is saying to this man is, take a plea deal,
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: admit guilt for crimes you don't believe you committed, or
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: we'll send you to Uganda. That's not a justice system.
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: It also shows the White House is, they're picking deportation
• 43:35
  Speaker 3: locations as a way of further punishing these people, right?
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: They're like, oh, you don't want to go to Costa Rica? Okay,
• 43:41
  Speaker 3: how about Uganda? You don't like dictators? How about Museveni?
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: Go get to know him real quick.
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: Which, you know, the other thing we should be thankful for,
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: at least for now, is Judge Zinus, when she heard this,
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: is like, this is why you cannot deport him to
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: Uganda until at least we get through this trial. And
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: I say, because... the fact that you offered him Costa
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: Rica and then decided to say no Uganda, like shows
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: that you're just doing this in a capricious and punitive way.
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: Well, and, and it, and it, it shows right. Like with, they,
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: they have been threatening to send people to all kinds of,
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: they have sent people to South Sudan who are now,
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: I think to the point of not being able to
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: keep up with what the fuck they're going on. I
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: think they're still in a holding facility in South Sudan.
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: In this case, it's not just to send a message
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: to other people about immigration. It is specifically to get
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: out of their embarrassment of, of having drummed up these
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: charges that can't be supported in a trial. They're afraid
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: of a trial. Costa Rica's pretty nice. Please.
• 44:35
  Speaker 5: Right. Please.
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: He's so terrible. Don't you want him to pay for
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: his crimes?
• 44:39
  Speaker 5: No.
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: They know a trial would expose how fucking ridiculous.
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: The charges are.
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: And wrongly rendered him to El Salvador in the first place.
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: Literally the only country on earth where they could not
• 44:47
  Speaker 3: have deported him by law.
• 44:48
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: The second part of it is, Zinus not only said,
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: you can't remove this guy anywhere. He has to stay
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: in the place he's in right now. It was just,
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: she said, and this order counts, right? Because I know
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: I'm just saying it out loud, but you, member of
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: the bar, as a lawyer, who presumably wants to continue
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: to be.
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: A lawyer, this order- Maybe, yes, or Winston, who's been
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: at the center of this.
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: You are not pretending this order doesn't count because it's
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: not written down, because that's what you guys tried to
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: pull the last time when you claimed that an oral
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: order from, what's his name? Bloesberg, whatever.
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: Bloesberg.
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: From Bloesberg? You claim that didn't count. So those guys
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: got sent to seek out because it wasn't written down.
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: So this counts. He's like, yes, just speaks to like that.
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: He has to talk to these people like like sort
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: of children, like Aaron children.
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: Well, meanwhile, as this is happening, DHS tweets, we're thrilled
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: that that he's going to Uganda.
• 45:41
  Speaker 3: Well, they did. They did it as a quote tweet
• 45:43
  Speaker 3: of Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal. It's just like another troll. Like
• 45:46
  Speaker 3: this man's life is just in furtherance of their trolling.
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It's just all for the content. One federal detainee
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: who's being treated quite well by the Trump administration despite
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: actually being convicted for child trafficking, Ghislaine Maxwell. On Friday,
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: the Justice Department released the transcript of her recent interview
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: with Todd Blanch, Trump's personal attorney turned deputy attorney general.
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: And you guys will be shocked to learn that a
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: convicted criminal who's made clear she's looking for a pardon
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: said that she's always known the one person who could
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: grant that wish was a perfect gentleman who's never acted
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: inappropriately around her. Full exoneration of Mr. Trump. You'll be
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: even more shocked to learn that the perfect gentleman's personal
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: lawyer did not follow up with any tough questions for
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: the person his own prosecutors have said is a serial liar.
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: I don't know if you guys went through the transcript.
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: You guys have any big takeaways from the Maxwell Blanche interview?
• 46:38
  Speaker 3: I mean, the big takeaway is that it was just
• 46:40
  Speaker 3: an absolute farce. Donald Trump's personal lawyer sets up an
• 46:44
  Speaker 3: interview with a woman convicted of sex trafficking children with
• 46:47
  Speaker 3: the sole goal of absolving Donald Trump and his associates
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: of any wrongdoing. And he asked, I think someone counted,
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: he asked many more questions about Bill Clinton than Donald Trump,
• 46:57
  Speaker 3: even though this whole controversy, the reason we're talking about
• 46:59
  Speaker 3: this is because Donald Trump refuses to release the Epstein
• 47:01
  Speaker 3: files and everyone's wondering why. And also like Blanche would
• 47:05
  Speaker 3: drop lines of inquiry when it got close to Trump
• 47:08
  Speaker 3: or when she mentioned like associates of Epstein being in
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: the cabinet. And in the process, though, Blanche gave Ghislaine
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: Maxwell this opportunity to lie and rewrite history for herself.
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: And she's a liar. She's an obvious motivation to lie.
• 47:22
  Speaker 3: She got better treatment after agreeing to have this conversation.
• 47:25
  Speaker 3: But in the process, you've got these Epstein victims and
• 47:27
  Speaker 3: their families just getting going through this traumatic nightmare all
• 47:31
  Speaker 3: over again. And For example, the family of Virginia Giuffre,
• 47:35
  Speaker 3: who is one of Epstein's victims who died by suicide
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: earlier this year, released a statement saying, we are outraged
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: the contents of these transcripts is in direct contradiction with
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: felon Colleen Maxwell's conviction for child sex trafficking. During DAG
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: Todd Blanche's bizarre interview, she is never challenged about her
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: court-proven lies, providing her a platform to rewrite history. I mean,
• 47:54
  Speaker 3: it's like truly a really disgusting, disgusting farce.
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, that, It reads more like a deposition
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: in a civil case where Trump's lawyer is trying to
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: gather the information that he needs in this civil case
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: to help his client get out of paying any kind
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: of restitution. It doesn't read like an investigation. It doesn't
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: read like a criminal investigation. It also is clear like
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: Blanche is not that prepared, right? Doesn't clearly know the fact.
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: Because he's not there to create a body of evidence.
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: He's there to exculpate Donald Trump.
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: He didn't bring any of the lawyers in the Justice
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: Department who are still working there who worked on this case.
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: The lawyers who said that Ghislaine Maxwell couldn't be trusted,
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: didn't tell the truth, never admitted her complicity in this,
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: showed no kind of remorse for what she participated in.
