Trump Honors Dead Friend, Restarts War

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I'm John Favre. I'm John Love it. I'm Tommy Detour. I'm back guys. Welcome back.

It's good to be back. I missed you. I missed you guys. And you were gone. I was gone.

I was gone. You guys did a great job. Great job holding up before here.

“On today's show, Lindsey Graham is dead and Mitch McConnell is alive.”

We'll talk about Graham's legacy and McConnell's proof of life photo and how the absence of both men is affecting Republicans agenda in Congress. We'll also get into Trump's latest war on the press after the White House and Cash Patel's opinion for New York Times journalist over there reporting on Katari Force 1. And whether RFK Jr. has a lid on what's become an explosive outbreak of diarrhea.

Then love it. It sounds like it's not about your vacation. Sort of a more of a net. It's a poor thing. It's going to say.

Yeah. Yeah, you can help me out. Then love it. Talks to our pal Brian Tyler Cohen about his brand new book, The Day After, How to Wheeled Power in a Post Trump World.

Fun to fantasize. Yeah, I'm paying for all of that. Okay, Brian. All right, but first, let's get to the top story this week. It appears as though the ceasefire with Iran fell apart last week.

While I was gone and now we're back to full-scale war. RIP, the MOU of Versailles. Trump officially notified Congress that military action has resumed. He also says he's reinstating the naval blockade of Iranian ports and that quote, "The USA will be from this point forward, known as the Guardian of the Hormuz Strait."

Really rolls off the tongue. Just say that's already into the Hormuz Strait.

That's always wanted to be.

US USA was kind of boring. We're not called the Guardian of the Hormuz Strait. Not the first time, uh, an agreement signed at Versailles after a war. And it poorly, hopefully not as badly as the last time. Good job, JD Vance.

Good job. Yeah, it's really nailed it. We're also apparently going to start charging a 20% toll on all cargo that goes through the Strait, according to Trump, uh, which seems like it's a violation of international law. Uh, that's according to Marco Rubio last month.

Yeah. Uh, taking a master's like, "Why is it so little?" He's in. They're just trying to get their beaks wet. But yeah, the, and the Rubio isn't just like, "Oh, this is legal."

Like, it would be a contagion that would spread across the globe. Yes, yeah, looking forward to him talking about that now. Meanwhile, Iran continues to fire off rockets at US targets across the Middle East, and openly threaten revenge on America. Uh, not to worry, Trump's got this whole thing under control.

Here he is calling into Fox and friends this morning. We're going to keep the Strait and we'll probably run it. We'll become the Guardian of the Strait. Maybe we'll go with the Guardian Angel of the Strait. And we should be reimbursed for that Obama was the worst of all, because Obama actually went to their side of

Obama because, you know, he's, um, let's not say, let's, let's not say, let's leave that for another time. Muslim? Is that what he was going to say? Socialist socialist?

“So Shrader, socialist foreigner or something in that vein?”

An Iatola? He's such a dick. Tell me, how feasible do you think it is for the US to become the Guardian Angel/Tolbooth operator for the Strait of Formus? Paging a courtesy what, right, Guardian Angel's, could we stand up a mission to permanently escort

both to the Strait of Formus? Yes, they could do a formal escort mission. It would require a lot of Navy resources. It could last a long time, maybe permanently.

Yeah, and it perpetuity aid, not the forever where everybody, uh, it would cost a lot of money. And it would be really, really risky, because again, it's a 30 kilometer choke point in Iran can hit you with drones, missiles, naval mines, god knows what else and, you know, the whole thing unravels of one gets through. So I don't think that a permanent escort mission is going to get you back to pre-war shipping

traffic levels, because there's like limitations on how many, you know, Navy destroyers you have, fewer companies are going to want to try this, because it is inherently more risky. And then a lot of companies are not going to pay a 20% search arch. That's a pretty big big big on the shipping fee. So my guess is that this is an empty threat designed to create leverage from the White House

and they'll probably walk the whole thing back in a couple of days. I just can't see how this will actually get implemented.

“Remember the last time the hundred and saw them on the Saudis were like, no, you know,”

using our airspace, you're not doing an escort mission. What are you even talking about? And then I saw, did you see the what, uh, New York Post reported that the White House is calling this latest operation, Operation Bitch Slap? No, that's, is that a joke?

No, no, that's official. Yeah, it's very ex-Sethian to me, but it suggests that they viewed, sort of what's happening is a time-limited, temporary battle with the Iranians. It also feels like, um, just a way to try to get attention. It's like, it's like, he's trying to act out pegseth and they've named all the other missions

and they didn't get enough attention. So now we're just going to bitch slap. Yeah, this was, this is on one on background for what it's worth. But it feels like he's heavy. And there's also a great, uh, Wall Street Journal piece about how there's some poorly

worded language in this ceasefire MOU that's being interpreted by Iran. It's meaning they now control the straight. So great work. As you said, JD Vance, Steve McCoff, uh, in Jared Kushner, like, just big picture. It's just worth remembering this is going to be a four to five week operation

to deal with Iran's nuclear program. And now we're well over four months and we're talking about how to reopen the straight of Formus. Yeah, just with that one thing to your list of reasons, this is not a good idea. One other would be that it, um, is not traditionally, uh, in the conception of Americans,

the role of, uh, the US military to be the permanent security detail for, uh, oil tankers moving through the Gulf to protect the investment of large multinational corporations in the infrastructure by which they transmit. That's why we got to take a cut. Love it.

Yeah, I was just doing some math on this, about 20 million barrels a day.

Go through, uh, go through the straight, uh, usually, uh, $80 a barrel. That's $320 million a day. 20 percent. [laughs] Who is it?

The, uh, it really didn't remind me, uh, Trump saying, uh, we're going to look, we got to stop these Iranians from trying to charge a toll for people moving this straight or our moose. And as a, as a consequence, we are going to charge a toll for moving this straight. And there's this episode of Supranos where this poor gardener is stuck between a war between Feechlamana and Polly Walnuts, and it just gets the ever-loving shit beat out of it over.

At the end of it, Polly Walnuts is like, "You're going to pay me, and I did you a favor. I protected you from the other guy, and you're going to have to do some lawns for free." That's Trump with this, and they're like, like, the, uh, that, that meme of the, uh, you know, the, uh, are, you know, our, our blessed ships, their barbarous murderers, and it's like, our blessed protection services, your barbarous protection record.

I saw the Iranians, one of the, like, tweeted out, like, uh, you know, you're right. Just as someone needs to control the, and like, but we're going to do it for much less. Yeah. Hey, Iranians, we've got a better deal than Trump.

Let me get you into the straight for, uh, I'll, I'll only take 10 percent.

Let me take 20 percent. I'll get you through the straight and 10 percent. Um, stupid. It seems to me like Trump's chances of negotiating that mo you into a long-term deal with Iran, uh, may have dropped precipitously over the, over the last week or so, but I don't know. What do you think, Tommy? I mean, the, the Walsha Journal's reported that the Trump administration thinks a nuclear deal is increasingly unlikely.

“When I think that, see, if you can't get the deal, buy it by the 60-day MUU,”

I don't know that you're going to get them. It's a more complicated nuclear deal. Yeah, I, I feel like, uh, when we first talked about this, we talked about the fact that there was, like, a fundamental problem, which is that the two circles of the venn diagram don't overlap because Donald Trump can accept a deal that's, uh, not to demonstrably better than the Obama deal, but the only deal that will ever be unoffer is one that's demonstrably

worse. Right. Uh, and everything about that MUU was about kicking the can on that fundamental problem and all the ups and downs. Like, the, we have a deal. We have an impasse.

