With these young children, I don't think it's exciting me.
Really? I think it's my story, total. The story? How do you feel about the story? Yes, I have a lot to come up with. Do you have your own connections? No, just like the story.
Wow! And that's just a story? Of course, the world is all automatic.
Finally, I feel like I'm so exciting.
I'm happy to hear your story with Viso Stoyer. And after Chibode E.
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That's code DSR26 at the DSR network.com/buy. Thank you, and enjoy the show. Hello, and welcome to the DSR Daily. I'm David Rothkoff. I'm joined by Riley Fessler, and I'm in a Stein.
It's the beginning of a new week. Sunny. It's June. Rabbit.
“Do you know what I mean when I say rabbit?”
Does that resonate with either of the two of you? Nope. No. Old superstition. I don't know who gave it to me.
Back in my theater days, where you're supposed to say the first thing you're supposed to say at the beginning of each new month, is rabbit. Why? I don't know. But there, I did it for all of you.
Now, let's get into the stories, and Riley is going to kick us off.
Well, two federal judges have paused the Trump admins, a $1.8 billion dollar, what they're
calling anti-weaponization fund, following a motion from 35 former judges who labeled the initiative a quote, "Fraud on the court." This is course stems from a not so settled lawsuit. The Donald Trump filed against the IRS, which critics argue was a collusive effort to bypass Congress and reward political allies.
Courts are now investigating the legitimacy of the settlement and have temporarily frozen the money to prevent any irreversible disbursements. Yeah. Let's go back to the square what on this. Okay?
“When Trump sued the IRS, was he doing it for his weaponization fund?”
And the show pants here? No, he was not. He was doing it so he could get $10 billion from the U.S. Treasury. And then people went, "What the fuck?" The president wants to take $10 billion out of the Treasury for himself.
That's correct. So then they came up with a figlet, which was this nearly $2 billion fund, to go to reward people close to the president thus benefiting the president and potentially also to the president and also to the president's children and also to companies run by the president and so on.
Also to establish the president precedent that they could do it.
Of course, as Riley indicated, it was never a real thing to begin with.
Trump is the president. He runs the IRS. You know, when the IRS leaked the documents that he is objecting to having been leaked, was it under Biden? No, it was under Trump.
I mean, he was the president whose administrations actions he was suing. So that's where it starts and then he sues a government he runs and gets into an negotiation with the Justice Department that does this bidding and then comes up with this scheme. As a settlement, only to avoid having the court rule on whether or not this was a legitimate case because had the court rule that it was not a legitimate case, which it was two days away
From when all this was announced, then what would have happened was that ther...
case to settle and no settlement possible.
“So they then said, "Oh, we're going to withdraw this negotiated settlement so far."”
Well, the court says that's a fraud on the court and also said it all these justice to judges and justices that they said this is a fraud on the court. Because there's no two parties. This is somebody in the government in a position of power seeking to take money out of the government and coming up with a pretext of doing it that is in violation of the Constitution
and abuses the legal process in the United States of America. So by all means, they should have done this and by all means this should be shot down and by all means it requires further investigation.
Because whoever it was in the Justice Department that was facilitating this was violating
the law and violating their oath of office and they should be kicked out and they should be prosecuted if that's warranted and they should be discharged. Good news. Good to see the court stand out. I'm going to follow up with a blast from the past. Former Attorney General Pam Bondi defended her handling of the government's highly controversial
Epstein documents dump on Friday, placing operational blame for redaction errors and missing files onto current acting Attorney General Todd Blanch. Last fight behind closed doors and it was transcribed in the interview before the House Oversight Committee on the insisted that the Justice and Transparency had been delivered in good faith.
However, the session was quickly condemned, obviously because it was ridiculous and it was not. Exactly.
“Her views were condemned because they were 100% partisan bullshit and that's what you expect”
from Pam Bondi, that's what you get from Pam Bondi, I understand Pam Bondi is ill with a form of thyroid cancer, very sorry, oh, she recovers, but I hope she spends the rest of her days not doing any work that is associated with the well-being of the people of the United States and that she's healthy enough to be prosecuted in the way that she ought to be prosecuted for her abuse of power, violation of her oath and the violation of whatever
law is devilated while she was Attorney General to support things like Trump's crazy cash grabs and vindictive prosecutions of people who did that deserve to be prosecuted and cover-ups for the crimes of the president of the United States and those close to all of which violate a series of laws. Anyway, you know, no one expected her to tell the truth, I think Democrats may have expected
that she would lie and that at some point she could be charged with that and I think that's what happened.
