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Trump Promises Free Speech Crackdown · Pod Save America

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• 1:24
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: I'm Jon Lovett.
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: On today's show, we're going to talk about a possible U.S.-China
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: deal to save TikTok. Woo, thank God. Trump's war on
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  Speaker 2: the legacy media and the split among New York Democrats
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: over endorsing the party's nominee for mayor, Zoran Mamdani. Then
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: Lovett talks to Senator Chris Murphy about his latest warning that, quote,
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: something dark might be coming. No shit. Speaking of which,
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  Speaker 2: let's start with the fallout from the assassination of Charlie Kirk,
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: which right now is the central focus of the president,
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: the White House, the Republican Party. right-wing media, and the
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  Speaker 2: MAGA movement. The suspected killer is set to be charged
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  Speaker 2: in court on Tuesday. More on that in a bit.
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  Speaker 2: But before the FBI had any idea who killed Kirk
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  Speaker 2: or why, Trump promised to go after any organization that
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  Speaker 2: has contributed to any of what he calls, quote, radical
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  Speaker 2: left political violence. What does he mean by that? We
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: still don't know for sure, but Trump has expanded on
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: his remarks. He did it over the weekend and then
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  Speaker 2: in the Oval Office on Monday afternoon, as did Stephen
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  Speaker 2: Miller on Monday when he appeared on Charlie Kirk's show,
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  Speaker 2: which was guest hosted by Vice President J.D.
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  Speaker 3: Vance. Let's listen.
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  Speaker 1: Well, the problem is on the left.
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  Speaker 4: If you look at the problem, the problem is on
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  Speaker 4: the left. It's not on the right, like some people
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  Speaker 4: like to say.
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  Speaker 3: On the right. The problem we have is on the left.
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  Speaker 5: They're already under major investigation. A lot of the people
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  Speaker 5: that you would traditionally say are on the left.
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  Speaker 3: They're already under investigation?
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  Speaker 5: Already under investigation.
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  Speaker 4: With God as my witness, we are going to use
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  Speaker 4: every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security,
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  Speaker 4: and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle, and destroy
• 2:55
  Speaker 4: these networks and make America safe again for the American people.
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  Speaker 4: It will happen, and we will do it in Charlie's name.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: Do you plan on designating Antifa, finally, a domestic terror organization?
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  Speaker 5: I would do that 100%, and others also, by the way,
• 3:08
  Speaker 5: but Antifa.
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  Speaker 3: It's terrible.
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  Speaker 5: We have some pretty radical groups and they got away
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  Speaker 5: with murder. And also, I've been speaking to the attorney
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  Speaker 5: general about bringing RICO against some of the people that
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  Speaker 5: you've been reading about that have been putting up millions
• 3:23
  Speaker 5: and millions of dollars for agitation.
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  Speaker 3: These aren't protests. These are crimes, what they're doing.
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  Speaker 2: Still kind of vague, still very terrifying. Two senior administration
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  Speaker 2: officials told the New York Times on Monday they're working
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  Speaker 2: to identify organizations that funded or supported violence against conservatives.
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  Speaker 2: The goal, they said, was to categorize left-wing activity that
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: led to violence as domestic terrorism. What's been your reaction
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: to the threats coming out of the administration? Tommy?
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  Speaker 3: My takeaway watching that whole live stream was Stephen Miller, J.D. Vance,
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  Speaker 3: like a lot of the MAGA world, they're seething. They're
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  Speaker 3: seething with rage and they're looking to punish people. a
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  Speaker 3: big group of people well beyond this sick individual that
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  Speaker 3: murdered Charlie Kirk. And I think on a human level,
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  Speaker 3: I like, I get their rage. If someone shot one
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  Speaker 3: of you guys, I would be raging too. But I think, um,
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  Speaker 3: everyone should watch JD Vance's like full closing statement on
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  Speaker 3: Charlie Kirk's show today, because I think it gives you
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  Speaker 3: the full roadmap for what's coming down the pike. So
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  Speaker 3: Vance starts by being talked about this article in the
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: nation that he says took Charlie Kirk out of context
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  Speaker 3: and was not just unfair, but he claims was an
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: attempt to justify Charlie Kirk's murder. which is absolutely not true.
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  Speaker 3: Like I read the article, it was extremely harsh. There
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: was a correction appended, so clearly they got something wrong.
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  Speaker 3: But like the article concludes, I won't celebrate his death,
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: but I'm not obligated to celebrate his life either. It's
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  Speaker 3: clearly not justifying his murder. But Vance kind of, he
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  Speaker 3: builds his outrage to this one article into a bigger
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  Speaker 3: argument against what he calls a pyramid or structure that
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  Speaker 3: includes donors, activists, journalists, and politicians, so the big group
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: of people. And then he says, asserts as a fact that,
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  Speaker 3: based on some polling that I'm not really sure where
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  Speaker 3: he's pulling it from, that liberals are the real problem
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  Speaker 3: when it comes to political violence because liberals believe it's okay.
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  Speaker 2: It was a single YouGov online poll that came out
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  Speaker 2: the day after the assassination.
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  Speaker 3: Oh, good. Okay.
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  Speaker 2: So just classic, just very strong data set from one
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  Speaker 2: online poll.
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  Speaker 3: Got it.
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  Speaker 2: Fielded the night after the assassination. Oh, good. Okay. So
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  Speaker 2: that usually works out.
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  Speaker 3: Gold standard.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: So then he ties together not just actually violent people,
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  Speaker 3: but also someone who yelled rude things at him and
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  Speaker 3: his family when they were at Disneyland. And then people
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  Speaker 3: who Vance says have lied about Charlie Kirk. And it
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  Speaker 3: builds to him saying there can be no unity with
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  Speaker 3: people who fund these articles or pay the salaries of
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  Speaker 3: what he calls terrorist sympathizers. So my takeaway was they're
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  Speaker 3: going to go after these media organizations who write things
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  Speaker 3: they don't like. They're going to go after the tax
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  Speaker 3: exempt status of progressive foundations that fund organizations they don't like,
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  Speaker 3: including the media. They're going to organize the mob to
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  Speaker 3: cancel random people who say terrible things on the internet.
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  Speaker 3: And they don't care that it's all kind of antithetical
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  Speaker 3: to the principles of free speech that Charlie Kirk talked about,
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  Speaker 3: or all the anger and frustration at cancel culture that
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  Speaker 3: we've heard over the years, including at TPUSA events. And again,
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  Speaker 3: they refer to these groups as terrorist organizations, which to
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  Speaker 3: me is very significant in the wake of the administration
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  Speaker 3: just deciding that it can murder suspected drug dealers because
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  Speaker 3: they've been designated a terrorist organization by the White House,
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  Speaker 3: including a second military strike on a boat today.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I watched the whole thing too. And one thing
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  Speaker 1: I think was worth watching it in full too is
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: because you see lots of clips of it going around, right?
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  Speaker 1: But you would never know that inside of what he
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  Speaker 1: said is he actually does acknowledge that he received a
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  Speaker 1: lot of personal notes from Democratic friends and former Senate colleagues.
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  Speaker 1: And he makes a point of saying that the vast
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  Speaker 1: majority of Democrats do not condone political violence. But it's
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  Speaker 1: almost an aside to get to his main point, which
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  Speaker 1: is the crackdown. He doesn't see saying that as a
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  Speaker 1: kind of, I don't know, entree into a better kind
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  Speaker 1: of conversation that recognizes that this is not a partisan problem, right?
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  Speaker 1: Like he's referring to a single study that shows Democrats
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  Speaker 1: are more accepting or tolerant of political violence. Meanwhile, Cato
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  Speaker 1: Institute is not exactly a left-wing organization, looks at the
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  Speaker 1: data and shows that that right-wing, actual right-wing murder and
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  Speaker 1: mayhem is tilted towards towards the right. But even in this,
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  Speaker 1: there's this competition to prove that it's a problem of
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  Speaker 1: the left or a problem of the right. And meanwhile,
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: you have a set of political assassinations and attacks. They
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  Speaker 1: are clearly run the gamut across the ideological spectrum. We've
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  Speaker 1: seen all kinds of attacks on Democrats. We've seen two
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  Speaker 1: attempts on Trump, this.
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  Speaker 3: Murder of Charlie Kirk.
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  Speaker 1: There are also mass shootings that are similar in that
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  Speaker 1: these are all people wanting to go out in some
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  Speaker 1: kind of a blaze of glory, the ideology of which is,
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  Speaker 1: if it's legible at all is often incomprehensible and strange
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  Speaker 1: and deranged. And it's all along a kind of smooth
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  Speaker 1: curve of motivations. And you look at it and you say, okay,
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  Speaker 1: we do have a really serious problem. And to understand
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  Speaker 1: it requires not looking at it with this political valence
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  Speaker 1: of trying to compete to which side is going to
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  Speaker 1: own most of it. And meanwhile, we have this toxic
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  Speaker 1: political culture that That he is, of course, contributing to
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  Speaker 1: by saying they're going to target the broad left and
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  Speaker 1: foundations because there was an article in The Nation he
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  Speaker 1: didn't like, an article nobody read.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, he said at one point, it's a statistical fact
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  Speaker 2: that most of the lunatics in American politics today are
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  Speaker 2: proud members of the far left. That is not a
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  Speaker 2: statistical fact. The fact that the vice president of the
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  Speaker 2: United States is saying that is just unbelievably irresponsible. You know,
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  Speaker 2: we mentioned there's like a YouGov poll. There's also a
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  Speaker 2: huge poll, large sample from earlier in the Trump administration,
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  Speaker 2: March or April, has the ideology of killers. Like 20%
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  Speaker 2: of Trump supporters agree that Americans may have to resort
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  Speaker 2: to violence to save the country. 10% of people who
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  Speaker 2: don't like Trump agree with that. The Anti-Defamation League, which,
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  Speaker 2: as you know, is not some liberal bastion these days.
