10/16/25: Trump Greenlights CIA In Venezuela, Debate On Totalitarianism, Dems Screwed By SCOTUS In 2026

23:47I mean, remember, we we argued about this on a farm. They were like, oh, children have been swept up in farming. Why are children on farms? Why are these illegal children on a farm? You people never cared about that when you're smoking your toke from your cannabis retail store, which gives you your little rewards program and your high potency THC when you're ordering. I appreciate you finding a way to bring it back to Weedsbogger. It was at a weed farm. Crystal, it was at a weed farm. I didn't just shoehorn it in there. So let me just say that, you know, this is, we've had these debates many times.

24:16That's why I believe that people should be brought out of the shadows so they cannot be exploited. I think your concerns about the exploitation of undocumented labor are entirely justified. I just come down a very different place in terms of what the solution is. But I will also say, Soccer, that it has like, and we'll show some more clips here, but it is not just undocumented immigrants who are fearful right now. In fact, there are a lot of people even with legal status or who are going through the asylum process or who are green cardholders. No one is exempt from this. And so the fear and the disruption in their life and the potential inability to go to work, all of those things are not just with the undocumented community.

24:55It's far more widespread. And yes, L.A. is a city of immigrants. I mean, like I said, it was roughly a third of the population who are immigrants or potentially impacted by this. And that Supreme Court decision that says doesn't you don't need any excuse to stop people other than them just like basically being brown makes it so that the fear and the impact is much more widespread than it would otherwise be. I'll grant you that. That's the cleanest hit that the left has got right now. And they're not wrong. But part of the reason I wanted to focus on that LA stuff is because I'm like, that's how you got here, okay?

25:25You created a political system where for a lot of us, it feels like you have an entire, like the entire liberal city focus is on criminals, making sure that they can get away with as much crime as possible and on making sure illegals are apparently treated as everyday citizens. I'll give you a perfect example here in Washington, D.C. You remember the whole big balls mugging, which justified the National Guard? Guess what happened to those two teens who mugged them? Probation. Nothing. No jail time. Nothing going after them. The D.C. people just let them right out of there. That's how you get to the National Guard deployment.

25:57It's like you have to grapple with failed governance and with priorities. You live in the richest city. We're literally one of the richest cities in the history of the world where you have 10 % of the people there who are there illegally. You have to tacitly admit that your skyrocketing price and everything is not capable without your slave labor from Guatemala. And then the only possible solution you come to is pathway to citizenship. That is why people freak out, people like me. I'll give you an example of who's the founder of Reddit. I think his name is Alexis something. I forget his name. He made a long post about ICE and everything.

26:30He's like, my family, we're undocumented. And he goes, instead of these ICE raids, that's why we need a pathway to citizenship. And it just strikes me again. It's like if your only option for many of us is amnesty or this shit, a lot of people are going to choose this shit. Because even in a pathway to citizenship, for example, there will come a time where many of the people who don't qualify, what happens to them? Are they going to leave willingly? They have to be deported somehow. Sometimes we're going to have to go and find them. Are you ever going to support that? No, we know the answer. They don't support law enforcement removing illegals from the country.

27:04You're making it such a binary choice. It actually was in the election, though. It really was. I don't think so, Cogger, because, I mean, listen, to me it was, right? To me it was. When I saw mass deportation now, I'm not going to say I knew it would be Black Hawk helicopters raiding an apartment building in the middle of the night and zip-tieing naked children. Okay, I'm not going to say I knew that. I knew it would be something approaching. I mean, Trump talked about the insurrection, like invoking the Insurrection Act. But there is a balance that could be struck between like, you know, ice absolute terror rain in a variety of cities and targeting blue cities in particular in blue states because you don't like the politicians who are there.

27:44That is where the vast majority of the illegals are, too, because they created sanctuary cities. And total impunity for these guys who are assaulting, again, American citizens, right, who are assaulting legal immigrants, who are racially profiling anyone who looks brown, running around in masks and terrorizing entire cities. Like, there is a way of doing some immigration enforcement that doesn't look like that. Yeah, but we did have that. But hold on. Oh, sorry. This is what I find frustrating about your analysis. I know how you feel about immigration, okay? But I feel that there is such a heightened level of scrutiny and expectation on one side and then a total lack of accountability.

28:25The upset over the way that the Trump administration has conducted themselves, you just want to blame like, oh, well, it's the liberals' fault. It's Biden's fault. It's Newsom's fault. It's Karen Bass's fault. These are grown human beings who control all of the government. They have responsibility for their own decisions. You can't just always blame liberals for what the fuck they're doing. I think that is entirely fair, but I would compare it to, are you capable of talking about illegal immigrant crime without contextualizing it in the broader picture? Not really. What do you mean? Well, okay, so if I was like, oh, if we talk about, let's say, the Lake and Riley case or any of that, every time we do, it always has to come back to, oh, but actually, statistically, it's a bigger picture, and it's America's fault that they're coming from Guatemala anyway, and actually they commit less crimes than whites, and that's why actually they're better citizens.

29:10or whatever. No, no, no. Criminal illegal immigrants should be deported. Are you happy? It's not about - It's not hard to say, Sagar. I know that. I can say it very directly. That is not what these people are doing. They are doing the opposite of that. In fact, we have an element here later in the show, the apartment building raid. They are claiming one Trender-Aragua member. The vast majority of the people that are picking up have no criminal records. The amount of drug trafficking, human trafficking convictions are down. They are doing the opposite of going after undocumented criminals, illegal criminals, okay?

29:46So, like, if the goal is let's get out the bad people, they are completely failing at that. I grant you that. I grant you that entirely. What I'm saying is about a political dynamic of which we were entered in. Now, you talked about that there's a middle way. We had four years of the so-called middle way where 8 to 10 million people entered the country illegally. That was just as insane and lawless. No, it only wasn't because you agree with the policy and you want to give them citizenship. For many of us, we reject that. We say, actually, that's a violation of immigration law. That is a violation of the border, violation of our sovereignty as a country itself.

30:22And yes, many people saw that as ridiculous, as lawless, as out of control. And they gave us the option. We had to choose between that and this. And the majority of the people did choose at least some version of this. And the majority of people are rejecting this now. Okay, but we don't live in government by poll immediately. So then Biden should have just been thrown out of office with the border? I live a very privileged life, right? Yeah, so do I. Let's put that on the table too. I own my own home. I'm doing fine, right? So let's think about the people who were both directly impacted by undocumented immigrants coming in and who are now directly impacted by what the Trump administration is doing.