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: But I do think for me that the second big
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: takeaway is the other, like it's sort of the other
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: side of that coin, which is because Blanche was Trump's
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: personal attorney and basically is still acting as that, and
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: because DOJ is not independent, and because nobody takes Ghislaine
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: Maxwell seriously and understands her motives. The fact that Trump
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: is so corrupted and polluted this process with his own
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: personal politics, it doesn't work. This doesn't end it. It
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: doesn't do anything. It actually kind of, it didn't help
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: in one way or the other. It didn't make a
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: big splash that brought more attention to the story. It
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: kind of came and went a little bit. But at
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: the same time, the fact that she's saying all these
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: things that seem to be positive about Trump doesn't matter.
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: Like the story goes on, the need for deposition goes on,
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: the demands for release go on.
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: Well, they also the several judges now have said that
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: the Trump administration's request to release the grand jury transcripts
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: is an obvious distraction because there's they should know that
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: there's nothing in the grand jury transcripts that would illuminate
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: any new information about the case. And also I think
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: that they, the DOJ gave the first tranche of Epstein
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: documents to Congress and, you know, Robert Garcia, the top
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: Democrat on the oversight committee, he was like, I don't know,
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: like 90% of these pages have been public already. They
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: gave us mostly public information. Yeah.
• 49:55
  Speaker 3: And I think what basically they've released like 1% or
• 49:58
  Speaker 3: 3% of what is believed to be in the totality
• 50:01
  Speaker 3: of these files. And obviously you're not going to release
• 50:02
  Speaker 3: like graphic images of underage people or anything like that
• 50:05
  Speaker 3: but there's a lot of documentation that could that is
• 50:07
  Speaker 3: still out there that's not been released that they're clearly
• 50:09
  Speaker 3: just trying not to release uh and that is the
• 50:11
  Speaker 3: part of that that this is just a complete.
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: And total farce i will say the one one sliver
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: of good news here did you guys see that james
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: comer uh the top republican on the oversight committee has
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: finally decided okay maybe maybe we need to hear from
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: alex acosta.
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: I saw that and i'll tell you like i i
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: We're all conspiracy theorists now. So they said they're going to,
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: it's for a transcribed meeting. That's what it said, that
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: there's not gonna be a recording of it, I guess.
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: Maybe that's part of the agreement.
• 50:34
  Speaker 3: I'm not sure.
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: But at this point, how on earth can we trust
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: James Comer and Alex Acosta?
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: You don't think they'll button this up?
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: Well, I think they will. But yeah, it's the problem
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: is the problem.
• 50:49
  Speaker 3: Well, the thing that's just worth noting politically about the
• 50:52
  Speaker 3: release of this Maxwell transcript is basically every moron who
• 50:56
  Speaker 3: went to the White House and held up an Epstein
• 50:58
  Speaker 3: files part one binder when Pam Bondi first snowed them
• 51:02
  Speaker 3: all into, you know, cheerleading, whatever bullshit PR thing she did,
• 51:07
  Speaker 3: has basically declared that the Maxwell testimony is all they
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: need to hear.
• 51:12
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 51:12
  Speaker 3: So there is a There's a subset of MAGA influencers
• 51:15
  Speaker 3: who built their audiences on the back of pushing Epstein-related stuff,
• 51:19
  Speaker 3: usually about Bill Clinton or Democrats, is now saying they're
• 51:22
  Speaker 3: satisfied by hearing this disgusting woman who is serving a
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: 20-year sentence who herself abused underage girls. They think that
• 51:32
  Speaker 3: what she says is gospel.
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: It's fucking gross. Obviously, there's a ton of other shit
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: going on as well. Trump got asked on Monday about
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: why he's gone silent on Gaza. which the Israeli government
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: continues to bomb and starve. He was asked about the
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: Putin-Zelensky meeting he said he was setting up, which the
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: Russian foreign minister has basically said isn't happening. There continue
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: to be horrific stories every day about more wrongful detentions,
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: stories about more layoffs because of the tariffs, stories about
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: an insane level of corruption in the White House, on
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: and on and on. We wanted to bring up these
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: stories in part because they were each at one point
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: at the center of the political debate, dominating the news cycle,
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: and then just as quickly moved on to the periphery
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: of what the White House and DC and a lot
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: of political press is talking about, which seems like a problem.
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: But first, anything you guys want to say about where
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: we are with these stories or any others I didn't mention? Tommy,
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: you want to talk about Gaza and also Russia?
• 52:24
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 52:25
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's so frustrating because he just chums the
• 52:27
  Speaker 3: water every day with some new outrage, and then he
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: just is never held accountable for anything. There's no follow-up
• 52:32
  Speaker 3: on anything. And I just do think it's worth noting that, again,
• 52:34
  Speaker 3: during the campaign, Trump said he was going to end
• 52:36
  Speaker 3: the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. It's August 25th,
• 52:38
  Speaker 3: so we've missed that deadline by a bit. But even
• 52:41
  Speaker 3: after the Alaska meeting with Putin, Trump said, okay, there's
• 52:44
  Speaker 3: going to be a bilateral meeting between Putin and Zelensky.
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: That hasn't happened yet. And he said, we're going to
• 52:48
  Speaker 3: figure out with the Europeans what a security guarantee for
• 52:51
  Speaker 3: Ukraine looks like. That hasn't happened yet. He said there'd
• 52:53
  Speaker 3: be a trilateral meeting with Trump, Zelensky, and then Putin.
• 52:56
  Speaker 3: Nothing about that. And even today, I don't know if
• 52:59
  Speaker 3: you guys noticed, he was talking about Putin going to
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: Alaska and taking that meeting as if it was some
• 53:02
  Speaker 3: sacrifice for Putin.
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: He's been saying that for a while, like, oh, it's
• 53:07
  Speaker 2: such a coup that we got the meeting.
• 53:08
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 53:09
  Speaker 3: And like, it just, it couldn't have been a bigger
• 53:10
  Speaker 3: gift to Putin to be welcomed back to the United
• 53:12
  Speaker 3: States into the international fold after invading Ukraine in 2022,
• 53:17
  Speaker 3: the full-scale evasion. And then a similarly on Gaza, like
• 53:19
  Speaker 3: there was this global outcry about the starvation in Gaza
• 53:22
  Speaker 3: a few weeks ago. It seemed in that moment, like
• 53:25
  Speaker 3: Trump might pressure Netanyahu, but the opposite has happened. Again,
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: like Hamas just agreed to a temporary ceasefire deal, it
• 53:31
  Speaker 3: was very similar to one that the Israelis had agreed to,
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: like I think in July. But rather than accept it
• 53:38
  Speaker 3: and rather than get out more hostages, Netanyahu has completely
• 53:40
  Speaker 3: changed his negotiating posture and saying he needs a permanent
• 53:44
  Speaker 3: agreement that gets out all the hostages and ends the war.
