12/16/25: Fox War On Christmas For Data Centers, Trump Aide Unleashes On Admin, Pinochet Defender Wins In Chile

26:40Keep in mind, part of why this is so crazy is it's not just about telling the truth. This White House, her employee, Caroline Levitt, took to the podium to defend every single part of this bullshit at the time as the official part of the administration. And she's admitting that in private, oh my God, we were aghast by it. We were disgusted. We tried to move off of this policy. The prosecutions are political. I mean, how is that gonna play in court? How is this gonna play? If this is a true court, James Comey, congratulations. You just got acquitted. All right. Letitia James, who they've tried to indict, what, three more times?

27:16Three times from a grand jury and can't get it. Yeah. Good luck, you know, to the prosecutors who are trying to do this. It's just so crazy. I have never seen anything like this in my entire time covering Washington ever. It is wild. Let me read. And she, by the way, undercut a number of other policies. She talked about how they need to be more careful with deportations. She said she did not agree with pardoning the violent January Sixers that she pushed to just do the nonviolent ones and was overruled there. So all kinds of the like most like core and controversial Trump 2.0 policies. She's effectively undercutting here everything from, you know, the day one J6 rioters pardons up until Venezuela, where she's just giving the game away that the blowing up of the boats isn't about drugs.

28:06It's about regime change on the political retribution piece. Let me read a little bit of this. So she said, quote, we have a loose agreement that the score settling will end before the first 90 days are over. she said at the time. When that did not happen by August, she told Mr. Whipple that I don't think he's on a retribution tour, but said that Trump was aiming at people who did bad things and coming after him. In some cases, it may look like retribution and there may be an element of that from time to time. Who would blame him? Not me. And so in terms of just actual real world impact, yeah, any of those court cases, Tisha James, James Comey, Eric Swalwell, Adam Schiff.

28:47There's been all sorts of talk about people they're going to go after on this mortgage fraud bullshit. Those cases will all be undercut to the extent that they had any legs to begin with by this overt admission from the chief of staff that, yes, these are political. This is about retribution. That's what he's doing. So that in and of itself is wild to to undercut J.D. Vance. Trump may not really care that much about that, but to say, you know, oh, yeah, of course, he converted to Trumpism because it was political, which is obvious. But, you know, here you've got the chief of staff acknowledging what everybody could see the reality in front of their eyes, calling him a conspiracy theorist, talking about Elon Musk drug use, all of it.

29:30I mean, yeah, it's it's pretty wild. And the other thing about this saga is the White House participated with all of this. Like this was authorized. I mean, there's a big, like, glossy photo shoot involved with a bunch of different administration officials. Other officials spoke to this reporter as well. So this was all – this whole project, this whole write-up was greenlit by the administration, even though, you know, I would be very surprised if they knew the extent of what Susie Wiles was saying here. No, they didn't know. I can already – my phone's – it's pinging a little bit here right now.

30:01Yeah. I'll just leave it at that in terms of what people around Washington, including people who are – I mean. Here's the thing. It's an unspoken rule here in D.C. When you work for somebody, you never make yourself the story. Never. So the White House chief of staff, many chiefs of staff, you know, to presidents and others, they don't sit for interviews. Why? Because your job is to execute the agenda of the president. You're never supposed to be the main character ever. That's the job of the principal. I know this sounds like kind of servile, but like in a certain way, like that's the job, right?

30:32That's what you do as a staffer. And so for sitting for 11 interviews here, 11 interviews and just letting loose about your thoughts about how Pam Bondi's an idiot. She said completely whiffed on Epstein. I mean, if the White House chief of staff thinks this, how can we as citizens have any confidence in our government? If the White House chief of staff is openly saying that what the president is saying is a lie, is that many cabinet members are idiots or incompetent, is that Doge, which was held up as a central pillar of the administration there at the time, she was, quote, aghast by it. First of all, what are you doing in that job, lady?

