CBS gets exposed for carrying water for killer ICE agent

27:17But Jake Powell is focused, obviously, on trying to lower interest rates, trying to make sure that we're creating jobs, trying to ease us still out of the pandemic and keep us competitive around around the world. And by the way, whatever overruns are at that Fed building, I remind everybody that the ballroom right now is costing twice the amount of money the president said it was going to cost. It'll be triple or quadruple by the time we're done with it. That's not a reason to do what they're doing here. This is all about intimidation. It's all about weaponization of the Justice Department. Jim George should know all about that.

27:47He chaired a committee on that last Congress. And look, Jay Powell is not going to be deterred. deterred. I actually think this brings all of the other representatives from the Fed to Jay Powell's aid and does the exact opposite of what the president's really trying to accomplish here. The reality is, though, there are only a few months left in Jerome Powell's term. And so don't we end up in the same place where it becomes clear what the next Fed chair, what the next Fed chair's job is in effect, which is just to basically to cow to Trump, to listen to whatever he says. And that's going to be like we know that Kristi Noem is there because she is a Trump supplicant.

28:29We know that that Pete Hegseth is there for the same reason, that Marco Rubio is there for the same reason, RFK Jr. there for the same reason. And Trump is making it clear by virtue of these threats that, you know, even if he can't have some impact on Jerome Powell, that the next guy is going to have to listen to him to bend to his every whim. And so isn't the issue of coercion basically eliminating the independence of the Fed still very much on the table by virtue of what we're seeing right now? Well, of course. And since that, the market has gone down several days since the president started this.

29:00By the way, Jerome, even though he won't be the head of the Fed in a couple of months, he still has another year on his term. So if you're now investigating him and doing this stuff, one can make an argument that now Jerome's going to stay. Maybe he doesn't stay as the chair, but he stays as a member of the board. So I actually think that this is not – was not in the president's best interest, was not in the country's best interest. But that's the problem. Sometimes you've got people in departments that read a tweet, hear something the president says, and they go and act on it and do it and creates chaos.

29:34Whether this was Bill Pulte or Jeanine Pirro trying to couple this, and the president actually didn't green light this. I think that's very plausible. But it's caused now, I think, tremendous angst among the business community and amongst our monetary allies about can the United States continue to still be the place in the world that the entire world's economy focuses on? Our dollar is dropping. De-dollarization is something that the Russians and the Chinese are working on. I mean there are dramatic repercussions in the bond industry. If people stop buying our bonds, if they stop buying our bonds, we can't continue to spend money and we go into a depression.

30:14I mean, period is what happens there. Last topic here. I want to talk about Dan Bongino, who has emerged as this white knight in the aftermath of what he very much feels like is some victorious term as deputy FBI director, you know, in the aftermath of all of his work helping cover up the Epstein files, which is the principal issue that he staked his brand on before coming into government. And so can I just have your reaction to this idea that Dan Bongino is like this crusade is still trying to cling on to this this branding as some crusader for accountability and transparency in the aftermath of probably the least transparent deputy FBI director term that in living memory?

31:00Well, look, I appreciate Dan Bongino fighting Republican grifters online on anti-Semitism and the stuff that you see coming out of Tucker and Candace Owens and the conspiracy theory. So I appreciate that at the moment. But let's not pretend like the last year didn't happen. I mean, this is a guy who got his job on the Epstein files, you know, talking about Epstein, talking about getting them released. And then as soon as he got there and read that Trump's name is in it hundreds of times and he's on the flight logs, all of a sudden Dan Bongino felt like, oh, I'm in an office with four walls and I'm uncomfortable.

31:34Let me go back to my podcast. Yeah. The whole reason he got hired was the Epstein files. And as it turned out, he had to leave because of the Epstein files. Do you think that his audience is going to stick around while he pretends that he has some credibility still? Oh, who knows? I mean, look, the Republican online audience, you know, you could do, you know, a mental health case study on it. OK, on what's going on between the Candace Owens and the Dave Smiths and the Nick Fuentes, you know, and Joe Rogan, who yesterday came out and called ICE the Gestapo. I mean, it's fascinating on what's going on in Republican podcasting.

32:16There's splits all within MAGA over all of it. And so it's a fascinating thing to watch. It's not healthy for the country or for the American people, but from a from a When has that ever stopped us before? Right, of course. Are you not entertained, Brian? Yeah. All right, we'll leave it there. Congressman, I appreciate your time. Thanks so much. Thanks, buddy. No Lie is brought to you by Factor. A recurring theme in my life is that I desperately want to eat better, but there are literally not enough hours in the day. Factor doesn't ask you to meal prep or follow recipes. It just removes the entire problem.