• 53:47
  Speaker 3: And again, like those details, set them aside for a second.
• 53:50
  Speaker 3: Like the key point is Trump, he's like bragging every
• 53:53
  Speaker 3: day about how he's ending wars, but he's not doing
• 53:56
  Speaker 3: anything to pressure Netanyahu to end this one and the
• 53:59
  Speaker 3: Israeli government is drastically ramping up settlement construction in a
• 54:02
  Speaker 3: way that's going to just kill off any hope of
• 54:04
  Speaker 3: a Palestinian state. Like talk of a two state solution
• 54:06
  Speaker 3: right now is incredibly naive and it will soon be, um,
• 54:12
  Speaker 3: there's just, will be literally no hope of a contiguous
• 54:14
  Speaker 3: Palestinian state given the settlement construction and the Trump administration
• 54:17
  Speaker 3: supports it full on supports it. So it's just, you know, so.
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: Killed a bunch of journalists today.
• 54:22
  Speaker 4: Yep.
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: Uh, the Israeli government and, uh, they were, they, sort
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: of bombed a hospital. And, and then also as people were,
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: are trying to rescue people, then they bombed it again,
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: right on, right as the world was watching.
• 54:36
  Speaker 3: It's a double tap.
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: And he had to, and then Yahoo had to- Mishap.
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: He called it a mishap.
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: A tragic mishap, which he had to do because it
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: was so thoroughly captured on camera and so obvious and
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: wrong that they had to claim it was a mishap.
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: And you see Trump was asked about it and he's like, oh,
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: I haven't seen that. I haven't seen the news.
• 54:53
  Speaker 3: It was like 11 o'clock Eastern.
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: Which like, who knows? Maybe, maybe that's true. Maybe it's not.
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: The guy doesn't pay much attention. He's just he's just
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: living in the present like all of us forever. Well, yeah.
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: Like, you know, he he he wants he finds the
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: Epstein story distasteful. So he says cover something else. And
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: then Fox News dutifully starts covering crime more. Trump sees
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: that there's a lot of crime in D.C. I better
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: do something about it. Kind of falling for his own
• 55:17
  Speaker 2: falling into his own like bear trap. And this is
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: not what's on Fox News is not on what he
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: is seeing. So it doesn't feel as important to him.
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: And so he moves on to the next thing.
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's one of the reasons I think he
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: holds so many press avails every day, because he knows
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: that if he's in trouble from whatever happened the day before,
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: or people are going to ask him questions, he's always
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: got something new to announce, and then people can talk
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: about that. I know we had the whole distraction conversation,
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: but it doesn't have to be a distraction from everything,
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: but it is a like, we're moving on and I'm
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: going to do something else now.
• 55:50
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: Like I, it's funny cause it does feel like, oh,
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: so are, are you guys saying that this is a
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: distraction from Medicaid cuts? And, and I think it's just like, let's,
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: it is not, but I think it's okay to acknowledge
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: like he is moving very quickly and he is doing
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: a lot on multiple fronts, uh, because, uh, he knows
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: that is destabilizing to the people that are trying to
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: fight him. And because he doesn't care about results, he
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: doesn't care about outcomes. He He doesn't care about the
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: consequences of launching so many initiatives, signing so many orders,
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: claiming so many peace plans and processes all at once
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: because he just has to get to the next day.
• 56:26
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: And meanwhile, it's like you do start getting numb to
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: the stories, right? There was an outcry over Abrego Garcia,
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: over Andre Romero Hernandez and Seacott in general. And now,
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: you know, they're out of Seacott and back in Venezuela
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: and The deportations continue and people like legal residents keep
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: getting swept up, you know, torn away from their families.
• 56:51
  Speaker 5: U.S.
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: Citizens, ISIS continuing to like tase and beat people who
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: have not done anything wrong, who are here legally. And
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: it's just like there's so many of the stories you're
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: just like, OK.
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: And I do think like maybe, you know, I think
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: sometimes like we try to figure out like, OK, what
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: is the conversation where there's some like. not to find
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: hope in every terrible fucking story, but more like what's productive, right? Like,
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: how do we be productive?
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: How do we fight this?
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: How do we fight this? And I think, and like,
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: but I do think it's worth acknowledging that part of
• 57:20
  Speaker 2: the challenge is going to be that over time, you know,
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: the reason we were talking about Kilmar Abrego Garcia today
• 57:27
  Speaker 2: is because.
• 57:27
  Speaker 5: Of a victory, right?
• 57:29
  Speaker 2: Because he was brought back and the Trump administration is
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: being fought on that. And the line is holding on
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: that case. Okay. But in the months since he's also
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: unleashed ice across the country. Like we can lose over time,
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: even while racking up these small victories, because this, and
• 57:46
  Speaker 2: this was, we talked about this from the very beginning,
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: which is slowly but surely wins and losses, your baseline
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: moves and the country changes. And like, and it's, I
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: think it's just okay to be honest about the fact
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: that that is a very real threat and more than
• 57:59
  Speaker 2: a threat. It's something we're watching happen, which makes fighting
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: him harder, but is just the reality of it.
• 58:04
  Speaker 3: It's just figuring out what accountability looks like with this
• 58:06
  Speaker 3: guy is so hard because yeah, he takes, it does
• 58:09
  Speaker 3: a million press avails in the oval office. And he, like,
• 58:11
  Speaker 3: he took questions three times today, three separate times today,
• 58:14
  Speaker 3: which is just unheard of for any white house. But
• 58:16
  Speaker 3: the white house is full of like a couple of
• 58:18
  Speaker 3: real reporters. And then like the dumbest people on the planet,
• 58:21
  Speaker 3: like Marjorie Taylor green's boyfriend. And so Trump gets away
• 58:24
  Speaker 3: with just asserting things over and over again, that he's
• 58:26
  Speaker 3: like cutting all these peace deals. And then meanwhile, He
• 58:29
  Speaker 3: has real leverage to force the Israelis to accept a
• 58:32
  Speaker 3: ceasefire proposal from Hamas, and he's not taking it. And
• 58:35
  Speaker 3: he continues to brag about ending a war in the
• 58:39
  Speaker 3: Congo between them and Rwandan-backed rebels. Yet there was a
• 58:43
  Speaker 3: Human Rights Watch report a couple days ago about how
• 58:46
  Speaker 3: the M23 rebels were like the primary group killing people
• 58:51
  Speaker 3: in the region, for lack of a brief version of this.