31:13What are you even doing? If you think this, you should leave, right? What does it say about you that you think all of this and that you're sticking around to, quote, do something about it? Because obviously you're not doing a very good job. You actually don't have that much influence if that's what you think that you're doing. And then second, yeah, I just I cannot get over how you can just openly admit so many things, which, again, we all know are true. But there is a difference legally, first of all, in a court of law to say that you have a political prosecution. But like on regime change, that's got to be one of the most consequential policies of the entire Trump administration.

31:49and to just come out and be like, our flimsy bullshit pretext is in fact bullshit, is amazing. I mean, it's shocking to the character. Well, and that's something in a future administration, if you've got Democrats in control, people need to think about the potential prosecutions. They clearly are worried about, like with the double tap strike, whether that was legal or not. Obviously, I think the whole thing is illegal, but they clearly got nervous about that as well, judging by the reaction. So when you have her coming out and publicly undercutting the bullshit legal pretext that they've been using, yeah, that's a big problem for Pete Hegseth.

32:30That's a big problem for that admiral. What was it, Admiral Bradley, who was kind of thrown under the bus? That's a big problem for all of the SEALs that were involved in this policy. That's a big issue. Let me read the part of the Epstein portion because this is pretty wild, too. So this is about Pam Bondi. She also gets into Trump a little bit with regard to Epstein. So as you mentioned before, Sokka, she says, I think Bondi completely whiffed on appreciating that that was a very targeted group that cared about this. First, she gave them binders full of nothingness. Then she said the witness list or the client list was on her desk.

33:05There is no client list. And it sure as hell wasn't on her desk. Mr. Vance, by contrast, she said, understood the sensitivity because he himself was a conspiracy theorist, she said. So, again, saying directly, when Pam Bondi told you that this was on her desk, she was lying. There is no client list. It sure as hell was not on her desk. That is what she had to say about that. And then she says that she has read the Epstein documents and acknowledged Trump's name is in them. Quote, we know he's in the file and he's not in the file doing anything awful. Nothing awful, Sagar. So rest easy there. But neither.

33:43Apparently, this is one more part on this. neither apparently is bill clinton asked about trump's claims going back years that clinton had visited epstein island as well said there is no evidence asked if there's incriminating evidence about clinton in the files as trump has suggested she says the president was wrong about that so she's saying trump is lying trump is in the files but not doing anything awful and that he is lying about what the files contain with regard to bill clinton it's so crazy man i truly have never seen anything like this. The last interview that was anything remotely comparable, in my opinion, was maybe Steve Bannon in the first hundred days where he openly trashed Jared Kushner and other members of the administration.

34:27Who was it? To the American prospect? Is that right? It was some kind of lefty. I thought it was like New York Magazine. No, it was a lefty magazine. I remember. New York Magazine is kind of lefty, but anyway, I don't remember exactly, but yeah. There was that, but honestly, like Stan McChrystal, He was the general in charge of Afghanistan at the time. And Michael Hastings, the Rolling Stone journalist, ended up being delayed. And McChrystal, what did he say about Obama? He said he was an idiot. Something like that. He said some comment about Obama where he was like, he's dumb. Published it and he was immediately fired.

35:00But that was in the old rules. I don't know if that's going to happen now. I have no idea. I mean, how could you ever enter a cabinet meeting again when, I mean, Susie Wiles, who I guess is technically kind of your boss, is out there just trashing you. In the public, it's amazing. But the world we live in is Kash Patel sitting for interviews about his love life with Stephen Miller's wife, who's dressed casually for some reason, this entire thing. I don't know. I don't know what is happening to this government. But yeah, we're being, Confederacy of Dungeons. I don't even have words. I'm literally speechless for how retarded this is.