First, Riley will main Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner is facing a new controversy
because he didn't have enough already following reports that he exchanged sexually explicit text messages with several women while married. In response, his wife, Amy Gertner dismissed the media coverage as, quote, shameful gossip and expressed hurt over the disclosure by former campaign staffer, Gen V of McDonald's. This latest scandal is just the latest in a string of past controversies, including it's
not so simple tattoo and a history of offensive Reddit posts as Platner pushes forward it toward the June 9th primary with his prominent progressive endorsements still intact for now. Yeah, I got to tell you, and I've been saying this for a while. And I know some of you out there are progressive because I'm a progressive and I really
think we need new voices out there. This was going to be a problem. We knew it was going to be a problem. It was predictable. It was going to be a problem.
And the fact that Graham Platner is a plain, speaking guy from Maine and he has some views that some progressive like is fine, that doesn't mean he has to be the Senate candidate. And did he did he win the primary against an older establishment candidate and you know,
“we don't need any more older establishment candidates?”
Yeah. But Maine's a state, it's a real state, there's a lot of people there. Pickin' this one was a problem and we knew it was going to be a problem. And it became this issue of, I don't know, pride or principle, although I'm not sure
What the principle involved is.
And people are like, no, we're sticking with him.
“We can even beat that Susan Collins with him because look at the polls.”
Yeah, look at the polls prior to the election. Look at the polls prior to scandals coming out, prior to tens of millions of dollars being spent, reminding everybody of each of these scandals, prior to a close examination of the Melee Mouth defenses that Platner has offered up, you know, I, you know, I just don't know how this is going to turn out, maybe he will even win.
But I gotta tell you, I'm not throwing a party when a guy with Nazi tattoos who participates
in Reddit discussions and offers offensive views, who obviously, you know, lost his moreings
in his marriage and engaged in these kinds of things. I'm just, I'm not gonna throw a party, it's not the kind of candidate I want.
“It's not the kind of person who should be out there.”
And he also seems like a loose candidate and we have seen what happens with a loose candidate before. I have just two words to remind you of where that leads. John Fetterman. So look, hope to Dems win. Susan Collins doesn't belong in Senate. She's too old. She's weak. She's not a true independent.
She is enabled all sorts of mayhem and bad decisions by the enactions by the U.S. government.
But this one, the whole thing gives me a stomach ache. It just, they just had to be somebody better. And I wish, I wish we were there and I'm not sure there's an easy way to undo it, by the way. But here we are. Well, I have some really bad news.
“Well, good. That'll change things up for Monday morning.”
And I know it's going to break your heart, David, because you're so excited. But unfortunately, President Trump suggested on Saturday that planned musical performances for the upcoming great American state fair, should be, it's old. What? He suggested that we replace them with a massive make America great again, Rally. Yippee. And this ultimate on truth social after several high profile recording artists
and roughly pulled out of the summer concert series. Like all of them. Look, when you are putting on a concert, and it is too embarrassing for Millie Vanilli to be involved, and I'm not even talking about all of Millie Vanilli. I'm talking about the only remaining half of the discredited group, which, you know, had a brief hit, and then was discovered to a blip sink, the whole thing. But only half of them were
willing to show up. And that half, then says this is too political for me. Something's wrong. But artist after artist after artist backed out, and this was not exactly like the group of radical progressive artists, right? These people already knew they were doing something for the Trump administration, but they alleged they thought it was for the America's 250th birthday celebration and not a political thing. But Trump's true social post on this was so
lame and pathetic. And it said, you know, well, I understand these artists have gotten the hips, which is a golf expression, meaning that, you know, gotten a little nervous about being involved. And so I want to bring in the one artist who gets bigger audiences than Elvis ever did. The biggest artist in the world made, I mean, this guy's narcissism, holy moly. It knows no bands. And so he thinks, yeah, okay, we want to do that. I'll just talk. That's the same as having
these people saying, that's the same as a concert. Forgetting for a moment, of course, that this was all the celebrating America's 250th birthday. Uh, you know, I have a calm coming out a little bit later today at the Daily Beast saying that Trump's present for America's 250th birthday, 2 America is humiliation because of things like this. And the fact that almost everything he wants to do to commemorate the birthday or his birthday in conjunction with the birthday, like the UFC
fight on the South lawn, which nobody wants to show up for, so they have to actually recruit members of the military and have them go there, but have them pay their own way, but they can only go it there. A certain height and weight requirements are met because Trump doesn't want to
Chubby audience.
downtown DC with 23.75% gold leaf or Trump's turning the reflecting pool into a kiddie pool,
or, you know, you know, Trump's initial plans. I'm sure to have big celebrations of the 250th at the Kennedy Center and then all of a sudden have a judge on Friday say, sorry, you can't even call it the Trump Center like you want to and you can't shut it down and then he writes, oh, hold up that I'm having nothing to do with it. I'm just going to give it back to the Congress and it's going to fail because they don't know how to do it. Of course, the everything about
Kennedy Center and being in trouble right now has to do with Trump and Trump's people.
