1054: First They Came for John Bolton

18:54Jon Favreau:I also think people have a mistaken impression of how things operate in a regime, dictatorial regime which is they think oh if the you know if the if the dictator is going after their opponents you know it's just uh agents showing up at their house and taking them away in the middle of the night and that's that and even as we were talking about these cases you're like oh i don't know did anyone did anyone commit some little mortgage fraud do we know the evidence right do we know if john bolton is guilty or not maybe he is we like so this is what they do they figure out, okay, everyone has probably broken the law somewhere in life.

19:29Jon Favreau:And also we don't have to tell anyone anything for a while. So we can pretend at least it's on the up and up with a little wink and a nod as they've been doing. And you know, then people will wonder what's going on and they'll think maybe it's shady. And also Trump threatens a million people all the time anyway, and has for a decade. I mean, we were talking about this in the meeting this morning and I mentioned ABC news and NBC and you were like, didn't he already threaten them a couple of times? Is that new? And I'm like, yeah, maybe, but you know, I'm going to take your licenses unless you pay me millions like maybe it's a tweet now pretty soon it's going to be like you know brendan carr actually doing it he's also i gotta say maybe maybe he switched to a stronger adderall he's doing more following up like he's following up on stuff more like it used to be the people to follow he's got the people i know i'm joking but he's got the people to follow because it used to be he throws out a tweet or post about how we've got a free tina williams or peters whatever her name is that woman in colorado and it's just a fit of peak and i forgot about that and jared There you go.

20:23But Jared Polis doesn't need to worry about it. That because it's never going to be harsh measures. But there's somebody keeping track and they do follow up. They do come back at you. Yeah.

20:32Jon Favreau:He and then the last person we should talk about is he went after Wes Moore, the governor of Maryland. They've been at a back and forth over sending the National Guard to Baltimore. The murder rate in Baltimore is at a 50 year low. You know, still crime in Baltimore. Still, you know, Trump says it's the fourth most violent city or crime-briven city, whatever. So Moore invited Trump to come walk the streets with him. And Trump responded by calling Moore nasty and provocative. He used a tone. He used a tone that was nasty and provocative. Let's go take a walk. That's how every tech CEO has meetings these days.

21:10Jon Favreau:It's just, you know, it's very passive-aggressive. and Trump said he may cancel the funding that Congress appropriated to rebuild the city's Francis Scott Key Bridge although Trump described it as I gave him the money and I might take it back which I don't even think that was I think it was appropriated in 2020 it wasn't Venmo it's not his money it's also yeah it's similar to the Bolton thing if it even comes out part of it is the process is the threat because Trump is so openly and brazenly saying you won't get the money because I don't like you like that would not hold up uh but then the process of holding it up would be the problem same for bolton maybe no crime will be there but he has to get lawyers he has to like uproot his life uh to fight it yeah and now i mean just imagine like a state losing funding you get from the federal government to rebuild a fucking bridge that collapsed through you know an accident yeah very important bridge too and i guess you know he just all of these threats are designed to send a message to every other elected official out there.

22:10Jon Favreau:Because Gavin Newsom has decided to burn the boats and tweet funny memes all day long, but other states are going to worry about getting federal funding in the wake of a disaster or, you know, what other executive branch help they might need.

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23:45Jon Favreau:Like Tommy's Tips. Get$5 off your next order at magicspoon.com slash crooked or look for Magic Spoon on Amazon or in your nearest grocery store. That's magicspoon.com slash crooked for$5 off. Hi, I'm Alex Wagner. I do not need to tell you that being an American right now is a wild ride. But as a longtime journalist, I am not interested in the noise or the fear-mongering. I'm interested in the stories at the heart of the headlines. That is why every week on my show, Runaway Country, I'm joined by folks in the middle of the crossfire. From disillusioned Maha moms to newly fired immigration judges to Epstein victims themselves.

24:23To understand what it means to live through this political chaos as an actual human being. And now I'm excited to tell you that Runaway Country is available ad-free to Friends of the Pod subscribers. Friends of the Pod is the subscription that supports the work Crooked does as an independent media company and gives you a ton of great bonus and ad-free content. With the midterms approaching, you are going to need more content to keep you sane. And now you can find Runaway Country right there. Subscribe now at crooked.com backslash friends.

25:00Jon Favreau:So Baltimore may have to get in line for the military occupation because on Friday, Trump said that Chicago, New York, and San Francisco may be next on his list. Sure enough, the Washington Post reported the next day that the Pentagon has already spent weeks planning a National Guard deployment to Chicago, a move that Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker both pushed back on quite hard on Monday. Meanwhile, National Guard troops in D.C. are now carrying guns. So an expected move, but, you know, it's here. And White House videographers are also accompanying federal agents during raids and arrests so they can fill our social media feeds with content that owns the libs and, you know, stuff that the MAGA base can get off to.

25:43Jon Favreau:Guys, we own ourselves, us libs, okay? We take plenty of videos of ourselves. Yeah, that's right. It's our liberal tiers that help, you know. We were watching the, what was the choir outside of the Abrego Garcia hearing? Oh, my gosh. Anyway, we watch too much Fox in our office. Trump is clearly enjoying himself as well. Here he is on Monday after signing executive orders aimed at ending cashless bail, prosecuting flag burners and ordering, quote, further actions to stop the crime emergency in D.C. So it used to be called the Department of War and it had a stronger sound. Now we have a Department of Defense with defenders.

26:21It just sounded bad. He said, sir, on behalf of the Department of Defense, defense. I don't want to be defense only. We want defense, but we want offense, too, if that's okay. So you'll make a decision. But, you know, as Department of War, we won everything. There's your trophy for the World Cup. I think what I'm going to do is place it right above the angel, right over there. That's solid gold, too. We're going to put it right up there. Look at that. There's a solid gold trophy. They know how to get to me, you know. As you all know, Chicago is a killing field right now. And they don't acknowledge it.

26:57And they say, we don't need him. Freedom, freedom. He's a dictator. He's a dictator. A lot of people are saying maybe we like a dictator. I don't like a dictator. I'm not a dictator. I'm a man with great common sense and a smart person.