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34:02This isn't motivation to eat better. This is the elimination of the reason that you don't. I'm super careful about what goes in my body. I could not recommend Factor highly enough. I've eaten it every day this week. You absolutely should too. Head to factormeals.com slash BTC50OFF and use code BTC50OFF to get 50 % off your first Factor box, plus free breakfast for a year. Offer only valid for new Factor customers with code and qualifying auto-renewing subscription purchase. Make healthier eating easy with Factor. I'm joined now by a candidate for the U.S. Senate in Michigan, Abdul Sayed. Abdul, thanks for joining me.

34:37Thank you for having me like in the flesh in the studio. That's right. I feel very honored. I mean, amazing to be here. Thank you so much for having me. So let's talk about the middle finger. This is Donald Trump went into a plant in Michigan, decided to give the finger to a worker there. Is that not just the most perfect microcosm for Trump's whole presidency that you've seen? I mean, the thing about it is like he's talking to him from above him. Yeah. He like flips him the bird and he drops the F-bomb against him twice. This is how he feels about working people. And that's the thing about it is like he couldn't just be bigger and be like, I'm the most powerful person in the whole world.

35:15He had to tell him how he felt. I mean, and this is par for the course of Trump. I mean, what does it say that he - But also that hero. Can we have a minute for that guy? Also, there's a GoFundMe for him. Please do. I mean, and it's crazy that like Ford, I mean, the idea that Ford suspended him to me is crazy, right? That's his first amendment rights. He was practicing. They decided to bring the president of the United States, stop the line so he could walk. And now that guy gets suspended. It's crazy. Anyway. Well, what does it say that something as inconsequential as somebody just saying, you know, giving, calling him a pedophile potential, which, by the way, not, not, not inconsequential.

35:53Yeah. Yeah. But like, what is it? That's a very good evidence. But what does it say that the president of the United States can allow can can allow something like that to get under his skin? And what are the implications of the fact that we have somebody so thin skinned, you know, so impulsive that that that's what bugs him to that degree that he'll say, fuck you as the president of the United States with all the cameras in the world on him to some guy working on the line at a car plant. I think we're seeing it play out live in living color. I mean, you look at the raid to depose Maduro. A lot of folks inside the White House say that the last straw was that Maduro did a dance that was similar to his dance.

36:32Yeah. Like, this is the reason why you spend nearly a billion dollars of taxpayer money to depose a foreign leader. Okay. You're also seeing it in his choices when it comes to Minneapolis. They can't admit that poorly trained officers shot a woman in the face and that it was wrong and that there should be an investigation about how they used the power of the United States government against a 37-year-old mom. And now he's just sending more ICE agents to Minneapolis. You see it in the choice to probe a sitting U.S. senator from my state because she had the audacity to remind the troops what their responsibilities were based on international and American law.

37:20All of this goes back to the fact that he thinks that the most important thing he can do is to respond to spites against him personally. For him, the entire United States government is being used as a tool for his own revenge. And I mean, the last point is the Fed chair right yeah yeah you see it every every all of the stories of 2026 which by the way is only like 14 days a lot old all of them go back to his own personal feelings right i mean not just the fed chair if you're talking about weaponizing the doj you've got letitia james you've got james comey you've got adam schiff which would be bad enough unto itself but the the fact that this guy came into office under this pretense that he was going to end the weaponization of government that was apparently out of control under merrick garland merrick garland of all people i wish that Merrick Garland was as was as rabid as Trump and Republicans have have made him out to be.

38:16And yet and yet here we are now, you know, this is weaponization at every corner. But I'm glad you brought up ICE. And I think this is a good opportunity to talk about this, not just given the fact that that it's happening in Minneapolis and Minnesota, but because it's going to go everywhere. I mean, we're here in in Los Angeles and this was the first ICE deployment was was here in L.A. And then it went to Portland, Chicago, Washington, DC. Of course, it's in Minnesota. I have to ask, is ice salvageable? No. And the way I want folks to understand it is this. Imagine you have a home that's got black mold in it.

38:51At some point, there's nothing really you can do with that. The whole edifice has to be broken down, excised, excised, and we need to start from scratch. We can and should and must keep our southern border secure. We can and should be able to create a pathway to citizenship for folks. What ICE has been weaponized to do is to do two things. Number one, to attack the constitution via the premise of immigration. And two, to normalize paramilitary forces demonstrating the raw power of the state on peaceful streets. The only, to me, the only historical precedent that we see with this is the Gestapo in Germany.

39:41And you could have seen it coming. Back in 2018, I said we should abolish ICE. And I said that because all you had to do was connect the dots around what this agency he was being told to do, how it was being weaponized, how it was being held apart from the usual laws that protect citizens from the state, how he was attempting to normalize the violence it was doing, and then watching at the beginning of the second term as he put that on steroids. $185 billion budget, that is more than the budget of the FBI. That is more than the budget of the U.S. Marines. Yeah. It would make it, I think, the sixth biggest military in the world.