Anyway, the point is all this is happening around the 250th birthday of the family at the United
States, which is now one month and four days away. And it's cringe, cringe maxed to post it, yes,
“yes, Mina. Well, everything that you said is way more important than when I'm going to say,”
so if you take anything away, have it be everything that David just said. But I just wanted to point out that it was also going to be two weeks of concerts. So, like concerts spread out over two weeks, being replaced with one speech. Well, you don't know. He could talk for a long, he could talk for a long time for two weeks. Two weeks, Trump does a nice two-week speech and big great or it could be
mini-series. You know, we could just have Trump go on and on and on and on.
He could do busy, at least. Yeah, but it's like whatever you may think of America. What America's, you know, got some good stuff and it's got some bad stuff. We've achieved some great things and we've failed in some areas. But, you know, the 250 years, you know, the idea of the democracy, the idea of our constitution, the progress that we've made, there are things to celebrate here real, mere material things. And millions of people have fought sacrificed and died to make
America what it is. It deserves a little bit of dignity, a little bit of honor, deserve some
“celebration because the reason we celebrate things to remember what's good and to aspire to”
achieving what we have yet to achieve. And what we're getting is humiliation. What we're getting is an absolute shit show from the president of the United States who wants to make it all about him in big gold letters in the most embarrassing way possible. And it's sad. But I suspect, you know, they're another way to look at it. There is a cautionary tale in that. That this 250th birthday is not happy birthday. It is not a good celebration.
If you've got a guy like Trump who's trying to dismantle democracy, undermine our fundamental rights undermine the institutions that have grown up over those 250 years, undermine our standing in the world so that, you know, there was a poll that was done recently that showed that around the world, people think more highly of China and Russia than they do of the United States. Neither one of which is a democracy. You know, I'm sure everybody has seen it that inside the
Declaration of Independence there are 27 grievances with King George III. You know, various people have done studies of this and some of the more conservative assessments have said that six or 10 or 12 of those grievances could be echoed in response to things that Trump is done. And several of the assessments done have said that all 27 have been violated or replicated by Trump. And that's the ultimate humiliation. That's the ultimate that that this was country was
established for a reason. And one by one, Trump is identifying those reasons and doing the opposite of the intent of the founders. And that's where we are on America's 250th birthday. Well, for the last story, we have to talk a little bit about foreign policy because prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. I can hear people clicking off as we go because, you know,
“foreign policy that it made. Anyway, go on. Yes, foreign policy. Well, it's important”
because prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered military strikes on Beirut. Yeah, accusing Hezbo of repeatedly violating an April ceasefire with ongoing rocket and drone strikes. The announcement prompted to thousands of residents to flee causing severe traffic gridlock as a family's sought safety. While Marco Rubio has proposed to
Graduate the escalation plan to curb the violence, diplomatic progress remain...
to expand its ground offensive and Lebanon. Yeah, and we own this, folks. America owns this. We
back this Netanyahu's gone in. It is looking more and more like he wants to seize and hold territory. Thousands of people have died in Lebanon. The peace talks that have taken place are not
between the combat and parties. They are between Israel and Lebanese government as well as not
“involved. We have to remember that this particular phase of this was launched by Israel.”
You know, that's why it is rich that, you know, they're saying Hezbollah has violated the ceasefire.
Israel has also violated the ceasefire. Israel violated the sovereignty of Lebanon with the
invasion. Israel violates ceasefires on a regular basis in Gaza. And this is going to be a problem
“with the settlement of the Iran issue. The smorning president Trump issued a true social”
on the Iran negotiation saying it makes it harder for him when everybody is putting so much pressure on him to have the deal done now. It'll get done what it gets done. Everything will be fine. Chill out everybody. Not exactly those words. But it was the president whining. Because he
“doesn't have a solution. He can't achieve what he wants to achieve. He knows the deal that he is”
going to get is going to be less good than the deal Obama got less good than where we were on February 27. It's so he's stalling because he thinks people will forget. Well, they won't forget. We won't forget. We'll cover this closely. As we'll cover, you know, all the other developments this week on all of our other podcasts here at the DSR Network, which you can subscribe to on YouTube, or you can subscribe to where you get your podcasts. And I'll also be doing my Monday morning podcast
that comes out on Monday evening from the Daily Beast today so you can go watch that. And we'll have some interesting new guests for you. So it's going to be a busy exciting week. Please join us throughout and back here tomorrow morning on the DSR Daily until then. Thank you, Minna. Thank you, Riley. Thank you, everybody. Bye. Bye.