30:59Okay. The people in that apartment building in Chicago. Okay. There were definitely undocumented immigrants there. All right. Yes. And they, if you talk to the residents, they have been far more traumatized by what was done to them by this government than by any of the undocumented immigrants who were there in that apartment building. So if you're just talking directly about the people who have been directly affected both by undocumented immigration and by a fascist crackdown in their city, helicopter raid, like all of this insanity, there is no doubt that they would much rather have the undocumented immigrants in their building than their whole life turned upside down, their children dragged down to their beds and traumatized.

31:42That seems very reductive because you're pointing to that one apartment building. I could probably find 10 apartment buildings where people have said that illegals have come in with crime. I mean, actually, literally where I live, there's very nearby, there's public housing projects where they're having problems with MS-13, and I actually even asked one of them, I said, what's the issue? He said, oh, we got all these Venezuelan migrants who've been coming in and breaking into people's cars. Yeah, so then ask them if they would like, in response to that, to have their apartment raided in the middle of the night and their children pulled down the street and zip tied and thrown U-Haul.

32:07I'm giving you the prospect of they're also upset about the former, which is how we got to the latter. Now, I'm not justifying what the Trump administration is doing, but similarly, in the way that we talk about illegal crime, or at least any liberal has talked about illegal crime, we have to look at it in the context of how we got here. Like, there's no way, I know this for a fact, having debated immigration with liberals now for over a decade, they can't, are literally constitutionally incapable of talking about illegal immigration without, oh, but America messed up Guatemala or whatever in the 1980s.

32:38And that's why it's our fault that all these people came over here. It's not possible. Of course we can look at stuff in the context. But isn't there a bit of a point? I mean, we're just talking about Venezuela, right? We're just talking about Venezuela where we might do a regime change, where we have massive sanctions that have, it's not the only reason, but it's a big part of miserating the population. I mean, it seems to me like that's actually a very important part of the conversation because people don't want to have to leave their house. They want to be able to stay in their homes. I don't agree with that.

33:05No, it's absolutely the case. Over a billion people around the world would come to America to be good. Even in a place like Venezuela that is where things are not good and haven't been good for a while, it's not like everyone is leaving. People prefer generally to stay where they're from. You know, the migrants pushed down the Syria. Like, they don't want to have to go to these European countries. We interviewed that Palestinian, now Australian doctor, Dr. Mo, who grew up in the UK. And kids would be like, go back to where your company is. Like, I literally can't. Like, I would love to go back to Palestine.

33:40I would love to not be a refugee, but I literally can't. So I don't think that there's any problem with discussing those root causes. But that's why I don't think there's a problem in talking about the incentive structure. and the border and lawlessness. I hear you, but, Connor, what I get frustrated with is it's every time, it's always trying to deflect blame from the Trump administration onto something that some liberal did that you didn't like whenever or wherever. And it's like, at a certain point, can we just say, you know what, this is really unacceptable, and I don't care what came before.

34:09This is inexcusable. This is unacceptable. And we should be outraged at the way their rights are being violated, at the way our rights are being violated, at the denial of due process, at the fact that we can just have mass racial profile, at the fact that these communities are being terrorized? Like, why can't we just have a direct condemnation without all this, like, well, actually, but it's the liberals full of money. Because I just don't really think that exists. Again, when we talk about illegal crime or when we talk about any of these other problems that illegals cause, it's like nobody's...

34:35So because you don't like the way liberals talk about immigration, you can't just condemn the Trump administration for what they're doing here. Don't you think it's kind of emotional blackmail in a way? Like, did we, for the last four years, just cover every single illegal rape in the country and completely for what it was? Like, no, because I think, honestly, that would be ridiculous. I think this is basically the inverse of that, where it's like, oh, we have to condemn this one specific thing we can't talk about. The broader context matters. The body politic actually did vote in a very specific way on this.

35:02Now, maybe they're feeling differently now. We don't live in government by poll fiat, where immediately, like, if that were the case, then we should have said, fuck Biden, let's get him out of here nine months into the election. I think your point would be reasonable if we're talking about one-offs, But we're talking about a whole government policy, which is also not really about immigration. It's partly about immigration, but it's not really about immigration. This is about trying to create a one party state. This is about trying to. This is the case. I mean, if you look at we just said we didn't get this into this show because it just broke yesterday.

35:34They're now trying to turn the IRS into, you know, an investigation of any of their political opponents. They want to go after George Soros's Open Societies Foundation. They want to try to criminalize basically donating to any sort of left causes. You have NSPM 7, which is meant to target anyone who is critical of like the right or Trump, etc. You have them denying visas to people because they said the wrong thing about Charlie Kirk. We're going to talk to David Sirota about these Supreme Court cases. They're trying to consolidate. They are going for the whole thing. They're trying to consolidate control.

36:05And part of that is the militarized response, both with the National Guard, but also with these federal agents in the streets of these cities, which they are only expanding. So, yes, it's important to talk about what that actually looks like on the ground. And it's also really important when the government lies to you about what's happening to be able to expose the truth. They're trying to provoke these direct confrontations because they want to use, and again, we know this from reporting, to invoke the Insurrection Act, which will give them an even freer hand. And this is not just about immigrants.

36:35This is about all of our rights. And I think that is abundantly clear. I said that's the cleanest hit that they've got. And that obviously is where they're out of control. I'm not I'm not really disputing a lot of your a lot of your critique of the way that the Trump administration has carried this out. I really am not. What I am trying to get to is look, I mean, I think you're off base with a one party state thing. I think quite a lot of this is either theater or in many cases it's like designed to placate like specific political constituencies. I mean we can't cover the way that we've haphandedly done the world's worst trade war and then also say that this is the most – that this is some like hyper-efficient party state which is capable of takeover.

37:17But also implicit – Whether they're able to be successful or not is a different question of what they're trying to do. Let me just take it back. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hyper, because specific to your critique is baked in like a liberal acceptance, let's say, of the Voting Rights Act. I read a lot about that. We're going to talk about that with Sirota. It's like, should race really qualify as part of gerrymandering because of some interpretation of the 1965 Voting Rights Act? In my opinion, based on everything I've read, specifically agreement and critiques of the Civil Rights Act, I would say no. I actually think it's a violation of the way that we were originally supposed to apportionment.