40:28Yeah. Just ICE. Just ICE. Yeah. And the premise that was sold to the American public was that somehow migrant crime was different than other crime. It's not like all of a sudden, there's not a police force that polices migrants, right? Crime is crime. You police crime. But that idea was that ICE was going to keep you safe. Now, ask yourself whether or not we are safer when they're shooting mothers in the face. And this is where we are now. And the response isn't to hold accountable the state against its people as the constitution would require. The response is to double down when it's so obvious that this agency has run amok because of the incentives that it's created because of the people that they've recruited to do this.

41:12And the worry that I have is that we're not even in the first year yet. The first year is not even over of his tenure. He's got three more of these. Yeah. There was an iteration of the Republican Party way back just a few years ago that used to that used to claim that the Second Amendment was so important expressly because of it being a way to defend against a tyrannical government, a big, overreaching government, exactly the kind of government that we're seeing right now. And I know that the Overton window shifts so much that it almost like for us to do this exercise where we say, oh, you used to you used to say this, you're being hypocritical.

41:47It's like, yeah, that that, you know, that ship has sailed years ago at this point. But in your travels, at least with the folks that you've spoken with, is there anybody in the center or the right that is viewing this through the prism of some, you know, traditional Republican or conservative mentality where, hey, maybe it's not great to have some like rogue jackbooted thug agency fucking shooting people in the face and killing them with complete impunity like conservatives of yesteryear used to say? You know, I'm not a conservative, but I have respect for traditional conservative thought. At least it is coherent.

42:26You look at a guy like Thomas Massey, he and I are not going to agree on most things, but at least he's internally consistent. Right. And when you look at any public official, you should ask, do your principles build out to your policy? Can I predict, based on what you say you value, what you're going to do? And the hard part right now is that the modern Republican Party is no longer a conservative party. We don't have a conservative party in this country anymore. You have some conservatives who call themselves Republicans who operate with the Republican Party, but are finding themselves almost at war with the Republican Party or have been kicked out of the Republican Party because now you have a party that's enthralled to the narcissism of one man.

43:11And he is literally sucking up all of the political power that used to sit in the traditional conservative party. And the worry that I have is when you have one man who is openly musing about not holding elections, who's basically said that the only check on his power is his own broken set of morals. Where do you go from here? And what I would really like is for people who believe in conservative ideology to decide to grow a set and stand up to him. Meanwhile, we're going to have to be out here fighting like hell to beat him and them in an election. And here's the worry that I have. You cannot accommodate tyranny.

44:01That's not how this works. and you're already seen. So you're not of the Barry Weiss school of both sizes? Barry Weiss is a whole different story at this point. I mean, like this is a woman who came to power talking about freedom of speech, except for her whole political project was to shut down any freedom of speech that mentioned the word Palestine. I mean, that's actually, they're actually consistent with that hypocrisy because Elon Musk did the same thing. Elon Musk came out and said, I have to buy Twitter because I need to, I need to own the town square so that we can get some true freedom of speech and legalize comedy again.

44:35And if it cost me$44 billion, so be it. And now he's out here, I think like an hour ago, suspended Amy Klobuchar's account because she was talking down about ICE. I mean, just the rank hypocrisy that we're seeing, especially on the issue of freedom of speech, is just mind of it. It's disgusting. And, you know, I just, I think the hard part I have right now is that you're seeing a lot of Democrats try to appease, right? And I just think that the way that you win an election in the year of our Lord, 2026, is to say what you're for and be more compelling about what you're for than they are. Because right now, that guy came to power talking about the pain that people were feeling and about how he was going to build an economy that got us past inflation and made your life affordable again.

45:23And when I talk to people up and down my state across the 70 cities I've been to, they're not feeling any better about things. if anything, they're fairly worth. This chaotic system of tariffs that he has created so that he could bend corporations to his whim is about enriching him and his family. This weaponization of ICE against the entire constitution is about enriching and empowering him. And so we've got to be able to call a spade a spade. And you've got a lot of folks out here being like, well, maybe you shouldn't just call it what it is. And you're like, y 'all, I think everybody's just been waiting for folks to just say the obvious thing and say it with some courage.

45:59And so look, you know, a lot of folks are out here like, you shouldn't say abolish ice. I'm like, really? When that agency shot a white lady in the face with the idea that somehow their whole purpose is to protect white ladies like her from brown people. Like, tell me why we shouldn't call this out in the starkest, most obvious, most direct, most specific and most passionate way. Like, tell me why that's not what we should do, except for that you all are afraid. And fear is exactly what a narcissist will weaponize against you. It's fear. Once you decide, you're like, I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid of you.

46:37I'm not afraid of what you're going to do. I'm going to keep saying what I say. You can do whatever the fuck you want to do. I am not afraid. Once you do that, that becomes contagious. You know, I mean, like hats off to Jerome Powell. Who knew that he was like the modicum of courage that we had in Washington, D.C.? He just went right up there and been like, here's what this is about. Yeah. And all of a sudden, guess what happens? Everybody around Donald Trump folds. Yeah. Because guess what? The thing about narcissism is it's fragile. Once people know they can get away with shit, they keep getting away with him.