• 58:54
  Speaker 3: They killed 140 people last month. despite this peace deal
• 58:57
  Speaker 3: Trump brokered? And no one just asked him that question. Hey, sir,
• 59:00
  Speaker 3: I know you just said you just went on for
• 59:02
  Speaker 3: 10 minutes about how, hey, some people think you're racist,
• 59:04
  Speaker 3: but you did this peace deal with Rwanda and Congo,
• 59:07
  Speaker 3: but actually there was a massacre last month. Are you
• 59:09
  Speaker 3: aware of that even? You know, there's just like no journalism.
• 59:11
  Speaker 3: There's no follow-up. There's no accountability in any way. And
• 59:14
  Speaker 3: it's just, I don't know, it's infuriating.
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, when at least half the questions to him are
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: answered by him starting with, oh, I love that question.
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much. What a great question.
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: It's funny though, right? Like it's this, this is like... Yes,
• 59:30
  Speaker 2: he gets ridiculous questions, but he's also taking more questions
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: than any president, like certainly in our lifetimes, right? Like
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: day to day, he takes a ton of questions. So
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: it isn't like, he is getting hard questions mixed in
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: with these ridiculous ones as well, but they can't cover
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: everything because A, some of them are taken up by
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: these other people and B, there's just too many fucking
• 59:53
  Speaker 2: threads to follow on any given day.
• 59:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and they punish the reporters who really go after him.
• 59:57
  Speaker 3: And if you piss him off, He yells at you. Like,
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 3: remember when he screamed at, like, Peter Alexander and told
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 3: him how bad he was? Then he moves on to, again, like,
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 3: Marjorie Taylor Greene's boyfriend.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was going to say, he's taken a lot
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: of questions, but imagine him doing the same thing if
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: the people shouting questions at him were Peter Alexander, Caitlin Collins, Tapper.
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: you know, Chris and Welker, right?
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 2: And they could follow up. Because there are people who
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: are mixed in. Those people are mixed in, but they're
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 2: not coordinated because someone's always ready to come in with
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 2: like a haymaker of like, Mr. President, your skin's never
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: been better. But by the way, though, like Vance is
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: doing the Sunday shows, right? Like there are opportunities to
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: question them. There really are, right? Like they are able
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 2: to do this despite the fact that they do do
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 2: those interviews and like see value in it.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: We haven't even talked about Vance's Welker interview of the
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: full thing, but it is a good example of like,
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: he lies so effortlessly and, but it was, it's also
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: so obvious and such bullshit. But when you feel like
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: you need to cover all the news with him and
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: you only have 20 minutes, 30 minutes, then you just
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: have to move on. And I do miss the, some
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: people did this with Trump once in a while. They're like,
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: all right, we're going to stay on one topic and
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: we're going to get into all your bullshit. And you're not,
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: you're not getting up until we get the right answers.
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: You know, like I, I do think that's a, If
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: I had Vance for a sit down, like that's the strategy.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: I just, I would really want to focus on how
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: he thinks World War II ended.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 3: I know.
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 2: It's fucking nuts. You're a smart guy. What are you
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: talking about?
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: Well, he knows. He's just lying. All right. One last
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: thing that's hopefully a little lighter before we get to
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: the interview. For those of you worried that ICE's big
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: recruitment push means that the masked agents roving your streets
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: might actually be beta lib cucks, Trump announced in the
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: Oval Office today that he's 100% on the case.
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 4: Now, they have to pass a toughness test. If they're
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 4: not tough, we don't want them for this job. They
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 4: might be great for other jobs, but not for this job.
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: One paragon of American toughness is already submitting himself to
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: the rigors of ICE, noted Superman portrayer Dean Cain. If
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: you haven't seen the footage of him doing the obstacle course,
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: please enjoy.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 6: This time, Dean Cain isn't flying there. He's going through
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 6: that obstacle course and training to be an honorary ICE agent.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 6: He was working hard out there. And this is exactly
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 6: what those recruits will do as they're picked one by one.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 6: And they're at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 2: Brunswick, Georgia.
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 3: I love this.
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 4: I love it.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 3: I just love that ICE training is like, okay, grab
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 3: this sex doll and drag it a few feet. Okay,
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 3: now slowly climb through about four feet of pipe. And
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 3: then when you get to this obstacle that you're clearly
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 3: supposed to climb over... Just go through it.
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 2: Slow motion? Here's a crying woman. Yell at her. Tell
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: her it's her fault. Tase her.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: Working hard or hardly working, Dean Cain. That was brutal.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 3: He's running at like 4.9 on a treadmill there. He's
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 3: not moving too fast.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 2: It's been a long time since Lois and Clark. Well,
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: that show's from the 90s.
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: He is not fitting in that uniform.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 2: No, he's not fitting in the tights. I'm not talking
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: about ice. When did Dean Cain play Superman? 1997.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: I looked this up the other day when he first
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: came up. That was the last season of Lois and Clark.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: I love that show. I was gay. Listen, he was hot.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: He was.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 3: Did you guys see Tim Miller on Piers Morgan with
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 3: Dean Cain? It's worth watching because Tim really goes hard
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 3: at him, but Dean Cain gets really, really mad that
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 3: Tim keeps saying, Ice is hiring a bunch of unqualified idiots,
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 3: like former actors.
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: And he gets really mad. And at one point he
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 2: yells at him, and I was a former NFL player.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 3: So I was like, did he play in the NFL?
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 7: Really?
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 3: Apparently Dean Cain was a really good athlete. He played
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 3: at Princeton. He was a defensive back. And then he
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 3: like signed with the Buffalo Bills, but got hurt in
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 3: training camp. But you can't call yourself an NFL player, Dean,
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 3: if you just went to training camp. You got to
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 3: make the 53. Yeah.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: And now he just, just mopes through a ropes course.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: Like what?
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 3: Like being in ice is not a fun job. I
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 3: don't think. Unless you really like to... He's also 59.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 2: Does he want to just go beat up people? What
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 2: does he want to do here? That's the problem with
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 2: who they're recruiting. Do we need a bunch of libs
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: to go sign up for ICE?
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 4: Maybe.
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: Probably not. You can be as young as 18. You
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: can be as old as 60. They've changed the age limits.
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: They're paying you money. They're forgiving your college loans. They've
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: cut the... The Wall Street Journal went and did a
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: story where they watched ice training for six hours. And
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: one thing they noticed is they've cut the training time
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: from 16 weeks to eight weeks. And basically it's people
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: who've never, you know, fired a gun before, had a
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: gun before. And they're just like eight weeks of training.
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: We're going to give you a gun. We're just going
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: to send you out there.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 3: Crawl through that pipe.
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: Crawl through that pipe. It doesn't matter how fast.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 3: Use your badge.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: You have a week to crawl through the pipe.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 5: Remember G.I.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 2: Jane when, uh, like G.I. Jane refused to go along
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 2: with the lower standards, uh, So she kicked the stool
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 2: out of the way because she was going to hop
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 2: the wall, the full wall.
