Trump just put me on his newest enemies list

24:41The Democrats have run repeated campaigns just on saying you don't like him, as if that's a winning message you need to sell, when more often than not, I could show you the charts, The country's already there. They don't like him. But whether they bring him back in compared to the alternative is a different question. Right. Just like you could dislike a teacher a lot. And then they bring in a substitute is so bad that you say, I still don't like that teacher. But, man, we prefer him to this new one. And so that's that's the Democrats mistake. The Republicans mistake is that they've constantly tried to say, oh, you counted him out and he connects with real America because he had these surprising comebacks.

25:17That's not real math. He got fewer votes in 16. He got wiped out in the blue wave in 18 and he lost in 20 with fewer votes. Right. We all know that they underperformed in 22, including after the big Supreme Court abortion decision. So the only time he ever got more votes was was 24. That's that's a one off, actually. And we'll see how he does in 26. I think Senate Republicans are reminded or waking up to how hard he is to run with. So the comeback narrative is a D.C. narrative. It's not really a comeback if you were never liked. Yeah, he won once. And unlike some other people, call it fair and square.

25:52I covered that election. There was a big high participation. He won 24 once.

25:58Brian Tyler Cohen:You know, I think what's interesting about all of this is like he is quietly doing his work behind the scenes where he just rids the party, excommunicates the party of anybody who was willing to come forward and support the discharge petition for the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Like it might not seem so overt because this is kind of the the the the slow running machinations of of the electoral process. But like Thomas Massey is out. He signed the co-sponsor of the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Lauren Boebert was forced to run in the fourth congressional district in Colorado because she wasn't going to be able to win in the third, certainly without the support of Trump, who'd been busy calling her dumb and low IQ.

26:40Brian Tyler Cohen:Meanwhile, you have Marjorie Taylor Greene, who left Congress outright. And when she even approached the White House because she and her family were getting death threats, Trump basically doubled down and said, you know, you had what's coming to you. And then Nancy Mace, Trump decided to endorse her primary opponent in the South Carolina gubernatorial race. And so one by one, like this is again, this is like a slow plotting process, but he was able to be successful in excommunicating the people who put him in this situation in the first place where the Epstein Files Transparency Act was even advanced because of those people who are willing to buck the party line.

27:16Brian Tyler Cohen:And so that's like the one piece of doubt I have in terms of whether whether it's still going to be as easy for these Republicans to buck Trump, recognizing that every time it happens, whether it's on Epstein with those four that I just mentioned, whether it's Bill Cassidy, who, of course, had voted in favor of of of his impeachment. John Cornyn. I mean, the guy was so far up Trump's ass, he could touch the back of his teeth, posting pictures of Trump of of himself reading the art of the deal. Even he wasn't loyal enough to get the endorsement over Ken Paxton. So there is that there is that backdrop of, OK, you can you can speak out for something that you agree with.

27:56Brian Tyler Cohen:You know, that that isn't that flies in the face of what the White House's stance is. But your job is going to be on the line. Yeah. And I mean, that makes me think of two things, one on Epstein and one on this type politics for Epstein, given how much has come out that already makes Trump look bad. And I'm always careful to say as a legal journalist that I'm an attorney, we have not seen criminal level evidence. We've seen stuff that is embarrassing. Many people would say disqualifying. But unlike some other individuals, the material that's become public about Trump and Epstein doesn't currently implicate Trump as a criminal.

28:31So that makes you say, OK, but that's already out there and he already took to lumps. What else is he hiding? Right. And I'm not the type you know me. I'm not the type to say, well, if it looks that bad, it must be that sometimes I've covered stories like this that look one way and they change, but it doesn't look good. It doesn't make sense logically, basically to have this much come out and then have Trump still be acting like there's something else to hide. Now, does that mean that it's the worst thing that someone could think of? No, it could be malfeasance in how Epstein was dealt with as a prisoner foul play in the jail cell which is something the whole congress has now legitimated it started out people said oh is that a conspiracy if you read the files legislation as I'm sure you have and I'm sure some of your viewers have one of the enumerated items is all the additional information about the treatment of Epstein under the control of who?