37:49It's just only baked in to the post-liberal cause that race itself should be an identity issue. Now, will it be bad for Democrats? Yeah. I don't really care about that. I mean, I wouldn't really care because it's a principal issue for me. You disagree? That's fine. I'm just – I'm trying to take it out – I'll save that – more of that comes in for a moment. But what we're talking about is taking an area that is majority black and then dividing it like a pinwheel to make sure that they have no representation. And yes, I think that's wrong. And I think that means that those – But then just lumping them all in one place is the same.

38:20Those people are being denied political representation. And so I think, yeah, I think that's a problem. It's a racial carve out for political representation. I'm only getting to implicit in all of this is a literal liberal bias where you see one as equal, as more lawless than another. You have to accept that, you know, if we all want to live together, many of us saw what happened to the Biden administration as actually lawless insanity and as a literal last chance, which is why many people voted for Trump. And that theory pervades the current United States government in their view of immigration specifically.

38:55Now, I'm not going to say for National Guard or for any of that because I actually do think that's kind of a separate issue, even though I know that you think it is the same. In general, on this issue, if the fact is if we are so far apart that, again, for the binary is literal amnesty for all of them, 20, 25 million or deportation, many of us are going to choose deportation, which you simply are. Because that does seem to me the binary when the liberal elite and others are all saying that this is the only other acceptable solution. For many people, that is a genuine threat. And I just – I don't think that the liberals grasp that it's an actual red line in the same way that maybe this is a red line for you.

39:33And I don't begrudge anybody. If you're liberal and you want to go out and make this your number one issue, you have your absolute right as an American. You should try and convince people. In my opinion, you're probably winning right now because most people see lawlessness and chaos in the same way they saw under Biden. And I think the cleanest hit that you guys have is that this is a violation of our rights as Americans, which to me is kind of nice because it's like we finally get to talk about us being Americans. But one of the things that drives me crazy is the conflation of the two and specifically saying there might as well be citizens itself.

40:04That's why, honestly, I'll say it. I still have a really hard time with always trying to have a look at, like, oh, the violation of this, this, and that. And it's like it's so crazy to me that you can literally cross our border illegally, take money, take a job, go live in our housing. Expect, like, the full rights of the U.S. Constitution, of the government and all that other people to protect you. I understand after talking with Glenn why it has to be that way, so I accept it. But intellectually, I struggle with it. It doesn't seem right to me that you can break our laws, that you can enter here legally, that in my opinion, you can take and actually not do so much benefit to our country and that we have to roll the red carpet out for you just to send you back from where you came from.

40:46It's nuts, in my opinion. Well, even if you feel that way. No, I've said I accept that the law has to be the way it is. But no, even if you feel that way, the reality of like due process, you know, is the perfect example here. If you don't have due process, you don't even get if you're a citizen getting caught up in this to prove you're a citizen. And that's where we are. I think it's fair. That's where we are now. You know, I mean, we have a number of instances of American citizens. I don't I think it was the day I was with maybe it was the day I would cover with Emily. But the you know, the guy who was going to work, American army veteran, and they busted open the windshield in his car, sprayed him with pepper spray, took him, held him for days, wasn't allowed a phone call, wasn't allowed to call his lawyers, was put on suicide watch, was not allowed.

41:33He was covered in pepper spray, was being burned by this pepper spray, not allowed to clean himself off. Those are the things that are happening. And so I understand that you have a hardline position on immigration, and it's important to you. And I understand that. I don't agree with it, but I understand that's the case. But, you know, I think especially at this point, you can't really claim the mantle of a popular mandate when you've seen such a backlash against what all of this looks like. So conceptually. OK, but sit with that conceptually. So then when Biden is unpopular, I should be able to demand that he stop.

42:07He's not going to stop. Like, that's not how government by poll fiat works. I mean, again, here's the thing, though. It's like we would just have three month, you know, policy cycles. It doesn't work that way. The system is literally designed so that you can get elected and then you can do something about it. And in four years, people will get to vote and they can choose what world that they want to go down. The nature of what the something is does kind of matter. You know, if you're going to like, OK, we're going to we're going to beef up the FBI and we're going to do investigations into, you know, criminal undocumented networks.

42:39And we're going to have these cases and we're going to take them down. In fact, what we've seen in the opposite is him like making deals with McKellie to let down a bunch of gang leaders. Like, that's the reality of what's going on here. And we're going to go after the, you know, the person who actually was going to their court hearing and is following the process. And we're just going to snatch them up or we're going to, you know, we're going to take you because we don't like what you said about Charlie Kirk or what you said about Palestine or just because you happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

43:02I mean, they truly are, you know, wreaking havoc in these communities. So when you talk about. I'll give you the Charlie Kirk thing is a perfect example. I know you guys are going to cover on the Friday show. But for me, one of those guys, so I conceptually, I have to be like, okay, this is a, this is a free speech problem. One of those guys though, he talked about white trash people. One of the people who posted that. And I go, you know what, man? Fuck you. Why are you in our country and you're insulting our own citizens? That's, I mean, I, and that's where I guess liberals just don't have that in them.

43:28It's like you come here and you're going to insult the people who live here. Go fuck yourself. Get the fuck out of here. There's a difference between your emotional reaction and your intellectual understanding of the way that is an infringement on people's First Amendment rights. And yes, immigrants do have free speech rights as well. But we've also seen the way that this government does not keep these infringements just with the immigrant community. I'm giving you the example because that, I mean, let's take a poll, shall we, since we're so interested in polling. Should people who think that white people who live in our country are white trash be allowed to live here?

44:05Most people say no. There are a lot of people here in this country already who think that there's poor people who are white trash. And guess what? I really object to that, though. But, you know, in other instances, like, you're like, offensive speech, whatever, like, stop pearl clutching. You know, the point of the point of First Amendment speech is, like, it protects you when things are offensive. You say that. I'm not going to say you should be kicked out of the country. It's a choice to let somebody have those rights is because there are going to be instances where the majority is opposed. Right.

44:39But we don't want to deny people their rights just based on like a mob mentality in the moment of what we emotionally feel. so you know that's why these fights can be difficult but are important but you know if you don't mind i would like to show some of the you know something in chicago because um i think like this is potentially there is more and more backlash as chicago seems to be the hottest uh at this point there's more and more backlash just from the community um to what's going on in chicago and so let me show you this one instant instance that really turned into uh you know quite a hot situation.

45:16Let's show E3, please. So here you can see a white vehicle. That's the ICE vehicle ramming this red vehicle in a community, in a random neighborhood in Chicago. And then they get out and they make chase. And allegedly, these three people that they make chase of are undocumented. And then you have people from the community. And we can put E4 up on the screen. Hundreds of people come out of their houses because this accident has just happened because, you know, ICE rammed this vehicle. Hundreds of people come out and it turns into, you know, it turns into a chaotic situation. So this is from the Chicago Sun-Times.