47:07And we've seen that play out time and time again. In fact, when ABC News capitulated to Trump early on, they thought that that would buy them space. And in fact, all that did was tell Donald Trump that they're weak, that they can be owned. And so what did he do? He did it again and again and again. And when CBS comes out and says, look, we're weak too, we're willing to capitulate too, continues to trash them over and over again. It doesn't buy you anything. Like these people think that if they can can confer some goodwill onto the other side, that Donald Trump will be a good a good like part like transactional partner.

47:42Transactionality only goes one way with Trump. Loyalty only goes one way with Trump. And so when they engage in this whole process, thinking that they've bought themselves time, thinking that they've bought themselves space. All they've done is shown him that they that they're just like, you know, that they're that they're a bloody fish in the water at this point. And he's going to come and kill him. And that's what he's done over and over again. It'd be like, it'd be like there's a mosquito. You're like, listen, just bite me this one time and then go away. Yeah. That's not how it works. No. And he's, and, and that, and that he will never not be a mosquito.

48:11No. And he was going to suck the blood out of whatever he possibly can. And he's insatiable. That's the thing about it. He's insatiable. So, you know, this idea that somehow he'll just look past me now, we've got to stop doing that. Yeah. And as a party, if we're serious about the future, you've got to be able to stand up to him and look past him. Right. That's the thing is you've got to both be able to stand up to him and look. past him and remind people that there is an after Trump. You've got to make him small. And that's, you know, I think sometimes I, you know, obviously I, I grew up with a name like mine and I learned the hard way that if you let somebody take your lunch money, you're never going to eat lunch.

48:49So I remember the first day of school, I let some kid take my lunch money. We moved. And the next time we moved, I told my dad, I was like, I'm going to get sent home today. He's like, what do you, what do you mean? I was like, I'm just going to get sent home. I just know how this is going to play out, right? First kid who stepped to me, I was like, I am going to beat you mercilessly as a message to everybody else. I'm not here to fight, but if you want to step to me, I'm so sorry. Like that's going to be the last fight you've ever had. And at that point, you're like, okay, once you all figured out that like, I'm going to, I'm going to fight back.

49:18And if you pick on me, I'm going to pick on you harder. We've got to develop a, a sort of willingness to bully bullies. And the hard part about it is as Democrats, it's like, you know, Sometimes high school drama is the best way to understand these political dynamics. Democrats are like the cool kids, right? And the cool kids, at the end of the day, when the bully comes, they don't really know how to fight. And everybody else kind of looks at them and says, serves you right. Because you guys have been bullying by exclusion for a very long time. Yeah. And I think we've got to have a dynamic at this point that just says, nope, nope, nope, nope.

49:52Like, we're not going to start the fight, but we're going to end it. And we're going to stop excluding all of these folks, right? because I hate to say it, the top of the Democratic Party plays a similar game by different means. And I just think that system has got to end because there are too many people suffering on the wrong end of a system that is allowing Donald Trump and people who are sucking up to Donald Trump to take more and more away from everyday people. And that's what we see up and down our state. It's what we're seeing up and down the country. What happened to the kid? What'd you do to the kid?

50:22I'm trying to find out if an 11-year-old got his ass beat. 11-year-old got his ass beat. I got sent home early. My dad asked me what happened. I was like, the predictable situation of my name is Abdul. And, you know, at the end of the day, honestly, like that kid never stepped to me again. In fact, he'd like cut a wide berth and I didn't have to fight again for the rest of the year. And nobody else ever questioned me about my name. Not once. That's how it goes. So while I have you, I think it's important to talk about your background. You're an epidemiologist. You're a physician. What else am I forgetting here before we jump into the medical stuff?

50:57You got it. No, look, you're also a Rhodes Scholar. Did a lot of school, spent way too much time in school. So I want to talk about Medicare for all for a moment. And I've spoken to Senator Sanders about this. I have been advocating for this for as long as I've been doing political media. But it always I mean, except for a small moment in the 2020 primary where you had a few candidates who wanted it, a few who didn't. And it became like this lightning rod issue where, you know, the progressives were down for Medicare for all universal health care, single payer health care. The moderates weren't.

51:30And if you've got, you know, half or a third of the Democratic Party that that wants it and half or two thirds of the Democratic Party who don't. And then 100 percent of the Republican Party who doesn't. It's you know, it's it's kind of DOA. But I feel like we're in a different world now where we don't look at these issues through the same lens as we did before, where the the sacrosanctity of the status quo and the system as it stands doesn't exist in the way that it used to. And we've seen that because they're not standing up to Trump. And so we don't have to, you know, think that these that everything is immovable because Trump is is is tearing everything down.