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: I only remember Demi Moore shaving her head.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 3: That was it. That was like a controversy, right? Yeah.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 2: There was controversy around G.I.
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: Jane.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 2: That's when he was playing Superman.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: I was going to say, Lois and Clark, G.I. Jane,
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: Bill Clinton was president.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 3: Dean Cain was also in Beverly Hills 90210 at some point.
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 5: Really?
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 3: So says my GPT. I just checked that.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 2: Dean Cain.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: Your GPT took a break from worrying about fascism.
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 5: Yeah. Anyway. Anyway.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 3: Good guy.
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 5: All right.
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: We're going to take a quick break. But two announcements
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: before we do that. The newest season of Crooked's award-winning
• 1:05:20
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• 1:05:28
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• 1:05:34
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• 1:05:37
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• 1:05:39
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• 1:05:41
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• 1:05:44
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• 1:08:16
  Speaker 2: On Friday night, amid an epic news dump, Donald Trump
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 2: praised Intel and its CEO while announcing that the U.S.
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 2: government had just taken a 10% stake in the American
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 2: chip manufacturer mere days after calling for that same CEO
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 2: to resign immediately over his supposed ties to China. Joining
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 2: me now to help figure out what the heck is
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 2: going on here is James Sirwicki, who writes about economics
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 2: for The Atlantic and Fast Company and who's been covering
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 2: finance and business for decades. James, thanks for being here.
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 5: Thanks for having me on.
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: Let's just start with this. Can you just walk us
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 2: up to the investment to understand what kind of position
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 2: Intel was in and what the challenges were that it
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 2: was grappling with?
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 5: So Intel is... obviously the biggest American chip manufacturer. That
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 5: is to say, they make chips in the United States.
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 5: And you're all familiar with Intel Inside. They built an
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 5: enormously successful business primarily by providing chips for computers, PCs,
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 5: and the like. But over the last, I don't know,
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 5: let's say decade, 15 years, let's say the last decade,
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 5: they have really run into trouble because they are not
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 5: making the kind of GPUs, the general processing units that
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 5: companies like NVIDIA and AMD, advanced micro devices, make that
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 5: are powering things like artificial intelligence and the like. So, uh,
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 5: Intel is Ben, uh, trying to sort of recapture a
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 5: part of that market and to become essentially what it
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 5: once was. And it's invested a huge amount of money.
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 5: I mean, I can't remember the number exactly, but it's
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 5: something like $ 109 billion that it put into capital expenditures
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 5: over the last five or 10 years. But, um, but
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 5: it's been struggling and this has been an issue for
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 5: obviously for Intel shareholders. And I think also it became
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 5: an issue for a lot of American policymakers who saw
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 5: it as a problem that America would not have a
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 5: chip manufacturer that was making chips in the United States.
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 5: And so as part of the CHIPS Act, which was
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 5: passed under the Biden administration, the point of the CHIPS
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 5: Act was to subsidize chip manufacturing in the US, not
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 5: just for Intel, but for other companies as well. But
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 5: Intel was going to be one of the chief beneficiaries
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 5: of this. And so that's kind of where we stood
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 5: as of, I don't know, let's say a week ago.
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 5: The other thing that's worth mentioning is you talked about
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 5: the CEO. He's a new CEO who was essentially hired
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 5: to replace the previous CEO who, you know, was basically
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 5: let go because the company, while spending huge amounts of money,
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 5: was not really delivering on the profit front, which is
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 5: obviously what shareholders care about.
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 2: So Intel isn't making the right chips. Like if you
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 2: want to make a fake photo with seven boobs on
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 2: a beautiful woman, 25 fingers, their chips don't do it.
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 2: So they're in trouble, but they're about to get a
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 2: bunch of money through a law passed by Congress, uh,
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 2: through the chips acts, uh, a bunch of many billions
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 2: of dollars.
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 2: In a bill that Trump hates because the Biden bill.
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 2: It's in that context that, uh, Trump calls for the
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 2: CEO to resign. Then there's a meeting at the White
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 2: House between the CEO and several members of the administration.
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 2: The tone becomes much more conciliatory. And then a few
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 2: days after that, we get this announcement. Trump is saying,
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 2: great news. I just got a 10% stake in Intel
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 2: and it cost us nothing. What was your reaction to that?
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 2: And what have you learned about it? What is this?
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 5: So there are a couple of things to keep in
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 5: mind here. The first thing is that this is actually
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 5: one case where Trump, I think, is actually telling the truth.
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 5: So when Intel, in its press release announcing the deal,
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 5: Intel sort of tried to frame it or sort of
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 5: fudge it and make it sound as if the United
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 5: States was putting new money into the company in exchange
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 5: for this stake. Because, you know, what the U.S. government
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 5: is basically doing is it's essentially taking 10, it's 9.9
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 5: percent of Intel.
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 2: The U.S.
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 5: Government is going to own almost 10% of one of
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 5: the most important companies, arguably, certainly historically, one of the
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 5: most important companies in America. This is incredibly unprecedented. There
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 5: have definitely been times where the U.S. government has taken stakes,
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 5: most obviously in 2008 during TARP, but they typically, in fact,
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 5: maybe have always come in times of crisis where the
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 5: companies were Either we had a broader financial crisis where
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 5: the company was really struggling. Intel's struggling, but it's still
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 5: worth $ 100 billion. It's not on the verge of going under.
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 5: So this was a really startling thing. And basically what
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 5: I think the way to think about it is basically
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 5: Trump and Howard Lutnick, who's the Commerce Secretary and has
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 5: become sort of Trump's kind of fellow dealmaker. Effectively, I
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 5: think Intel was coerced. into giving the government roughly 10
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 5: percent of the company in exchange for those chipset grants
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 5: that effectively it was already supposed to get. And the
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 5: idea is like we are going to release these grants
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 5: to you. We will give them to you, but only
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 5: in exchange for 10 percent of the company.
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 2: So this is what's so strange to me about this.
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 2: Howard Ludnick and the CEO basically a hostage video where
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 2: they say, hey, he doesn't even need this money, but
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 2: it's great that he's getting it. We're so happy to
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 2: be working together, whatever that means. The CEO makes a
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 2: kind of unctuous statement of we're going to make Intel
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 2: great again, which made me want to barf. And none
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 2: of it really computes, even on its own terms, right?
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 2: Because as you said, Intel's not about to go under.
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 2: It's a massive company. It's been able to get the
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 2: financing to put in 10 times that amount of money
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 2: into its own growth. If it wants to sell 10 percent,
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 2: a 10 percent stake, it doesn't need to give the U.S.