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  Speaker 2: you know, has data from 2013 to 2022, overwhelmingly right-wing
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  Speaker 2: instances of violence. The FBI's own statistics, DHS own statistics.
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  Speaker 2: Like it's not, and again, this is not to say that,
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  Speaker 2: you know, left-wing political violence to the extent that it
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  Speaker 2: happens is not a huge fucking problem, but like the
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  Speaker 2: statistics tell a very different story. And at the least,
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  Speaker 2: maybe if you're the vice president of the United States
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  Speaker 2: and you're trying to bring the country together, you don't
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  Speaker 2: just jump up there like you're a poster on social
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  Speaker 2: media and and decide to lay it all at the
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  Speaker 2: feet of the left incorrectly.
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  Speaker 3: And two little things on that. I mean, one, I
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  Speaker 3: think broad-based, you can ask people, like, do you support
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  Speaker 3: violence to advance some political agenda? They might say yes.
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  Speaker 3: When you get more specific, okay, would you support assassination?
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  Speaker 3: Would you support physically harmed? The numbers go way down
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  Speaker 3: to them.
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  Speaker 2: It's like 7% or something?
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: Again, it's too many, but it's small. And then also,
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: the most important thing, though, I think when you look
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: at kind of the body of research, studies find that
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: Americans are more likely to support political violence if they
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: think the other side also holds those views. So if
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  Speaker 3: one party says they're coming for us, it's only a
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  Speaker 3: matter of time, that is going to lead that party
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  Speaker 3: that feels attacked to support political violence. So that's why
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  Speaker 3: JD Vance and Trump's message and Stephen Miller's message of like,
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  Speaker 3: rejecting unity and targeting the other side before they get
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  Speaker 3: us is quite scary and dangerous.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's from that G. Eliot Morris has a subsect
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  Speaker 2: about that, which I really would encourage everyone to read
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  Speaker 2: because there's an actionable item out of it, which is
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  Speaker 2: the more you share and let people know the fact
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  Speaker 2: that there's only, you know, a tiny, tiny percentage of
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  Speaker 2: Americans who actually, you know, support political assassinations or violence
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  Speaker 2: like that, the more it helps sort of reduce the
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  Speaker 2: both sides, you know, support for that kind of thing. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: There's also like a morning council poll came out and
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: it showed that like, there's basically unanimity around people blaming
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  Speaker 1: political rhetoric, generically, social media and mental illness of any
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: kind of a killer. But then you get into the
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: details and Democrats blame Republican rhetoric, Republicans blame Democratic rhetoric,
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  Speaker 1: Democrats blame Trump and on and on and on. But
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  Speaker 1: you see in that that like people instinctively understand that
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  Speaker 1: we have a huge problem And you do have to
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: have two ideas in your mind that are a little
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: bit in conflict, and one of which is undoubtedly heated
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  Speaker 1: political rhetoric contributes to create a medium in which these
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  Speaker 1: kinds of things can emerge. And also, no, we should not,
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  Speaker 1: unless there's clear evidence, tie the actions of random murderers
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  Speaker 1: and maniacs to entire movements, in part because... that gives
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: those murderers and maniacs more power. It suggests that they
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: were successful in yoking control of our politics, which is
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  Speaker 1: what a person who does this is ultimately doing by
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: like declaring their views and their desires and their dominance,
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: like their worldview more important.
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  Speaker 2: I was trying to figure out what the, how this
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: is gonna go, how the sort of like legal attack
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: from the administration on these groups could unfold. So I
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: was like asking around. If you noticed, Miller, Stephen Miller
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: in the Oval on Monday when Trump was asked about
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: this and then Miller started, like, what NGOs are you
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: talking about? What's the specifics? You know, he said, he
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: mentioned ICE, people who are like doxing ICE and handing
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: out gas masks at protests. And it sounds like from
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: what Miller has been saying and even what J.D. Vance
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: has been saying, that they were planning something like this
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: prior to the assassination, especially because Miller says that like
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: Kirk's last text to him was like, go after these
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  Speaker 2: left wing organizations, you know, make sure you do that. And, um,
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: you can't, there's no law that would allow the president
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: or authority law, the president to, to designate a domestic
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: group as a terror organization. You need to have some
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: kind of like foreign ties to that. That seems more
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: like one of his, you know, sign an executive order
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: that doesn't really have any force of law, or maybe
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: he just labels them that, you know, they've been thrown
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: on Rico a lot. Um, Rico is, you know, that's
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: the racketeering, uh, law. It's used for conspiracy. It's hard
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: to do a criminal RICO case unless there were like
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: direct connections between organizations and people who have committed violence.
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: One thing they have done before, the government has done
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: before in history, is there's like a, you can bring
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: civil RICO cases and you can do civil forfeiture. And
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: so what you do is basically freeze the assets of
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: a group that you think is part of a conspiracy.
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: And they can sue to get those assets back, but
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: it basically ties them up for years in court. And
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: this is what happened with a lot of Muslim charities
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: after 9-11 is they basically, they were bankrupted through forfeiture,
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: even though there were no convictions and eventually were found
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: to like not have, you know, supported any kind of
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: terrorist groups. So it is, it's a campaign of intimidation.
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: It's a campaign of like, perhaps we could seize assets
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: and money and power, which also Miller said over the weekend,
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: he's like, we're going to take your power away, take
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: your money away. And then if you've broken the law,
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: then we'll take your freedom away.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: And it's like, well, why are you taking power and
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: money if they haven't broken the law?
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: You gotta go to the law first.
• 14:06
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it does seem like, look, I mean, the thing
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: that is so worrying to me about it is, in part,
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: we've seen so many major organizations capitulate just on the
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: threat of action by the Trump administration. We'll get to
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: some of the media examples later, but we have not
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: seen people, not seen kind of mainline groups show a
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: lot of kind of grit in the face of intimidation
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: tactics by the administration. I talked a little bit about
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: this with with Chris Murphy. And John Gans wrote a
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: great piece about this, just about what a crackdown could
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: look like. And we've talked about this before, that there
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: are parts of America's culture that give us advantage, one
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: of which is this is a big, complicated, fractious country
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: with a lot of layers of government. And he talks
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: about this, that it's virtually ungovernable. That's been true throughout
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: our history. And that is a protection. But you only
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: have to target a few places to have like a
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: real chilling effect across free streets. Organizations afraid to get
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: involved in protests. Organizations afraid to get involved in, say,
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: fighting on behalf of immigrants for fear of being tied
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: to some action of some disparate group. And then that
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: coming back to them because they were involved in a
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: meeting or a different meeting or a protest or whatever.
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  Speaker 2: I will say back to that nation piece that made
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: him so mad. Not only did he like mischaracterize the
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: piece itself, he said that, you know, and the nation
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: is funded by George Soros' Open Society Foundation and the
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: Ford Foundation, and both Open Society and the nation were like, no,
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: that's not true. There's no connection between us whatsoever.
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but step one is going after the Soros Open
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: Society Foundation and the Ford Foundation and stripping their taxes
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: and status, which will make it impossible for them to operate.
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it'll be like a Harvard thing, right, where
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: they'll sue, obviously, and maybe the administration doesn't have a
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: leg to stand on, but it'll tie them up, you know?
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: So anything else from the J.D. Vance-hosted... I know... I
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: watched most of it. I watched all of it.
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: I thought Tucker Carlson's part was pretty interesting. It was
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: the most low key of the thing, which is surprising
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: that it was Tucker. But he focused on the intra-MAGA
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: split on foreign policy in the Republican Party and Charlie
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: Kirk's role in pushing back on the neocons and opposing
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: war in Iran. And then this is where it got
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: interesting to me. Tucker says, quote, I don't think it's
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: helpful for people, particularly foreign heads of state, to jump
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: in and say he lived for my cause or whatever.
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: That's disgusting, actually. It's also literally untrue. That is almost
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: certainly a reference to Bibi Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister,
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: who even before the killer had been ID'd, went on
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: Fox News and he blamed Kirk's assassination on, quote, a
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: combination of radical Islamists and ultra progressives. So just linking
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: the progressives with the Islamists. And it's all even weirder
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: because Netanyahu has got to deal now with this far
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: right part of the MAGA world that has been asserting
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: that Israel was behind Charlie Kirk's assassination, which the first
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: time I saw this was like from someone at Infowars.
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: But it kind of like blew up on the right
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: to the point where Netanyahu was asked about it during
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: a TV interview. And there's zero evidence for the claim. Frankly,
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: I find it insane on its face. And it's like,
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: you know, the latest kind of anti-Semitic trope you might hear.
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: But it is it was just a bizarre subtext that
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: kind of came out today.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: There was a political assassination. It does have underlying causes.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: And we're going to learn more of what the motives
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: are in the specific cases. But like there is rising
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: mass shootings, political violence. there are a lot of underlying
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: reasons that it's happening. And the fact that we're going
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: to now be dealing with a kind of partisan debate
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: over a crackdown on the left, when that is such
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: an ancillary and unrelated part to what's actually kind of
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: driving this from the depths of the internet and what's
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: broken in our society, means even as we're trying to
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: figure out where Stephen Miller is going to find his
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: next target, There may be more deaths, there may be
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: more attacks, right? There may be more mass shootings and
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: shooting in Minnesota, the random attacks happening all the time.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: And there's gonna be no attention on that, right? Because
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: we're not gonna do anything like to have an actual
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: helpful national conversation about what to do to like figure
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: out what is driving these kinds of like blaze of
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: glory murderers. And like that will, then there will be
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: another and we will do the same thing where we
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: race around trying to figure out who can own the
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: motives if those motives are even legible. And it's sad
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: and scary because it just means we're going to spiral down.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: Because if we're focused on a fucking online lefty magazine
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: that wrote an article that you didn't like, we're not
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: focusing on the actual danger that is very real and,
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: by the way, threatens Democrats and Republicans alike.