29:22Trump DOJ and the Bureau of Prisons. Now by the way would that alone be a huge scandal if there were foul play i think so which is again what i'm saying is a different explanation than if you were hiding say some earlier illicit conduct but whatever it is he is acting like someone who is going all that way to have something to hide that's on epstein then on the politics look on the one hand what everything you said is true and explains why even when trump could be polling in the 30s the power he has in republican primaries and over that base, which is not even the whole Republican Party, let alone the whole country in the electorate.

29:58Right. That's our gerrymandered system, which a partisan Supreme Court has made worse helping Republicans. That still gives him power, even when he's basically lame duck DOA political. Yeah. And then on top of that, he's willing to do something other presidents have. It's still a type of weakness, I think, Brian, that he spent with his allies more on a single house primary of the Epstein proponent. Yeah. For transparency, Massey, Massey, than any other House primary in American history. That comes from a point of weakness, right? It's like if you get into a dispute with someone and you come back and you bring 20-hired security, right?

30:37One of these billionaires, you say, oh, what do they do? Yeah, they could hire a lot of off-duty cops with guns. And on the one hand, you say, well, you're not going to beat them up today, right? Literally. On the other hand, wow, they must be really scared. And that is a lot of firepower that they bought. more on that race than any in American history. I mean, that tells you a lot about the fear and the power that Massey built up, which then, yes, House member versus president. You know, that's usually not a fair fight.

31:06Brian Tyler Cohen:I think that that's a really good segue into another topic that I wanted to talk about, because as far as Trump operating from a place of fear is concerned, he wouldn't need to move to consolidate so much support in the media space if he was able to, you know, convey his message by virtue of how he was governing. Like if he was doing a good enough job, he wouldn't need to level all these attacks and buy up all of these media outlets. We've seen him either sue or have his allies kind of seek to be as heavy handed as they can within the media, you know, whether it's whether it's CBS or, you know, imminently CNN.

31:45Brian Tyler Cohen:then we've also seen him sue ABC, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Meta. I mean, you name it. We just recently saw Scott Pelley get fired at 60 Minutes. And, you know, the fate of that institution obviously is in doubt. I think what you guys do at MS Now is really important because it's one of the few, if not the only legacy media outlet left that's willing to actually buck Trump and criticize him when it's necessary to do so. And so, you know, from your vantage, recognizing that Trump has gone after everyone, really, I mean, he seems to be just taking his way down the list. How does that make you feel about your obligation, your responsibility to speak out?

32:34Brian Tyler Cohen:And also beyond that, like, you know, it feels almost inevitable that once he's done with CBS and CNN, attacking MS now is going to be next up on the list. And so just it's not going to be easy when the person with the biggest megaphone in the entire country sets his sights on either your network or on you individually. And so just kind of planning out for something like that, how have you thought about that? Yeah, I mean, it's a fair question. What's going on with CBS, which remains the highest rated news program. We can all talk about how the internet's changed a lot and some for the good, but 60 minutes competes with NFL football for the largest audience, highest ad rate.

33:19And does it with, as we've seen, because you just saw them stand up to this incredible internal corporate magnet of pressure, does it with independence? I firmly believe, based on what I know and being in this business, that if a radical socialist went after 60 minutes with somehow, and you got to really do a lot of legwork here, but got a hold of the state control the company, I think they would go up against leftist intervention just as much as MAGA intervention. Those are serious people.

33:46Brian Tyler Cohen:Yeah. The problem for Trump is those serious people, nonpartisan, are calling him out. And that's because of the plays they're trying to run to abuse their oversight of the media merger system in order to get favorable coverage. And if you could prove it out enough, if you had an independent investigation, which you're not going to get from this DOJ, you'd have to investigate whether they've crossed the line into quid pro quo bribery and other crimes because it is illegal for government officials to say i need x from you to do y in the government and usually it's softer right we have all the campaign donations it's softer it's hard to prove if that happened that's already that second to your question we're going to continue to stand on business and be independent and you know sometimes it's like i'm posting about my show or i'm promoting myself here i'm not really about me I'm really fortunate to work with people like Rachel and Nicole and Lawrence, who stood up, by the way.