These people are bastards who can't work with. I've never met more reliable partners. Like,

all of it has been a kind of, uh, uh, like high-dudge and dramatic Trump show on top of, like, the fundamentals, which have been terrible from the beginning. Well, in the Trump administration was betting that they could offer around a bunch of economic incentives and get them to not want to go back to war. But for Iran, they're like, we just survived a war against the U.S. in Israel. This is our moment to, like, assert our dominance over the entire region. And they're

betting that Trump doesn't want to go back to war before the midterms. And I think they are right because Trump tells us as much all the time. So, uh, Trump's under, uh, and a little interview with, uh, Tommy, your friend Hugh Hewitt. I caught that. Did you see that? So, so Hewitt

“asked him, "Do you plan to house the Iranian regime?" And Trump says, "Well, I think they're a”

little kuku. They all are. To them deals are made to be broken. They're extremely unreliable people.

Was that mean? I don't know. It's Trump says it was built to test. It was a test. We didn't know. Well, memorandums of understanding when you're dealing with sleas bags don't mean much. It is, like, to your, how many times did it was Trump, like, this new group of people. They're so reasonable. We can make deals with them. J.D. Vance is out there being, like, "It's really cool

for the first time in 47 years that we have all these channels to the Iranians. And they just

want to chat. And it's just, it's been so cool." Yeah, the, the friends we make along the way. And yeah, the Hugh, the Hugh set up question, and it's like, "Is it possible, Mr. President?"

“The things are going exactly as you plant. Why, yes, Hugh. I think they might be. I think you're right.”

Exactly as we plant. As all. Yes. Also, I noticed that Trump at NATO was like, "We've already got the nuclear material because it's so far underground. Nobody's going to be able to get it except us." So why did we go to war in the first place? Is it? What? It wasn't the whole point to get the nuclear material? You're going to drive yourself crazy trying to find any sort of internal logic. Yeah, and he's

calling it the nuclear dust now because it's, it's so stupid. It's okay. It is funny that the MOU,

it formalized the ceasefire. That's gone. It ended the blockade, blackheads back, reopen the home

street of war moves, closed again. Sanctions relief, oil waiver. That's gone now. And now a 60-day clock to negotiate the permanent deal. That's August 16th. We are well on our way. Yeah. Good stuff. Good stuff. Well done, everyone. Before we move on, I kind of missed this when I was gone. The story about the Iranians, the Israelis giving the US intelligence that the Iranians are trying to kill Trump again. What's going on there? Oh, yeah. Well, apparently they did that.

The Iranians, apparently the Israelis passed the long intelligence to the US claiming that Trump was on. There's some new effort to assassinate him and Trump went and bragged to the press about how he's like number one on the Iranian hit list. And that maybe is why he switched from the old Air Force 1 to the new Air Force 1 on the way home. We're going to talk about this later. Yeah. But also maybe why he started bombing again. So, I mean,

probably pretty pissed if J.D. Vets keeps talking about how cool the Iranians are. If I went to stop, last time there was that much daylight between two members of a mob family, Corlyon gets shot outside that fucking orange stand. It's like, don't, not, not, not a little too much daylight inside the family guys. Did maybe feel too like the like Israeli intelligence meant yeah, who's probably like, oh, not bombing enough lately. See, see, they're trying to kill ya. It's just

such a mark. Of course, they're trying to kill you, man. You killed Kostom Soleimani and then you bombed their country for like a month. So they're like, you know. Right. Democrats and Congress haven't really had the ability to reign in Trump and Iran, but they may have a chance this week Brian shots that he's voting no on the annual defense bill known as the NDAA, citing Trump's request for a 50% increase at the defense department. This is separate. This is an addition to the extra

“67 billion, I think, infunding that Heggsets asking for by August in a separate supplemental bill.”

You guys think every Democrat will see this as an easy call like shots. No, they won't.

I mean, they, they, they, they maybe they should, but they won't. First, so this is not a

appropriation. This is an authorization. Right. So this is about how the Congress is directing money to be spent, but it doesn't actually appropriate the money that's a separate process for reasons that make sense if you, I don't know, red roll roll call on the toilet, but as many Americans do, but we're actually going to read it. Right. But I wonder, because so it's fed similar debates in the past about holding something up that actually includes the reforms that Democrats want. Right.

So there is an argument that you continue to have this past with a huge supermajority. It also raises raises incomes for the troops. That kind of thing. It has some reforms that Democrats want. Yeah, we should do that. Everything's in there. So you crane like the whole defense department strategy, everything's the whole year. And not passing it doesn't hamstring the administration to fight the war at all, because it's not actually authorizing any. It's not actually

appropriating any money. It's just kind of proving how money can be spent. And then you have a fight that's coming over the supplemental, which is what Heggseth really wants and Trump really wants.

“Which is, I think to me, I look about the Senate and we're voting no one fucking everything.”

They fought a fucking insane stupid war that's hamstring the global economy without any kind of justification. But the appropriations are the money he needs and is the kind of the, I would say, is like the real back end authorization of the conflict. Yeah, it seems like, it seems like the reason to target this one, even over the appropriations is you could probably do a supplemental if they do this. It would be a reconciliation bill. So you only need 51 votes. And this,

it seems like they need the full. This is not a 51 vote margin. This is the full. So Democrats probably have, if they all banded together, they have the votes to black. Yes, but nothing about not passing this prevents them from doing the appropriation. Look, I'm just, this is something

a kind of the broad support of the military and all kinds of rules that they've been trying to fight for. Yeah, I think the, the stat is like the Congress has passed and NIA every year for I think 60 plus years. So this is usually a thing they get done in a bipartisan fashion. I do,

like this authorizes 1.15 trillion. I think there's going to be another request for up to 350 billion.

So for 1.5 trillion total, which is what Trump wants, which is an insane amount of money. There's a 42% increase on current levels, which is just not necessary or justified or inner interest. And there were some polling that a recent pull-down 60% of Americans think that that budget request is too high. And the majority think the Iran war was dumb and unnecessary. And they probably won't be thrilled if they were to learn that it's ramping back up again. So I, like,

easy. I think this isn't easy for me, but there's a lot of Democrats, so I think we'll have a lot of muscle memory that says voting against all of the underlying things within this bill. And voting against authorizing Pentagon spending is bad politics for them. Again, I think that's a

“dated view of politics in the world, but I think that's why you'll see majority's vote for it.”

Yeah, there's a view among some, I'm sure that it's bad politics for sort of the reasons you're getting at, which is like, we got national security and not supporting the troops. There's also like a bad local politics angle. Like a slot game was asked about it. And she said, oh, it's a tough vote specifically because it includes, like, you know, money for a new hangar, it's self-regier national guard based, right, or say it. And so you can imagine that there's

a number of Democrats like that. But I do think, look, I think it's, it's meaningful that shots who's, you know, in line to be in, in leadership here is, is saying that he's voting no and that they voted, the Democrats voted no in committee. So I don't know, I think at this point, Trump is continuing to fight this war and nothing is stopping him. And you might as well throw everything you have at it if you're in Congress to try to put roadblocks up or at least raise

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weekend, and Mitch McConnell, who is apparently still very much alive. Graham was 71 and died

Saturday night from what's being reported as an aortic dissection. Axios reports that a person who had spoken with Graham said the Senator complained he wasn't feeling well, but didn't want to seek medical attention until after his meet the press appearance the next morning. Graham apparently joked, quote, "I can't die now. I still need to do the rushous sanctions. Get around sorted out and do Israeli Saudi normalization." South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster has appointed Graham

sister Darlene to serve out the remaining months of his term. He was up this November and Trump, of course offered a touching tribute to the Senator during his Fox and friends' phoneer as one does. That's it. I can't do it anymore. Do he call me like about 40 with his letter. He said, did I really say that? I can't believe it. So, he called me too much. He was a bad golfer. He betrayed me. Then said just kidding, and he did like being outside. Yeah, which is also what you

say, the funeral for a golden retriever. I love the ball, love being outside. It's just incredible.