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 2: government a discount on 50 million shares. It can just
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 2: it can it can get the financing through a loan.
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 2: It can do it in a hundred different ways that
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 2: don't involve giving the U.S. government a stake. So what
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 2: exactly is Trump like? What do you believe is actually
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 2: causing this if it's not just this pool of money
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 2: from the CHIPS Act?
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 5: Well, I think the pool of money is important. I
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 5: think Intel does want it. And I think, as you said,
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 5: I think that video is very, very odd because and
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 5: it's worth watching. It's only a couple of minutes long
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 5: because the Intel CEO says we didn't even really want
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 5: this money or need it. And then Lutnik says, yeah,
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 5: they told me they didn't even want it, but they
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 5: decided to basically take it in exchange for 10 percent
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 5: of the equity. you know, because it was fair. And
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 5: I'm like, wait, what if they didn't want the money
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 5: or need it? Why would they give you 10% of
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 5: the equity? So I think there are a couple of things.
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 5: I think, you know, they wanted the money. I thought
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 5: the money, the money was, was, is useful to them. Uh,
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 5: and in, in putting more money into their businesses or whatever,
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 5: some of the money, interestingly, was, uh, was originally from
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 5: the chips act. And then it recently got diverted into
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 5: this uh, somewhat odd secretive defense program called secure enclave
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 5: where Intel is the exclusive provider of chips to this,
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 5: do this thing that we don't know what they're doing. Uh,
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 5: but that money was originally from the chips act. So
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 5: it's basically all chips act money. So I think that
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 5: was it. I also say this is entirely speculative, but, um,
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 5: I think it's probably not a coincidence that Trump went
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 5: from saying the CEO was going to be fired, should
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 5: be fired to, you know, 10 days later, the CEO
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 5: being like, Oh, you know, we're going to work together
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 5: and the like. And so I think it's, it would
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 5: not be surprising that there was a connection between those things.
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 5: And let me just say one other thing, which is
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 5: connected to what you said. The, the video is, kind
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 5: of embodies this thing that we've seen over the last
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 5: few months, which is CEOs basically kowtowing to Trump. You know,
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 5: we saw Tim Cook do it. We've seen other CEOs
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 5: do it as well. There is something about it that
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 5: just feels just like creepy. And it really does feel like,
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 5: you know, this is the kind of extreme version of it,
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 5: where it's not just that the CEO is sort of
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 5: paying obeisance to Trump. It's that he's actually giving Trump
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 5: 10 percent of the company in order to kind of
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 5: keep things copacetic between them.
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 2: Right, that it's sort of a, well, that's what I'm
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 2: getting at here too, which is, okay, fine, sure, of
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 2: course they want the money, but this is about more
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 2: than that. This is about seeing value in a good
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 2: relationship with Trump for a bunch of future business reasons
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 2: that they may know about or may anticipate. This is
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 2: also not rooted in law at all. Like there's no, right?
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 2: Like there's no, the Chibs Act did not make any
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 2: sense claims about the investment for equity, that Congress has
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 2: not passed any kind of law for how we hold stocks.
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 2: We don't have a sovereign wealth fund, though Trump claims to.
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 2: He wanted to create one. Lutnick is out there saying
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 2: this is a down payment on a sovereign wealth fund. Now,
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 2: I've seen some people try to defend this and say,
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 2: you're just a bunch of liberal idiots because you're going
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 2: to turn down, you like the old way where we
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 2: just gave companies money? We've been doing Tesla. We've been
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 2: doing all kinds of things to help our industries. Why
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 2: doesn't Uncle Sam get his beak wet? Why can't we
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 2: get a taste of it? Can you just talk about, like,
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 2: what is your reaction to that argument? Like, why are
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 2: you so offended by this? It's just a good deal
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 2: for America.
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 5: There are a couple aspects of it. I mean, I
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 5: think it's true. I assume there are people on the
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 5: left in particular who are perfectly happy to see, you know,
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 5: this company kind of a big company called on the
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 5: carpet by the government and handing, having to hand over
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 5: money from my perspective, I think there are a bunch
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 5: of problems with it. Um, the first is just the
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 5: obvious problem of having the government be a major player
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 5: in any business, right? Which is that, uh, it means
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 5: that the government is invested in that business's wellbeing, which
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 5: that means then means that the government may look out
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 5: for that company. It may cut it some extra deals.
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 5: It may make it easier for that company to find customers.
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 5: It may, uh, do business with that company in a
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 5: way that it would otherwise wouldn't do because it doesn't
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 5: want the value of its state. to drop. Alternatively, it's
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 5: also the case that the company now has to think
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 5: about the government, right? Because in theory, as you said,
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 5: I have no idea. We have no idea how this
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 5: thing is going to be structured or what rules are
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 5: going to, uh, govern it. But, um, in principle, it
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 5: seems like, you know, Howard Lutton, it could decide tomorrow.
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 5: He was just going to sell the stake, right? Which
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 5: would crater the Intel stock price. So Intel is going
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 5: to have to like worry about, well, how do I
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 5: make the government happy? If I'm, you know, building a
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 5: new chip fabricating plant, do I have to put it
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 5: in a place that the president will, will make the
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 5: president happy or we'll make the next president happy or
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 5: whatever it is. So those things I think are all
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 5: really problematic. And then I think what follows from that
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 5: is that other companies, Intel's competitors are going to have
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 5: to start thinking like, Oh God, do I have to
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 5: make a deal with the president now so that I
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 5: don't get screwed over on tariffs or, you know, the
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 5: government doesn't come down on us in some way or another.
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 5: You know, they're basically competing to one degree or another
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 5: against the government now. And so in that sense, I
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 5: think this kind of thing feeds on itself and creates
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 5: a sort of model where companies are just having to
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 5: constantly pay too much attention to what the government is doing.
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 5: There's one other aspect of this that I think people
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 5: maybe don't really, haven't really followed. And that is that
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 5: Taking equity actually defeats the purpose of the subsidy. Like
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 5: the point of the subsidy was that we wanted to
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 5: incentivize chip production in the United States because we thought
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 5: for economic and national security reasons, it was important for
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 5: companies to invest here in the United States. Well, the
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 5: point of the subsidy is like, we're going to reap
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 5: all these benefits, social and economic benefits. So we're going
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 5: to in effect subsidize, help subsidize the production. But if
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 5: I'm exchanging, if I'm demanding the total value of that,
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 5: and actually a little bit more than that in equity,
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 5: there is no subsidy. And so now companies, if we,
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 5: you know, have another subsidy program, companies are going to
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 5: have to say to themselves, I don't know, do I
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 5: want to do this? Because if I do it, what's
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 5: going to happen? Is someone going to come to me
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 5: a year from now and demand 10% of my company
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 5: in exchange? And so I think it makes even that
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 5: kind of policy less effective than it would otherwise be.