27:11Jon Favreau:Yeah, not a dictator, even though you wouldn't believe how many people are coming up to me. Mr. Trump, Mr. Trump, we want a dictator. No, no, no, not me. That's not me. I'm just common sense. I did see someone on Twitter called the office decor Saddam Corp I think that's a good it is very Saddam Corp I think the new Department of War logo being kind of a southern old guy arm over a barrel and it says Department of War I think it's Gildan the Lily this is like cartoonishly fascist it is in a way that if If you told someone about it, that it was happening, who had been asleep for 10 years, they'd be like, come on, that's too...

27:56Jon Favreau:Of course everyone got that it was fascist, right? How did people not know this? It's also like, man, you guys are sending out your social media people to film these arrests. Lenny Riefenstahl knew how to compose a fucking shot. Oh my God. You know what I mean? It's just like, there's no pride in the product. You're going to be fascist. Learn the rule of thirds. Yeah. I wanted to score something. Also, historically speaking, remember the Republicans who liked limited government and personal freedom and talked about that stuff all the time? Not like the crazy libertarians, like the dude in New Hampshire who tweets insane stuff, but like the libertarian wing of the Republican Party?

28:33Jon Favreau:Where are those people? They're just hanging out. They're just gone? It's just a small but mighty crew at the American Enterprise Institute now. And Cato. Don't forget Cato. Every time I see a tweet from someone there, I'm just like, yeah, you got it. I know. Me too. They're pro-immigration. I'm retweeting the Cato guys all the time. It's a big 10. There's a comedian named Tim Dillon who we've talked about, I think, maybe on Rapid Response stuff on YouTube. But I don't think he explicitly endorsed Trump in 2024, but he was very critical of Democrats, had J.D. Vance on his show right before the election for this long interview.

29:05Jon Favreau:But Tim Dillon did this riff the other day on his show where he was saying how all of the things that Alex Jones has been worrying about for years are coming to fruition. The U.S. military in the streets, FEMA camps, evil companies like Palantir collecting off our data and monitoring us. Where are the people who are worried about this? Like, again, I know Alex Jones is a performance artist, as he said about himself in court. But, like, there's a lot of people who sincerely care about these issues. And where are they? Well, I think maybe they didn't. I know. I do think people like limited government.

29:33Jon Favreau:Like, New Hampshire is an entire state built on loving limited government. Where are they? They're choosing Dye right now. Yes. They're choosing Dye. And not only that, I talked about this just as soon as they are. They are. But like, so I talked to this to Ricky later, you'll hear it. But like, okay, right, fine. They're libertarians, but they like order. They like law. The president is seizing the means of production. You know, he's, he's taken over. He's, he's demanding shares in publicly traded American corporations, private companies. And they're nowhere. They're nowhere. It's communism. It might take more.

30:04Jon Favreau:I mean, I'm sure you talked about this with Sir Ricky. I don't know if you talked about the wind story, too. This was un-fucking-believable to me because, again, it was a headline. I'm like, oh, Donald Trump's shutting down wind projects. Like, oh, yeah, he doesn't like wind, so maybe he's, like, cutting funding from the government. No, no, no. There was, like, a wind farm that's 70 % built, already set to generate, like, enough electricity for, like, just hundreds of thousands of people in Rhode Island. It's almost going to be done. And just pulling the permits now. Just the federal government saying, we don't want wind projects.

30:34Jon Favreau:And wind projects that are actually in the process of being constructed with private money, we're going to shut them down. To your point earlier about like existential problems that are sort of hard to look in the face because they're so dire and nothing's happening to solve them. Like climate change is still a thing, as we all recall. There was this group that looks at sort of the intersection of climate and business. They found that$22 billion worth of clean energy projects have been canceled in the first half of 2025. A lot of that is like car manufacturers scaling back EV production because we got rid of all the tax credits that incentivized the purchase of EVs.

31:05Jon Favreau:But like big picture, electricity is just going to get more expensive. And wind generates, I think, about 10 percent of our electricity last year. Wind and solar, you get to about like 20 percent of electricity generation in the United States. and he's just killing off those industries at a time when we're also building these giant AI data centers that take like a city's worth of energy so that, you know, we can all - They can get a couple more boobs on those ladies. I made that same joke with Sir Wiki later, fuck. Stay tuned. So that Grok can turn into Mecca Hitler, you know, in real time. Someone said this, like our country is now building data centers and detention centers and camps.

31:45Jon Favreau:That's it. That's what the United States, States has come to now. There are coal power plants that are set to retire. And the people running the coal power plants have not asked for an extension. They were ready to shut them down. And the Trump administration is forcing them to stay open because they're not profitable in many cases. It's the equivalent of rolling coal, right? It's not good for anybody. It doesn't do anything. It just makes the air worse to own the people driving behind you, the libs and the Priuses and the Tesla. Well, it used to be Tesla's behind you. And it's more expensive now.

32:14Jon Favreau:Say you didn't give a shit about climate change. We're now there's cheaper energy that we're now trying to get rid of for more expensive energy because Donald Trump doesn't like what windmills look like and thinks that our coal past is something that we need to return to. It's like it's the difference between what they claimed, what what Republicans said forever and what Trump actually is. Right. Like, oh, they don't want to choose winners and losers. Right. And the tax credits and all these things choose winners and losers. But Trump, I mean, like, again, to your point about everything Alex Jones predicting coming true, he goes, he meets with the oil executives, He demands a billion dollars.

32:42And then he's like, not only do they try to subsidize fossil fuels more in their big, beautiful bill, some of which came out, but not all of it. They're not going to kill projects that are basically done. There's no justification for it. None other than to make energy more expensive and to push people towards dirtier forms of fuel. To drive up the profits of a dozen or two dozen companies.

33:04Jon Favreau:Just wait till the federal government shows up at gas stations and just starts covering the prices of gas. So that no one knows. They just, they'll charge your card, but yeah, they're not gonna, they're not gonna release the information. Spray painted. Because gas is gonna be cheap, as cheap as it can be forever. Well, it's just, you're competing with all these immigrants for this gas and they're using up the gas. So on the, back to the occupation, that's happening too. Oh, one more thing on the Department of War though. Because I just want to like, the President of Peace, Nobel Peace Prize guy, gonna end forever wars, gonna end all the wars.