52:06And so there will come a world where we have to build it back up. But do we build it back up in the exact same way that we did or do we build it up in a way that that is that is more just and brings more people into the process? And so first and foremost, I understand that that when people think about Medicare for all, it still feels like it's sorted into the very progressive camp. But from the folks that you've spoken with who are not necessarily super far left, does it feel like this is a moment where there's actually an embrace of something like Medicare for all? You know, once you get past the left-right framing that all of us try to put our politics into, and you actually go out into communities across the country, and I've been doing this up and down my state, you realize that most folks don't really ask whether or not this is too progressive for me.

53:00They're asking, does this actually solve a problem I really have? And even when you go back to the passing of the ACA, which was a really important moment in expanding healthcare for people, and I want to take that away from the history of our country, President Obama called it a starter home. Yep. And we have since outgrown the starter home. And to me, the big failure, right, that we kind of knew existed inside the starter home, the reason we were going to outgrow it someday, is that it relied on a profit-motivated health insurance industry to provide the bulk of the American public healthcare.

53:35And when you have profit-motivated insurance and profit-motivated healthcare providers, at some point, all that profit comes from somewhere, which is your and my back pocket. And we've now come to a place where that has become unsustainable. And we consistently have to patch with subsidy after subsidy to make the system sustainable and to work. And so to your point, in an era where Donald Trump has now stripped that edifice back because he could care less about whether or not people in this country can actually afford their healthcare. We're now in a moment where we have to ask, okay, if the starter home wasn't working and they're breaking it down, what do we really need to build?

54:13Yeah. Medicare for all is not government healthcare. Medicare for all is guaranteed baseline government health insurance. If you like your insurance from your employer or from your union, that can still be there for you. But if you lose your job or your factory shuts down, you shouldn't be destitute without healthcare. You should be able to get the healthcare you need and deserve without having to worry about a premium, a copay, or deductible. That's not a crazy idea. And it would solve some of the biggest problems in healthcare. Number one, you could guarantee every single person the healthcare they need and deserve.

54:50Number two, our healthcare costs are growing at an unsustainable rate. And when you have, Medicare providing the bulk of health care for the public, it can start to negotiate down prices or at least keep them from growing at the speed that they've been growing. And that's why it's called single payer, because instead of individuals negotiating on their own behalves, which, of course, you have no economies of scale, you're not able to negotiate anything well. Now you've got the government negotiating on behalf of 350 million people. Exactly. Bring the price down, just like every other industrialized country in the world is able to do.

55:22I mean, this is not some novel theory. Like this is what Canada does. This is what France does. This is what Western Europe does. And we all have this like Stockholm syndrome that we think we have the best healthcare in the world because the health insurance companies who don't want us to touch a thing keep telling us we have the best health insurance in the world. And here's the problem with it, right? Like in Stockholm, they actually have good healthcare. But like our Stockholm syndrome, like to get the average wait time to see a cardiologist, which by the way, nobody is told to see sometime in the future.

55:52Like when you need to see a cardiologist, you need to say cardiologist. Right. You're not sitting here in January and saying like, hey, I'd love to see a cardiologist in October. Exactly. Two and a half months. That's the wait time in our country. Like my wife and I are both doctors, okay? And when we need to use our healthcare, you know what we do? We always just call up friends. I literally like, I had this issue. I thought I had a stress fracture in my foot and I was like, okay, well, how would I actually manage this? I guess I'd have to go to my portal, send a message to my doctor and then tell them what I was feeling and then wait until they booked me for a visit to tell me that I needed an x-ray and MRI to then tell me that.

56:32So I was just like, I just texted my friend. I was like, hey, but I have the privilege of having doctor friends. That's not a thing most people have. And this is the challenge in this country. Like when everyone's trying to figure out how to end around the healthcare system, you know, it's freaking broken. All of that goes back to health insurance. So even on the doctor front, right? A lot of folks are like, well, doctors are making good money. No. What's happened is you have health insurers and hospitals and clinics who have been able to use each other to consolidate in the system. Hospitals buying up hospitals, health insurance buying up health insurance.

57:05And all of the money in the system gets sucked up at the top. So if you actually look at the increase in physician or nurse pay, it's only gone up like 25 % over the last 20 some years. Both my parents are registered nurses. So I've seen it and I've heard every complaint in the world about how the hospitals are run, about how the system is run, about like you have never seen a more disillusioned perspective about health care than when you've spoken to nurses. I've had to walk picket lines with nurses at three hospitals in Michigan in the last year alone. And you know why? Because what will happen is a different hospital system will buy up the local hospital and then because they basically all own all the local hospitals in the area, they suppress contracts for nurses because they know the nurses can't go anywhere else.