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: So there's the government crackdown. There's also mega influencers and
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: supporters who are just going after anyone who's posted comments
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: that range from, celebrating Kirk's murder to joking about it
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: to condemning the assassination while still criticizing Kirk's politics and
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: past statements. After some person tweeted a public spreadsheet of
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: target names, Elon Musk responded, quote, they are the ones
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: poisoning the minds of our children. And here's what Vance
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: said in his closing remarks on the Charlie Kirk show Monday.
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: So when you see someone celebrating Charlie's murder, call them
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: out in hell, call their employer. So I guess for J.D.
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: Vance and Elon and the rest of MAGA now, free
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: speech is out, cancel culture is back, and it's good now, right?
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: What do you guys make of the naming and shaming
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: and I guess trying to get people fired campaign?
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: Remember when Elon bought Twitter? He said it was because
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: he was a free speech absolutist. Generally, absolutists would entail
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: speech to defend you. It does show how dumb and
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: hypocritical the debate has been all along. I mean, there
• 19:37
  Speaker 3: are some very principled defenders of free speech out there.
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: And then there's a lot of people who just mean like,
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: Free speech is speech I believe in or like. And
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: I think we've always known that MAGA was full of
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: shit on this, that Trump was full of shit on
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: this because last month he had an executive order about
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: prosecuting people who burned the American flag. That's been a
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: test case for decades for free speech. Before that, they
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: were arresting foreign students who were critical of the war
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: in Gaza. Now we're getting people fired for saying shitty
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: things about Charlie Kirk. I'm not defending any of those comments,
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: but you know, when people complain about cancel culture, I
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: think they're very rarely talking about anything a political leader
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: or politician did. It's usually just online mobs. And now
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: these guys are creating spreadsheets and, and Elon Musk is
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: helping unleash these online mobs on the platform that he
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: purchased to be a free speech absolutist. And it's just like,
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: it's absurd.
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: You know, it's like, you know, Epstein turned all of
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: us into conspiracy theorists. And now, uh, like the, the
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: right is turning themselves into a bunch of narcs the
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: way they said that the left had become a bunch
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: of fucking narcs. And like, I, I am like, there
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: is like a real like hardening and like viciousness online.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: And there's a lot of kind of performative indifference and
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: a lot of kind of performative effort to like that,
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: how you demonstrate your political bona fides by not caring
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: about a political murderer. I think it's like depraved and
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: it's also stupid, especially like you don't have to, you
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: can despise Charlie Kirk if you don't feel terrified about
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: where this leads, like you're just not paying attention. attention,
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: but like a culture in which people are policing each
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: other online and then Googling and searching through records to
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: find where they work and call them. Like you may
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: get a nurse fired who said something heinous, right? You
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: may get a teacher or administrator or a college out
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: of their jobs. Like that's absolutely true. But like, is
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: this the collectively, are we all happy with that world?
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: The government doesn't need to crack down on free speech
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: because we built a panopticon where everybody vents their spleen
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: and then goes around trying to figure out who they
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: can hurt by it. Like go and find their, find
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: the way in which to make them pay for that
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: thing I saw online that I didn't like. Turning the
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: whole country into one little tiny village where everybody's like
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: watching each other through the window. Is that a good
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: world we want to live in? By the way, I
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: would have said this when this was policing people from
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: the right or from the left.
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: I think we did.
• 21:51
  Speaker 5: I think we did.
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: And I think we did. You know, it's the reason,
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: the legal standard again for free speech, we have a pretty,
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: pretty broad, one here in America, you know, uh, for
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: speech must be directed to inciting imminent lawless action and
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: be likely to produce such action, right? That's the standard.
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: That's the Supreme court has decided on free speech for
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: it not to be constituted as protected free speech. So
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: beyond that, the reason that you sort of have a
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: big broad definition of this is because people start with
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: someone saying, oh, I'm, you know, or this, this person posted,
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: I'm glad he's dead. Or this person posted your next
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: so-and-so right. And now we've gone to all the way
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: down to someone who's saying, I condemn violence, but let's,
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: and I think it's awful that he was assassinated, but
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: I also think he said some bad things. Now the
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: right is including that. Which is what that Nation article
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: basically said.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm sorry, but like, do you have the point
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: where just people posting quotes out of context?
• 22:48
  Speaker 7: Right.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: The out of context quotes now, we're going to go
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: after people?
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: And then it just got, it sort of veered and
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: it was, you know, making me angry. And then at
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: some point in the last 48 hours, 72 hours, I
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: had to laugh, you know? So it was veering into
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: the absurd. And fortunately, the chairman of the Oakland County
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: Republican Party in Michigan, he did it for me. He
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: made me laugh. He decided to drive around all weekend
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: and post pictures of private businesses with flagpoles demanding that
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: they lower the flag, even though President Trump's order to
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: lower the flag is for federal buildings only. And so
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: you get tweets like this from this guy. Hey, Chase Bank.
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: Why isn't your Barclays Circle branch in Rochester Hills complying
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: with federal and state orders to lower the flag in
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: honor of Charlie Kirk you've had since Wednesday?
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: I know you're mad, man, but there's got to be
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: a better way to spend your time.
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: You think the bigwigs at Chase HQ are going to
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: come down heavy on the Barclays Circle branch?
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: People have been pointing out that after Kennedy was killed,
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: there were like little, there were reports about people celebrating
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: it and that leading people to say, hey, it's not
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: social media. But like, I don't doubt that there's this
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: part of us that has like a schadenfreude and kind
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: of a lack of care for political opposition that can
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: get pretty vile and that it's always been there. But like,
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: there is, it's just so obvious that being exposed to
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: so much of it and exposing ourselves to so much
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: social media leads people to really like, like I felt
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: it myself just this weekend, kind of reading about this stuff.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: Like I felt myself like getting this sort of like,
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: anger and then you feel it and there's nowhere to
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: put it right because you're just reading things on the
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: internet and so you want to like you like have
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: to do something with it and so he's going to
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: point it at that chase branch like there's so many
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: people I disagree with and they're all out there saying
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: these things all the time and like people don't know
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: what to do with that energy and it's just so
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: fucking toxic.
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah and that's not even like I disagree with the
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: Chase branch. That's like the Chase branch probably not even
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: crossing the manager's mind that they should lower the flag.
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: I mean, come on. So here's what we know about
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: the alleged killer as of Monday afternoon when we're recording this.
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: We may know more by the time you're hearing it.
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: The suspect is 22-year-old Utah native Tyler Robinson, who agreed
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: to turn himself in after his father recognized photos released
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: by the authorities. Robinson comes from a family of Republicans.
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: But Utah Governor Spencer Cox said over the weekend that
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: Robinson himself held a, quote, leftist ideology. Six sources familiar
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: with the investigation also told Axios that Robinson was in
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: a romantic relationship with his transgender roommate, who they said
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: is being, quote, extremely cooperative with the investigation. And Kash
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: Patel and Dan Bongino, the podcasters running the FBI, said
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: on Monday that Robinson had a, quote, obsession with Kirk,
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: that he sent text messages before the shooting. saying he
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: had a, quote, opportunity to go after the conservative activist
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: and that he was going to, quote, take it. And
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: Robinson had been linked to DNA evidence found at the scene.
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: Speaking of cash, Fox News reports that his job may
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: be in jeopardy in a story sourced to 10 sources
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: in the Trump administration. Apparently, Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche have, quote,
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: no confidence in cash and, quote, Pam in particular can't
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: stand him. Live tweeting incomplete information about the investigation from
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: Reyes in Manhattan didn't exactly help. Raos?
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: Raos.
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: You got it.
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: I'd never heard of it until I read about him
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: going there.
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: Raos.
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: It's Raos.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: It's 100% Raos.
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: Cash is going to face a Senate hearing on Tuesday.
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: I'm sure that will be fun. But until then, he's
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: been doing the rounds on Fox to defend himself to
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: the network's most important viewer. Let's listen.
• 26:25
  Speaker 6: Could I have worded it a little better in the
• 26:27
  Speaker 6: heat of the moment?
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 26:28
  Speaker 6: But do I regret putting it out? Absolutely not. I
• 26:30
  Speaker 6: was telling the world what the FBI was doing as
• 26:32
  Speaker 6: we were doing, and I'm continuing to do that. If
• 26:35
  Speaker 6: you go back and look at historical cases like Luigi
• 26:38
  Speaker 6: Mangione and the Boston bombing, how long did it take
• 26:40
  Speaker 6: the Bureau to release information to the public? We're not
• 26:42
  Speaker 6: doing that. Those two manhunts took five days and they
• 26:46
  Speaker 6: happened in downtown major metropolises. We apprehended our suspect in
• 26:50
  Speaker 6: 33 hours because we were transparent and open. So anyone
• 26:53
  Speaker 6: that thinks that the FBI is not on top of
• 26:56
  Speaker 6: its game and that me and the deputy and everybody
• 26:58
  Speaker 6: in leadership and our Salt Lake City field office in
• 27:00
  Speaker 6: Quantico is doing anything politically, I'm not having it. And
• 27:04
  Speaker 6: if you've heard anything else about it, they are lying
• 27:06
  Speaker 6: to you.
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: Not having it. For those watching on the YouTube, you'll
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: notice that he's doing something you just cannot do if
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: you're doing TV, which he's looking at the monitor above
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: his camera at himself. Constantly, which just makes you look
• 27:19
  Speaker 3: so shifty.
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: What I was doing was telling you all what the
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: FBI was doing as it was doing it, which is
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: what every FBI director is famously supposed to do, right?
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: When law enforcement is conducting a law enforcement operation and investigation,
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: you're supposed to just keep people abreast of every detail.
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: Bob Mueller used to tweet, got one, just getting clear.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: He says something, maybe it was this interview, about the
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: DNA evidence that they collected from the crime scene. And
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: it's like, why?
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: Towel.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: It's... Do you understand why you share information?
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: Right? Like, is it to help?