45:56New York Times covered it as well. Other outlets do. They said feds ram SUV after chase down Residential Street in Chicago, then tear gas the crowd. And we can show some of what this looks like. This is E5. We can put this up on the screen. So this is, again, similar to the one we covered before. I think what's important, E5, guys, go ahead and put up the VO. I think what's important here to realize is this was not like an organized protest. These are just random community people. And maybe there were some activists who, after this all starts to unfold, come to the scene. You've got elderly people.

46:29There was at least one baby in the crowd. And then what they say is that people start throwing stuff and they started tear gassing. They've been using tear gas quite indiscriminately around schools. We saw the pastor who was tear gassed. And Chicago PD, who had shown up to try to deescalate here and separate the crowd from the federal agents, they actually got tear gassed in this as well. You had one person with like a baby in a carrier has to run away. And tear gas is very particularly dangerous for children in particular. And there's a couple of key things that I want to point out here just again on the theme of like you cannot trust what this government is telling you.

47:07They initially said that the immigrants had rammed the ICE agents. You can see from the video, they are the ones who intentionally caused this accident. This is apparently a law enforcement tactic. I'm not familiar with this, but a law enforcement tactic to stop vehicles. And it's banned by most police departments because it's extremely dangerous and has caused a lot of fatal accidents. So they're executing this extremely dangerous maneuver. Then they lie about it. And then even they picked up, they arrested a few of the people that had gathered there. And they said that they had, you know, assaulted the officer and throwing things at them, etc.

47:42But then they also released them without charges. So, you know, we've had other instances where they claim this woman that they shot, they said, oh, she had a semi-automatic weapon. And, you know, she was trying to threaten us, etc. And that turned out to not be accurate as well. So they also have just been caught in a number of instances where they will just lie about the scene and the way things ultimately unfold. Again, I'm really not denying any of this. I'm not saying they haven't lied. Have you noticed me defending the government since he caught? OK. All right. Since we saw that most of the people who, as you said, were gang members, I'm not sitting here saying that the apartment building was full of Trende Aragua.

48:17I don't believe them either. OK. Trisha McLaughlin, most of the time, she doesn't tell the truth from what I can tell. She's the lady who's the Department of Homeland Security spokesperson. person. A number of her stories have collapsed. I am not denying it whatsoever. I will say this kind of gets to our earlier debate or whatever about Chicago. I mean, everyone's focused on, I mean, who's bringing a baby to a protest? I mean, it seems a little bit crazy, don't you think? Well, I don't, we don't actually know the circumstances because, I mean, this was, this just like unfolded in this community.

48:45So you're going to bring, I mean, I have a baby, I'm not taking her in a protest. They may have been in the area and, you know, the traffic was stopped. So I'm not sure why there was. Okay. But implicit in what kind of what you said gets to, oh, they shouldn't fire tear gas if there's a baby around. I remember that. See, this is the problem. I've covered this shit for so long. I remember when illegals would bring their kids to the border and then people would get upset whenever they would get interdicted. And they're going, what does that incentive say? Bring your kids, bring your kids with you.

49:12And you can't do anything about it. I'm just so sick of this emotional blackmail. But do you think that the use of tear gas has been appropriate? I don't know on a case-by-case basis. And this is really more belies the point broadly about everything that seems to be framed, in my opinion at least, as these people should just be allowed to live here. And it seems in general, having covered this again for over a decade, what possible enforcement is acceptable to the liberal conscious? Basically nothing. Romain in Mexico was cruel. Then we let him come in here. The only acceptable solution. If you keep them in prison, oh no, that's cruel too.

49:48So they need a work visa. They need to be able to go around here. If they skip their asylum, oh, those poor people, they skipped their hearing, even though they did it, it would be cruel to go and get them. So do you see how the permission structure has risen? And anytime a liberal mob creates violence, riot is a voice of the unheard and they don't deserve to be prosecuted and everything they've done is fine. In Chicago and in Portland, like LA, you could make, you know, there were, there was a, like a hot protests before the National Guard surged in. But Chicago was a lot more peaceful before these people showed up.

50:17Chicago is much more peaceful. There were not riots. There were not even major protests. And so if your concern is a lack of chaos and law and order, this is the exact opposite of what you would ultimately want. And so I just think it's such a straw man to say, well, you wouldn't want any enforcement. It's like, OK, well, we could argue about what would what would be appropriate. But can we all say that this is not appropriate, that this is not an acceptable way to go about it? You know, that we've got this Walgreens, you know, chasing people down in Walgreens and throwing them on the ground who are U.S.

50:54citizens just because they happen to, you know, be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Like, can we say that mass, you know, I can say that out military officers roaming the streets and terrorizing random people and crashing into cars and shooting people, that this is not the way to do it. And then we can talk about what would be the right way to do it. But I don't think it should be so hard to say this is not acceptable. And that this is an issue not just for immigrants, but again, for all of us and for these communities in particular being impacted. And it's not a one-off. This is part of a plan.

51:25This is what they want to do. And they're expanding this to other cities because this is part of their project of consolidating control and scaring people, basically. So I can easily say, just like you did about criminals, like, yes, I think it's bad. I'm merely pointing out that every level of enforcement is cruel and unusual. The only acceptable thing. I just don't know why you have to dodge. But it's not a dodge. It is. Of course it is. I'm trying to put you into the personality and the mind of people who share my politics who are currently in the government. Okay, I'm not even necessarily justifying it.

51:56I'm explaining to you how it happened and how it's a serious political constituency. Actually, that's why they don't give a shit about whenever they see these videos. Remain in Mexico is cruel. Then whenever you're there, come over here and you put them in prison, that's cruel too. The only acceptable solution is to let them loose, give them a work visa. If you go and get them in any criminal way, it's cruel. It's fascism. And so you see the rhetorical ladder that we start to climb up here? And then when you violently riot across the country? When you have actual fascism, though, we should be able to say this is not acceptable.

52:28And regardless of what the libs did that you didn't like, they are grownups who have a lot of power and control. And by the way, Stephen Miller is running this and he's a total sadistic psycho who even Trump says is like wild white nationalist. And he's in control of this. And I don't think that it would matter what the libs did because he has an ideological project that he has been trying to effectuate his entire life. So I don't know that the libs are really to blame for the existence of Stephen Miller. Well, actually, he's from California and he was radicalized by illegal politics. So I will say that.