57:56And so they're able to suppress their wages and worse, give them unsafe staffing ratios. So you've got far too few nurses managing far too many patients, which becomes a risk to the patients. And that's the thing people don't get. But when you have this kind of scenario, you yourself as a patient assume that the hospital is operating in your best interest. But when they're not hiring enough nurses to take care of you, guess what happens? They're not. They're not operating in your best interest. And all why? So they can make more money. Right. And it happens in this collusion, this evil collusion between health insurance and hospital.

58:32So what I'm saying is instead of having a profit motive on the health insurance and the hospital side, maybe we can just guarantee everybody health care via the federal government, which, by the way, we do for people when they get sick or anyway, after they turn 65 through Medicare. And that's the most popular program we have in this country. It's got 80 percent support in this country. And here's the crazy thing. If you actually look at where the money for health care comes from, 60 percent of medical billing comes from the federal government anyway, either through Medicaid or Medicare. So we already have a government health system.

59:04we've just created a system where private health insurance can profit off of providing insurance to people when they're their healthiest and they don't want to do it you know when they get sicker they've created these advantage programs where they'll take medicare dollars pocket them and then use prior authorization to gatekeep seniors from their health care they do that but the whole is a money grab, right? And so we don't need private health insurance. If people want private health insurance, great. But you shouldn't have to rely on it because it's fundamentally unstable. And it's created this tiered system that creates challenges for people when they actually just want to get the care that they need.

59:44Yeah. And by the way, I lived in France for a couple of years after college and they have socialized healthcare, but then they also have a private offering. They call it a mutual, but it would be the same thing. I mean, you can buy extra health coverage if you want it, but otherwise everybody's covered. I remember I, uh, I have two herniated discs in my spine. It's a long, long time wrestling injury. And so I needed, uh, I did like electric stim and, uh, and like deep tissue massage and whatever, just to like keep me in one piece. But I remember finding a doctor in France who did that for, for, um, you know, sports medicine and whatnot.

1:00:19And, um, I remember going and asking how much, how much it would cost and they, and everything gets, gets reimbursed if you lay money out. And they said it would cost like, would cost like two euros and 80 cents. And I was like two euros and 80 cents. And they were like, but you'll get it back. And she thought I was upset that I was going to have to lay out the money. She thought I was upset that I was going to have to like pay two euros and 80 cents and not that I was expecting her to say that it was going to cost like$275, you know? So we'll have to live this way. Yeah. You know, and then the funny thing about it, right, is that the idea that you would want to do something similar to somebody in a different country is somehow so terrible.

1:00:56But here's the think about it, right? It's crazy to me, right? Every country in the world has a military. Some militaries run better than other militaries, but nobody's like, well, that country has a poor run military. So our military is going to be trash too. You never hear that argument. So my point is, look, we're the United States of America. We have never settled for less than the best, except for when it comes to healthcare. We're okay with middling to, I mean, complete shit, infant mortality rates. There are communities in America where I worked in the city of Detroit where infant mortality rates are similar to where my family immigrated from in Egypt.

1:01:42And we seem to be okay with this. We don't have to live like this. We don't have to live like this. There is no reason why we cannot build the best healthcare system in the world. And right now, if you have money, you can have some of the best healthcare in the world. But if you're middle income, if you're middle class in this country, you are getting healthcare that is way too expensive for far less care that smacks you in the back end. It's the reason we have$225 billion of medical debt in this country, which is higher than the GDP of half of the United States. And like, we seem to be okay with this.

1:02:18we don't have to live this way. I would add, too, the rest of the world imitates the United States at every opportunity they can. Like, again, I lived overseas. I know the extent to which our culture, our culture is exported and everybody else imports it. Everybody wants to see what's happening in our movies, our TV shows, our music, our clothing, all of it, our dancing, like everything gets exported from the United States, imported into foreign countries. There is a reason that give, even despite that mentality, nobody wants to touch our health care system, that nobody goes near the American health care system.

1:02:52We are the envy of of no country in the world when it comes to health care. And and for a world so so groomed into into adopting American culture, the fact that nobody wants to touch our health care system is a testament to the fact that it is so broken and doesn't work for anybody. No. And Brian, like here's a crazy thing. Like we we are sending billions of our dollars abroad to fund genocide and war abroad. We just spent a billion dollars to depose a foreign head of state, $185 billion ICE budget, which just to understand this, you could eliminate the medical debt in this country for somewhere between$3 billion to like$10 billion.

1:03:35It would be a drop in the bucket relative to the ICE budget, and we are not doing it. That is our money. That's taxpayer dollars that we pay to the federal government so that we can weaponize a bunch of folks who were like sitting in their mom's basement playing Grand Theft Auto like five weeks ago. Right. Now they want to cosplay as soldiers by terrorizing people in the streets. Spending our money. When you got people who are wallowing away in medical debt, going without the healthcare that they need and deserve in the richest, most powerful country in the world. All of it, almost all of it goes back to decisions that get made because corporations get to buy and sell our politicians rather than being accountable to everyday people.