34:42Lawrence has clashed with Donald Trump for 15 years, stayed on the air, faced the threat. Now it's heavier for the reasons you say. So we're led by those people and a team. We're more independent than we were before because we're now a fully independent company. Versant, we trade as our own company. Most people aren't interested in all the details, but the bottom line is we're more independent than we were a few years ago. So that's what we're doing and we're standing up. the wider point though that you made is really important when you're up 20 in the fourth quarter you're not really doing a lot of cheating even if you sometimes cheat right it makes no sense um he is sliding and crashing and yes he has a probably an emotional vendetta against media and and i think all in all honesty if he were doing better he might still be complaining and attacking Kimmel and that type of stuff.

35:32But the extreme way that they are trying to censor, mute and control the press going into these midterms and presumably they're not going to stop going into the big the big presidential election shows how weak they think they are without that kind of of pressure or cheating.

35:49Brian Tyler Cohen:As we watch the DOJ and the FCC be so heavy handed in what they're trying to do, Like, obviously, Brendan Carr has a huge hand in all of this. And of course, we were just talking about Todd Blanche, how he is basically, I mean, look, the guy's violating the law because we still have three million Epstein files that haven't been released. He's made it clear that he has no intention of releasing anything else. And so he's participating in this government cover up at the same time, violating, violating existing law. You know, as we move forward, I think we looked at what happened in the aftermath of Joe Biden winning in 2020 and installing Merrick Garland as attorney general.

36:27Brian Tyler Cohen:And I think there was this sense in retrospect, misguided, I think, where it was more important to protect the, you know, to prevent against the optics of politicization and to get back to normal politics and just calm everything down. And obviously that didn't work. And in fact, the unwillingness to hold these people to account for what they'd done, Trump specifically, kind of emboldened him to recognize that he could do it 10 times, 100 times faster and harder than he had done it before. And now we're in a situation where the corruption is so egregious, like people are selling, you know, shorting stocks and buying buying stocks that just make them turn them into millionaires 10, 10, you know, 10 times over.

37:14Brian Tyler Cohen:We're watching this massive pay to play scheme. You know, we just had this report come out, I believe, in The Washington Post like a day ago that showed that a number of the companies that had donated money to Trump's ballroom were then granted government contracts that were worth far more than what they had had had donated. And so like we have reached full banana republic levels of corruption. How do you think that the next Democratic attorney general should take this stuff into account, recognizing that there are going to be those people who say, you know, let's put the politics of retribution behind us.

37:51Brian Tyler Cohen:But then there's also going to be people who say an unwillingness to actually uphold the law is the exact thing that emboldens criminal behavior in the future. And so what do you think, you know, what do you think should be the move moving forward, especially from somebody who has a lot of experience in the legal realm? I think you describe it accurately. I think any honest future Justice Department must deal with the corruption, the looting, the revenge prosecutions that have basically infected multiple parts of the government. I mean, we have the housing partisan warrior in Pulte, who was, based on what we can tell, misusing access to information there to go after opponents.

38:34That's like secret police stuff. And now he's going to run the intelligence services for a little little temporary stint, is what Trump said. So it's at at DOJ. It's at housing. It's at FBI. They were visiting the Georgia voting voting station. and now it's at intel he oversees cia i mean this sounds like a movie when you say wait cia director is going to meet with the guy who's already been caught misusing information to go after domestic opponents right this is bad so you have to completely go in after all of that without fear of favor and i say that and people will say oh i'm sounding uh potentially naive but that's any honest non-maga administration obviously that would hopefully include the Democrats.

39:15That's what they're telegraphing. But if you had an honest John McCain style Republican, I don't know that they're going to win the nomination, but I would expect a McCain style administration to also do this. I've seen very fast. Well, now to say everyone's the worst, but I've seen and covered Republican administrations with a DOJ was much more independent. Yeah. And nonpartisan than this one.

39:38Brian Tyler Cohen:So we know we we just want we watch Joe Biden's DOJ prosecute his son, like prosecute the president's son. The notion that that investigation would even be allowed to be open, much less go to prosecution, go to conviction, would be just, I mean, it's laughable at this point. The notion, see Don Jr. get prosecuted. And Reagan-Bush, according to legal experts in law schools, the Reagan-Bush DOJs are not held up as some high watermark. But again, if we're just going to be proportionate, they had open probes into their own administration, including Iran-Contra. And by the end, there were deals and pardons.