35:41It's crazy. It's fucking crazy. So you have the chief of staff. So this is not Trump's arraignment syndrome. Trump's chief of staff saying he's lying about the Epstein files. Pam Bondi was lying about the Epstein files. That she disagrees with the deportation approach, the USAID approach, that Elon Musk, who was handed the keys to the whole freaking government, is a drug addict. that Russ Vogt, who still has the keys to the whole government, is a right-wing ideologue, that the vice president is a conspiracy theorist. What, I mean, what more could you possibly get into this series of interviews?

36:22It's pretty wild. I don't know. I mean, I have to think that there would be some, like, there has to be some blowback for this. I mean, especially the parts where she says things about Trump in particular, that he's lying and that she disagreed with him on the J6 pardons and the undercutting of the Venezuela policy. That's a live, active, very significant, serious issue. And here she is just like giving the game away on that one. I don't know. It's very different from my impression of her. I didn't know anything about her, but it seemed like she was just this very, we haven't heard from her that she was very disciplined and buttoned up.

36:58This is the total opposite of that. Well, you know, maybe everything Trump, everyone turns into a narcissist around Trump, I guess. You know, that's possible. I also wonder how he'll, you know, he's very against alcohol at all. Right, being described as an alcoholic. I also wonder how he'll react to being characterized as having the personality of an alcoholic. His brother died of alcohol. I wonder how that will land with him. Yeah, I know. That's going to go over well? No. Whatever. All right, more consequential news. We got Juan David Rojas standing by to talk about Chile. Let's get to it. Welcome to the A-Building.

37:29I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. It's 1969.

37:43In Atlanta, Georgia, at Martin's alma mater, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest. It featured two prominent figures in Black history, Martin Luther King Sr. and a young student, Samuel L. Jackson. To be in what we really thought was a revolution, I mean, people were dying. 1968, the murder of Dr. King, which traumatized everyone. The FBI had a role in the murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago. This story is about protest. It echoes in today's world far more than it should. And it will blow your mind. Listen to The A-Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

38:28What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka Neuro Linguistic Programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain.

39:05It's about engineering consciousness. Mind Games is the story of NLP. It's crazy cast of disciples and the fake doctor who invented it at a New Age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all? NLP might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the On Purpose podcast. On a recent episode, I sat down with Nick Jonas, singer, songwriter, actor, and global superstar. The thing I would say to my younger self is congratulations, you get to marry Priyanka Chopra Jonas.

39:48And also, you know, your daughter's incredible. That's beautiful, man. Yeah. Thank you. That's so beautiful. I can see that got you a little... Yeah, for sure. Our daughter, she came to the world under sort of very intense circumstances, which I had not really talked about ever. Growing up on Disney in front of a million, how did that shape your sense of self? I went blank. I hit a bad note, then I couldn't kind of recover. And I built up this idea that music and being a musician was my whole identity. I had to sort of relearn who I was if you took this thing away. Who am I? Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

40:33Turning now to our friend Juan David Rojas, who joins us live to discuss the most recent elections in Chile, who have elected a new right-wing president, Jose Antonio, cast by nearly 20-point margin. Juan, our excellent analyst of all things Latin America, joins us to break it down. Good to see you, man. Thanks for having me back on, guys. Absolutely. So let's put this up here on the screen. Why the Chilean left failed. You discussed some of the policies over the last five years, some of the rise here of Jose Antonio Cas about how exactly this all came to be. Why don't you break some of it down for us and maybe what it means for the region and if anything, for the United States?

41:12So, Cast, he's been called far-right, ultra-conservative. He's very conservative. He is an apologist for the Pinochet dictatorship, which for decades after the dictatorship, people on the right tried to distance themselves from the former dictator. and actually the first like few presidents after the dictatorship were all like center left. It was only until Sebastian Pineda, I think in like 2010, who was like the first conservative when he was like trying to distance himself from the dictatorship caste is like he says that like, you know, he condemns the human rights abuses, but that, you know, his legacy and especially Pinochet's economic legacy were great.