“I believe someone barked too much, get me up at night. Yeah, but what a sweetheart in the end.”

Like a girl. A guy who is seemingly Donald Trump's best friend in Congress dies and he calls him to Fox News and he just can't help but make it entirely bad himself. I mean, it's not surprising in any way. It's just, it's a reminder of who he is. Lindsey Graham's legacy. What will it be? How about it? So, I remember when I was working for Hillary Clinton, she had just come back from a trip to the Arctic with no Symbad. I don't believe he was on that trip with Lindsey Graham

John McCain, Susan Collins, and that was at a time when Lindsey Graham was the ciferous around climate change. He was trying to figure out how to get the GOP to change on climate change. He did a cap in trade bill with John Kerry and then you fast forward to Donald Trump being president and he's trying to claw back the inflation reduction act money that went towards electric vehicles. On immigration, he works with Ted Kennedy to write the comprehensive immigration bill. He is a a staunch advocate for

comprehensive immigration reform. Then you fast forward to the Trump era. He is not only against any kind of comprehensive proposal. He's against helping the dreamers and he comes out in favor of ending birth right citizenship and obviously supports Donald Trump and his draconian immigration policy. And so, you know, you look at like there was an interview that I thought was revealing where he said, you know, I'm going to do what Mitt Romney couldn't do, and I'm going to do what McCain

couldn't do. I'm going to harness the magic. There's a dark side to Donald Trump, but there's a magic. And I'm going to be the one to harness it. Right. And now he's dead. And you look and say, what did your harness exactly? What did your harness? What did you get for your magic? Trump got everything he want. Right. He got his immigration policies. He abandoned any kind of effort to tackle climate change. I suppose you've got a war with Iran. Maybe there's an argument that you've slowed the abandonment

of NATO, but here we are and he's threatening Greenland. You're begging him to do what he can

“for Ukraine, which is hard as not in. So, you know, Lindsey Graham sold his soul to try, I think,”

to stay relevant and then generously, I think, to try to turn Donald Trump as away from his quote, "dark side," and the end result is Lindsey Graham is the one who became kind of sad and pathetic vassal. Yeah. I think it's a cautionary tale about what happens if you're in DC too long and you get caught up and like care about the wrong stuff. And like, like, I don't know,

Lindsey Graham had never met him. People say he was nice and charming and kind. Like, he was nice

to his sister, who's their parents passed away, raised to sister, right? Who we love? That he's so lovely. And we think Darlene has incredible judgment and she's coming in. It's a hard job, but this is somebody who has her own head on her shoulders and she's not going to be bullied by a bunch of these Republicans in Donald Trump. She's going to do what she knows is right for people in the North Carolina that helps saying that out loud. Okay, we're hoping

she's a secret liberal. You're not be funny if she was just a secret liberal. I mean, it would be a great tool. This came in. Anyway, what I'm getting at is like, there's people who think that he is kind of like a throwback to a better and more collegial time in DC and like, maybe that's true.

“I guess. But like, I think the defining quote about Lindsey Graham is what he said to Mark”

LeBevich in 2019 in this near-ties magazine piece because Mark is pressing him like, how do you go from being Trump's biggest hater to like desperate to be in his inner circle? And Graham says

It's weird and it's flattering and it creates some opportunity. And I just, I found that to be so sad because this is a man who, over the course of his honesty. He credit for honesty, but he went from

being defined. He defined relevance for himself as first being John McCain's sidekick and then

being Donald Trump's sidekick. And he just didn't care about the cognitive dissidents that came along with the two or the vial things that Trump said about his best friend. And I mean, love it, I thought you ticked through all the policy areas as well. Like, the thing it seems like he got policy wise was a war with Iran. So congrats on that. But like, you know, the other thing he thinks he seems to be excited that he got was 63 appearances on meet the press.

And there would have been a 64 this Sunday. And that's such an ephemeral definition of relevance. But it's also such an indictment of the DC establishment press that this man is a fixture on these shows because he's primarily booked on these shows to advocate for starting a war somewhere.

“And so, you know, look, I'm not attacking him personally, but I think it's like what you don't”

want to be in Washington. You know, you want to stand for something. You want to be care about

something. You want to do something for people and not just be relevant. Yeah, I mean, people's motivations are complex. And when you talk about to a reporter, like he did about wanting to stay relevant, the generous interpretation there is Donald Trump is the president. And this is where my party is. And so I'm going to try to be relevant to sort of get my policy preferences, you know, move forward in any way that I can. There's also the less generous reading of

staying relevant is like, I want to be in the mix. I like being close to power. And, you know, Peter Baker, how to story about him as well. And he recalls running into Graham outside of restaurant DC and Graham is on the phone with Trump at that point. And he gets off the phone and he says to Peter, about Trump, he's a lying mother fucker, Mr. Graham allowed with the shrug. But also said, quote, a lot of fun to hang out with. Mr. Trump, he said, was so dominant within the party that he could

do almost anything with impunity. Quote, he could kill 50 people on our side and it wouldn't matter. Mr. Graham observed. Honestly, that is a pretty accurate honest assessment of Donald Trump and Lindsey Graham's relationship with Donald Trump, which is he's a lying mother fucker, but I'm sure Graham had a lot of fun, but he takes me golfing, hanging out with him. Like, that's literally what it is. And that was, by the way, you know, the story mentions this as

well that like John McCain and Lindsey Graham, you know, had a falling out over this towards the

“end of John McCain's life. And John McCain was like, why do you have to golf so much with them?”

Like, I get why you might want to be trying to like push him in the right direction here and

there. And this is the first term, of course. He's like, but why are you golfing so much with them?

And, you know, that was sort of a sad looking out that made it a little jealous, you know, you're like, oh, you made new friends at college, you know, and now you're not hanging out with the little crew. It just speaks in the power of personal politics and like he's nice to me. There's a lot of people that know better about Donald Trump or smart who know he's doing bad things for the country who are like offended by ice rates or whatever, but are like, well, he was nice

to me that one time. And I think, you know, it's like, of course, like, I believe that Donald Trump can be unbelievably charming to people. Yeah. I get it. I fall in for that myself. You know, but it's, yes, people. The, the, the, the amount of Trump to like the John Thune gave us speech was clearly like, like, I'm like surprised and devastated by the loss of Instagram. People that, like, Lindsey Graham really like Lindsey Graham charming funny. That kind of politics

is hard in an era when someone like Trump is president. And it's like, I think beyond just the, the way in which he kind of flipped on Trump, like the kind of politics he seemed to like, which was personal and kind of making deals and joking around, right? Like, it is a democratic of practice, but when one of the people you're working with attacks the legitimacy of the other party undermines democracy is, like, hostile to, like, tries to prosecute his enemies. Like,

the jokes don't work. It doesn't, doesn't make sense anymore. Like, the, the thing that you think you're doing, you're actually not doing anymore. Because you're practicing, I do think, like,

“genuinely, like, practicing what you view as the best way you do democracy in a, with a, with a,”

with a collaborator who actually doesn't believe in it at all. And like, all the people lamenting the end of the era, like, the era of John McCain and Lindsey Graham and that kind of, like, I don't know, like, rockets by partisanship where you mix it up and argued and then Lindsey Graham writes the tribute to Hillary Clinton and time magazine. Like, if that's the kind of politics, you're, you're, you're, uh, wanting, then the, uh, the enemy of it is Donald Trump.