33:38Jon Favreau:Already ended a dozen wars. I'm a President of Peace. and now we're doing a war department? Yeah, I don't know. It's a throwback. Throwback jerseys are pretty hot right now in a lot of sports, the NFL. I own a couple throwback jerseys. Maybe we're just throwing it back. Does he think that we got mired in Vietnam because of a brand issue? Does he think it was because our logo and slogan didn't capture the vibe? Is that the problem? We didn't win World War II because we had a department of war and then we changed it and we lost our mojo. No, that's not what happened. I don't think that that's what happened.

34:08That's not what happened.

34:08Jon Favreau:Joe Rogan of the domino theory. Yeah, that's right. That's right, I am. So Republicans are already lining up in Congress to introduce legislation to extend Trump's takeover of the D.C. police from 30 days to six months. That can't really happen without 60 votes in the Senate, right, which they don't have. You do sort of wonder if they're going to try to somehow stuff that in a government funding bill and then dare the Democrats to, you know, shut down the government over it. Wonderful. And I don't know if I've made up my mind on how I think that's going to go yet, but what do you guys think? Like, is that a good thing to shut down the government for?

34:45Like, I'm sort of more and more in the Chris Murphy camp of you cannot concede to the normal parts of governing because they benefit from the normal parts and then they benefit from the abnormal parts. Like, oh, they want this so that it looks legal. Meanwhile, TikTok is still operating illegally. he's taken intel without any kind of congressional authorization he's doing all kinds of things with illegally as well so why are you going to give him the patina of a legal uh imprimatur when he has like had shown no indication that he won't do it either way yeah like why are you

35:18Jon Favreau:gonna help him it's tough because that is that's almost like the argument i know i know because it's like well we can all vote and shut the government down over this and then trump can say well i don't give a fuck about congress i'm just gonna maybe even if he couldn't take over the police anymore he's like well i still got the guard the guard can go anywhere but you know that's my prerogative but like we did this the last time i know and the and the answer is uh if you concede that that his abuse of power makes him more powerful in congress he's already won and so you just can't do that you just yeah and then he's just i hear that but i'm saying it's the other side of the argument he's just gonna park like an f-22 in millennium park to protect the bean and like be like i cut the murder rate in chicago and everyone's like thank you sir Yeah.

35:56First bean he's gone here in years. You know what I mean? Oh my God. He's never shown much care for the bean in the past.

36:03Jon Favreau:I shouldn't have played that AI country song for you this morning. That's what got the way it happened. Can I talk about something serious? Yes. All of a sudden the National Guard is going to be armed and there's not even an explanation for why this is suddenly different. Right. Because they're going on. They're saying that their mission has been a great success, that there's been no murders in D.C. And so if the Guard can have guns, why didn't they have them at the beginning? You waited. Why? To get us a little bit more comfortable. It admits to the reason they're doing it, because they knew it would look worse to start out with guns.

36:35They're not some justification. It's not like the National Guard have felt unsafe and have been hounded. They're just looking at their phones outside the Washington Monument. Right.

36:43Jon Favreau:Well, and they're also hoping that everyone's like, you know, all the libs made a big fuss about the Guard. They're just taking pictures with people. They're just standing around guarding the monuments. Who cares? Meanwhile, you know, he signed another executive order today that was like every state must get some of its guard ready to mobilize for President Trump in case he needs to put down civil disturbances, which is the real, you know, the goal here, and fight crime, whatever else. So now, yeah, now they're going to have armed guards, armed National Guard troops in the streets of major American cities.

37:13Jon Favreau:And maybe it's fine for now, but also maybe everyone's going to, you know, shut the fuck up and stay home and not criticize Donald Trump anymore. Yeah, it's scary. It's really scary. Because we can do this the easy way or the hard way. If everyone just lets the guard there and just patrolling the streets with their guns, then you're all OK. Right. And you could see the guard getting deployed with their guns to liberal areas right before an election, right before the midterms. Yeah, that's the next thing to worry about. And really, it's just a cover, right? Because the guard is the guard. They're in camo.

37:42It looks wrong. It is wrong. but it's the ICE agents that are going around doing more of the arrests and it's the ICE agents that are the ones that are going to be standing outside of polling places. It's the ICE agents that are going to be increasingly recruited from sort of the MAGA fanboy base with these enticements to join. So like that to me is what's going to ultimately happen. You got the guard there, you have ICE there and all of a sudden they're trying to pull precinct votes down by 10 or 12 in some liberal areas and enough to swing some close races.

38:11Jon Favreau:Yeah, you know what? I'm with Murphy. I just I just think I like and I know, you know, we're going to probably have a couple conversations about this as we get close to the government funding deadline. But it's like so, you know, Democrats don't have a plan to reopen the government once they shut it down. And what if Trump just says that's fine and I'm going to do whatever. Then people should know that the president of the United States has decided to operate without Congress and without the government funded. And it's just going to be a full, you know, like it's more probably more important for Democrats to tell people we have no part of this and we're fighting for it.

38:43Jon Favreau:and we're fighting against it and that's it. I don't know. Yeah, we're in extraordinary times now. We are only, what, seven months in? Yeah. We're seven months in. Look at where we are. Every CEO is marching into the Oval to pay fealty. There are troops on our streets. He's threatening to do more. Like this is happening very, it's happening fast. It's happening right in front of our eyes. Do you think six months from now, that vote's gonna get easier? Everyone's just lining up to give him gold. Gold trophies, gold shit from Tim Cook. there's gold everywhere which everyone should watch the South Park episode to see what in their view happens with those various bubbles that get presented to the President of the United States yeah not the bean not the bean not the bean not the bean

39:36pod save America

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41:24From disillusioned Maha moms to newly fired immigration judges to Epstein victims themselves. To understand what it means to live through this political chaos as an actual human being. And now I'm excited to tell you that Runaway Country is available ad-free to Friends of the Pod subscribers. Friends of the Pod is the subscription that supports the work Crooked does as an independent media company and gives you a ton of great bonus and ad-free content. With the midterms approaching, you are going to need more content to keep you sane. And now you can find Runaway Country right there. Subscribe now at crooked.com backslash friends.