41:58His brother actually was one of the Chicago boys that advised PNHC installing this neoliberal model, the country known as the cradle of neoliberalism. And so his brother Miguel Cas actually served as the president of Chile's central bank during the dictatorship. And so there's a lot of polarization around this. People on the left will say that we'll condemn the human rights abuses and a lot of the legacy of the economic policies. And people on the right will say, oh, look, we had this great economic growth afterwards. And there's kind of flaws in some of these arguments. So that's a bit of the rundown for the moment.

42:37For the United States, Kast, almost all right-wingers in Latin America, you could describe them as neoconservatives. They worship the United States. They hate Russia, China, Iran, blah, blah, blah, blah. This guy is going to be really good for the current administration. He loves Millet. A lot of like posting after the election was showing how like geographically the continent of South America is like divided along the middle between right and left governments. And Millet, what he did is that he posted like the the like Western half that are like conservative governments, this like tech bro, like futurism stuff with like skyscrapers.

43:14And then the leftist governments are a bunch of like Brazilian favelas. So that's to give you an idea. Got it. Gotcha. So they're excited about like the Prospera typeification of those countries. Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. So his brother was a Chicago school neoliberal economic adjustment austerity guy. Dad was a Nazi. He's a Pinochet apologist. This is a lot. It's a lot to take. So what was it that people were responding to to reject the more left-leaning government and go with this guy who – I mean his politics are pretty radical from those familial connections and his embrace or justification of Pinochet.

43:58But also the embrace of Malay also says he wants to consult with Bekeli with regard to crime. So I mean this is a pretty dramatic turn. What led to it? Yeah, so I will say that Kass, despite his past, and this is the third time he ran for president, and in previous other times he was really hard-lined on abortion, he kind of toned that down this time around. He is, honestly, as far as anyone can really say, a committed Democrat. He said he's not interested in trying to take over all the institutions, persecute his opponents, and govern for life, like Pinochet. and in general you can even also see that like the candidate that he defeated was the communist party candidate she was nominated by the communist party but for a communist honestly she was pretty moderate she was really critical of like human rights abuses by like maduro and ortega in latin america which is i said like in some other time that uh it's rare for like leftists to openly like celebrate maduro it's also rare for them to like be stridently critical of him too.

45:03So that's something interesting in Chilean politics. And I think that explains a lot why so many people were willing to gravitate towards him. As for the failings of the current government, current president, Gabriel Boric, he won in 2021. He was seen as like the shining star on the international left. The country was like trying to rewrite its constitution. And he said he was going to bury neoliberalism. That didn't really work out and we can talk some more about that but in a nutshell i like to say that he was basically like the chilean mamdani and to be clear i like him and mamdani i think both of them like on a personal level they seem kind of like nice guys and uh charismatic etc uh and boric actually did some really good things in my opinion he like raised the minimum wage like 20 percent um The 40 poorest Chileans, the bottom 40 percent of Chileans now have access to free health care.

46:02Pensions are a little bit less miserly, which historically were terrible in Chile. And the best thing actually is that there's a gradual reduction in the work week from 45 to 40 hours. That's something that unions had been demanding for decades. Really, really good stuff. The problem is that the broader political environment after the pandemic shifted to issues that really benefited the right. There was a crime wave. Some of that had to do with the fact that there were these mass protests in 2019 that led to the Constitutional Convention, similar to 2020 here with BLM. There was backlash against the police, and that led to officers not wanting to police high-prime areas.

46:43There's also been a broader reconfiguration of the drug trade in South America favoring Asian and European markets. So that's led a lot of organized crime to move into countries like Chile. There was inflation. And even though the government raged the minimum wage, the truth is that the increase was roughly in line with previous governments. So in relative terms, people's buying power went down. And finally, this is always the kryptonite for progressive governments. there was this huge migration surge, especially in illegal immigration. The country's immigrant population has doubled to 1.6 million, and there's around 300 ,000 undocumented, mostly Venezuelans now, in Chile.