53:01But actually, if you take it a little bit further, I don't know. I just think that your desire to try and talk about this in a vacuum in the same way that if I were to try and talk about every illegal immigrant who raped somebody in a vacuum ignores very important political context. On the political violence and chaos front, everything was fine with it when people were burning, rioting, and looting. That was all MLK quotes galore. And even on the Charlie Kirk thing, I was thinking about this earlier, when everyone was like, oh, it's bad that we're being forced to mourn. How many times do I have to walk past George Floyd's face and have crowds of people tell me I have to kneel for eight minutes and whatever seconds?

53:36They had no problem with state morning demanding me and my life and everybody around me. Like, do you see how that's going to drive people to a very, very different place whenever you have that level of cultural and governmental, like actual trying to control of your life for over a decade? and then same on the immigration question where every time they try to do something about it called Nazi and fascist, some of them are just gonna say, fuck it, let's go. And that's part of what, you know, I do think that that bears responsibility because things don't happen in a vacuum. Okay, but all of your personal agency talk, like normally you're so fast to, you know, ascribe people personal agency.

54:13Where is it for these people? Oh, I just, I said, it's bad. I mean, absolutely. It's always gotta be couched in. Yeah, but the libs. Yeah, but BLM. Yeah, but Gavin Newsom. Yes. And it's like, why can't we why can't you ascribe the same level of personal agency to these very powerful individuals who are have put, you know, extensive plans in place and who you're right. I do think we shouldn't talk about this in the vacuum. I think we should talk about it as part of an effort at totalitarian control and achieving a one party state. Now, you may think that they're too incompetent to be able to pull that off.

54:46That may be the case. But that is, in fact, what they're trying to pull off. And so that's the other part of this that, you know, I think needs to be brought into the picture is that the National Guard surge and all of the federal agents, in some ways the other federal agencies, because they're able to do more, are more of a threat into these cities. The militarization of regular law enforcement, this is part of a broader plan that is being effectuated by this government. And I really don't give a shit at this point what Joe Biden did or what some liberal did in 2018 that you were unhappy about.

55:21Because these are the people who have power now. And I don't know why we can't just like deal with the current existing threat. And then, yes, we can talk about the root cause. We can think about how to go in a different direction that's going to create an immigration solution that's more palatable for people so we don't end up in the extremes. I am down with all of that. But at the moment, the thing that we need to focus on is what's happening right now with this government, what they're doing and what their plans are. I have no problem with it. We just did, right? We focus on it for certain, even with the National Guard.

55:48But I don't think, frankly, saying a totalitarian one-party state is happening is all that useful. Whenever we live here in Washington, D.C., you and I are recording just fine. There's a bunch of idiots who are picking up trash down at the—I didn't mean that, but I mean the people who are commanding them. The people who are idiots who put them in charge of picking up trash. Yes, we're walking around. So the bifurcation of the reality and then the reality of what's actually happening and then, yes, the deployment in some cases seems like important context to me. Like nobody – listen, if they seize the ballot boxes or – what did Michael Moore once say on our show?

56:24That if they're going to go and seize the ballot boxes and unironically rig the election, I'm with you. I'll even promise you I will take to the street. For real. I actually will. But isn't there something short of that that's also concerning? But like what? I mean like we're about to argue about the VRA. It's like, yeah, you don't like that it's going to get struck down by Supreme Court. Sorry, that's within the political mechanism. How about trying to criminalize dissenting from Trump at all, using the IRS? They're targeting, so they pulled the funding from blue states during the shutdown, again, to try to cripple any sort of Democratic dissent and governance.

56:59You know, chilling speech, policing comedians monologues, right, making it so that you can't be here if you don't like Charlie Kirk. I mean, I objected to some of that that you're listening. But look, even on the Democratic side, nobody wants to hear this. Obama actually set that up under the 2013 shutdown. What are we talking about? The executive branch's ability to pull funding and to, at the total discretion, to distribute funds from which he wants to. Has anyone ever, has anyone ever denied red state funding? No. Yeah, you're right. Right. And so at a certain, like, where is the line for you?

57:32Does it really have to be they seize the ballot boxes? Like, it has to go that far before you see the way the country is being, like, the rights that we've enjoyed are being taken away. And it's being turned and weaponized. And they are, like, again, whether or not they can succeed, it's very clear what the plan is. The plan is we want to make it so there basically is no opposition. So that we have control, so that they can't win the House, you know, so that they want to go after Act Blue. so that any sort of fundraising is very difficult for Democrats. They want to go after individual donors so that you're too scared to give your money to Democratic causes.

58:08That is the plan, and that they also want to change the composition of the electorate so that the people that vote for them, they're changing the asylum refugee program to favor right-wingers coming from Europe. Yeah, I think that's nuts. Listen, I'm with you. I think that's nuts. All part and parcel of the same plan. So I know it sounds wild to say, but that is in fact, I mean, so you don't think that's Stephen Miller's goal? Of course it is. No, I genuinely don't. I actually think it's politics. And I think that seems to be our fundamental disagreement. And in some cases - You don't think he's an ideological actor?

58:42No, I said he's an ideological actor. I didn't think that his plan is a totalitarian one-party state. I genuinely don't. And that seems to be the premise of our disagreement. in some cases what you're talking about is that many liberals are so accustomed let's say on the non-profit status it's like well yeah it is i'm not defending per se in the way the trump administration is going to do it but like let's be honest is it not also been a fantasy like to investigate the coke brothers or to go into look into right-wing tea party funding network like this is a long time normalized rhetoric in terms of democratic administrations if they weren't no yes no absolutely it's not no it absolutely is in terms of their anyone said that they should You wish to like criminalize Republican donors.

59:24Well, no, okay. I don't think they said criminalize Republican donors, but they said that they flirt with the— I actually even agree in terms of, let's say, in churches or, you know, in terms of their political activity. I'm just saying, though, if you look at it, in some cases, all Trump does is say things— all Trump really does in some cases is say the quietest part out loud for much of the way that the political system has acted. There's legitimate—well, no, but see, this just seems to be our core, I guess, disagreement here. in everything you interpret as a genuine crushing. Like, what would it take for me to say, yeah, this is it?