Hmm. Uh, so Graham, sister Darlene, uh, will only temporarily fill the seats of Carolina, will hold a Republican primary, this August to determine who will face democratic senate candidate Annie Andrews, this November. Um, you guys think this is still a safe seat for Republicans, no matter

I mean, in such an anti-establishment year, I guess you always have an outside shot.

I don't know what that candidate looks like, you know, like a hardcore, like, burn down both Paul, both parties suck, come on. Trump, Trump wins the South Carolina by, uh, 18 points. Graham won against Jamie Harrison by 10 points. 10 points. You know, uh, the swing in some of these, uh, off cycle elections has been about 13 points. So is it hard? Absolutely. Is it possible? No. Yeah. It depends on who the person is. Yes. So they're, uh, names that have been floated Nancy Mace,

who just had a seller performance in the gubernatorial primary. I love her posting just when I thought they thought it was out. They pull me back in. Nobody's pulling you in here. You are the nobody wants you. It does. It's so the algorithm has pulled you back. Yeah. It's like a like, all right. You're fine. I'll do it. No, no, no. They're the Russians. Oh, they're in the Russian, uh, Ralph Norman. Uh, Joe Wilson. Joe Wilson now seen as the elder states. And yes, exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So you just want to say that the guy who screamed you lie at Barack Obama way back when, uh, Lieutenant Governor Pamela Vett, all these have been floated. Uh, yeah. Cook rates it as a solid R. And, you know, the case for Andrews is she is a real candidate, the Charleston pediatrician.

She's raised $8 million through $1,000 cash on hand. Um, she was actually out raising Lindsey Graham's

“campaign. Um, and so, you know, enough of a shift. You get a really cookie Republican nominee. Who knows?”

But yeah, outside shot. Um, this is your grandlife quite a whole. So close. So close. We almost, we almost got out of this. We should also talk about McConnell, uh, who offered a proof of life photo as an attempt to finally quiet the rumors that he was dead or incapacitated after being rushed to the hospital following a collapse at his home on June 14th. On Sunday, McConnell released a statement from himself and his physician, who stated that his prolonged hospital stay was the results of a fall associated

with his post polio condition and that he was also being treated for a mild case of pneumonia. There was also a photo of McConnell sitting in a hospital bed holding the Sunday sport section

of the Washington Post alongside his wife for my labor secretary Elaine Chao. Um, you guys will be

shocked to learn that many in the poster community are falsely claiming that the photo was reused from 2023 or AI generated, um, uh, one, one person who decided to buy that was uh, Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson. Can't believe they got Ron who gave any who gave an interview today saying, I just heard from a source that was an older photo. The source was rock or yeah, who's your source. Um, you know as a tweet that got text to him. Of course, what if you guys made it the fact that

so many people online left and right and the US Senate are convinced that a very alive Mitch McConnell is not alive. Uh, I watch a video of someone analyzing the short collar. Do you want? I watch it. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I'm not buying it. I just was it. I was sort of interested in what the theory is. I know. You know, we changed over here. And like that was just how you're spending your time on the shirt. The shirt was the shirt was like kind of folded in the

same way as another photo from the past and that it was sort of brought in. I don't, I don't totally buy the theory. It did look like it was different to me. It is where they were doing like

“zepruder film breakdowns of photos in the videos that CNN posted. Well, here's the thing. The reason”

that it was just like the, it was, you had a fall and then a mild case of pneumonia and that's why we haven't heard anything for the last. That's that, that to me was the weird part. And then, and no, there wasn't cardiac arrest even though there's like a lot of reporting about the audio from the dispatch, in which you were found in cardiac arrest and unconscious and resuscitated for being brought to the hospital. Maybe it wasn't him. Maybe with somebody else in that house.

But like part of this is he's a single photo holding the day's newspaper. That's what hostage takers really literally to give you as little as possible. Right. Like, oh, you're, the state, the test for a senator is not, are you alive, right? Like, yes, that's a bare minimum of, but but but not sufficient, but not sufficient. So perhaps a video might be helpful. So of course, there's going to be a lot of speculation, especially when a lot of old politicians have been

shown to be lying about their health and hiding how sick they are over and over and over again. Jill Biden saying she thought Joe Biden was having a stroke, a lot of reporting about the concealing of how he was aging. Mitch McConnell disappeared for three fucking weeks. They were rolling Diane Feinstein to the Senate after she was no longer copusmentists. So yeah, people are suspicious when they're told that an aging politician is fine. Like, there's a conspiratorial mindset

on the internet. There is obviously paranoia on the internet. It flourishes there.

“But it is, I think, not unreasonable to be skeptical when you hear from politicians that they're”

ancient and fine. Well, and I think some podcast I was listening to on vacation, maybe it was this

A few things I wanted to catch up on. There was a, there was also political implications,

“which I think feels the consensus, right? Which is, and I believe that it was August 3rd or 4th.”

August 3rd, yeah. That like, they were worried that maybe Thomas Massey would jump into a race and as an independent and then tilt the race to the Democrats. And so there's some kind of machinations there. And BTC was floating in the theater to me that there was concern that Andy Bashir might run and could actually win the scene. I had not heard that. It's a BTC, but I like it. Well, I was going to try to go on. Yeah. If there's no, no, no, no. And then Andy Bashir was also saying

that he is going to challenge the constitutionality of the Kentucky law that says he can't appoint a place, man, because he believes that the constitution of the state is clear that that, and that the law violates it. I was also, like, also the implications of what would happen

in a Senate for just those several weeks where they're losing a vote, you have Tillis.

And even with whether McConnell, McConnell's absent regardless right now, they, the four people, like Corn and Tillis Collins and Bercowski, if the Gramssey just filled in McConnell's back, those four can lead to a tie, right? But if they all vote no right now, they can really kind of gum up the works. And the Gramssey is filled tomorrow. Yes. The Gramssey's full. That's not happening.

“Tuesday, I think it's supposed to be filled on Wednesday. But you started to think about what would”

happen in a lame duck if there's a Supreme Court vacancy, right? Like, God to me is where they're like, oh, gotta, gotta get that McConnell, gotta get that proof away. I also think like everyone thinks every photo is AI now. That's, I sent my friend a photo of Erling Holland with stuff raccoon holding a Tillabottle and he asked me if it was real. So thanks for that, fucking Samel. Every funny photo I last night now, I do the same thing. Like, is it real? Is it AI?