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 2: It gets at how the, the way Trump does business
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 2: is actually not beside the point, right? There are many
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 2: objections to sovereign wealth funds, right? Norway, I believe, has one.
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 2: And as a point, I'm not sure how ironclad this
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 2: rule is, but it invests outside of Norway, right? It
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 2: invests outside of the country to avoid the influence of
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 2: politics domestically, even if the United States created a sovereign
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 2: wealth fund, which would be quite silly given that we
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 2: have a massive fucking debt, right? We don't have, we're not,
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 2: we don't have a surplus of oil wealth, but even
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 2: if we did, there'll be all kinds of questions about, uh, uh,
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 2: the benefit to taxpayers, the way it distorts the market,
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 2: the influence of politics, all of those would be questions.
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 2: This is being done lawlessly, which means companies have no
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 2: idea when Donald Trump will come knocking, which is, I
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 2: think like you describe it as creepy. It's un-American. to
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 2: have CEOs showing up at the White House with baubles
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 2: and pledging their fealty and using his slogan. But it
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 2: speaks to me about how dangerous this is. And I'm
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 2: wondering if you're surprised at all by how, first of all,
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 2: how obedient these titans of industry have been and why
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 2: there isn't any more of a kind of collective response
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 2: from corporate America about how obviously stupid this will be
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 2: in the long run for them to go along with it?
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 5: Uh, I think it, I think the reason, I think
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 5: the fact that there has been no collective corporate response
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 5: speaks to some degree to the fact that, uh, there
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 5: is no easy mechanism for corporations to kind of work together.
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 5: I mean, I guess, you know, there are organizations like
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 5: the business round table, whatever, but I think that each
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 5: company is essentially trying to like look out for itself
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 5: And in doing so, the idea of a collective response
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 5: just becomes kind of hard to pull off. But I
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 5: think the bigger problem here is the one you kind
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 5: of pointed to, which is this is the way Trump
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 5: is basically running the economy, right? He's running it as
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 5: essentially a tool of his own personal interests, right? Not personal,
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 5: like necessarily enriching himself, but it's just, he's like, I love,
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 5: he loves tariffs. So he's imposing all these tariffs, companies,
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 5: are essentially going along with it until they, I'm sure
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 5: they're hoping the Supreme court will, will overturn them. But
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 5: if the Supreme court doesn't do that, then they'll just
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 5: have to find ways to work around it. And I
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 5: think it is, uh, un-American is, I think actually the
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 5: right word. I mean, you know, the American economy was real, look,
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 5: the government plays a role, big role in the economy,
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 5: but I think the American economy was really built on
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 5: the principle that you don't want government picking winners and
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 5: losers and certainly don't want, don't want it picking winners
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 5: and losers in this dramatic of fashion. And so I
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 5: think the fact that, um, you know, companies are going
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 5: along with it is, I think a lot of them
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 5: just don't know what to do at this point. Um, and,
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 5: and are, uh, trying to figure out how can I
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 5: kind of manage this problem without actually kind of wrecking
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 5: my business. And that's, I think where they are at
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 5: the moment.
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 2: So as, uh, certainly members of the administration have now
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 2: been out there saying this is going to be the
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 2: first of many deals, the, um, uh, tick tock, which
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 2: is continuing to function completely outside of the law. ties
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 2: into this because Trump talked about the US taking a
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 2: stake in TikTok. Can you just talk about what happens next?
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 2: And then a little bit also like about Republicans who
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 2: I'm old enough to remember when Republicans thought seizing the
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 2: means of production was a problem.
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 5: I mean, I think the overarching problem here is really
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 5: this question you've kind of mentioned a few times, which
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 5: is lawlessness, right? I mean, Trump is doing all of
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 5: this stuff effectively without any statutory and certainly without any
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 5: constitutional justification. I mean, there's just nothing that really authorizes
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 5: him to do, to do what he's doing. And that applies,
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 5: I would argue, not just to, uh, you know, taking
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 5: this 10% stake in Intel, but it also applies to
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 5: his entire tariff policy, right? All of which is effectively
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 5: conjured to a large extent, I think out of, um,
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 5: out of thin air. And, and I think the, the
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 5: real player here who has been totally silent, um, is Congress.
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 5: So you have plenty of Republican, let's say not Republicans,
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 5: but sort of libertarians who have been, you know, invading
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 5: against the tariffs and certainly are invading against this. Um,
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 5: the Cato Institute has been excellent on these issues all
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 5: the way through. Um, but Republicans in Congress are just
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 5: happily going along with this both or quietly going along
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 5: with it, at least both on the terror front and,
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 5: and on this. And, um, and I think until, uh,
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 5: they stand up and I don't imagine them standing up.
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 5: It's really hard to imagine anyone, uh, other than the
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 5: Supreme court, uh, stopping Trump and Lutnick from doing this.
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 5: You know, I mean, Lutnick is just, this is just
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 5: the way at Lutnick, I think is just completely in,
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 5: they're just indifferent to the idea of like, yeah, you can't,
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 5: they're just indifferent to it. It's like, you can't do this.
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 5: Like why, why can't we do it? We're just going
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 5: to do it. It's a great idea. And you're like,
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 5: but you don't have any, you have no legal justification
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 5: or tools for doing this. It doesn't matter.
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 2: It's the, the, It's so, uh, like the amount of
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 2: sway lawyers have in democratic and previous Republican administrations, I
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 2: think would shock. It would shock you if you compared
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 2: it to what's happening here. Is there like, do Intel
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 2: shareholders have any claim here? Because they were entitled, the
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 2: Congress passed the money, caught the money was entitled until
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 2: was Intel was going to get the money and Trump
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 2: interferes and then demands shares at a discount. They have
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 2: to have some claim to something here, right? Yeah.
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 5: I mean, I assume Intel shareholders, some Intel shareholders will
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 5: sue because, you know, effectively their stake was diluted by 10%.
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 5: I mean, Intel again is trying to claim that no, no, no.
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 5: The money, you know, was, was, was injected into the
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 5: company and it's like, no, come on, you were supposed
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 5: to get this money. It was all set.
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 2: Cause Intel still has lawyers. Cause Intel's in, there's still
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 2: lawyers with some sway over there at the chip place.