1:04:16And we don't have to live this way anymore. We really don't have to. We could make different choices. And I'm just saying that it's time for us to have an honest, direct conversation with the American public about what it looks like to actually start making different decisions. Perfect place to leave off for folks who are watching this right now or listening right now who want to help your campaign. Where can they go? Abdul for Senate.com. Follow us on socials. Abdul Al-Sayed, E-L-S-A-Y-E-D. Frankly, if you just look up Abdul and Senate, I'm the only Abdul-Rençal Senate. Kind of anywhere. So I hope folks will check us out.

1:04:46Brian, thank you so much for having us. This was awesome. It's great to just have this conversation face-to-face. Well, thanks for coming. And thank you for the work you do. I'm joined now by the Attorney General of California, Rob Bonta. Thanks for joining me again. Great to be with you again. So you have a major announcement here as far as a new lawsuit against one of Elon Musk's companies is concerned. Can you explain what that lawsuit is? Absolutely, Brian. Today we announced the launch of an investigation into XAI for allowing Grok to generate non-consensual sexually explicit images of women and children.

1:05:24And it is shocking. This has happened in full view of the public on the X platform over the last few weeks. And it is disgusting and very possibly illegal. So we are launching an investigation to get our arms around the facts. There are multiple laws in the state of California that restrict and limit the ability of platforms and entities to create sexually explicit, non-consensual images just like this. and we will go where the facts and the law take us. But I am very concerned. We are very disturbed about what we've seen. And so we wanted to let the public know that we are on the case. We are investigating.

1:06:06And if appropriate and necessary, we will take action to hold Elon Musk and XAI accountable. So I presume that there's going to be some defense as far as Elon Musk is concerned, that all of this is kind of an emerging technology and that you can't really predict what's going to happen, what this technology could do until it actually does it. But what might undermine that is if this stuff was happening and it wasn't taken care of after it's already been revealed, that it was happening. And so has that been the case or is this all just kind of new? This, if Elon Musk and XAI say that, they'd be wrong.

1:06:45This is not a bug. This is not a failure of existing safeguards. This is the feature. This is a design. This is intentional, deliberate, a purposeful provision of the ability of Grok to create these images. And other AI companies have put guardrails in to prevent exactly this from happening. It can be done. It should be done. And XAI has not done it. And even after the public outrage, the outcry that has occurred, the Grok continues to allow the creation of these images. It's been put behind a paywall with something called spicy mode. Now you have to pay to create these sexually explicit, non-consensual images, but you can still create it.

1:07:41And that's by design as well. So Elon Musk and XAI have made their choice and they are allowing this to happen despite what the law says. And we're going to dig deep and look close. And if we find that they're breaking the law, whether it be civil laws or criminal laws, we're going to take action. I know that there are some laws regarding revenge porn, for example. Are there any existing laws or I guess what is this lawsuit going to be predicated on? Is there some existing law that you're going to lean on in your lawsuit against XAI for creating these explicit or non-consensual sexual images? There are multiple laws that exist in the state of California, three in particular that have been created by the California legislature just recently as AI has begun to proliferate.

1:08:25And we have seen what is possible in terms of what AI can create with deep fakes and images like this that, quote unquote, undress children and women and put them in different sexually explicit situations. And so AI-generated images like these are prohibited in California by at least three laws that our research has revealed prohibit these types of images. And there's always been and continue to be criminal laws on the books that prohibit child pornography and certain types of child sexually abusive material, CSAM. So there are laws already in place. And we will be measuring the behavior against those laws to see if they violate what those laws prohibit.

1:09:14I know that it's not really your job to try and get into Elon Musk's head, but why do you presume that Elon Musk seems so reticent to actually comply with this law and to take the same precautions that other AI companies have taken? You know, far from that, to your exact point, he's actually monetizing it, putting spicy mode behind a paywall so that he can continue this abusive practice, but now make money from it. Hard to get into that head. Yeah. He's always sort of exhibited an irreverence. He has claimed a commitment to sort of pure free speech, as he calls it, First Amendment, although speech can certainly be and should be regulated with appropriate time, place and manner restrictions, as the U.S.

1:10:06Supreme Court has said. I think that it's safe to say that limits on free speech are roughly where child pornography comes into play. That's right. I mean, and this is just like if you use your common sense here and apply it, you know, no matter what you claim you are, you know, this should be nonpartisan. This should be bipartisan. This should be everybody saying we shouldn't have nonconsensual, sexually explicit images of children in the public domain. that should be an easy one. Or of women that allow women and children to be abused, harassed, mistreated. And this is a no-brainer. It's common sense.