And the liars did the den, even the AI just now when they're like, something they do that on some of like the writing, you know, they're like, oh, 80% that this was written by AI, and you're like, was it? Is that right? It's also that line? Like, and if we're just, let's be harsh. Like, this is 100 percent Mitch McConnell's offices fault. Like, their boss went into the hospital on June 14th. They didn't offer any real information for weeks. And then they did this weird leak to the worst

liar and asshole on CNN Scott Jennings and had him claim that he just done a 20-minute call with

“Mitch McConnell where they talked about NATO that was not funny. That's not the conspiracy. Not the”

conspiracies that like, and it was for us to do the same thing or we also said the same. Yes, because it's like, oh my gosh, they're talking about pneumonia. You're in the hospital. Quick, let's talk about the straight forward move. It was like a head of state read out that you would do from the White House. And yeah, also I really just talked about the following issues. One of the topics that that came up in both their conversations, according to these reports, was the grand planer story. And it's like,

so you're talking to Mitch McConnell, you say is your friend. You identify him as Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky senators, if we were thinking you were talking about somebody else. You think he might be dying. Your last conversation is going to be about grand planer. You know what, you know what, before we throw too many stones from our glass house, I'm just envisioning one of you guys in the hospital and me trying to call. Yeah, we did it pretty quick. Yeah, we did it pretty quickly. Yeah,

how's it going? How's it going? How's it going? Did I miss anything in the news? What's happening on Twitter? Yeah, he'd be like, you don't want to know about it. It's actually worse out here than in there. We would, though, we would probably joke about this one. We don't talk in the fun. We don't we don't talk in the fun. I don't have an answer to my phone since 2013. You guys are our phone friends. If you guys are in the hospital, maybe, maybe we'll see. You know that, but the Republican

text on your own. That's true. That's true. Okay. Thank you. Note it. Hey, Dan Toberski here. I'm a podcast toast, a journalist, and now with my newest project, the author of my own manifesto. Well, it's a manifesto about manifestos. My search for inspiration in a world that feels more infuriating more out of its freaking mind with each passing hour. manifestos are a call to action, an artful screen. They capture our anger and they try to do something with it. This is my attempt

to take the manifesto back from mass shooters and nihilists and return it to its rightful place, with the warriors, the visionaries, the regular folks with just the right amount of crazy. I compare notes with radicals, secessionists, internet trolls out for a laugh, and punk singers screaming their guts out. I'll try to turn their anger into the world they want to see. Listen to manifesto wherever you get your podcasts. Autobless subscribers can binge all

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see Blinds.com for GTX. The public congress does have quite a to-do list, though. They've got the

the Todd Blanch confirmation, AG confirmation. They've got J Clayton for DNI, the NDAA that we just

talked about, the Iran War Supplemental FISA. The whole FISA thing that we talked about before the break. That still hasn't been renewed. I think Todd Blanch is in trouble. I hope so. I think Todd Blanch is in trouble. He's supposed to have a hearing this week. I will see if it continues, but like a number of questions swirling. We're going to talk about the war against the press next. But there's that. There's even though it's DHS. There's now been two other ice killings.

We haven't even talked about. There's a man in Houston that ice killed and now just today is where we're recording on Monday in Bitterford, Maine, where I just was. There was a, it seems like a 26 year old Colombian man who had complete authorization to work in this country and was shot in killed and the war that ice had was not even for him, apparently. And so I would imagine and hope that Todd Blanch at DOJ would get plenty of questions about what kind of investigation you are

going to lead into these killings. Susan Collins just said that the DHS inspector general out of Boston is going to take over the investigation internally. But I don't really have a lot of faith in an internal DHS investigation. Which is a more special theory. Right. I feel like the DOJ or or feels like the FBI has to get involved. But again, thumb filless needs to just decide to yes. Man up and fight this terrible boyman and care about stuff. I mean, he says things occasionally

that are helpful in his critical of Trump, but like use your power while you can't do it.

“Also with McConnell, God, I think that eliminates their once-eat majority on the appropriations”

committee. Yes. And they can't schedule hearings and it might impact the supplemental funding requests for more Pentagon spending or something. More broadly, it's just like, it's a reminder that the margins in the Senate and the House are so thin that you have one death or one prolonged absence or one something. It can just like completely hamstring the party in power. I get to say, I think that's supplemental is never getting through. I think that because that's for the election.

Even though that's 51 votes, like you have Collins, Houston, in Ohio, and Sullivan, in Alaska, who are all facing very tough re-elections. Yep. You can't let all three of them go. Give him a count. He's awesome. And then you have McCowsky, you just, you know, just out of principle. Imagine that. Right. I want to do it. But that's that's four Republicans on a supplemental to, to vote for more money for war. And then maybe you get Federman. But I also like the, the House

is tricky. The House is tricky. Yes. There are, there is, even there are Republicans internally are calling it a zombie Congress now. They just, there's no, they have no margins. They have no, and they're all angry and they're all mad at each other too. They're not, there's not like a well-run machine here. Let's talk about the latest front in Trump's war on the press. Late on Friday, the administration issued subpoenas to four New York Times journalists

“who reported that the White House at the urging of the Secret Service had decided to use the”

old Air Force one during the NATO summit in Turkey as a security precaution. FBI Director Cash Patel, who spent eight hours working from the White House on Friday, has been tasked with overseeing the investigation. The Times Senate Democrats and press advocacy groups have all criticized the move, which came through the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, Jay Clayton, who's also Trump's nominee for Director of National Intelligence. The DOJ wrote on Twitter

on Saturday, the quote, "Every administration has addressed the crime of leaking national security information," adding, quote, "Reporters are not the targets. Those leaking classified information are. What did you guys make of this one?" This is just an obvious effort to punish and scare these journalists, because a normally investigation would figure out who in the government had access the information. They tried to narrow it down in a time to find the leaker that way,

but instead they sent a bunch of federal agents to the homes of these reporters on Friday night, and they were like, "Show up to a grand jury on Wednesday." That's not the normal process. Also, the FBI is weird anecdote in the story about how the FBI was the one warning the reporters not the publishing an advance. I don't know why they would be the ones. We are asking them not to publish an advance for security reasons. As you mentioned, the cash betel gets some,

he was going to fly to Chicago to see his girlfriend perform at a country concert. Every story notes that it's in the parking lot of some venue, which is very funny. But instead,

constantly updating the White House staff on this investigation into these journalists and coordinating with them. And so it's so obvious, they're trying to punish this reporting. Apparently Trump

was very mad about the reports about our first one. On some level, you can step back and be like,

"Okay, a reporting on security measures embedded in Air Force One like there is a risk there, but everyone knew about this." This was sort of like the conversation about the Katari gifted Air Force One in advance, was that you couldn't put in place these countermeasures, specifically

“the missile defense stuff in time for Trump to use it. That's what happened. That was the assumption”

was that piece of whatever countermeasures that had would be the hardest and take the longest. Yeah, and so if we already, everyone was speculating, once he wasn't taking that plane back, there was going to be a reporting on why. If the Y is security, if Trump is, Trump is pissed now that he won't be able to use the plane because now the secrets out on the fact that the plane isn't as secure as the original ones that took a decade to build.

Just another lesson by American, you know? For sure, yeah. And then the DOJ putting out this

state been saying a lot of classified leaks have often been investigating, which seems to be confirming the story, right? Because they're now saying, so there was, yeah, every leak investigation kind of confirms the underlying report in the US. But also like, they're trying to say, oh, well, we're just doing this sort of normal course of investigating leak, but as Tommy said, the operations reverse, but also, there is an understanding that if you're

“trying to get information from journalists to recovering, that that is a serious thing to do.”

Garland put in place protections for journalists to protect against this exact kind of thing, Pam Bondi rescinded those protections. Yeah, I mean, going after the journalists, is peeing the journalists for 48 hours after the story is just completely backwards.