59:53Yes, unironically, like rigging the election, like actually rigging straight up the election or stopping the election or seizing ballot boxes. Within that, I mean, considering how much US history and all that I've read, it's pretty within the confines. So as long as there's a theoretical trappings of some bullshit elections, then anything else is fine. But then, I mean, think about it. I mean, I know you don't like Comey or Tish James or Adam Schiff. I like Letitia James, the other two I don't care for. But now we've got, OK, the DOJ is going to be my personal hit squad. I'm going to go out. I'm going to gin up charges against whoever I want to.

1:00:27I'm going to target. So you've got the DOJ acting that way. You have funds withheld from blue states. It is an all-out war on the opposition. That's what it is. And in a way that is truly different. And yes, some Democrat might have said something or the other. We have never seen in our lifetimes the complete weaponization of government against not just political elites, but against the entire constituency of the opposition party. And that is what they're that is what they're doing and what they have plans to expand. So we have to even throw to standing by. So this will be my last word. But my point – so you choose to see that.

1:01:05What I choose to see is a federal grand jury throwing out the ham sandwich thing, making sure – or saying – the Chicago jury is saying that much of what ICE is saying is bullshit. The Los Angeles jury throwing that. I'm like that is still within the confines of the system. That's not a theoretical election. That's actually legal justification. By the way, James Comey is being tried in this place where I live. I can guarantee you he's being found not guilty 100 percent. Now, I mean that doesn't say that he hasn't been harassed by the state. So I'm not going to diminish that that's really, really bad.

1:01:33Yeah. OK. But that's not the same thing as being thrown into Seacott without due process. Yes. A multimillionaire. They also did. OK. Well, they're all really. But it's not the same thing, though. It's actually not. Is if a multimillionaire can contest his defense and then can get released on bond and also be found not guilty. You don't live in a fascist. You know, I mean, you know that the point of that is not just about Comey. The point of that is that Trump's enemies, anyone who would speak out against him, are put on notice. We will do this to you. That's the point of those actions. It's the same thing.

1:02:08I mean, we objected vociferously to when, like, a tax auditor or whatever showed up in Matt Taibbi's house after he poured it on the Twitter files, right? Yes. And this is being done, you know, in that, I don't know if, you know, was it legitimate or not. We certainly were very uncomfortable with that. Now this is being done explicitly in a whole-of-government way. So I would just say that I see your ham sandwich grand jury and I raise you a Supreme Court that's allowing things like Kavanaugh stops, that's allowing rescissions, that's allowing the complete destruction of government agencies, that's allowing this administration to do whatever they want because that is a much more powerful institution than one or two grand juries here or there that check some of the abuses.

1:02:50I think that's a fair point. I just, I mean, again, based on your rescissions thing, it's kind of baked in is that you agree with the race thing. So we'll just put that to the side because we're going to talk about it. No, rescissions, I'm talking about the funding. Oh, sorry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The rescission with the funding. Okay, so within that, let's say that on the front of where you think that things are going to go the worst, because I would say that the worst of the true totalitarianism means that dissent itself does not exist, is that criminalization has no pretense in the legal or the judicial system.

1:03:17I just don't see it. I mean, I definitely do think that Trump has an enemies list. Yeah, absolutely. I'm with you. I agree. But it's a big, big difference, again, in my opinion, between that and actually being thrown in jail, no pretense, you know, show trial like in Moscow or something like that. I would say similarly with the Supreme Court, Kavanaugh stuff. You can agree with it. There's a lot of shit the Supreme Court that does that I disagree with. But that's not the same thing as saying that it was declared by executive fiat. Some of the rescissions have not been held up. You know, Lisa Cook is still on the Federal Reserve Board.

1:03:50Like, it's not exactly like it's 100 % of what you want, maybe a lot more than you would like. But that's very different in terms of how the system is operating. And that's part of why I'm like, yeah, I just think it's generally, I would say it's out of the confines of modern history, definitely not out of the confines of American history. And that's part of why I look at all this, and particularly to pair it with some of the things that we've all gone through. And I was like, yes, Trump is extraordinary to the current mind. And I don't defend or even frankly like I would say almost 80 percent of a lot of what the White House has done.

1:04:20I think it's grotesque. I think it has betrayed much of the spirit of what people voted on. And in fact, I think what disgusts me the most really about it is a lot of the lying is because, you know, it's not just Trump. Of course, Trump was a liar. But the people around him actually made assurances both privately but also really publicly about the way things were going to go. And then to just flip on a dime like that, I am much more concerned at a Democratic level with that. And because I don't see that the voters – I mean I'm a rare exception. There's most people who are just going to go along with everything.

1:04:54And that actually probably scares me, maybe equally to what you are because it shows me that the stuff itself doesn't even matter. And I think – see, you talk about fake elections. That's what I think is fake is that the mind is so controlled by so many of these people with a cult of personality that you can literally flip on something that you said that you were going to do. and they're going to do anything about it or create any sort of democratic check. So in a way, I almost, I view that as one of the more dangerous elements of MAGA. But we have talked for so long. I apologize to the audience and to David Sirota.

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1:07:58At long last, much anticipated, we are joined now by David Serrata, who, of course, is founder of Lever News, among many other things, and is out with a new book. David, welcome. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Yeah, of course. So let's put the book jacket up on the screen here. Guys need to make sure to check this out. You guys have been doing phenomenal work on corruption in America in particular. The headline, the title of the book is Master Plan, the hidden plot to legalize corruption in America. David, let's start with this news that's incredibly relevant. We put up three up on the screen here about one of the cases that's going before the Supreme Court, or actually is it two cases that are going before the Supreme Court, that, listen, we already don't have the greatest campaign finance system.

1:08:40There already aren't a lot of limits, but there's an effort afoot to try to eliminate what meager limits we do have. So explain that to the audience for us. So we're at the 15-year anniversary of Citizens United, and Citizens United was the culmination of this movement that we document in Masterplan. And I should say we call it the hidden plot, and people think they know this story. But trust me, you do not know the story of how corruption was legalized because it's been secret for decades. And we uncovered all sorts of documents exposing how they wrote it down. They wrote down how they were going to deregulate the campaign finance system and weaken anti-bribery laws.

1:09:23Americans in polls tell us that they hate the Citizens United decision. But as you allude to, the Supreme Court is literally right now going to hear a case that could dismantle whatever was left of America's anti-corruption laws after Citizens United. And it's a case spearheaded by J.D. Vance. So essentially what this case would do, what J.D. Vance is trying to do, is say that parties – the limits on how much parties can coordinate their spending with candidates should be essentially eliminated, which the effect of that would be. The reason the rules exist is to prevent what would end up being if this happens, which is that donors could simply funnel much larger amounts of money through parties to candidates, essentially using parties as a kind of shell corporation or a pass-through entity to flood much more money directly to candidates.