1:10:44So hard to know what's in his head. But what should be in his head is that we should not have these images and they should not be on XAI generated by Grok. And last question on this point, what kind of damages are you seeking? What would be the consequences for XAI if you're successful in this lawsuit? There's a set of different remedies that we might be able to secure here. One would be what we call injunctive relief, a court order stopping the behavior going forward, stopping Grok from generating these non-consensual sexually explicit images of women and children, you know, ending the practice, ending the conduct.

1:11:18That would be one. There's also civil penalties that we could secure,$25 ,000 per violation. And just to get a sense of how many potential violations there might be, between Christmas and New Year's, there were 20 ,000, it's estimated, images of this type generated on X. So a lot of potential violations. And then finally, there could be criminal liability, in which case the corporation would be held accountable. We'd have to see if any individuals would as well. But usually when a corporation is held accountable, there are criminal fines and criminal penalties. All right. I want to switch gears here for just a quick moment, because we had a judge hand down a ruling in federal court in California regarding their effort, you know, at the hands of the DOJ, at Trump's DOJ, to undermine the maps that are going to be on the ballot for Prop 50.

1:12:12Can you explain a little bit of your reaction to that court ruling? Yes, we're very, very gratified with the court's ruling today. A three-judge federal panel upheld the maps that the people of California created by voting overwhelmingly for Proposition 50. This is exactly what was expected. No surprise. I saw the complaint come in. I closely monitored the evidentiary hearing, multi-day evidentiary hearing on the plaintiff's motion for preliminary injunction. And I always thought we'd win and we've won. The plaintiffs have argued that the maps were based on racial gerrymandering. They're wrong.

1:12:52They are partisan redistricted maps. And that is completely lawful, completely illegal. They were created in response to Texas's redistricting. And that's exactly what the proposition said that was put before the voters, that this is a partisan redistricting of maps. And that's what the court found as well, appropriately so. So we're gratified by the win. It's no surprise, but gratifying nonetheless. You know, if I'm not mistaken, this is the Republicans' sixth attempt to try and undermine these maps, two of which went to a judge in Texas that was Judge Matthew Kazmarek, who's like one of the most pro-Trump judges in the entire state of Texas.

1:13:34Even he not only said no, but then threatened sanctions because the lawsuit was so frivolous. And so do you presume that we've seen the last of the litigation at the hands of these Republicans to try and undermine these maps? I don't think it'd be wise to presume that. I mean, they're working overtime, they're stretching, they're reaching. You know, it seems like the more baseless and meritless, the better for them. You know, I'm sure they're willing to lose a seventh time, an eighth time, and they will. You know, we beat them back six separate times. And every time they think they've found something or have some argument and they claim they're on the verge of victory and striking down these maps.

1:14:11It's ridiculous. You know, this is about facts and law going into a court, showing the receipts, showing your case, and they got nothing. And we continue to reveal that they have nothing and we continue to beat them in court. So based on their past behavior, I'm not certain that this is over, but so be it. We'll beat them again if necessary. Presumably, they would always start with their best lawsuit, their strongest lawsuit. And so does the fact that we're now six lawsuits in, does that suggest that if we were to see a seventh, that it would be weaker than all of the prior lawsuits that have not only been brought, but that have been struck down in court?

1:14:49I think that's fair. Although I will say, you know, they were just kind of throwing everything against the wall. I think they were all, you know, very weak. So it's just kind of different shades of weakness and meritlessness and baselessness. And maybe they come up with some other cockamamie theory that's baseless and meritless as well. Wouldn't put it past them. It's not beyond them. I think it's an irresponsible use of the court system in a lawsuit, but if they wish to do it, they may, and we will beat them. You know, this lawsuit happened at the hands of the DOJ, which claimed that there shouldn't be any racial gerrymandering.

1:15:27Is there no irony in the fact that they've just gotten done asking the state of Texas to gerrymander racially so that they could get five seats for themselves. Trump came out, said, I'm entitled to five seats. They obviously racially gerrymandered those five seats. So they're kind of speaking out of both sides of their mouth here where they claim that it's good when it benefits them in Texas, but bad when it doesn't redound to their advantage in California. Yeah, ironic, hypocritical, unprincipled. You can use a bunch of other words, whatever you want to call it. But they start with the outcome that they want based on their desire to seize power and have whatever power that they seek.

1:16:08And then they back into some cockamamie theory or logic. And they'll say one thing one day and something else the next day, depending on if it suits them and suits their desire for power. And you've pointed out a really key hypocrisy. not the only one, unfortunately, but I think you really make the case there. Well, look, I think maybe they're hoping they'll have more luck when they carve up the maps in Venezuela or Greenland or whatever other territory they're seeking to usurp and annex. With that said, thank you. Thank you, Attorney General Bonta. I appreciate your time today. Really great to see you again, Brian.

1:16:48Always a pleasure to be with you. Thank you. Thanks again to Jamie Raskin, Jared Moskowitz, Abdul El-Sayed, and Rob Bonta. That's it for this episode. Talk to you Wednesday.

1:17:19Thank you.