40:13I just want to be clear. This administration doesn't allow anything like that. And they didn't have the level of revenge prosecutions we have right now. So history is helpful that way. So I would say any non-MAGA honest DOJ has an obligation to do this first and do it strongly. And that means looking at what's always hardest in Washington, which is, you know, you have all this this pro wrestling and then you have a hell of a lot of people who they go in and out of office and you say, why does it seem like the Democrats are giving in and they're not fighting that hard? And then you look up and two years later, the guys who were fake fighting on the Senate floor in the same lobbying shop and other crap like that.

40:48And so the DOJ has to really look fully at what they sometimes see as their contemporaries, which is, oh, well, I knew that guy when we were at DOJ 10 years ago. Yeah, well, we don't care if he was covering up the Epstein files or helping Todd Blanche make up stories or going into grand juries to help make it a slightly less severe revenge prosecutor. I don't care if they broke the rules of the law, they should be disbarred, investigated. And if they, if they committed a crime like anyone else, I don't care that you knew them back when they were different and worked in a different DOJ. So we have to deal with that.

41:23And if we don't, you know, there was a writer I quoted when I did a piece about January 6th, who said a failed coup without accountability becomes a training exercise.

41:32Brian Tyler Cohen:Yeah. Well, boy, have we seen that? And we're going to see more of that. And And then on the corruption, they're looting. The last point I would make is, you know, when I'm trying to report and get people's attention, I use analogies because I feel like when you're only talking about the thing, we only know what you think about the thing. So let me compare it to another thing, okay? A heck of a lot of conservative-minded people, and some people were sympathetic to Trump, or maybe they voted for him once and they regret it. They look at that looting that you see sometimes where a city has a blackout or burned down buildings, and people go in and they say, God, these people, they got the opportunity.

42:04and in one hour they started taking TVs. You say, that's wrong. What about the local store owner? Okay, insurance pays for it, but it's still stealing, right? And those type of folks will say, gosh, that looting is wrong. And you've got to turn around those people up. Okay, that's less than 1 % of the scale of the premeditated, first-degree, long-acting looting, including of the Pentagon and places where we would care about national security. So, yeah, if you cared about that looting, You should care about this looting. It's Trump family looting. It's allied companies. And I don't predict the future, man.

42:40I would tell you if we don't deal with it as a society, it will get worse, not better, even if even if the politics change a little bit.

42:46Brian Tyler Cohen:Well, you know, the ultimate irony of that is like that was a message that resonated with Trump's voters from Trump himself. And the first thing he did was install Elon Musk, who promised to like eliminate waste, fraud and abuse. And what does he do with his power? Fires all of the people who serve as as, you know, the the watchmen of all of their respective departments and agencies. And then Elon went on after all of the all of the inspectors general were fired and basically eliminated any barriers to the to the companies, the agencies that regulate his companies and then awarded himself a bunch of government contracts.

43:23Brian Tyler Cohen:And so right there, all of that trust was just completely decimated. But the extent to which we're seeing it now has become so overt and so egregious and almost like, I mean, they're almost like proud of it to come out and say, I'm going to sue my own federal government for$10 billion. and then think that it's some gift to us to say, you know what, let's just compromise with a$2 billion slush fund to turn each one of the 1 ,500 insurrectionists into millionaires, but also will give me tax amnesty for myself and my family forever that could also cost the government$100 million in funding that would get paid to the federal government and now won't.

44:01Brian Tyler Cohen:I mean, the the corruption in that sense, it's almost like the administration is kind of poking, poking its finger in the eye of the American people, because this is the exact kind of stuff that, you know, that Trump and Fox would have had a field day with. Well, I think you're making a subtle point about, if I may, the the culture of their degradation of our system. Yeah. They think it's a flex to say, see what I can get away with, see what I can steal. I mean, the fund that is in so much trouble now, I'll remind folks, it is already paused in court. It was paused, which is a procedural step under review.

44:39But if you have a fully obviously legal thing, they don't pause it. OK, there's plenty of stuff the government does that doesn't get paused in this early stage. So a judge already paused it. A separate judge is looking at whether the whole deal is a fraud, as you mentioned. So that's how controversial the fund is. But if you're watching this in America, it's your money. They're seizing and stealing your money. They don't claim that it was appropriated by Congress. They don't claim that there's any reason. They think that's a flex. Now, on some of these issues, more and more Republicans don't. And a lot of people, when they learn the details, don't.