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: It's to help people either to protect their communities or
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: maybe to find somebody. No, you weren't. It wasn't like
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: you like, I'm going to overrule you guys. I think
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: we should put the guy's picture out there. Dude, he
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: was saying that though.
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: He was, he was talking about how like he gave
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: a tick tock of the key events. And one of
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: the key events was what time he and Dan Bongino
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: landed on the ground in Utah. And then they decided,
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: they decided to release the photo. And it's like, Do
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: you think that that was the first time the FBI's
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: released a photo of a suspect?
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: That doesn't make any sense.
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: It was crazy. He's like, we apprehended the... The father
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: turned him in. What did you do?
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: What the fuck did you do? Yeah, he tweeted, this
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: is what happens when you let cops be cops. The
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: dad turned him in.
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: You were there to receive the information from the dad?
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: Also, he said like, he's like, would I have worded
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: it differently?
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: Buddy, you tweeted misinformation about your own investigation.
• 28:34
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: There's also like... There was an Axios story, and it
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: wasn't that remarkable, but it said that it was about
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: the transgender roommate and how it might lead to motive.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: And there were quotes by Cox in there. But Cox, who,
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: by the way, seems to just be behaving honorably and
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: responsibly throughout this. But at the end of that story,
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: it said somebody just hadn't seen in this kind of
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: tone before. It said, it's pretty clear that Robinson's roommate
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: knew a lot and didn't say anything after the killing.
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: So they're a person of interest officially in cooperating with
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: A second official said, we want to keep it that way.
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: That is a really strange story to come out of
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: law enforcement to Axios, right?
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: So weird.
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: Especially since, yeah, one of the sources said the person
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: was extremely cooperative and made it sound like they're really
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: happy to have that cooperation, which is why they didn't
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: release the name or identity of the person. And then
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: that official at the end, I thought that was weird.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: And so I don't know. I don't know who this
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: official is. Maybe it's a career person and maybe just
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: a strange quote. But throughout this entire couple of days,
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: we had the Wall Street Journal reporting incorrectly about the bullets,
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: we had a Guardian story that had some incorrect information
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: that they had to withdraw. And then you have these
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: kinds of stories. And because we have someone like Kash Patel,
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: who's a mix of kind of partisan loyalists to Trump,
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: plus also a deeply strange incompetent, you don't know what
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: the balance is and you don't know where these quotes
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: are coming from. Like, is this a story that's because
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: they're just trying to prove they know stuff? and get
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: stuff out there in a kind of unhelpful and kind
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: of ham-fisted way? Is it because they're actually like wanting
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: to put it out there into the world that there's
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: this transgender person connected to it? As you have Elon
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: Musk seeming, there's like a transgender terror cell operating despite
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: the fact that Cox has said this roommate is cooperative.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: So I just found myself reading this and saying, oh,
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: I'll never know. It's hard to know because we have
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: a couple of partisan hacks that aren't prepared running this department.
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: Kat Patel is grossly unqualified for the job. Just He
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: was a low-level prosecutor at DOJ. Then he was an
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: aide to Devin Nunes before he got into Trump world
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: where he was like a low-level NSC guy before getting
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: some garbage time gig at the DOD.
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: And now.
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: That's enough for me. There was.
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: So no like law enforcement experience. He's talking about how
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: he walked the crime scene in Utah. It's like, buddy,
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: I'm sorry. Did you learn about that on Capitol Hill?
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: Like where, what, what value do you add? What training
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: allowed you to walk the crime scene?
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: Did you put, you put a pair of black light
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: glasses and kind of like, what are you talking about?
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: Someone on Twitter tweeted that Patel permanently has the facial
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: expression of someone walking through Dubai customs with a brick
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: of cocaine. So funny.
• 31:03
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: Tim Dillon, a comedian, said he wouldn't trust Kash Patel
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: to investigate a dispute with DoorDash to get him a
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: $ 10 credit. That Fox story is sort of hopeful, right?
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: According to Fox, the White House, the AG, the deputy
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: AG all have lost confidence in Kash Patel. I would
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: bet big money that the rest of the bureau doesn't
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: like him either because of the way he's politicized the
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: place and pushed out people. So the one interesting thing
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: is the White House just installed a new second deputy
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: director because you always have a backup. deputy director who
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: a lot of people think is in place so that
• 31:37
  Speaker 3: in 90 days he can take over because under the
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: federal vacancies reform act of 1998 you can fill in
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: for the director if you've been in the job for
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: 90 days this.
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: Is like that miss missouri attorney general i think yes
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: they grab yes that's so.
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: Someone said they'll get billy longed which is the irs
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: commissioner it was now the u.s ambassador to iceland.
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: A story we didn't even talk about because it's just
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: one of uh 20 things that happened that way yeah
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: speaking of that i know you talked about this last
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: week but um Cash is also being sued by some
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: former agents for firing them.
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, three career agents say they were wrongfully terminated. The
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: one story that just blew my mind, so there's a
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: guy named Brian Driscoll. He was a career agent. When
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: you read his bio, it's absolutely incredible. He kicked down
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: the door, took out some ISIS guy himself, saved a five-year-old.
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: You're like, holy shit, this guy's a hero. So during
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: his vetting, he's asked questions like, these are verbatim, from
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: a 29-year-old White House liaison. Who did you vote for?
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: When did you start supporting President Trump? And have you
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: voted for a Democrat in the last five elections? Kash
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: Patel told him as long as you haven't given to
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: Kamala or posted on social media, you'll be fine. So
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: that's how seriously they're taking this. So Driscoll was supposed
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: to be installed as the deputy acting director, basically like
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: keep the trains running until Kash Patel is nominated or confirmed.
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: But the White House made like a clerical error in
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: the press release and they announced him as director. And
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: when they called over to be like, yo, do you
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: want to fix this? They're like, no, we're good. White
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: House refused to fix the error.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: They didn't want to admit their mistake. And what's wild
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: about this is if you go back to the original
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: story about Driscoll in The Times when he was kind of...
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: There was a moment because he had a funny... He
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: has a funny picture.
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: His picture... That mustache.
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: Mustache.
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: And he kind of has like a weird smirk and
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: everybody thought it was like... It was like the hipster
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: FBI guy. In that story, they joked about how him
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: being acting director felt like some kind of mistake.
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: It actually was.
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: It actually was a mistake.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: It was a mistake.
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: Incredible. It also sounds like Stephen Miller is like really
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: running the show. No surprise, but.
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: Which... at DOJ, at FBI, at DHS, at ICE, everywhere. Busy, busy.
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: Just one thing, like that story about like Driscoll, like
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: there was a part of the end of it where
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: Kash Patel fires a seasoned veteran of the FBI while
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: his wife is dying of cancer for not being sufficiently loyal.
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: And it like, I do think it's like, as we
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: talk about some like abstract and imaginary version of what
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: a crackdown could look like, it's both like, I don't
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: know if it's a mix of kind of, I don't know,
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: like hopeful, but terrifying that people as incompetent and cruel
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: as this are going to be running it because the
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: cash Patel is alienated a ton of people. It's probably
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: where they need to have somebody in the, in the
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: wings to replace it. But it is like worth remembering,
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: like these are not some crackdown that like, it's going
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: to be run by, it's not gonna be run by
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: other people. It's going to be Pam Bondi and Dan
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: Bongino and cash Patel trying to figure out how to
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: go after people. And these guys are fucking bozos.
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: I wish Stephen Miller was too, but he is not.
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: He is not. Um, So Trump's taken off for a
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: working visit to the UK on Tuesday. He's going to
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: get a whole welcome by King Charles, sorry, and Camilla.
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: But he's going to be back in the States for
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: Kirk's funeral and memorial on Sunday.
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: If the Queen was there, they'd be rolling out all
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: the stuff.
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: Any sense of what's on the agenda for the UK trip, Tommy? Yeah,
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: he meets with the King and the royal family.
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: They do like a carriage procession and the state banquet
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: at Windsor Castle. And then he and Keir Starmer will
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: hang out over at Checker's. one of the countryside residences.
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: What I think is interesting about this trip is how
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: much Jeffrey Epstein is in the background.
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: Of all of it because- Not literally everyone.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: The British- I thought it was Andrews plus one to
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: the dinner.
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: Well, that's exactly right. The British ambassador to the UK,
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: this guy, Peter Mendelsohn, just had to resign because this
• 35:07
  Speaker 3: cache of Epstein's, like his Yahoo inbox became public and
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: Bloomberg News got ahold of them. And there's hundreds of
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: emails back and forth between Epstein and Mendelsohn, including long
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: after he had been prosecuted. Peter Mendelsohn's, like, staying at
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: his house. He's a very senior person under Tony Blair
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: and now the ambassador to the U.S. And then, obviously,
• 35:26
  Speaker 3: as you mentioned, like, Prince Andrew was a big Epstein
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: buddy and a creep, so that's always kind of lurking
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: in the background. So I wonder how much this will
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: kind of blow up over there.
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: Those Mendelsohn emails are, like, bananas. It's not just that
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: they take place after. Like, he's like, God, I can't
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: believe they're doing this to you. I can't believe this
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: is happening to you.
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: He's crashing at his house.
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: It's crazy.
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: I'm sure, though, I'm sure all of the Brits, however
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: they feel about the assassination will be tripping over themselves
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: to uh offer donald trump condolences and doing moments of
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: silence and all that it's it's very yes like i
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: mean not to make tucker's point but like the international
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: sort of shows of solidarity among sort of global right-wing
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: populists uh all over the world has been interesting to note.
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah but even like i think there's like the european
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: parliament had a moment like i mean i think they're
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: taking their cues from trump about sort of how serious
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: and important this is. And obviously it is very serious
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: and important. It's a scary moment in the US and
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: in the political climate. But yeah, I think this will
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: be a big topic of conversation out there. There's also just,
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: it's coming at a time when the Labor Party is
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: a disaster. Like Keir Starmer keeps tripping all over himself.