It's just for all the times I would be like, oh, Obama, the Obama administration did this and

other administrations. It's usually the last resort is to to subpoena journalists if you absolutely have to. And you don't start the investigation that way unless you just want to intimidate people. And like half of the leak investigation that Obama were holdovers from the Bush administration, like there's all these caveats. So this look, I understand the criticism of it, but anyway, it's just not comparative. It just really, they're not the same in any way what happened

then and now. All right. One more explosive piece of news before we get to love its interview with Brian Tyler Cohen. The country is currently experiencing a cyclosporias that's outbreak a parasite that causes severe intestinal illness and diarrhea. Cases have been found in over half the states in the country, including over 2,500 cases in Michigan alone, while cases of the intestinal illness tend to rise and spring and summer of every year. This year's outbreak has been

particularly extreme raising questions about how the administration's cuts to the FDA and CDC may be affecting the federal response. Nicholas Florco at the Atlantic pointed out that as a Friday, CDC's case tracker of the outbreak had not been updated reporting less than 200 cases. An obvious undercount just Michigan alone has more than that. My only question is our case, junior at fault for American getting explosive diarrhea?

I think the question is worth asking. I think we don't know, but CDC's lost roughly a quarter of its workforce. They stop requiring surveillance of cyclosporias after it's been tracked for decades. Yeah. One of the ones that the, it's a cut one of the pathogens that they were tracking in the, in the budget cuts. And it's also just hard to measure the cost of having like just incompetent boobs at the top of all of these agencies. There's a lot of dogs

that aren't barking, right? The kind of thing like serious professional. Right, because they're there, they're sort of in a permanent squat. You know, when your dog has that, you know, dog sort of has that those long clips, you know, they're just, you know, they're like walking across the lawn, because they're just a food position for a long time. That's Michigan right now. That's pure Michigan. They're not even having, there's no lettuce and tomato on the

“Taco Bell Supreme anymore. That's what this country needs to be. That's what Thomas Trump has done.”

I was worried about this in the Wall Street Journal, and then it sure you were the following sentence was. She went to her local Taco Bell in July 7th, and by the next day, her stomach was upset. I'm like, uh, you know, dog bites. Yeah. Yeah. I think I've had it since I was 17. It's just, I mean, my reaction to this was was what you said, I love it. Like, what, what disease are we not tracking? Because of dough, oh my god, because far of K, things vaccines are causing it. Like,

god help us all. So the screw screw worm on the borders. Yeah. There's a worm eating cows in Texas, feels like that should be a bigger deal. Although, I mean, I was at the farmers market this weekend. We didn't buy like raspberries because Hannah had seen something somewhere that said raspberries might have it. I don't know. Sorry. Not to get darker about this, but this, for me, goes into the category of like the high class problem that Brian writes about in his book,

the after Trump, how do we will power? Like, public health agencies have been so decimated

I don't think people understand that when they leave in a new administration comes in,

it's going to be incredibly difficult to replace all of these experts and officials. Because you can't, like, people got other jobs. You can't just call up everyone that Trump fired and who had been, who had held this expertise for decades and be like, oh, yeah, can you come back now? It's gone new jobs. And so Michael Lewis wrote that book about all the the data that's being lost or there's a section of that book about the federal government that

talked about all the data and that is not being tracked or the longitudinal studies that are that were ended, all the research that was terminated. Like, that's just a price we're going to pay for very long. And all the investments into mRNA vaccines and other things that could

“provide the game-changing, you know, curious of the future. Yeah. And I think the next administration”

is probably just going to have to be honest about the whole that we're going to have to dig ourselves out of. Because there's a political issue with that, too, which suddenly there's an outbreak and, you know, the next Democratic President or the CDC officials, like, well, we were hamstringed

by all the cuts in the Trump administration. No one's going to be like, okay, no don't worry about

that. We understand. Yeah, like we spent on, like, there's so many ways in which what we're talking about are all the kind of offensive, like, not morally offensive, but, you know, proactively offensive ways in which Donald Trump is, you know, destroying institutions and and wrecking the government and, you know, focused on the wrong things. But I remember when we were working on some speech about some unrelated topic and there was a fear about swine flu.

And so there was a meeting and it was, we're going to, it rose to the level of the president and then he gave a brief topper at some speech swine flu topper. By swine flu topper. And it ran through with the latest he learned from the agencies and what people needed to know and that did two things. One, it informed the public about an ongoing public health threat. And whenever the President speaks to something, it is an organizing force inside the government.

It gets people attend a tent to attend to something, figure out what they're doing, explain what they're not doing, what's happening. And none of that happens when Donald Trump is president, none of it. And there's just a, like, it's, it's a hard to measure price because it's, it's the, it's the cost of incompetence that just shows up in people being sick

“after you're going to talk about. I think everyone here's been, um, quite sober and serious”

and talking about Senator Graham and not talking about all the jokes that we're being made on Twitter over the weekend. But I didn't need to read one, which was from an LOLGOP, which is said, They have to move the dead center as quickly so Bobby Jr doesn't try to eat them. Tommy, as we were talking about this, I was thinking to myself, can I read that tweet? -Yeah. -It's too much. -No.

And I'm glad you did. -I've got you. -I'm glad you did. -I'm glad you did. -I'm glad you did. -I'm glad you did. I forgot I got out of the pot because it was a good one. That's a good place to leave it. And... -Do you think he was gay? -Okay. -Well...

I think probably, but we'll never know now. Doesn't matter.

-We'll never matter. -In the end, never mattered. Never mattered. -You see that Trump ordered all flags in the United States to half staff. And I know this is my only... This is no one cares about this was me. He does not have that authority. He is responsible only for the flags on federal land because it's a free country.

And the sovereign states of this country can decide what they do with their flags. And the sovereign citizens can decide what we do with our flags. And if we want to lower our flags for Lindsey Graham, we can do it. I appreciate that we have lowered their pride flag to have staff as a little bit of people. -They did. -And the American flag both of them together.

-Wow. -I thought was a little bit of a... -But I'm moving. I'm moving, troll. You know, yeah. Exactly. -I'm moving, troll. -But I hate when Donald Trump orders everyone to lower the flags. Like, there's a free country. As far as I'm concerned. -Alright. Well, on that note, after the break,

love its conversation with Brian Tyler Cohen about all of this. Positive America is brought to you by Mint Mobile. There are things at life that you don't want to be transparent. Like, you're swimsuit or you're a search history. But when it comes to your wireless billing transparency,

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only in greater than 50 gigabytes ma's low and network is busy. Includes up to 20 gigabyte hotspot capable device required availability, speeding coverage varies, see mintmobile.com. Joining us now is progressive host and author of the new book the day after how to

Brian Tyler Cohen, welcome to the show. Love it. Thanks for having me. So you have your new

“book out, which we will talk about, but before we do, I wanted to get your reaction”

to what we're seeing right now in some right-wing media. I want to start with Tucker Carlson,

who has become increasingly critical of trump. Let's roll a clip.

You betrayed us and it's the betrayal that makes it so bitter for people like me and maybe you who voted for trump and I campaigned for and with him, you know, it's like really we really believe that you were going to at least try and in the end it's all about cryptocurrency scams and wars for Israel. I mean, I can't believe you did that hiding the Epstein stuff. So he goes on in that video to say that you can't even ask questions about Butler. So there's a mix

of his, like America first stuff, the anti-Israel stuff and the conspiratorial stuff in there. What do you make of Tucker's turn against Trump lately? I don't know that it's so much this virtuous stand as it is, Tucker recognizing not where the puck is, but where the puck is going.

And he can see how unpopular Trump is, how he's losing popularity even within in his own base.

And it's because he has defied his own campaign promises. I mean, it's nobody forced Trump to engage in a foreign war in the Middle East after promising no new wars in the Middle East. That was him. Nobody made Trump suppress the Epstein files after they all campaigned on release in the Epstein files. Nobody forced Trump to launch a trade war in against all these foreign countries that would raise the prices of everything. That was that was him. And so obviously that's

rubbing the Republican base the wrong way because it's completely diametrically opposed everything that Trump campaigned on. Tucker wants to retain relevance in in that base though that is his audience. And so he can both give himself a little bit of independent cred by going after Trump

on stuff that's already unpopular and kind of recognize that Trump is not going to be there forever.