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 5: And so I assume Intel shareholders will sue. I think
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 5: the problem is that it may well run into the
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 5: business rule, business judgment rule, where the board will say,
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 5: we really thought this was in the best interest of
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 5: the company. And so therefore, you have to go with
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 5: us and trust what we did. Now, I find that
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 5: I'm very skeptical of that, but there's a lot of
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 5: deference to boards of directors in corporate law.
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 2: But how can you claim it is in the interest
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 2: of Intel to do this without basically saying it's a
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 2: bribe because we did it because we think giving Trump
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 2: this month, this, this stock will produce ancillary benefits outside
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 2: of this deal. Because as you point out, the stock
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 2: is worth more than the, the 8 billion or 9
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 2: billion that's going to come via the chips act. So
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 2: they have to come out there and say, giving Trump
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 2: equity will produce a benefit. I like, there's no, I
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 2: don't understand, or, you know, well, I'm not, I'm not
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 2: as good as their lawyers, but, but that to me
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 2: is the first assumption.
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 5: No, I mean, I think that's true because even if
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 5: I'm sure, you know, Intel will try to argue or
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 5: will argue that the chips act grants. Well, in theory
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 5: there was, you know, the commerce department could have turned
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 5: them down or rejected us, blah, blah, blah, blah. But
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 5: even if you accept all that, as you said, or
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 5: I guess as I said, There's a gap between the
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 5: value of the equity that Intel gave up and the
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 5: total amount of money that they were going to get
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 5: from the government. And that is basically just a gift.
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 5: I mean, it's just a gift. That's all it is.
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 5: And so trying to explain to courts why they gave
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 5: that gift. Yeah, I'm sure it will. They will have
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 5: to construct some argument about, you know, the future value
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 5: of the relation. It'll be really interesting to see, um,
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 5: if this goes to court, if they actually try to
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 5: make a, an argument along those lines. Um, because it
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 5: does feel like that's basically what happened here. I mean,
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 5: obviously the CEO can't say I didn't want to get fired,
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 5: so they will have to come up with some other
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 5: explanation for it.
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 2: But then that raises, anyway, but that raises all like
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 2: his personal interest is different than that of the shareholders.
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 2: He has an obligation to shareholders that's called into question
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 2: by this too.
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 5: Totally.
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 2: Anyway, tough year for the wisdom of crowds, James.
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 5: Well, tough year for at least the, the, the, the
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 5: part of the crowd that voted for Trump.
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 5: Tough, tough, tough.
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 2: Uh, the James wrote a book called the wisdoms of Krause.
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 2: It was a hit in case you didn't keep up. James,
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 2: any final thoughts on this? Uh, do you think we
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 2: should get a stake in Tik TOK as Americans? Do you,
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 2: are you enjoying the experience of being an Intel shareholder?
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 5: Uh, no, I'm not an Intel shareholder, but I, I, I,
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 5: the one.
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 2: That you are, presumably you're a taxpayer.
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 5: I guess I am now. I will be soon. But
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 5: what I will say about that, actually, let me say
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 5: one thing about that, uh, which is part and parcel
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 5: of this whole thing. To me, one of the most
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 5: frustrating things about this beyond the lawlessness and the, the
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 5: indifference to react to, to any kind of sense of,
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 5: of the rule of law is simply the fact that
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 5: they tell us nothing. So it like a good example
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 5: of it, this is one version of it, right? We
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 5: don't know how it's going to be structured. We don't
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 5: know whether there'll be any rules on what we can
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 5: do with this, what Lutnik can do with the state,
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 5: but go back to Lutnik story about the $ 600 billion
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 5: or whatever it was that Japan and South Korea were
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 5: supposed to put in, are going to put into the
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 5: United States as part of these trade deals. We have
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 5: seen nothing. There's literally no paperwork. We have no idea
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 5: what it is. Lutnick said that the president was going
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 5: to be able to invest that money at his discretion. Again,
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 5: totally unconstitutional, no statutory justification for it. But set all
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 5: that aside, we don't know what it looks like. It's
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 5: just something that these guys are telling us, and we're
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 5: supposed to just go along and be like, okay, I
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 5: guess that's the way things are. I mean, it really
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 5: is extraordinary to me how indifferent to the law they are.
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 2: And, and, and by the way, that is the experience
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 2: of trying to understand what's going on in some of
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 2: these arrangements that also had to do with that soft
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 2: bank announcement, all these different announcements. You, you, you come
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 2: into it and you say, have I just missed the brief?
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 2: Did I miss the memo? Have I missed the documentation
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 2: or is there really just nothing?
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 5: And it feels like there's nothing. I mean, you know,
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 5: I mean, let Nick was on TV the other day
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 5: and he said he was talking about, I think I
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 5: can't remember what agreements he was like, well, it's not
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 5: like you're going to get a 250 page trade agreement
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 5: or anything. I was like, why not? We're not going
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 5: to see what it looks like.
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 2: Well, and again, like we, and, and given that they
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 2: are doing this outside of Congress, presumably they would have
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 2: some sort of sense of propriety to say, yes, this
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 2: is outside of Congress. We're going to actually create a
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 2: process to help you understand what's going on because there
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 2: is no law about what happens when treasury seizes stock
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 2: from Intel. Where does it go? Where do we hold?
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 2: Where is it going to go? And are we opening
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 2: a Vanguard?
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 5: Yeah. who's managing it? Like, I mean, literally can Howard
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 5: Lutnick wake up, you know, a month from now and
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 5: be like, you know what, this is terrible. I'm just
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 5: going to sell it. I mean, can he do that?
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 5: I have no idea. Uh, and it is quite extraordinary
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 5: that they, they just don't care. I mean, you know,
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 5: it's the, that sort of recurring motto about, about Trump
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 5: is like, nobody cares. And it just feels like, I
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 5: don't know. Everyone's like, all right, I guess that's just
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 5: how it is. Everybody except us.
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 2: But we care and other people listening care.
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 2: And that's, that's a good, that's, that's where we'll have
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 2: to start.
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 5: We have to start.
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 2: James Cerwicki, thank you so much for your time.
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: Good talking to you.
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 5: Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 1: That's our show for today. Dan and I will be
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: back with a new show on Friday. Talk to everybody then.
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 2: You guys are going to burn the flag, right?
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 3: Did you guys see that the White House tweeted a
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 3: Kilmar Abrego Garcia photo that is the Shepard Fairey with
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 3: MS-13 with the Obama logo on it? Oh, I knew they.
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: I thought they had done that way back when it
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: was the first story, but yeah, they're... Why'd.
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 2: They leave the logo on?
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 7: I don't know.
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 3: It's sick. To send a message. To us.
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: Anyhow. Message received.
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 3: Thank you.
• 1:32:49
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