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: He just had to fire his deputy prime minister into
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: this huge cabinet reshuffle and the Nigel Farage's party is
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: leading in the polls. So like things are not looking
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: good for a lot of the kind of progressive left internationally.
• 36:53
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  Speaker 1: for making a bunch of noise during this time.
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: In the wake of the assassination, Governor Cox of Utah
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: called social media a cancer. There's been a lot of
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: discussion about the role of these platforms in both radicalizing
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: people and just making us the worst version of ourselves. Well,
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: the Trump administration's responding with a big announcement. TikTok is saved! Nice.
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: The deadline for ByteDance selling the app is Wednesday. But
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: after after multiple extra legal extensions by the White House
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: in violation of both the law and the Supreme Court order, whatever.
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: But then whatever, whatever.
• 38:57
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: Trump posted on Monday morning that, quote, a deal was
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: also reached on a certain company that young people in
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: our country very much wanted to save. They will be
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: very happy. I will be speaking to President Xi on Friday.
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: Scott Besant basically confirmed this news, saying that the two
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: sides had agreed on a framework of a deal that
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: would transfer ownership of the app to the U.S., He
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: also said, quote, we are not going to talk about
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: the commercial terms of the deal. It's between two private parties,
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: but the commercial terms have been agreed upon. So I
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: assume our America first president would never cut a deal
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: that leaves TikTok users vulnerable to any kind of intimidation.
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: influence or data collection by the Chinese Communist Party, right?
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't think he gives a fuck, but I
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: think we have no idea, right?
• 39:37
  Speaker 3: We just have no idea what's about to happen.
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: Like whether or not the deal is that China will
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: still be kind of in control of the algorithm or not.
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: We just don't know.
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: Do we know? It seems like the.
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: The Chinese side of the negotiations did mention something about
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: licensing the algorithm, which was something that was first floated,
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: I think, by the White House back in April on this.
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: So basically, the Chinese continue to have control of the algorithm,
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: license it out to whoever buys it in the US.
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: And so the privacy data collection concerns are somewhat ameliorated,
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: I guess, supposedly. But the, you know, Chinese Communist Party
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: in control of the algorithm and turning it on and
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: off for the propaganda purposes, like that, that does not
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: seem like it is fixed by that kind of arrangement,
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: if that's what the arrangement may be.
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: Okay, good, because I don't want to stop seeing those
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: cool Chinese folk songs sung by all kinds of people.
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: I love them.
• 40:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so the data privacy thing, like, it makes me worry,
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: but also there was this giant hack called Salt Typhoon,
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: which apparently means that the Chinese have had, like, a
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: decade of access to all of our communications, so I
• 40:45
  Speaker 3: think we're kind of Ships kind of sailed on that one.
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: Them licensing out and get you a good deal on
• 40:49
  Speaker 3: an algorithm. Chinese Communist Party is turning up and down
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: the dial on like how we all feel about the world.
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: 170 million Americans using this thing a month. Also, what
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: do you want to bet that either the government, U.S.
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: government has a stake in TikTok now.
• 41:04
  Speaker 7: 100%.
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: Or and like a bunch of Trump close allies. There
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: was some kind of a deal there about the, I mean,
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: who the fuck knows what they said.
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: It is either going to like a giant billionaire Trump fan,
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: like a Larry Ellison type or like someone backed by
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: 1789 or whatever the hell Don Jr. 's VC thing
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: is called. It's going to be a political ally of Trump,
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: which I think we just have to step back and
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: be like, OK, so that means Trump will have a
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: huge say over TikTok. Elon Musk owns Twitter. Mark Zuckerberg
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: will do or say anything Trump wants to avoid regulations.
• 41:36
  Speaker 3: So see you later, Facebook and Instagram. I guess we
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: can fight it out on LinkedIn guys. We got a
• 41:41
  Speaker 3: rough state over on blue sky where we can, if
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: we end the civil war there, we can maybe, you know,
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: mount a counteroffensive.
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: Everybody from blue sky is about to get fired for
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: their posts about Charlie Kirk.
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: So I don't really know.
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: The whole thing.
• 41:53
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: I feel like there's a lot of like concern about
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: the algorithm and the data. And then I look and
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: it's like, I don't know, like the Twitter algorithm is,
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: is wholly owned by, by a capitalist, and it's a
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: fucking nightmare. Instagram's a nightmare. These places are already a nightmare.
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: I can get worse. I can get a lot worse.
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: Well, we're going to talk about the legacy media organizations
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: that TikTok and other platforms are rapidly replacing. Outlook continues
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: to be pretty bad there as well. You'll remember that
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: in July, CBS's parent company agreed to settle Trump's absurdly
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: meritless lawsuit over 60 Minutes to the tune of $ 16 million.
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: so that the administration would approve its merger with Skydance,
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: which is owned by the son of Trump ally Larry Ellison.
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: The merger closed in early August after the head of
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: CBS News resigned, the executive producer of 60 Minutes resigned,
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: CBS canceled Stephen Colbert's show, and Paramount's general counsel pledged
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: to hire an ombudsman to monitor CBS News coverage for
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: any hints of political bias. In a surprise to absolutely
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: no one, they selected Kenneth Weinstein, a Trump donor who
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: he originally nominated back in his first term to serve
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: as ambassador to Japan. This comes as rumors... There's no
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: news experience, by the way. No, of course not.
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: No news experience.
• 43:03
  Speaker 3: Why would he have a news experience? Just a conservative
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: think tank guy.
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: Hey, listen, it's time we say sayonara to woke.
• 43:08
  Speaker 5: Jesus.
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: He didn't actually serve as ambassador to Japan. Didn't go through,
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: but anyway. This all comes as rumors swirl that Ellison
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: is close to appointing conservative media commentator Barry Weiss in
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: a leadership role at CBS News as part of a
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: broader deal to absorb her startup, the Free Press. And
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: as Trump continues to toy with the idea of revoking...
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: the broadcast licenses of CBS's historical rivals, NBC and ABC.
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: What do you think, guys? What do you think of
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: our new corporate media overlords?
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: I think it's worth noting that Disney paid a settlement
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: for a frivolous lawsuit by George Stephanopoulos in the same
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: way that CBS did. They seem to have gotten no
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: credit for it. They didn't really seem to get very
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: much for that George Stephanopoulos payout, if now they're coming
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: after their license anyway. And I had actually thought that that,
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: I'm like, not, surprise would not be the word. But
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: I thought that Trump understood that he needed to demonstrate
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: that there was some value at first to these kinds
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: of capitulations so that he could get some more of them.
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: But that seems to be out the window now. So,
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: you know, he says he goes after Columbia. Columbia strikes
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: a deal. Then all of a sudden they're going to
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: be coming after them again. ABC thought they could get
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: out of the barrel. They're still in the barrel. And
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: so any capitulation really doesn't get you very much at all.
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: I mean, the New York Times said they want to
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: make Barry Weiss editor in chief or co-president of the network.
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: So that's a big gig. along with his ombudsman the
• 44:27
  Speaker 3: the free press what in its founding documents.
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: Built yeah right it's right yeah i think they're written
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: by publius they build itself as this bastion of like
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: heterodox opinion truth-telling but they're just the establishment at this
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: point and their primary focus is attacking anyone critical of
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: the war in gaza uh or anyone who like wonders
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: aloud if it's a good idea for the united states
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: keep funneling arms to bb den yahoo is a you
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: know the they can indiscriminately massacre civilians or periodically starve
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: the population of Gaza.
• 44:58
  Speaker 3: And so, you know, that includes like repeatedly downplaying the
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: famine in Gaza. There was an article in May that
• 45:03
  Speaker 3: was headlined the Gaza famine myth.
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: Subtle.
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: Uh, there was a video from the free press suggesting
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: that it was unfair. They do this big piece about
• 45:10
  Speaker 3: how there have been images in the news of starving
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: kids and that, uh, news publications were bad because they
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: didn't mention that some of those kids, I think most
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: of those kids in the story had preexisting conditions. Um,
• 45:22
  Speaker 3: And then they made a video kind of responding to
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: their reaction to that piece. And it was tweeted out
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: by no other than Bibi Netanyahu himself. So again, we're
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: just sort of like helping out the powerful here. And,
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: you know, I think what's so weird about it is
• 45:36
  Speaker 3: what Barry Weiss has built at the free press, I
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: think is the opposite of what CBS wants to be,
• 45:39
  Speaker 3: which is down the middle, nonpartisan to the point of
• 45:43
  Speaker 3: feeling tortured at times, kind of old school, just the facts, man,
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: boring ass reporting. And, She is a partisan actor whose
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: primary skill seems to be ingratiating herself with the most
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: elite billionaires who are like really mad at the left
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: and want to fund this kind of stuff. And like
• 46:01
  Speaker 3: I had a little dust up with, you know, they
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: called Ben Rhodes Hamas because he was critical of their
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: piece the other day, which is nice. And then I
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: had my own little dust up with the free press
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: the other day because I tweeted on the day Charlie
• 46:13
  Speaker 3: Kirk was assassinated. I tweeted that it was sickening. that
• 46:15
  Speaker 3: that video of his assassination was getting pushed into our
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: feeds all day long over and over again. And the
• 46:21
  Speaker 3: reason that bothered me was because there was clearly an
• 46:23
  Speaker 3: algorithmic incentive for Elon Musk to make this snuff film
• 46:27
  Speaker 3: go around. And also there are influencers on Twitter who
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: get paid per view, right? So you have something inflammatory
• 46:33
  Speaker 3: or horrifying that could scar his friends or family or
• 46:36
  Speaker 3: anyone or kids who were on Twitter that day. It's
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: disgusting that Twitter is just like pumping that shit. And
• 46:42
  Speaker 3: Barry's partner, Nellie Bowles, wrote this piece called attacking me
• 46:45
  Speaker 3: among others, uh, and saying, well, it's far more ghoulish
• 46:48
  Speaker 3: to slaughter a polite conservative, um, than, you know, to
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: talk about the algorithm, like a suggesting that I hadn't
• 46:55
  Speaker 3: criticized the assassination itself. And she goes funny to see
• 46:58
  Speaker 3: where their outrage goes. Like she had ignored that my
• 47:00
  Speaker 3: previous tweet was saying what happened to Charlie was horrific
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: and indefensible and condemning political violence.