45:12But they think it's a flex in the same way that autocrats take a kind of pride in getting other people, even you'll see this in senior cabinet meetings in Russia, whatever, to say that up is down and red is blue. because it shows, oh, look, this person will embarrass and debase themselves, their sense of reality for our power. That's how much power we have. I would observe that there are other people who have power in a way that I think is better long term leadership. I can list off other leaders who are different. But yes, it's a type of cynical. They think it's cynical. I think it's cynical.

45:47They think it's a kind of flex to say, look what we can get away with.

45:51Brian Tyler Cohen:Ari, last question here. Nick's in how many? Five. Nick's in five? That's a good answer. I'm in New York. I've lived in New York more than any other place. I can just tell you, I live in Brooklyn, walk around. Everyone's going crazy. Everyone's into it. So I want to support. I don't want to say seven and then it sounds like it's going to be too tough. Yeah, just on that level, as someone who's been in New York this long, the energy, I mean, And you walk near Fort Greene where there's the Spike Lee's, there's a bar he likes to go to. And it's really community because people know each other. And it's like people are going nuts.

46:27So it's definitely a fun time to be in New York in the summer.

46:30Brian Tyler Cohen:Well, it's cool because like, look, I'm from, born in New York, grew up in New Jersey originally. So all of my sports teams are New York sports teams. I'm a diehard Giants fan. I've been a Yankees fan since I was, you know, five years old. Living out in LA, I've been out here for 15 years. And like we have, first of all, the city is so sprawling. So there's never a ton of people like you can walk down the street in New York and you're just there is a there is a mob of people wherever you go. L.A. just isn't like that. So you never feel like you're immersed in like a mob of people in the same way.

47:00Brian Tyler Cohen:And we also have, you know, the Dodgers are in L.A. We have the Anaheim Angels like that are that are just an hour outside of L.A. Like it doesn't have the same feel within the city. We have a lot of sports teams, too. There's a lot going on and and it just doesn't it doesn't take over the city. Like we don't have, you know, even when the Kings, I mean, the Rams are Super Bowl champions previous year. The the our hockey team was was NHL champions. You can you you can walk through the city and not know that that happened. I feel like the same thing isn't isn't going on in New York, which is which is really cool.

47:36Brian Tyler Cohen:And so, you know, I'm not a huge bet. Go ahead. I mean, and not not to make it political, but, you know, a lot of times around America, it's the places where there's very little diversity and not many immigrants and that's where people are like oh my god the immigrants right yeah and you walk around new york and it is for folks who sometimes feel like oh is this whole american experiment is this thing breaking down a lot of places it's not you walk around first of all they got a new mayor in they got new stuff they're trying but also you walk around and you got such diversity and when they're rooting for the next if you want to make it an american thing you're like great they're rooting for America.

48:13It's in English, yada, yada, if that's your cup of tea. But also you see people who moved here, came here and are sharing something geographically, culturally. I love that.

48:22Brian Tyler Cohen:Yeah, that's awesome. Highly recommend for anybody who's watching right now. First of all, check out Ari on The Beat on MS Now at weekdays at 6 p.m. Eastern. But also I'm going to put a link to to Ari's YouTube channel right here on the screen and also in the post description. If you're listening on the podcast, I'm going to throw it into the show notes. This is the kind of thing where we all have to come together and support and support any media that is willing to tell the truth about what's happening right now. That takes the form of folks who are doing doing good work and pushing back on legacy media, which has been Donald Trump's focus in censoring since the beginning of this administration, all the way down to independent media folks and creators.

49:04Brian Tyler Cohen:but it's a group effort here to make sure that we elevate these voices who are willing to do the work. So I'm going to put that link right here on the screen and also in the post description. If you're not yet subscribed, please go ahead and hit the subscribe button. Ari, thank you so much for taking the time, man. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks to all your viewers and listeners. Stay informed, stay hydrated, stay at it. Peace, everyone. Thanks again to Alex Michelson and Ari Melber. That's it for this episode. Talk to you on Wednesday. You've been listening to No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen.

49:35Brian Tyler Cohen:Produced by Sam Graber, music by Wellesley, and interviews edited for YouTube by Nicholas Nicotera. If you want to support the show, please subscribe on your preferred podcast app and leave a five-star rating and a review. And as always, you can find me at Brian Tyler Cohen on all of my other channels, or you can go to briantylercohen.com to learn more.