42:07Jon Favreau:CNN reported over the weekend that unsurprisingly, most of the arrests in D.C. have been focused on immigrants. And as The Times reported last week, the summer surge in immigration arrests has been a direct result of federal agents going after people with no prior criminal records or convictions. That was certainly the case with Trump's most notorious wrongful deportation, that of Kilmar Obrego Garcia. And there have been some big developments in that case since we last spoke about it. If you remember, Abrego Garcia was brought back from Seacott, arrested by the feds on dubious human smuggling charges in Tennessee, then released by a very skeptical judge so he could go home to Maryland while awaiting his trial.

42:44Jon Favreau:Apparently, the government then offered to deport him to Costa Rica if he pled guilty to their charges. When he refused, they told him they planned to deport him to Uganda instead. Then he showed up for a check-in on Monday morning and was immediately detained by ICE, which was expected. Luckily, Judge Palazinas ruled that he can't be sent to Uganda for now. Here's what Abrego Garcia had to say on Monday at the massive protest on his behalf before being detained by ICE. Independientemente lo que pase hoy, regardless of what happens here today, con ICE, prometenme esto, in my ICE checking, promise me this,

43:40promise me that you will continue to pray, continue to fight, resist, and love, not just for me, but for everybody, continue to demand freedom. Thank you so much.

44:00Jon Favreau:I know Tim talked about this, Miller, when he interviewed Andre, but it's... Hernandez Romero, another Tico prisoner. It is just, it's unbelievable that the people who have been wrongfully deported, ripped away from their families, tortured, beaten, like have this kind of grace and are saying like, keep fighting for justice and all that. I mean, it's just, it's wild to me. Yeah, it also like sort of, I was thinking the same thing and just that it also speaks to like, what do we have on our side? Which is, yeah, people don't care about this enough right now. It just feels that way. We can't, people just aren't waking up to it enough, right?

44:39There just isn't enough political pressure. It just all feels too close. But at the same time, like the information is out there, right? Like the story is still, we can still tell the story. Like he doesn't, he hasn't had his thumb on the media. There's enough media, right? Like it is not for, it won't be because of censorship that we don't stop this. It might be because of noise and nonsense and misinformation, but it won't be because the story couldn't be told. And I do think that like, as hard as that is, it does point away here, which is like our job collectively is to figure out how to tell that story because there are moments like this where someone's talking about this openly and honestly, and they're not afraid to do that.

45:11And I do think that that is hopeful.

45:12Jon Favreau:Yeah. And I'll just be honest, he doesn't have the option to say what he really thinks probably you know he's this guy's like dealing with the capricious justice system that that they're what the united states is saying to this man is take a plea deal and admit guilt for crimes you don't believe you committed or we'll send you to uganda that's not a justice system like it also it also shows the white house is where they're picking deportation locations as a way of further punishing these people right they're like oh you don't want to go to costa rica okay how about uganda which you don't like dictators or something about Museveni.

45:44Jon Favreau:You'll get to know him real quick. You know, the other thing we should be thankful for, at least for now, is Judge Zinas, when she heard this, is like, this is why you cannot deport him to Uganda until at least we get through this trial, and I say, because the fact that you offered him Costa Rica and then decided to say no Uganda, like, shows that you're just doing this in a capricious and punitive way. Well, and it shows, right, like, they have been threatening to send people to all kinds of... They have sent people to South Sudan who are now, I think to the point of not being able to keep up with what the fuck they're going on.

46:17I think they're still in a holding facility in South Sudan.

46:19Jon Favreau:South Sudan. In this case, it's not just to send a message to other people about immigration. It is specifically to get out of their embarrassment of having drummed up these charges that can't be supported in a trial. They're afraid of a trial. They say, Costa Rica's pretty nice. Please, please. If you're such, he's so terrible. Don't you want him to pay for his crimes? No. I know a trial would expose how fucking ridiculous. And wrongly rendered him to El Salvador in the first place. Literally the only country on earth where they could not have deported him by law. Yes. The second part of it is if you Zinnis not only said you can't remove this guy anywhere.

46:54He has to stay in the place he's in right now. It was she said. And this order counts, right? Because I know I'm just saying it out loud. but you, member of the bar, as a lawyer who presumably wants to continue to be a lawyer, this order - Who's been at the center of this. You are not pretending this order doesn't count because it's not written down because that's what you guys tried to pull the last time when you claim that an oral order from, what's his name? Blowsburg, whatever. Blowsburg. From, Blowsburg? You claim that didn't count so those guys got sent to CECOP because it wasn't written down.

47:27So this counts and he's like, yes. Just speaks to like, you have to talk to these people like sort of children like Aaron Children.

47:34Jon Favreau:Well, and meanwhile, as this is happening, DHS tweets, we're thrilled that he's going to Uganda. And they did it as a quote tweet of Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal as just like another troll. Like this man's life is just in furtherance of their trolling. Yeah. Of libs. It's all for the content. One federal detainee who's being treated quite well by the Trump administration despite actually being convicted for child trafficking, Ghislaine Maxwell. On Friday, the Justice Department released the transcript of her recent interview with Todd Blanche. Trump's personal attorney turned deputy attorney general.

48:05Jon Favreau:And you guys will be shocked to learn that a convicted criminal who's made clear she's looking for a pardon said that she's always known the one person who could grant that wish was a perfect gentleman who's never acted inappropriately around her. Full exoneration of Mr. Trump. You'll be even more shocked to learn that the perfect gentleman's personal lawyer did not follow up with any tough questions for the person his own prosecutors have said is a serial liar. I don't know if you guys went through the transcript. You guys have any big takeaways from the Maxwell Blanche interview? I mean, the big takeaway is that it was just an absolute farce.

48:41Jon Favreau:I read Donald Trump's personal lawyer sets up an interview with a woman convicted of sex trafficking children with the sole goal of absolving Donald Trump and his associates of any wrongdoing. And he asked, I think someone counted, he asked many more questions about Bill Clinton than Donald Trump, even though this whole controversy, the reason we're talking about this is because Donald Trump refuses to release the Epstein files and everyone's wondering why. And also like Blanche would drop lines of inquiry when it got close to Trump or when she mentioned like associates of Epstein being in the cabinet.