1:10:23So not even through supposedly independent super PACs. We're talking about much larger amounts of money directly into candidates. And the other case that's going on right now is a case that's trying to narrow the enforceability of anti-corruption laws. This is the line of rulings like the Bob McDonnell ruling, the Bridgate rulings. So further narrowing it, there's an appeal at the court that cites – remember the story of Donald Trump soliciting a billion dollars reportedly of campaign contributions from oil executives in exchange for promising favors. This appeal at the Supreme Court cites that situation to say, look at this, pay-to-play culture is now so pervasive that essentially we need to make it unprosecutable because pay-to-play culture is now essentially what politics is.

1:11:19That's insane. That's the opposite of the way you should view that situation. Exactly. Exactly. I mean, it literally says, imagine if prosecutors prosecuted this kind of quid pro quo corruption, this would essentially criminalize all of politics. That's where we are. Well, you also talk about Ferraris there in the article. Can you expand on that? Yeah, so that's one of the cases in this line of cases to weaken the enforceability of anti-corruption laws and anti-bribery laws. That quote from John Roberts where he says, you know, this case is not having to deal with the tawdry details of Ferraris and Rolexes.

1:11:58It's about the – and this is his words – the overzealous – and I'm paraphrasing here – the overzealous enforcement by federal prosecutors of anti-bribery laws. That's the court's posture here. And it's worth noting that the court has been issuing these rulings, making it harder and harder to prosecute bribery, while certain members of the court are accepting lavish gifts from billionaires with business before the court. So in a certain sense, they kind of have an interest in making sure that bribery and this kind of corruption is unprosecutable. That is such an important point and one that doesn't go remarked upon enough.

1:12:42I did want to give people a little bit of good news here, though, because I saw you were talking on Twitter about how, you know, the commonly held belief is like, well, after Citizens United, there's not a lot we can do about campaign finance to require a constitutional amendment. We all know how likely that is to happen. But you've actually been doing some investigating, and there may be actually some ways that individual states can help curb the corrupt influence of money in their politics. Yeah, so this is actually some good news. In Montana, luminaries of both parties are pushing a ballot measure that takes a look at how to deal with money in politics in a different way than standard campaign contribution limits or disclosure requirements.

1:13:23The long and the short of it is that the idea that corporations are people that are entitled to the rights to free speech with money being defined as speech, the whole idea that corporations are people stems from state incorporation laws that deems them or grants them the same powers as people under the law. The Citizens United case, all the campaign finance cases rely on those state incorporation laws. So what's happening in Montana is there's a ballot measure to say, OK, if that's the case, then we can change our state laws to grant corporations certain powers but not grant them other powers.

1:14:05Legal scholars will tell you that the corporations under the law are artificial entities created by state laws, which means – and we've done this in the past, way back, where we said corporations have this as part of their charter. They have this power and this power and they don't have this power. In Montana, what they're proposing to do is say they have all the powers that they have, but they do not have the power to spend in elections. And here's the thing. I know people listening to this probably saying, well, doesn't that mean that a company could just like move out of Montana and move to Delaware and then do what it wants?

1:14:38Well, the answer is not in inside the state because all state laws have a provision that essentially say if you're an out-of-state company doing business in our state, you must comply with the basic laws and powers that we grant to corporations in state. So the point is Montana doing this can change its situation for Montana. It doesn't have to wait for other states to move forward with this. And of course, then you extend it. You say, well, listen, states, blue states that are more inclined to do this right now don't have to wait to do it on their ballot. They could do it through their legislature.

1:15:13So I think what they're looking at in Montana is a template. And the thing is that the Supreme Court just recently and over many decades continues to have ruled that how this how corporations are treated flows from state law. And my point in saying that is, is that this is a way to use Supreme Court precedent to deal with the problem in a way that the Supreme Court has previously and repeatedly said is within what it considers okay under the law. Really interesting. So David, how does this connect to the upcoming midterm elections? Well, look, I think it's not it's on the ballot in the midterm elections.

1:15:52So I think I, you know, I, I, it's not going to be in place before the midterm elections, but look, I think the Democrats have a big problem in the midterm elections on the corruption issue. Uh, and, and, and I wrote about this recently, which is, which is to say that in 2016, the last poll before the election showed Donald Trump losing on every issue except for corruption. If you can believe it. Here in 2025, the most recent Reuters poll showed the Republicans have a similar lead on the issue of corruption as they did in 2016. Who do you trust to deal with corruption? The Republicans are actually leading the Democrats.

1:16:34And I think the Democrats, that's a huge problem for the midterms because clearly it means the Democrats have not made a forceful case about how they are, whether or not they are serious about cleaning up corruption. And I think part Part of the problem here is that a lot of their anti-corruption argument is a purely anti-Trump argument. And it doesn't – it's not willing to concede the system is corrupt. And if you remember the John McCain race, I think back to that a lot, the 2000 John McCain race where John McCain at one point almost won the Republican nomination. I would argue that the reason his anti-corruption message, and it was a pure anti-corruption message, the reason it resonated was because he was willing to talk about both parties.

1:17:17And I think a lot of voters saw that as you're willing to be authentic and speak honestly about the situation as opposed to just blaming one side for the problem. Yeah, gave him this sort of maverick branding. Let's talk a little bit about the – a little more about the midterm. So there's this other Supreme Court case where it looks like the Supreme Court is poised to strike down additional aspects of, you know, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act. Let's go ahead and take a listen to Harry Enten talk about the impact that this could have on our on the midterms. OK, so, you know, if you go back six months ago, you go back to April, Kate Baldwin.

1:17:58What were we looking at? Well, we were looking at the Democrats with a very clear shot of taking control of the U.S. House of Representatives, according to the Calci prediction market odds. We saw them at an 83 % chance, but those odds have gone plummeting down. Now we're talking about just a 63 % chance, while the GOP's chances up like a rocket, up like gold, up from 17 % to now a 37 % chance. So it will look like a pretty clear, likely Democratic win in the House come next year has become much closer to a toss-up at this point, although still slightly leaning Democratic. What's changed? What do you think?