• 47:06
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 47:06
  Speaker 3: So it was just like, it is that kind of
• 47:09
  Speaker 3: partisan hackery bullshit that CBS is acquiring for $ 200 million
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: and and making the sort of editorial lens for the network.
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: They also, they clearly think of themselves not as partisan hacks,
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: but like center right thinkers, you know, like Tyler Cohen
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: had a piece there today about how the cancel culture
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: on the right is just as bad as when they
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: complained about it on the left. But like that, requires
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: Barry Weiss and company to constantly be attacking the straw
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: man of the left that they have in their mind.
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: And that maybe was, you know, justified for some people
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: at some time. And so everyone, you know, the left
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: always has to be a liberal, uh, for the pre
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: for the free press to continue. And so that's what
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: I think is going to be like the, the real
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: CBS thing, right? It's like, I'm going to pick out
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: crazy things that Trump does here and there. So we
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: can continue to report on that. But then the left
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: just look at all the things they're doing. And if
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: there's a nurse, uh, in Colorado somewhere who didn't properly,
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: you know, mourn Charlie Kirk, they're going to go after.
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It's also like, it's sort of an outsider insider thing.
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: Like the free press, like we're going to tell you
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: the truth, right? Like they have done an amazing job
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: of building a brand. Even the name is excellent.
• 48:21
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: And like, I just, they have built a kind of
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: like parasocial relationship with their fans in part because like, Hey,
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: if you support us, if you're here, it's because you're
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: a truth teller and you're not afraid of, of a truth,
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: no matter where it comes from. Like you can handle it.
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: And the left doesn't think you can handle it. And
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: even some people on the right don't think you can
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: handle it. But we know you can. But like, that
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: is a definition about being on the outside, right? But
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: if you're about to take hold of like a storied
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: mainstream giant media institution, by the way, one on decline
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: as is every other mainstream institution, right? Like, I don't
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: know what exactly you're kind of like hoping to build
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: in the kind of.
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: Slowly- Enjoy rolling over the ashes.
• 48:58
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: But then it's like, okay.
• 48:59
  Speaker 3: Sorry.
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: You're in charge now. You're not covering- You're not covering
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: how CBS should be doing the news. You're doing the news.
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: And in reality, the news is kind of boring. The
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: kind of news that CBS does for the most part
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: doesn't actually get a lot of attention.
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: Maybe she'll spice it up.
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: Well, sure. But it doesn't get a lot of... The
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: stuff that you don't talk about is just the day-to-day
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: coverage that you have to provide. And like, I don't
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: know how different that looks. How different is your storm coverage?
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: You know?
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: I don't want to know.
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: Well, let's find out. I'm excited to find out. Pod
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  Speaker 1: Save America is brought to you by Helix. I have
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• 50:46
  Speaker 2: All right, before we get to Levitt's conversation with Chris Murphy,
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: we just want to mention another Democratic senator who seems
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: to understand the gravity of the moment, Chris Van Hollen,
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: who talked to Tommy for the show last week. Van
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: Hollen spoke at the annual Polk County Steak Fry in
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: Iowa over the weekend. And during his remarks, he said
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: that the hesitancy of New York Democrats like Chuck Schumer
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: and Hakeem Jeffries to endorse Mamdani is spineless and said
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: they need to, quote, get behind him and get behind
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: him now. On Sunday, after the New York Times covered
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: Van Hollen's remarks, New York Governor Kathy Hochul endorsed Mamdani
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: in a Times op-ed, leaving Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer,
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand among
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: the prominent New York Dems that have yet to endorse.
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: A Jeffries spokesperson then responded, Weirdly, told the Times, quote,
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: leader Hakeem Jeffries will have more to say about the
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: general election well in advance of November 4th. Meanwhile, confused
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: New Yorkers are asking themselves the question, Chris Van who?
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: After Hochul's endorsement, Trump again posted to Truth Social about
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: the need to beat Mamdani and in his mob boss
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: way seemed to float pulling federal funding from New York.
• 51:49
  Speaker 3: What do we think?
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: So. Chris Van Hoo.
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: Chris Van Hoo. So I saw that over the weekend
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: and it really annoyed me in part because it's like, okay,
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: Chris Van Halen has criticized you.
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: They also served in the house together. He's quite familiar
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: with Chris Van Halen.
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: You're not responding to the actual substance of what he's saying.
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: You're saying you're going to have something to say about
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: this in the coming weeks, but you're going to come
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: back with like a dig that feels like it's from
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: another era of political media where it's like, ha ha,
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: got him. But it's like, You know, who's seeing this?
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: This is for no one, this comment.
• 52:22
  Speaker 3: It's for no one, right?
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: Like people who want you to endorse Mamdani. It's not
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: an argument. You're not making an argument to anybody. You're
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: not making an actual point. You're kind of treating people
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: like they're stupid. And then you think, okay, you're going
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: to get to this in a couple of weeks. What's
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: going to happen in a couple of weeks? Mamdani's not
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: going to fundamentally change his views on anything. If you're
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: not going to endorse, that's a huge fucking problem. If
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: you are, why are you going to be dragged to it?
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: Being dragged to it doesn't help anybody. First of all,
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: it's embarrassing for you. It makes people feel like you're
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: not doing it for any other reason than political expediency.
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: You're not actually helping him because you're making it look
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: like it's reluctant. And by the way, you're still going
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: to get the same blowback from Trump and every other person.
• 52:55
  Speaker 3: So it's just bad.
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: Politics to me. And then you look at like, and
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: then Hochul comes out and she does it.
• 52:58
  Speaker 7: Great.
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: I don't know if she was pushed by the Van
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: Hollen thing or not, but then it's really a long
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: and kind of empty op-ed that really has nothing to
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: say other than what every Democrat who wants to endorse Bhamdani,
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: but is a little nervous about it. He's going to say,
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: which is, we don't agree on everything. We don't see
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: eye to everything. But I think he's going to do
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: a good job on affordability and Cuomo's worse, which is
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: not that hard to fucking say.
• 53:15
  Speaker 3: So just say it.
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 53:17
  Speaker 3: Like, look, I don't blame Hakeem Jeffries spokesperson. You're doing
• 53:21
  Speaker 3: their job. You're pushing back, right? Like defending the boss.
• 53:24
  Speaker 3: But it was a bad quote. And I also think
• 53:26
  Speaker 3: like Chris Van Hollen has shown a lot of political
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: courage this year. Like he went down to El Salvador
• 53:31
  Speaker 3: to get his constituent back from a foreign gulag. He's
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: been just got back from Israel where he was on
• 53:36
  Speaker 3: the show where he talked about what's happening there and
• 53:37
  Speaker 3: called it. uh, Gaza ethnic cleansing.
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 53:40
  Speaker 3: So he's like saying and doing some gutsy things. And
• 53:42
  Speaker 3: I think that, uh, he is absolutely right that it
• 53:46
  Speaker 3: is cowardice to not endorse Mamdani. And it's, you're, you're right.
• 53:50
  Speaker 3: What's the point of waiting a couple of weeks? What's
• 53:52
  Speaker 3: going to happen in a couple of weeks? And like,
• 53:53
  Speaker 3: I've heard from people who are sort of inside this
• 53:55
  Speaker 3: world that, um, in private meetings, you know, you'll leadership
• 53:59
  Speaker 3: will say as well, we have a lot of donors
• 54:00
  Speaker 3: who are concerned about Mamdani.
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: And it's like, that's kind of what this smells like. It's, uh,
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: It's such stupid politics. I mean, it's just, I just
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: don't understand it, right? And like, if you were gonna
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: not endorse him and you're gonna make them, and that's
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: your final decision, then should have articulated why earlier, you know?
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: The fact that we're dragging out the song, you're right,
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: you get no credit for endorsing. You still get all
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: the criticism that you got, rightly so, I think. And
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: so what was the purpose? That like later when someone
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: attacks you for the endorsement, you could say like, well,
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: I didn't do it until the very end and everyone
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: knows I was, dragged kicking and screaming into it. I also,
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: by the way, that's going to help you.
• 54:37
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: I also don't love that. It's like, oh, well, you
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: know what it is. It's those donors, which is like, okay,
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: like you're a coward. So let's blame the fucking juice.
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: Like that's, that's sort of what it boils down to.
• 54:46
  Speaker 3: That's not what they said. The religion of these donors.
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: Okay. I don't know what you're not. I know you're
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: not saying that. I'm saying that like this idea that like, oh,
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: they're hearing from the donors. They're hearing from the donors.
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: And this is New York politics. I know what that means.
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: And it's like, okay. So you think if you endorse Mamdani,
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: you're going to have a big fundraising problem? Once you
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: endorse Mamdani, I have a feeling you're not going to
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: say that. So I'm not suggesting that you're saying that
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: at all.
• 55:11
  Speaker 3: Of course not.
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: I'm saying that I feel like that's the implication. Well,
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: it's like there's a lot of Jews that are pretty
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: concerned about Mamdani. Meanwhile, he's doing well with Jewish Democrats.
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: He's done everything he can to address concerns about that.
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: And the other thing that's interesting about Mamdani is he
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: keeps having these meetings with business leaders and others that
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: are kind of instinctively opposed to him. And he's kind
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: of charming the fuck out of them because he listens
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: and he's curious and he's actually receptive. So I don't
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: know what these conversations that are going on behind the
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: scenes with like people like Jeffries and Schumer, but if
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: it's going to result in an endorsement two days before
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: the election, like fucking do it.