49:11Jon Favreau:And in the process, though, Blanche gave Ghislaine Maxwell this opportunity to lie and rewrite history for herself. And she's a liar. She has an obvious motivation to lie. She got better treatment after agreeing to have this conversation. But in the process, you've got these Epstein victims and their families just getting going through this traumatic nightmare all over again. And, for example, the family of Virginia Giuffre, who is one of Epstein's victims, who died by suicide earlier this year, released a statement saying, we are outraged. The contents of these transcripts is in direct contradiction with felon Colleen Maxwell's conviction for child sex trafficking.

49:46Jon Favreau:During DAG Todd Blanche's bizarre interview, she is never challenged about her court-proven lies, providing her a platform to rewrite history. I mean, it's like truly a really disgusting, disgusting farce. Yeah, it reads more like a deposition in a civil case where Trump's lawyer is trying to gather the information that he needs in this civil case to help his client get out of paying any kind of restitution. It doesn't read like an investigation, read like a criminal investigation. It also is clear, like Blanche is not that prepared, right? Doesn't clearly know the fact he's not there because he's not there to create a body of evidence.

50:21He's there to exculpate Donald Trump.

50:23Jon Favreau:He didn't bring any of the lawyers in the Justice Department who are still working there who worked on this case. The lawyers who said that Ghislaine Maxwell couldn't be trusted, didn't tell the truth, never admitted her complicity in this, showed no kind of remorse for what she participated in. But I do think for me that the second big takeaway is the other like it's sort of the other side of that coin, which is because Blanche was Trump's personal attorney and basically is still acting as that. And because DOJ is not independent and because nobody takes Ghislaine Maxwell seriously and understands her motives.

50:55The fact that Trump is so corrupted and polluted this process with his own personal politics, it doesn't work. This doesn't end it. It doesn't do anything. It actually kind of it didn't help in one way or the other. It didn't make a big splash that brought more attention to the story. It kind of came and went a little bit. But at the same time, the fact that she's saying all these things that that seem to be positive about Trump doesn't matter. Like the story goes on. The need for deposition goes on. The demands for release go on.

51:19Jon Favreau:Well, they also, several judges now have said that the Trump administration's request to release the grand jury transcripts is an obvious distraction because there's, they should know that there's nothing in the grand jury transcripts that would illuminate any new information about the case. and also I think that they uh the DOJ gave the first tranche of Epstein documents to Congress and you know Robert Garcia the top democrat on the oversight committee he was like I don't know like 90 percent of these pages have been public already they gave us mostly public information yeah and I think what basically they've released like one or percent or three percent of what is believed to be in the totality of these files and obviously you're not going to release like graphic images of underage people or anything like that but there's a lot of documentation that could that is still out there that's not been released, that they're clearly just trying not to release.

52:10Jon Favreau:And that is the part of that, that this is just a complete and total farce. I will say the one sliver of good news here. Did you guys see that James Comer, the top Republican on the Oversight Committee, has finally decided, okay, maybe we need to hear from Alex Acosta? I saw that. And I'll tell you, we're all conspiracy theorists now. So they said they're going to, it's for a transcribed meeting. That's what it said, that there's not gonna be a recording of it, I guess. Maybe that's part of the agreement. I'm not sure. But at this point, how on earth can we trust James Comer and Alex Acosta? You don't think they'll button this up?

52:45Well, I think they will button it up is the problem.

52:49Jon Favreau:The thing that's just worth noting politically about the release of this Maxwell transcript is basically every moron who went to the White House and held up an Epstein Files Part 1 binder when Pam Bondi first snowed them all into cheerleading, whatever bullshit PR thing she did, has basically declared that the Maxwell testimony is all they need to hear. So there's a subset of MAGA influencers who built their audiences on the back of pushing Epstein-related stuff, usually about Bill Clinton or Democrats, is now saying they're satisfied by hearing this disgusting woman who is serving a 20-year sentence, who herself abused underage girls, they think that what she says is gospel.

53:33Jon Favreau:It's fucking gross. Obviously, there's a ton of other shit going on as well. Trump got asked on Monday about why he's gone silent on Gaza, which the Israeli government continues to bomb and starve. He was asked about the Putin-Zelensky meeting he said he was setting up, which the Russian foreign minister has basically said isn't happening. There continue to be horrific stories every day about more wrongful detentions, stories about more layoffs because of the tariffs, stories about an insane level of corruption in the White House, on and on and on. We wanted to bring up these stories in part because they were each at one point at the center of the political debate, dominating the news cycle, and then just as quickly moved on to the periphery of what the White House and DC and a lot of political press is talking about, which seems like a problem.

54:16Jon Favreau:But first, anything you guys want to say about where we are with these stories or any others I didn't mention? Tommy, you want to about Gaza and also Russia? Yeah, I mean, like, it's just, it's so frustrating because he just chums the water every day with some new outrage. And then he just is never held accountable for anything. There's no follow up on anything. And I just do think it's worth noting that, again, during the campaign, Trump said he was going to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. It's August 25. So we've missed that deadline by a bit. But even, you know, after the Alaska meeting with Putin, Trump said, okay, there's gonna be a bilateral meeting between Putin and Zelensky.

54:46Jon Favreau:That hasn't happened yet. And he said, to we're going to figure out what the europeans what a security guarantee for ukraine looks like that hasn't happened yet so there'd be a trilateral leading with trump zolensky and then putin nothing about that and even today i don't know if you guys noticed he was talking about putin going to alaska and taking that meeting as if it was some sacrifice for putin yeah yeah he's literally the opposite for a while like oh it's such a coup that we got the meeting yeah and like it just it couldn't have been a bigger gift to putin to be welcomed back to the united states into the international fold after invading Ukraine in 2022, the full-scale evasion.

55:18Jon Favreau:And then similarly on Gaza, there was this global outcry about the starvation in Gaza a few weeks ago. It seemed in that moment like Trump might pressure Netanyahu. But the opposite has happened. Again, Hamas just agreed to a temporary ceasefire deal. It was very similar to one that the Israelis had agreed to, I think, in July. But rather than accept it and rather than get out more hostages, Netanyahu has completely changed his negotiating posture and saying he needs a permanent agreement that gets out all the hostages and ends the war. And again, like those details, set them aside for a second.