“But he wants to have a longer career than I think than I think what spans just Donald Trump's”

specific tenure in office. And and I think that's look, he is a savvy operator. I think that what's makes him a little bit more savvy than a lot of other people in that space who only recognize, okay, right now I have to tie my fortunes to Donald Trump. And whatever he does, I have to blindly defer to him and that's it. And and I think that that's going to drag a lot of people down because they're only focused on today and not tomorrow. Yeah, it's interesting, you know,

Tucker is a challenge for Trump because Tucker has fucking money and seems to be pretty happy wherever he's in scomst making his shows from his home. So he's not on the, I mean, he's on the take. He's on the take. But he doesn't need Trump in the same way that say like a bunch of other either media figures still feel like they need Trump or or members of Congress or others in the sort of conservative ecosystem who are afraid to be on Trump's bad side. And part because they

don't feel like they have a they need him, they need him. But also be they don't feel like they have an independent trusted relationship with the base. You know, you see, you see the the Republicans just wanted to have an event with Trump to sign the housing bill. Trump allows the housing bill to become law, but doesn't sign it as a fuck you to the Republicans because those are Republicans want their event with daddy. They want to take the picture because his impremanture

on the bill does more than any words they can say because they don't have that kind of relationship and Tucker does seem like he's in a different category. Like their brand is just kind of glumming on to whatever Trump does. And frankly, there are no, we've seen there are no long standing principles. There are no core beliefs or core values. It's just whatever Trump says becomes gospel for these people who are hangers on for Trump. I mean, these people were anti-warger in the

campaign and now they're all explaining why actually what Trump is doing is completely fine. They have the ability to reign him in. They're a co-equipment of government, but instead they just day by day contract all their autonomy over to him. And so whatever stance he adopts, whatever errant synapse fires in his brain and words fall out of his face, that becomes gospel for this GOP. And you're right, Tucker doesn't abide by that same principle.

He doesn't need to. It's not like Trump can post a mean tweet and end his career in the same way that he can for somebody like Bill Cassidy or John Corden. But really what it does is just

“destroy the Republican brand. But that's what Trump wants. He wants the brand to just be”

slavish devotion to him and whatever he says and does. Yeah, it is also the ways in which Republican politicians Trump media figures deal with the conspiratorial mindset in their audience,

like Chris Rufo talking about the danger of this kind of thing. You hear that in a lot of what Tucker

has been doing. You also hear it in Candice Owens. And Ben Shapiro, let's just roll the clip without any introduction. Today, we are going to uncover the real murderer of Charlie Kirk. It's time. We've been working for months on a deep and detailed investigation. It's not who you think today. We are going to discuss who was really behind. Charlie Kirk's assassination. Candice Owens. So Candice Owens has obviously been saying unhinged shit about the killing of Charlie Kirk

and Candice Owens has also been at war with Ben Shapiro. I think this is his way of striking back with some parody about it. It's also coming at a time in which maybe in part because of the conspiratorial turn on the right. Like Ben Shapiro has lost some some relevance, lost some some audience. What do you make of that little civil war?

I mean, look, the reality is that when it comes to conspiracy theories online, that's the currency

of the internet. That's even more pervasive in right-wing circles. But the interesting part of this

“is in large part, that's what Republicans tapped into as it relates to Epstein. And that brought a lot”

of people into the political process. It's why a lot of people voted. They believe that there was this, you know, basically upper echelon of politicians and people who can commit heinous crimes with impunity. And that gained a lot of traction. And when we saw that that was in large part, what happened with the Epstein files, it backfired on Trump because now you have people who believed it. And it was largely borne out in what we saw. And Trump decided not to not to release anything

other than half of the files, damed to release half of the files, but continues to hold on to the other half. And so in this instance, you have people who kind of bought into what felt like a conspiracy theory, it ended up being in large part. I mean, they were obviously elements of it that were untrue, but in large part accurate. And now it's turning against Trump because he continues to

“suppress these files instead of release them. So I think that's one instance in which you have”

a political party that is already prone to this stuff. And it's going to create a lot of, I think, disaffected voters on the right because this is where they operate. This is where they live. And now they can see that Trump has no interest in actually delivering on that specific point. The Epstein files as this way of signaling that you're willing to take on the powers that be, right, whatever that means. But but also part of it, too, is like the comfort of some far off

enemy that is truly the ones responsible. Like that's a lot of what Trump does more broadly. It's this idea that that what is the source of our hills. It's not structural. It's not systemic inequality or broken systems for the failure to build housing or just the like the ordinary, quote unquote ordinary dangers that lurk for children everywhere that there is some like superplot of super leads. And that's the real threat. Now two things can be true, right? Like

there was and is now a big cover up around Epstein. There was a network of connected people who supported this person even after he was exposed. There's clearly nefarious doings and how he

got such a slap on the wrist when he was first brought up on charges and obviously Trump has been

covering up for him. But that a lot of right wing media is about this sort of comfort of like you are the folk, you are the good people in the good communities. And the enemy is it's the immigrants or the trans people or the cabal of Jews operating a pedophilia ring, right when when like actually like the real challenges and problems in your life are closer to home. But it's much harder to face that. And a lot of right wing media is just about stoking that feeling and

telling people over and over again that like they're like hey keep at it. Keep at once we get rid of these, once we get rid of these trans swimmers and Jewish cabals then everything's going to be

“coming up America. You know we've seen this as a recurring theme for so long. I mean I remember”

elections where it was migrant caravans and then it was gay marriage and then it was trans people and it's you know they're really effective at finding some boogie man to vilify as the source of all of society's woes. I think that they're going to run up on a wall in this election cycle because

over and over again. In some ways Republican elections from the early 2000s look identical to

“what they're saying today but they ran an entire election cycle based on culture wars in 2024”

and trying to perpetuate this idea that okay if only we can get they thems out of uh out of swimming then then everything will be solved and in fact now these people the Republicans have full control of government they have the house they have the Senate they have the White House they even want the popular vote on that message and one of they have to show for it there's no democrats in control to gum up the works. So what Republicans have to show for it right now

is a country that is sicker poor and hungryer than it's been before a country where prices are not going down they're going up inflation's not going down it's going up health care is not more expensive it's been contracted food assistance is the same we have not fewer wars but more uh the Epstein files are not released they're being suppressed and so given the fact there's no democrats to blame for any of this Republicans are going to have to confront the fact and and especially

their their base confront the fact that hey maybe if I keep voting on these culture war issues especially issues where like 10 people in the NCAA are at the heart of their entire national discourse then then you know that's not going to result in better outcomes for regular Americans that's just going to be more culture war issues that allow Republicans to consolidate power and then just do with that power what they want and Trump kind of unable to grapple with the actual

problems he claimed he was going to fix is distracted by the reflecting pool and the ballroom he's doing pit stops on the lawn he's doing challenge or campaigning he's doing the kinds of things you do when you're out of power complaining about the things you complain about when you're out of power but of course he you know he has the controls so now let's talk about what happens