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: Meanwhile, there was a local TV news reporter in New
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: York today that reported that according to two sources, Adams
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: is probably going to drop out by the end of
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: the week. So we shall see if that, if that
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: comes to pass, but that was the report today.
• 55:59
  Speaker 3: Your choices are Cuomo or Mamdani. Pick. Pick. Yeah. Pick soon.
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: What about Curtis?
• 56:05
  Speaker 3: Curtis? Well, I'm guessing that Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer
• 56:08
  Speaker 3: are not going to vote for him.
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: But Katz and Gracie Manchin?
• 56:10
  Speaker 6: No.
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: Okay. When we get back from the break, you'll hear
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: Lovett's conversation with Senator Chris Murphy, who's been sounding the
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: alarm about just how bad the Trump crackdown on the
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: left might actually be. Two quick things before we do that.
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: We want to hear from you. We're asking all of
• 56:22
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• 56:24
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• 56:27
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• 56:28
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• 56:29
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• 56:33
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• 56:45
  Speaker 2: I'll be taking it. Great.
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, hopefully. You're like, less than.
• 56:53
  Speaker 2: More Mondays. Love It or Leave It's New York show
• 56:56
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• 56:59
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• 57:03
  Speaker 2: Dynasty Typewriter. Who are you having on? Let's see if
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• 57:08
  Speaker 3: I have no idea.
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: I love when this happens. Colton Dunn, Michaela Watkins, and more.
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• 57:18
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• 57:32
  Speaker 1: Pod Save America, brought to you by Quince. Cooler temperatures
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  Speaker 1: Free shipping. 365-day returns, quince.com slash crooked. Senator Chris Murphy,
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: welcome back to the pod. Thanks for being here. So
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: I want to talk to you, obviously, about the murder
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: of Charlie Kirk and the reaction to it coming from
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: the right. You talked about this on social media over
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: the weekend, about the ways in which this could lead
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: Americans to unite to confront political violence, but that we're
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: seeing something else that's really worrying from the right. Can
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: you talk a little bit about what you're worried about?
• 59:05
  Speaker 7: This awful, tragic assassination, could have been this moment where Democrats, Republicans,
• 59:13
  Speaker 7: the right and the left come together and decide that
• 59:15
  Speaker 7: we're going to do a set of things communally to
• 59:18
  Speaker 7: draw a line in the sand on political violence specifically
• 59:21
  Speaker 7: and mass violence, public violence writ large. Obviously, we're all
• 59:26
  Speaker 7: shaken by the fact that more and more political figures
• 59:30
  Speaker 7: are the targets of attack. And there's a system of
• 59:34
  Speaker 7: radicalization that exists online, some of it political, some of it, frankly,
• 59:38
  Speaker 7: non-political that puts us all at risk. But predictably, Donald
• 59:42
  Speaker 7: Trump is doing the opposite. He has been likely looking
• 59:47
  Speaker 7: for a pretext all year in order to supersize his
• 59:53
  Speaker 7: efforts to try to use the legal system in this country,
• 59:55
  Speaker 7: which he now controls out of the White House in
• 59:57
  Speaker 7: order to destroy his political opposition. And we now have
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 7: growing confirmation that that's the conversation that's happening inside of
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 7: the White House, that they are going to just create
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 7: this mythical world in which the only threat of violence
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 7: comes from the left, which is not true. There's radicalization
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 7: in both the right and the left. But if you
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 7: really want to do the counting, there's far more violent
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 7: radicalization happening on the right than on the left. They're
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 7: going to tell this false story in order to empower
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 7: the DOJ and the FBI to shut down democratic organizations,
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 7: to harass and lock up more democratic political officials. And
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 7: what has already been a pretty dark year could get
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 7: a lot darker. And I just think we have to
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 7: name what they are talking about doing now so that
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 7: when it happens, they have a lower likelihood of getting
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 7: away with the stated reason versus what is the actual reason,
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 7: which is their political agenda to try to seize power
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 7: and allow Trump and his family to rule forever?
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so J.D. Vance guest hosted the Charlie Kirk podcast,
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: and he focused on this article in The Nation that
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: was very critical of Charlie Kirk, and from there extrapolated
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: out to a need to go after a lot of
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: left-wing institutions. But they're There are two parts of it
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: that jumped out at me. One is at first I
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: only saw clips of it. And when I saw clips
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: of it, I saw clips of J.D. Vance saying that
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: the left is statistically more likely to be lunatics and
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: that he's going to go after left-wing institutions. But what
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: I didn't see in anything shared on social media was
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: in that speech, J.D. Vance makes a point of saying
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: that he heard from Democratic former Senate colleagues and Democratic
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: friends that who want to unite against political violence. And
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: he says that he thanks God that the vast majority
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: of Democrats do not contone political violence. And it struck
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: me that even in this set of remarks about the
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: need to take on political violence, we are all kind
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: of subject to like the algorithmic feed and how it
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: radicalizes us against one another. And I wonder if even
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: this kind of debate about the proportion of which direction
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: the political violence comes from is almost beside the point. Like, okay,
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: we claim it's further to the right. Vance claims that
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: the left has lost its mind and is celebrating a killing.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: But like, is there any hope to collectively talking about
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: this as a cultural and internet-driven phenomenon?
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 7: Of course there is, but it does require leadership from
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 7: the top. And you're right that there's going to be
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 7: a tendency to cherry pick anything that the vice president
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 7: says or anything that the president says. But, you know,
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 7: there's also confirmation today that there is an effort underway
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 7: right now in the administration to name and target and
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 7: prepare plans to shut down and disrupt only political organizations
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 7: on the left. So, yeah, I appreciate the section of
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 7: the vice president's speech in which he says what we
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 7: all know, which is that, you know, inside the sort
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 7: of broad political mainstream, there is no tolerance for political violence,
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 7: whether it comes from the right or the left or
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 7: targeting the right or the left. But that kind of
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 7: talk may be masking the plans that he is actively
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 7: engaged in, which is an effort to try to, you know,
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 7: go after somebody like George Soros, right, who probably is
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 7: the most notable funder of generic political opposition to the
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 7: president in this country, has zero connection to violence. In fact,
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 7: has dedicated his entire life to fighting violence, condemning violence,
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 7: but has been named by Donald Trump as someone who
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 7: might face criminal charges. And that likelihood that mainstream Democratic
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 7: figures and funders get targeted has probably greatly increased, notwithstanding
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 7: some of the pieces of Vance's speech that didn't get covered.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: So There are obviously Republicans that are saying the right
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: things here. Governor Spencer Cox has been a model of
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: trying to demonstrate responsible leadership in this moment. I saw
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: your colleague Senator Lankford saying what looked to me to
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: be far more responsible than what I've heard from President Trump, obviously.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: In the Senate, in Congress, everyone is aware that the
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: number of threats has gone up dramatically against Democrats and Republicans.
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: That's not a Twitter thing. That's a real thing, right?
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: Is there any hope that because of the actual reality
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: of this confronting both Republicans and Democrats, that without someone
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: like Donald Trump doing what's right here and showing wisdom,
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: which is obviously impossible to imagine, that there will be
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: voices outside of those that could have some purchase?
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 7: I mean, listen, I wish I could be the bearer
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 7: of good news here. You are right that there are responsible,
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 7: thoughtful Republican voices, but they tend to be the same
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 7: ones over and over again. This is not the first
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 7: time that Spencer Cox has said something full of all
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 7: sorts of thought and common sense. James Lankford continually steps
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 7: up and tries to make the Senate a more functional place.
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 7: But by and large, there has been no willingness to
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 7: stand up to the boss, to President Trump, when he
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 7: does exactly the opposite, when he lionizes and endorses violence,
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 7: when it happens on the right, and when he invents
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 7: a world in which the only threat of violence comes
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 7: from the left. Now, we have an opportunity to do
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 7: something right now. We're going to confront the budget for
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 7: the coming year. And the president has made it clear
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 7: that he wants to turn the DOJ, even more so
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 7: than it exists today, into an operation to hunt his
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 7: political opponents. We could put constraints on the DOJ in
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 7: that budget. We could require it to have a level
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 7: of independence that it historically has had. But I just
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 7: don't think, aside from the few Republicans you named, there
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 7: will be enough that will actually try to, through law,
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 7: put constraints on the president's instinct, which is to use
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 7: the assassination of Charlie Kirk for political ends.
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 3: So what are the constraints?
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: What are the levers to slow or stop that project?
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: You know, Kash Patel has not exactly shrouded himself in
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: glory in the last couple of days, which actually, to me,
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: kind of the imagination of what a kind of unchecked
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: Republican administration that's hell-bent on cracking down on its opposition
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: would look like is far worse than what you're kind
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: of seeing in practice. America is a pretty big and complicated,
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: fractious place with a First Amendment. It's a hard project
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: to crack down on dissent in this country, isn't it?
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 7: It is a hard project, but you don't need to
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 7: be universally successful. And this is, I think, the The
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 7: reminder that I'm constantly giving folks, you know, if you
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 7: go to countries that are today very illiberal democracies, places
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 7: like Hungary or Turkey, you will still see dissent. There
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 7: are still elections. The opposition party can win, but they
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 7: can never win at the national level. There's never allowed
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 7: to be enough dissent and enough support for the political
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 7: opposition that they are able to win at the highest
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 7: levels in contests for the president and for parliament. And
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 7: so I don't want our sort of measure for success
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 7: in this country to be that dissent has not been
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 7: completely eradicated. What we have to look to are, you know,
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 7: the places where the political opposition gets its main oxygen,
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 7: are donations being curtailed? Are they trying to consolidate control
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 7: of the media in a way that only the regime
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 7: story is being told, are they targeting just enough people
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 7: with the criminal justice system to convince a lot of
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 7: would-be volunteers or activists to stay indoors? I think we
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 7: are reaching that point where they've done just enough to
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 7: frustrate dissent, not to eliminate it, that they are going
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 7: to be able to keep the Democratic Party so weak
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 7: that we'll be able to compete but not win in elections,
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 7: which is why this to me is a really decisive
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 7: moment when they are contemplating ratcheting up their attacks, we
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 7: need to show that it's not working. We need to
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 7: actually see in the coming weeks and months there being
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 7: bigger protests, there being more people signing up for activist
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 7: and mobilization efforts than ever. And if we do that,
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 7: then you will sort of prove to folks who may
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 7: be thinking of sitting on the sidelines now that the
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 7: times are getting darker, that there's safety, that there's sort
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 7: of safe space to still remain involved in our democracy.