55:50Jon Favreau:Like the key point is Trump, he's like bragging every day about how he's ending wars, but he's not doing anything to pressure Netanyahu to end this one. And the Israeli government is drastically ramping up settlement construction in a way that's going to just kill off any hope of a Palestinian state. Like talk of a two-state solution right now is incredibly naive and it will soon be – there just will be literally no hope of a contiguous Palestinian state given the settlement construction. And the Trump administration supports it. Full-on supports it. So it's just – So killed a bunch of journalists today.

56:22Jon Favreau:Yep. The Israeli government. And they sort of bombed a hospital. and then also as people were trying to rescue people, then they bombed it again right as the world was watching. It's a double tap. And he had to, and then Yahoo had to - Mishap. He called it a mishap. A tragic mishap, which he had to do because it was so thoroughly captured on camera and so obvious and wrong. And you see Trump was asked about it and he's like, oh, I haven't seen that. I haven't seen the news. It was like 11 o 'clock Eastern. Who knows? Maybe, maybe that's true. Maybe it's not. The guy doesn't pay much attention.

56:59Jon Favreau:He's just living in the present like all of us forever. Well, yeah, like, you know, he wants, he finds the Epstein story distasteful. So he says, cover something else. And then Fox News dutifully starts covering crime more. Trump sees that and says, there's a lot of crime in DC. I better do something about it. Kind of falling into his own, like bear trap. And this is not what's on Fox News. It's not on what he is seeing. So it doesn't feel as important to him. And so he moves on to the next thing. yeah and it's why i it's one of the reasons i think he holds so many press avails every day because he knows that if he's in trouble from whatever happened the day before or people are going to ask him questions he's always got something new to announce you know and then they people can talk about that and you know we i know we had the whole distraction conversation but it doesn't have to be a distraction from everything but it is a like we're moving on and i'm going to do something else now yeah i like i it's funny because it does feel like oh so are are you guys saying that this is a distraction from medicaid cuts and and i think it's just like Like, let's it is not.

57:58But I think it's OK to acknowledge he is moving very quickly and he is doing a lot on multiple fronts because he knows that is destabilizing to the people that are trying to fight him. And because he doesn't care about results, he doesn't care about outcomes. He cares about the immediate press hit and the headline. He doesn't care about the consequences of launching so many initiatives, signing so many orders, claiming so many peace plans and processes all at once because he just has to get to the next day. Yeah.

58:26Jon Favreau:And meanwhile, it's like you do start getting numb to the stories, right? There was an outcry over Abrego Garcia, over Andre Romero Hernandez and Seacott in general. And now, you know, they're out of Seacott and back in Venezuela and the deportations continue and people like legal residents keep getting swept up, you know, torn away from their families. u.s citizens uh isis continuing to like tase and beat people who have not done anything wrong who are here legally and it's just like there's so many of the stories you're just like okay and i and i do think like maybe you know so i think sometimes like we try to figure out like okay what is the conversation where there's some like not to find hope in every terrible fucking story but more like what's productive right like how do we be productive how do we fight this how do we fight this and i think and like but i do think it's worth acknowledging that part of the challenge is going to be that over time, the reason we're talking about Kilmar Obrego Garcia today is because of a victory, right?

59:28Because he was brought back and the Trump administration is being fought on that and the line is holding on that case. Okay, but in the months since, he's also unleashed ICE across the country. We can lose over time even while racking up these small victories because this, and this was, we talked about this from the very beginning, which is slowly but surely wins and losses, your baseline moves and the country changes. And I think it's just okay to be honest about the fact that that is a very real threat and more than a threat, it's something we're watching happen, which makes fighting him harder, but is just the reality of it.

1:00:04Jon Favreau:It's just figuring out what accountability looks like with this guy is so hard because yeah, he does a million press avails in the Oval Office. And he took questions three times today, three separate times today, which is just unheard of for any White House. But the White House is full of like a couple real reporters and then like the dumbest people on the planet, like Marjorie Taylor Greene's boyfriend. And so Trump gets away with just asserting things over and over again that he's like cutting all these peace deals. And then meanwhile, he has real leverage to force the Israelis to accept a ceasefire proposal from Hamas and he's not taking it.

1:00:34Jon Favreau:And he continues to brag about ending a war between in the Congo, between them and Rwandan back rebels. yet there was a human rights watch report a couple days ago about how the m23 rebels were like the primary group uh killing people in the region for lack of the brief version of this but they killed 140 people last month despite this like peace deal trump brokered and no one just asked him that question hey sir i know you just said you you just went on for 10 minutes about how hey some people think you're racist but you did this peace deal with rwanda and congo but actually there was a massacre last month.

1:01:09Jon Favreau:Are you aware of that even? You know, there's just like no journalism. There's no follow-up. There's no accountability in any way. And it's, I don't know, it's infuriating. Yeah. When at least half the questions to him are answered by him starting with, oh, I love that question. Thank you so much. What a great question. It's funny though, right? Like it's, it's this, this is like, yes, he gets ridiculous questions, but he's also taking more questions than any president, like certainly in our lifetimes, like day to day, he takes a ton of questions. So it isn't like, it... He is getting hard questions mixed in with these ridiculous ones as well, but they can't cover everything because A, some of them are taken up by these other people and B, there's just too many fucking threats to follow on any given day.

1:01:55Jon Favreau:Yeah, and they punish the reporters who really go after him. And if you piss him off, he yells at you. Like remember when he screamed at like Peter Alexander and told him how bad he was. Then he moves on to again, like Marjorie Taylor Greene's boyfriend. I was going to say, he's taken a lot of questions, but imagine him doing the same thing if the people shouting questions at him were Peter Alexander, Caitlin Collins, Tapper, you know, Kristen Welker. And they could follow up. Because there are people that are mixed in. Jonathan Swan. Those people are mixed in, but they're not coordinated because someone's always ready to come in with like a haymaker of like, Mr.