1:18:32You should go back to April. Look at the generic congressional ballot. at what you see. You see plus three Democrats in 2025 in April. You see plus three Democrats back in April of 2017. Now, jump over to this side of the screen. What happens? Well, the Democrats are no longer keeping pace with the pace that they were setting back in 2017, 2018. You look back in 2017, you saw that the Democrats had leaped up to an eight point advantage. If both sides max out, we're probably looking at a GOP gain of plus seven House seats. That doesn't even take into account the potential gutting of the VRA that is right now going to be in front of the Supreme Court.

1:19:07If you add that in, you could be looking. The Voting Rights Act. Yes, exactly right. The Voting Rights Act. If you add that in, then you could be looking about adding 10, 12, 15, 17 on top of this seven seats. So Nate Cohn of the New York Times did an analysis here and said basically if Republicans really max out what they could do with that section of the Voting Rights Act being nullified by the Supreme Court, Democrats would need to win the popular vote by like more than five points to even have a prayer of winning back control of the House. So talk a little bit about that case and what, you know, some of the details there and what you think the impact could be.

1:19:45Yeah. So the case is basically making it easier to gerrymander. I mean, that's the top line, especially in Republican states. It basically would say that districts that are drawn in accordance with the old Voting Rights Act or the existing Voting Rights Act, districts drawn to make sure there is adequate minority representation, that that provision would essentially become unenforceable if not eliminated. And what that would mean for various districts with African-American members of Congress and the like, that it would eliminate, or at least Republican legislatures would be empowered to eliminate more of those districts in a way that increases their chances of winning those districts.

1:20:33And essentially what it would say, it would make it harder to prove or harder to get the law enforced to say that a specific map was violating essentially the basic civil rights that were outlined in the Voting Rights Act. It would raise the threshold. So I do think it's true. The upshot here is our Republican states with Republican legislatures and Republican governors, if this ruling comes down, are they going to call emergency sessions to redraw their maps? I think we should assume a lot of them are. And I want to bring it back to what we reveal in our book, Master Plan, which is, look, you have to understand so much of this comes out of that early 1970s era where you've got conservatives saying, look, we – and this is in the Powell memo.

1:21:22Look, we have a problem where the government has become too responsive to what people want. This is essentially what Lewis Powell, the Supreme Court justice, was arguing in the infamous Powell memo. And what it was really saying is democracy has become a problem for us. So we need more investment in essentially electing who we want, corporations, oligarchs and the like, to prevent the people from getting so much of what they want because it's threatening our so-called free market system. So you've seen that in the deregulation of campaign finance. That's one pillar. You're now seeing it in the attempt to change the maps, right?

1:22:05Change the process, the way we elect people. You've seen it in the attack on unions, right? These are the three pillars that we have to stop the public from getting what it wants. So I look at the redistricting stuff as one pillar of this larger plan to reduce the power of people to essentially get what they want from government because the people in power with money don't want that. They see that responsiveness as a threat. What I found interesting after Citizens United, David, is there was a lot of talk about, I think, fine, correctly, about a lot of Republican billionaires who would take advantage.

1:22:45It ended up actually being quite bipartisan, including unions, many others who used it much to their advantage. I wonder if you could talk about that in the context of this as well, specifically with California talking about redistricting and whether you see that as the acceptable balance. Like what's a better end state? Because I think that's what you're trying to get at. No, it's a fair question. Look, in my view, what California is doing on its redistricting ballot measure is a response to what the Republicans started. I think that's obvious. Yeah. Do I think it's a good thing? Like, do I think an arms race of gerrymandering is a good thing?

1:23:24No, it's a very bad thing. This is where I think we don't want to go, but it is where we are. How to put this all back in the bottle? I mean, that's the big question. I mean, I do look to a place as an example like New York City with Zoran Mamdani, and I say, here is something we can look at as a potential solution. And I want to be clear about what I'm saying. I'm not saying Zoran Mamdani is the solution. What I'm saying is there's been a debate about how did Zoran Mamdani, as an example, win a Democratic primary against all of that money in the financial and media capital of the world? Was it that he was a compelling candidate?

1:24:07Was it his slick ads? Was it a great message? All of those things are important. But the thing to my mind that was most important was that New York City has a system of public financing of elections, which allowed him to get enough resources to be competitive, not enough to outspend his opponents, but enough to be competitive. And I look at systems of public financing of elections, which operate in about 20 cities and a couple of states, and I say this is a way that if you want – I don't care if you're a Republican, Democrat, conservative, liberal. If you want candidates who come from outside of the system of private financing, of donations coming in with the expectation of legislative favors, then we should be looking at those systems as a way to do that.

1:24:55And look, Congress has gotten very close at various points to creating public financing systems of elections for Congress. It was first proposed, an old idea was first proposed by Teddy Roosevelt. So my point in bringing this up is, and we talked about the Montana situation, we're going to have to start thinking like way outside of the box. You've got J.D. Vance at the Supreme Court saying we got to dismantle what's left of what was left after Citizens United of traditional old campaign finance laws. It's time to actually take a look at how do we actually change the entire system, change state and corporation laws, public financing of elections.

1:25:33Like that's where the discussion actually needs to be. Yeah. How do we get away from plutocracy and towards something approximating like majoritarian representation, democratic representation? David, thank you so much for your reporting. Tell people again, remind them book title and where to find it. Yeah, it's called Master Plan. It's the hidden plot to legalize corruption. Again, you may think you know this story. Like I've gotten people, oh, I already know everything's – like trust me, you do not know. These are never before published documents, photos, transcripts. And you can find the book at levernews.com slash book.

1:26:10And I just want to say thanks to both of you for having us on to discuss it. And one of the things I talk about that we talk about in the book is the infiltration of media by the same Powell memo, billionaires and corporations. We have seen that of late or sort of a culmination of that. And independent media, the rise of it right now is also one of those things that I look at as an optimistic development. And you guys are really, really a huge part of that. Wow. Thank you, David. Thank you very much. We feel very much the same about you and the important work that you're doing out there. So thank you so much.

1:26:43Great to see you, David. See you, man. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Thanks for watching, guys. We appreciate it. Friday show tomorrow. We'll see you then. 14 years in prison for killing a young woman. A 15-year sentence for a crash that caused three deaths. 12 and a half years for killing a child and critically injuring her mother. All true stories. All caused by marijuana-impaired drivers. No matter what you tell yourself, if you feel different, you drive different. So, if you're high, just don't drive. Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council.

1:27:41of every Monday from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Saturday, May 2nd, country's biggest stars will be in Austin, Texas at our 2026 iHeart Country Festival presented by Capital One. Tickets are on sale now. Get yours before they sell out at Ticketmaster.com. That's Ticketmaster.com. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.