“if and I believe they're called democrats that's how you pronounce it I've never I've only”

read it I haven't heard it said I've never seen one but these democrats are inclusive and elusive

creature yes these democrats and there I think they're nocturnal no but but they're main weapon is the strongly worded letters so look the whole bright is that we can win the house the Senate is not off the table I want to get to what you're talking about what you hope for democrats in a post Trump world but before we get there democrats would have to model what it looks like for them to be empowered if they win the house what do you think a democratic house majority

that has control of committees and subpoena powers but camp legislate without getting things signed by trump what does that look like to you it looks like investigating what we can investigate right now which is the rampant corruption that we're seeing across the government I mean my god trump's kids are taking in millions hundreds of millions of dollars in government contracts DOD contracts we're seeing short sales five minutes before some major white house announcement that

makes somebody a millionaire a hundred times over we're seeing you know these foreign investments via world liberty financial into trump's mean coins and stable coins and and crypto currency all of this stuff is happening in broad daylight it's clear that it is beyond illegal but there is this sense that crime is just legal in the trump era so long as a republican commits it or

you're willing to pay trump the requisite amount you know a million dollars to get a pardon

“or whatever you need so I think that in this rare sliver of time we're hopefully when democrats”

have the gavals they'll use that time obviously you can't legislate but you can use that time to investigate this stuff and by getting a lot of this stuff out there and starting these investigations hopefully you pave the way for the DOJ to pick up a democratic DOJ to pick up where they've left off I mean the the January six committee in large part was able to inform the prosecutions that came afterwards now I would argue that those prosecutions came too little too little too late

and and the the recklessness of america ones DOJ is in large part why were here but the reality is that we can use this time not only to win you know the the messaging more because this stuff obviously resonates I mean restoring the rule of law against the corrupt government is in in in large part what trump himself ran on against the democrats except he's doing it a thousand times bigger but it also has has some practical effects because then you can have a DOJ that uses a lot of

what congress was able to find on these fact-finding missions to actually move forward and prosecute some of this illegality so we can get back to a world where law and order actually exists so there's a lot of polling and about about views of democrats and democrats it is a deeply tarnished brand it is unpopular obviously among republicans but also democratic voters are deeply frustrated by the democratic party we've seen insurgent campaign defeating incumbents what does it look

like to have a democratic party after trump that you think meets the moment and meets the expectations

of the institutions that we take as a sacrosanct are not i mean trump is barrel through everything

he's he doesn't listen to the law the constitution the courts attorneys any other branch of government he just does whatever he wants i mean you would not find a democrat ever who would get into office and then raise the east wing of the white house to the ground it just wouldn't happen there's so much difference to norms and traditions and institutions trump has shown that if there's a will there's a way now he's done it for self enrichment he's done it so that he

can enshrined the oval office in gold and build a ballroom for himself and and and laundry money through foreign countries into his own pockets and his families pockets and build up his real estate portfolio so he's doing it for for for you know for bad reasons my argument is that democrat should look at what trump's doing and use that for virtuous reasons to deliver medicare for all it is long past time that we have universal health care in the richest country in the

world it's crazy that we don't to combat climate change the existential issue of our time to expand voting rights especially at a time when they're contracting across the country amid the fall of the voting rights act there are so many things that we can do that we allow these these norms and traditions to block us from doing but i think we have to get past this idea that even the smallest speed bump is is going to be an obstacle for us our our democratic officials

are not in government so that they can pay difference to the institutions of government they're there so that they can deliver outcomes for people and if that means they have to find a way

to circumvent these these hurdles these processes then so be it because the reality is i think

we're going to have a small window of time where we already know that there was a largely disillusioned

“with democrats block of voters that's why they went over to republicans now we have a disillusioned”

block of republican voters because you know to imply about everything that he was going to do so already trusting government is is at extreme lows we have a second i think i believe we're going to have a second by the apple here where we can bring people back into this tent but if we don't deliver if it's good enough the democrats can just not symbolic victories and get caught trying before eventually something inevitably goes wrong then i think you're just going to lose large swaths of the

population and and when you have an electorate that's that disaffected i think that's the conditions in which autocracy thrives i think it starts to become about what it looks like i agree in a sense that democrats need to need to take from trump a willingness to push harder against

the lawyers basically and we have better lawyers than they have but you got to sometimes you know

“push your lawyers find i think the democratic administrations have been too differential”

to the lawyers especially around questions that are kind of i would say more like philosophical rather than like a kind of on the page but at the same time the supreme court has given him immunity which is a terrible decision they've ruled with him more often than they have been but he has been stymied by the courts and part because especially the lower courts and part because they have been so hamphisted and so aggressive in trying to do things that are just

run against the plain language of the law so i i i do want us to learn the lesson from trump that we can be more aggressive and move faster and try things based on what we believe are like solid legal grounds even if they might be questioned by the courts but at the same time like he's cheating we're trying to prove the games worth playing right like we're playing against cheaters but we believe in the sport we like the rules of the sport we are we you know we're trying to

make sure people like you know like we we we're watching them get away with murder and bribing the reps and all the rest but we're trying to make a case to people that democracy's a game worth playing as you have in the book within in the conversation with president obama we have a tougher job than they do and part we do believe in uh in that part of democratic practice is uh understanding that laws are made by uh people and not uh uh uh one person deciding what the

laws right i mean i'm i'm definitely not advocating for tearing down or democracy i'm advocating for making it work for people making it a more efficient process i mean you know you've spoken at length whether it's something so granular uh as as housing right here where we are in Los Angeles or whether it's these you know these big issues like like obamas you know ultimate goal was to get

“single payer health care uh that's what the aca was was initially viewed as being so i think that”

that you know in either one of those scenarios either when you're looking at a local level or big ticket ideas on a federal level it's not necessarily a matter of of tearing government down it's

not just allowing yourself to be stymied by what republicans view as the smallest speed bumps

ever and what democrats view as just immovable um in passes uh speaking of a movable uh uh they uh pro-mitch macano upholding up the newspaper like he's a hostage uh did you do you find that reassuring what do you would like uh like uh or we meant to he's not speaking he's just a statement there's a picture of him he is alive i don't think that's the only question people have for their senators uh

whoa what do you what do you think's going on with mitch i'm really skeptical of conspiracy theories

“but i mean he looked really good in that picture yeah i think i think you just been unconscious”

for like three weeks um maybe you would have less color in your face so look again i try not to spread back here you don't want to do conspiracy theories you're responsible people we're responsible people but both you live in an era where it's easy to fake stuff and he

looked damn good in that hospital bed uh so i'll just leave it at that i think uh conspiracy

theories thrive online because it rewards people who are uh rewards kind of paranoid and kind of uh cynical sentiments but it also i think speaks to something about this era where uh like i don't think you don't need to be a conspiracy theorist to uh have a lot of questions about a send a senator checking into the hospital on June 14th uh they're being a uh audio from the uh dispatch saying someone was unconscious and cardiac arrest the only statements are coming from his staff and then

“the only sign of life is a single picture uh posted uh without any video or comment directly from”

the senator so uh part of it is it's um the internet makes people not trustworthy but so to these fucking people yeah yeah i mean look that that you cannot if you're a republican you can't be surprised when when this is the this is the environment you have to contend with the the same environment that that you in large part created and nurtured is now kind of turning against well one of their own in Mitch McConnell and hopefully this fall we can uh you know defeat some

“of them and then eventually have power and then we can wield that power Brian thanks for joining”

the book is the day after how to wield power in a post trump world it is out today everybody should pick it up uh and everybody should subscribe uh to Brian's YouTube where he is uh getting good information two people competing with uh we're as we're all doing competing with the right on the internet to try to you know get some get some wins in that algorithm Brian good to see after it love it thanks so much thanks Brian Tyler Cohen for coming on the show Dan and I will be back with a new show on Friday

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