1:02:27President, your skin's never been better. But by the way, though, like Vance is doing the Sunday shows, right? Like there are opportunities to question them. There really are. Yeah. Right. They are able to do this despite the fact that they do do those interviews and see value in it.

1:02:41Jon Favreau:Yeah. We haven't even talked about Vance's Wellker interview of the full thing. But it is a good example of like he lies so effortlessly. But it's also so obvious and such bullshit. But when you feel like you need to cover all the news with him and you only have 20 minutes, 30 minutes, then you just have to move on. And I do miss the – some people did this with Trump once in a while. They're like, all right, we're going to stay on one topic and we're going to get into all your bullshit. And you're not getting up until we get the right answers. You know, like I do think that's a if I had Vance for a sit down, like that's that's the strategy.

1:03:14I just I would really want to focus on how he thinks World War Two ended. I know. It's fucking nuts. You're a smart guy. What are you talking about?

1:03:21Jon Favreau:Well, he knows he's just lying. All right. One last thing that's hopefully a little lighter before we get to the interview. For those of you worried that ICE's big recruitment push means that the masked agents roving your streets might actually be beta-lib cucks, Trump announced in the Oval Office today that he's 100 % on the case. Now, they have to pass a toughness test. If they're not tough, we don't want them for this job. They might be great for other jobs, but not for this job. One paragon of American toughness is already submitting himself to the rigors of ICE. Noted Superman portrayer Dean Cain, if you haven't seen the footage of him doing the obstacle course, please enjoy.

1:03:56this time Dean Cain isn't flying there. He's going through that obstacle course and training to be an honorary ice agent. He was working hard out there. And this is exactly what those recruits will do as they're picked one by one. And they're at the federal law enforcement training center in Brunswick, Georgia. I love this.

1:04:11Jon Favreau:I love it. I just love that ice training is like, okay, grab this sex doll and drag it a few feet. Okay. Now, now slowly climb through about four feet of pipe. And then when you get to this obstacle that you're clearly supposed to climb over, just go through it and now here's a slow motion like here's a here's a crying woman uh uh yell at her tell her it's her fault tase her working hard or hardly working dean kane that was a that was brutal he's running at like uh 4.9 on a treadmill there he's not moving too fast it's been it's been a long time since lois and clark yeah well that shows from the 90s he is not fitting in that uniform i know he's not fitting in the tights i know when did dean Dean Cain play Superman.

1:04:56Jon Favreau:1997. I looked this up the other day when he first came up. That was the last season of Lois and Clark. I love that show. I was gay. Listen, he was hot. He was. Did you guys see Tim Miller on Pierce Morgan with Dean Cain? It's worth watching because Tim really goes hard at him. But Dean Cain gets really, really mad that Tim keeps saying, Ice is hiring a bunch of unqualified idiots like former actors. And he gets really mad. And at one point he yells at him, and I was a former NFL player. So I was like, did he play in the NFL? Really? Apparently, Dean Cain was a really good athlete. He played at Princeton.

1:05:29Jon Favreau:He was a defensive back. And then he, like, signed with the Buffalo Bills but got hurt in training camp. But you can't call yourself an NFL player, Dean, if you just went to training camp. You've got to make the 53. Yeah, and now he just mopes through a ropes course. Like, what? Like, being in ice is not a fun job, I don't think. Unless you, like, really like to, well. He's also 59. Does he want to, like, just go beat up people? Like, what does he want to do here? that sounds like right well that's the problem with who they're recruiting it's like part of like it's like you know the the like do we need a bunch of libs to go sign up for ice maybe oh probably yeah well now that you know you can be as young as 18 you can be as old as 60 they've they've changed the age limits and they're paying you money and they're forgiving your college loans and then they're just gonna you know they've cut the uh wall street journal went and uh did a story where they watched ice training for six hours and one thing they noticed is they've cut the training time from 16 weeks to eight weeks and basically it's people who've never you know fired a gun before had a gun before and they're just like eight weeks of training we're gonna give you a gun we're just gonna send you out there crawl through that pipe crawl through that pipe it doesn't matter how fast use your badge yeah you have a week to crawl through the pipe and remember gi jane when uh they're like gi jane refused to go along with the lower standards so she like she kicked the stool out of the way because she was gonna hop the wall the full wall Yeah, yeah.

1:06:49Jon Favreau:I only remember Demi Moore shaving her head. That was it. That was like a controversy, right? Yeah. There was controversy around G.I. Jane. Yeah. That's when he was playing Superman. I was going to say Lois and Clark, G.I. Jane, Bill Clinton was president. Dean Cain was also in Beverly Hills, 90210 at some point. Really? So says my GPT. I just checked that. Dean Cain. Your GPT took a break from worrying about fascism. Yeah. Anyway. Anyway. Good guy. All right. We're going to take a quick break. But two announcements before we do that. The newest season of Crooked's award-winning limited series is out.

1:07:22Jon Favreau:Shadow Kingdom Coal Survivor exposes one of the deadliest battles in United Mineworkers history. It's hosted by Niccolo Mainoni, who offers new details about an infamous murder trial that rocked the country in the 1960s and reshaped the American labor movement. First two episodes are out now. Listen on the Shadow Kingdom feed wherever you get your podcasts. Or better yet, Friends of the Pod subscribers can listen to the full season of Shadow Kingdom right now. Join Friends of the Pod at crooked.com slash friends. Also, for those of you who watch the pod and don't love ads, you can now stream ad-free video of Pod Save America and your other favorite shows with a paid subscription to Crooked.

1:07:57Jon Favreau:Ad-free video is available now on Supercast, Substack, and YouTube. Visit crooked.com slash friends to learn more.

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1:09:03Jon Favreau:But Elijah and Dan. I was like these two bozos. I don't know. You see this? This woman has been making TikToks about how she fell in love with her therapist because her therapist was sending her secret signals. Mm-hmm. Oh, man. There's a whole discourse on it. We shouldn't be having the phones. No. But we should be using the internet for good purpose. Like to Zoom with your therapist. For sure. Which you can do on BetterHelp. Exactly. Because if you don't want to go in person, BetterHelp is the place you want to go because you can just, you know, from the comfort of your home. I guess, what is that?