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: So I'm almost reluctant to raise this in part because
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: I do see such an asymmetry. I see like this
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: Manichean language about a kill or be killed civil war
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: that's from like the highest echelons of Republican politics, whether
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: it's an elected leader or very powerful people, Elon Musk, others, right?
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: It's a very, those are, these are people in positions
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: of power and that is often set against random people
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: on the internet spouting off, right? Performatively indifferent or justifying
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: or celebrating a murder. And I view that as depraved.
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 3: I really do.
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: But at the same time, there's value in being confident
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: in the truth. And there is a strain of that
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: on the left, isn't there? And is it giving in
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: to the argument from Trump and Vance to talk about that?
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: Or is it worth confronting it as real to demonstrate
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: our actual democratic values?
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 7: No, I think it's absolutely worth acknowledging it and confronting it.
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 7: Of course, it's different when it's just run-of-the-mill political voices
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 7: lionizing and endorsing violence on the left versus the president
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 7: of the United States of America doing it. But that
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 7: doesn't mean that we don't have an obligation to try
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 7: to shut it down and keep it as fringe. Absolutely,
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 7: we need to call this phenomenon out when it happens
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 7: on the left. There are people who are celebrating these
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 7: acts of violence. We saw that with the assassination of
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 7: the health insurance CEO, that there were frankly a lot
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 7: of people online who were making the case that the
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 7: system was so badly rigged that their only recourse was
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 7: to resort to violence. That is simply not true. There
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 7: is no justification for violence. The energy should be put
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 7: into fixing the a broken system. And the system is
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 7: absolutely not so broken. Our democracy is not so badly
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 7: rigged that it cannot be fixed. And so when you
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 7: see this endorsement or excuse of violence happening on the
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 7: right or on the left, I think it's just kind
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 7: of a job requirement for all of us to call
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 7: it out.
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: Part of this too is what people are exposed to, right?
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: What they're seeing. And there is a kind of way
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: in which social media feeds a cynicism and a sense
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: of powerlessness, as well as like this idea of, forget
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: celebrating violence, but like kind of performing indifference to the
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: death of Charlie Kirk or justifying the death of Brian Thompson.
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: It speaks to a kind of a depravity that flows
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: from being exposed to content that points to Republicans as
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: an enemy, as someone that's coming after you, that is
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: targeting you. And there is some truth to the fact
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: that Republicans are in power and there are people that
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: feel as though they're coming after marginalized groups. But there's
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: something really toxic that has kind of creeped in in
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: both directions. And I just don't know how we get
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: to understanding and tackling it when it is so politicized,
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: especially when it's coming from Vance and Trump.
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 7: So I hear what you were saying, right? We live
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 7: in this world in which each side believes the other
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 7: is an existential threat to the survival of the nation.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 7: And when you believe something like that, then you start
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 7: to believe that any means are necessary to order for
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 7: your side to prevail I mean I will I will
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 7: caveat what I'm about to say with this for a
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 7: lot of Americans This administration is an existential threat to
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 7: their survival I mean they're about to throw 17 million
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 7: people off of their health care people are gonna die
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 7: because of that the way in which they are targeting
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 7: the immigrant community is deeply immoral but that does not
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 7: mean that that any of the sort of non-conventional, non-violent
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 7: means are justified. Here's, John, what I think one of
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 7: the most important projects we need to be involved in
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 7: is to convince people that the lines that are perceived
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 7: to divide us right now, black and white, good and bad,
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 7: true versus evil, are kind of not the only lines
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 7: that matter. So yes, we are divided on issues of
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 7: taxation and guns and climate and choice. But we're not
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 7: divided on many other issues, like the way in which
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 7: our economy works only for corporations and not for regular people,
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 7: like the way that our local communities have become so unhealthy,
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 7: like the way that our internet perverts our families' conversation,
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 7: our kids' existence. There's a realignment that could happen in
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 7: this country where we decide to actually unite social conservatives
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 7: and social progressives around a project to dismantle consolidated corporate power,
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 7: to hold tech companies accountable for their crimes. But we're
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 7: so addicted to the way that we divide politics today
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 7: along these kind of static lines of division on mainly
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 7: social and cultural issues that we can't find that other realignment.
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 7: So I just think that project of kind of finding
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 7: that hidden realignment that exists is probably more important, especially
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 7: in the wake of this political violence than ever before.
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I saw a video going around of Charlie Kirk
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: denouncing brain rot caused by Nick Fuentes. And that was
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: brain rot that radicalizes people against the Jews. And I
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: feel like there are these two ideas that have to
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: be held in our mind at the same time, which
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: is there is a really dangerous right-wing project that is
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: coming after core American values and is trying to change
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: this country in a way that is really dangerous. While
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: at the same time, we have a collective fight against
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: the ways in which we have rotted our own brains
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: and hardened ourselves to each other, even when some of
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: our concerns and justifications are real.
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 7: Let me say just one more word on the topic
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 7: we were just closing out, because I think it is important.
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 7: There is an ability to unite a lot of elements
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 7: of the right and left around a revitalization of the
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 7: idea of the common good in America. People are really
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 7: sick and tired of an economy that is driven by
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 7: a cult of profit In which we sort of don't
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 7: value anything else other than making a dime This is
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 7: sort of a virtuous Economy a virtuous society anymore Trump
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 7: has exploited that erosion of the common good that erosion
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 7: of communitarianism But there is an ability to sort of
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 7: reunite the country around that conversation in which we say,
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 7: what are the six or seven things we can do
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 7: to incentivize us to care about our neighbors again? And
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 7: I think you'll find strange bedfellows if you sort of
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 7: start with a conversation of why we have been kind
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 7: of torn away from each other, from our neighbors in
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 7: a way that feels very unfamiliar.
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: Before I let you go, Donald Trump just posted about
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: the continuing resolution, the CR. This is about the funding
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: of the government. You've been outspoken. You've been often a
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: lone voice, even in committee, about why Democrats should not
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: be going along with Republicans on the funding fight. What's
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: the status of that? What's happening right now? Where are
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: your colleagues?
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 7: Yeah, on the specifics of this shutdown, this is going
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 7: to be a hard fight because I just don't believe
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 7: that the Democratic Party has an obligation to fund the
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 7: destruction of our democracy. And if we're going to lend
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 7: our votes to a witch hunt operation against progressive organizations
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 7: or colleges and universities or our fellow citizens who are undocumented,
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 7: I think that ultimately becomes a real moral stain on
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 7: our movement. So I know we always have this instinct
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 7: as the minority party to be responsible. But we need
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 7: to start drawing lines in the sand about what kind
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 7: of government we're willing to fund and what kind of
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 7: government we're not willing to fund. And to me, that
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 7: means trying to stop the health care disaster that's about
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 7: to be visited in our communities and building some protections
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 7: into this budget that make it harder for Trump to
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 7: get away with his lawlessness. I think this is a
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 7: moral moment for the party. And I think the country
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 7: is going to be looking to see what the price
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 7: for Democrats is of putting our imprimatur on a budget
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 7: that could potentially fund the death blow to our democracy
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 7: if we're not careful.
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: I agree. I agree. It's the moral moment. But then
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden the government shut down and everybody's
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: trying to figure out what it looks like to get
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: it reopened. Is what you're saying is you think that
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: there are winnable fights if we hold the line on
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: Obamacare funding plus some other protections that you believe Democrats
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: held together, they could win that fight and get a
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: vote that includes them and forces them into the budget?
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 7: Well, I think my vote is really easy to get
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 7: because all I want... is for the president to obey
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 7: the law, implement the budget we write, and for premiums
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 7: to not go up by 75% later this year. I
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 7: don't need some big new social program. I'm not looking
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 7: for Obamacare, too. I just want premiums to not go
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 7: up and for the president to obey the law. And
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 7: you ask a common question, which is like, can you
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 7: win those fights? Well, that's a question of whether Republicans
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 7: are going to be reasonable or not. I mean, they're
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 7: in charge. They know that in order to pass a budget,
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 7: they need Democratic votes. And what we're asking for is
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 7: not the moon. And if their belief is that unless
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 7: Donald Trump can act lawlessly, we're going to shut down
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 7: the government, I'll take that case to the people.
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's two things, right?
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: It's whether Republicans will be reasonable, but also it's what
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: Democrats are going to hold together, have a clear line,
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: make that case to the country.
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 3: That's not up to Republicans. That's up to you.
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: And do you feel like you and your colleagues are
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: ready to make that fight, draw that line of the
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: sand and hold to it?
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 7: Well, listen, I can only speak for myself. And I
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 7: think I can win that fight. I think I can
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 7: say to the American public that Republicans were so committed
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 7: to the president being able to act illegally, and they
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 7: were so committed to raising your premiums by 75% that
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 7: they decided to shut down the government. That's all we asked.
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 7: And we have an obligation, a moral, ethical, and representational
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 7: obligation to ask for those simple things, and they wouldn't
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 7: do it. And thus, as the party in charge, they
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 7: decided to shut down the government. I think we can
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 7: win that argument.
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: Senator Chris Murphy, thank you so much.
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 7: Appreciate it.
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 2: That's our show for today. Thanks to Chris Murphy for
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 2: coming on. Dan and I will be back with a
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 2: new show on Friday. If you want to listen to
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