47:24And that doesn't sound like much here, but that's enormous in Chile, considering that the country's whole population is around 20 million. And so how did Aborich handle that? Similar to with Biden, his government had like the lowest amount of deportations in history around half of the previous government and like for example with Biden like you can say for instance that Biden deported a lot of people at the border within the country not so much and so there was this every single time including in Latin American countries you see this divide between people who are more college educated and more working class and every single time the more college educated people have a reluctance, understandably so, for like, you know, humanitarian reasons to not really want to like do things like deportations, whereas working class people feel, you know, they have concerns over crime, strains to social services, competition with illegal labor.

48:29So it borged to his credit, he did like militarize the northern border to try to stem new arrivals, but people really resented the fact that the government was not really keeping up enforcement. And so, Kass has this Trump-esque program. He wants to build a border shield of walls, ditches, and - It's going to be a long shield, man. That's a skinny country. Yeah. We all know the shape. That's a tough, that's going to be a tough wall to build. Love Chile, by the way. Very cool country that I've been to before. So, finally, a question for you, Juan, you talked there about America. What about Venezuela?

49:05Like you just said, what's the opinion on the current government, on regime change? Would they be supportive of something like that? Traditionally, with Pinochet and our past relations, it was viewed as this power center, a bulwark against Latin American leftism. Is that something that we're going to see again? What do you think? Yeah, I'd say that the president-elect, his administration will go along basically with whatever the trump administration wants including uh venezuela the current uh government of voyage like i said they were very critical of maduro they have said that they would not you know support any kind of um regime change like by force in venezuela uh but uh yeah it's the this is a really sensitive topic i mean who knows maybe Kikas could be apprehensive about this stuff because the thing is, you know, the precedent you set for this, it's like, OK, you know, maybe you like it if it's against Maduro.

50:03But it's like, you know what, if they can do it to Maduro, they can do it to anybody. Yeah. It's a yeah. Yeah. And just because they like you today doesn't mean in the future they won't turn. Right. So that very, very interesting stuff, Juan. Yeah. Oh, you know, one interesting thing, actually. in chile permanent residents this is hilarious uh are allowed to vote if they've lived in the country for five years and so venezuelans uh were actually a really coveted uh electorate during this past uh campaign and guess who they voted for they voted for cast who was promising to to uh deport them because venezuelans are super neoconservative so there's been a lot of discussion around that.

50:47The leading conservative candidate now in Peru for 2026 said that Peru should just give citizenship to Venezuelans so that they can vote for him. Talk about importing voters. Wow. It's funny stuff. Well, dude, this is why we like talking to you. A lot of other stuff going on in the world. Chile, always a fascinating country. Beautiful country. Wish them the best. Thank you for joining us, sir. Thank you. Thank you guys so much for watching. We appreciate it. We have a great Crown Appoints show for you all tomorrow. And we will see you all on Thursday for our last show before Christmas. Crystal will be back in the studio.

51:23Don't worry. So we'll see you all then.

51:43black history lives in our stories our culture and the conversations we still having today This Black History Month, the podcast I Didn't Know, Maybe You Didn't Either, digs into the moments, perspectives, and experiences that don't always make the textbook. Let me tell you about Garrett Morgan. Bruh had to pretend he didn't even exist just to sell his own invention. Listen to I Didn't Know, Maybe You Didn't Either, from the Black Effect Podcast Network, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or simply wherever you get your podcasts.

52:201969, Malcolm and Martin are gone. America is in crisis. At a Morehouse College, the students make their move. These students, including a young Samuel L. Jackson, locked up the members of the Board of Trustees, including Martin Luther King Sr. It's the true story of protest and rebellion in Black American history that you'll never forget. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. Listen to The A-Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car?

52:58When you look at your car you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious Mind Games a new podcast exploring NLP, a.k.a. neurolinguistic programming. Is it a self-help miracle, a shady hypnosis scam, or both? Listen to Mind Games on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.