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1:10:13Hi, I'm Alex Wagner. I do not need to tell you that being an American right now is a wild ride. But as a longtime journalist, I am not interested in the noise or the fear-mongering. I'm interested in the stories at the heart of the headlines. That is why every week on my show, Runaway Country, I'm joined by folks in the middle of the crossfire. From disillusioned Maha moms to newly fired immigration judges to Epstein victims themselves, to understand what it means to live through this political chaos as an actual human being. And now I'm excited to tell you that Runaway Country is available ad-free to Friends of the Pod subscribers.

1:10:50Friends of the Pod is the subscription that supports the work Crooked does as an independent media company and gives you a ton of great bonus and ad-free content. With the midterms approaching, you are going to need more content to keep you sane. And now you can find Runaway Country right there. Subscribe now at crooked.com backslash friends.

1:11:15On Friday night, amid an epic news dump, Donald Trump praised Intel and its CEO while announcing that the U.S. government had just taken a 10 % stake in the American chip manufacturer, mere days after calling for that same CEO to resign immediately over his supposed ties to China. Joining me now to help figure out what the heck is going on here is James Sirwicki, who writes about economics for The Atlantic and Fast Company and who's been covering finance and business for decades. James, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me on. Let's just start with this. Can you just walk us up to the investment to understand and what kind of position Intel was in and what the challenges were that it was grappling with.

1:11:57So Intel is obviously the biggest American chip manufacturer. That is to say, they make chips in the United States. And you're all familiar with Intel Inside. They built an enormously successful business, primarily by providing chips for computers, PCs, and the like. But over the last, I don't know, let's say decade, 15 years, let's say the last decade, they have really run into trouble because they are not making the kind of GPUs that the general processing units that companies like NVIDIA and AMD, advanced micro devices, make that are powering things like artificial intelligence and the like.

1:12:40So Intel has been trying to sort of recapture a part of that market and to become essentially what it once was. And it's invested a huge amount of money. I mean, I can't remember the number exactly, but it's something like$109 billion that it put into capital expenditures over the last five or 10 years. But it's been struggling. And this has been an issue for obviously for Intel shareholders. And I think also it became an issue for a lot of American policymakers who saw it as a problem that America would not have a chip manufacturer that was making chips in the United States. And so as part of the Chips Act, which was passed under the Biden administration, the point of the Chips Act was to subsidize chip manufacturing in the U.S., not just for Intel, but for other companies as well.

1:13:38and but Intel was going to be one of the chief beneficiaries of this. And so that's kind of where we stood as of, I don't know, let's say a week ago. The other thing that's worth mentioning is you talked about the CEO. He's a new CEO who was essentially hired to replace the previous CEO who, you know, was basically let go because the company, while spending huge amounts of money, was not really delivering on the profit front, which is obviously what shareholders care about. So, Intel isn't making the right chips. Like, if you want to make a fake photo with seven boobs on a beautiful woman, 25 fingers, their chips don't do it.

1:14:17Right. So, they're in trouble. But they're about to get a bunch of money through a law passed by Congress, through the CHIPS Act. That's right. A bunch of, many billions of dollars. Yes. In a bill that Trump hates because it's a Biden bill. Yes. It's in that context that Trump calls for the CEO to resign. Then there's a meeting at the White House between the CEO and several members of the administration. The tone becomes much more conciliatory. And then a few days after that, we get this announcement. Trump is saying, great news. I just got a 10 % stake in intel and it cost us nothing. What was your reaction to that?

1:14:59And what have you learned about it? Like, what is this? So there are a couple of things to keep in mind here. The first thing is that this is actually one case where Trump, I think, is actually telling the truth. So when Intel, in its press release announcing the deal, Intel sort of tried to frame it or sort of fudge it and make it sound as if the United States was putting new money into the company in exchange for this stake. Because, you know, what the U.S. government is basically doing is it's essentially taking 10, it's 9.9 % of Intel. The U.S. government is going to own almost 10 % of one of the most important companies, arguably, certainly historically, one of the most important companies in America.

1:15:42This is incredibly unprecedented. There have definitely been times where the U.S. government has taken stakes, most obviously in 2008 during TARP, but they typically, in fact, maybe have always come in times of crisis where the companies were, Either we had a broader financial crisis or the company was really struggling. Intel's struggling, but it's still worth$100 billion. It's not on the verge of going under. So this was a really startling thing. And basically what I think the way to think about it is basically Trump and Howard Lutnick, who's the Commerce Secretary and has become sort of Trump's kind of fellow dealmaker.

1:16:25Effectively, I think Intel was coerced into giving the government roughly 10 percent of the company in exchange for those chipsack grants that effectively it was already supposed to get. And the idea is like we are going to release these grants to you. We will give them to you, but only in exchange for 10 percent of the company. So this is what's so strange to me about this. Right. Howard Lutnick. and the CEO film like basically a hostage video where they say, hey, he doesn't even need this money, but it's gate that he's getting it. We're so happy to be working together, whatever that means. The CEO makes a kind of unctuous statement of we're gonna make Intel great again, which like made me wanna barf.

1:17:13And none of it really computes, like even on its own terms, right? Because as you said, Intel's not about to go under. It's a massive company. It's been able to get the financing to put in 10 times that amount of money into its own growth. If it wants to sell a 10 % stake, it doesn't need to give the US government a discount on 50 million shares. It can get the financing through a loan. It can do it in a hundred different ways that don't involve giving the US government a stake. So what exactly is Trump, like what do you believe is actually causing this if it's not just this pool of money from the CHIPS Act?

1:17:53Well, I think the pool of money is important. I think Intel does want it. And I think, as you said, I think that video is very, very odd because, and it's worth watching, it's only a couple of minutes long, because the Intel CEO says, we didn't even really want this money or need it. And then Lutnick says, yeah, they told me they didn't even want it, but they decided to basically take it in exchange for 10 % of the equity, you know, because it was fair. And I'm like, wait, what if they didn't want the money or need it? Why would they give you 10 percent of the equity? So I think there are a couple of things.

1:18:25I think, you know, they wanted the money. I thought the money was was is useful to them and in putting more money into their businesses or whatever. Some of the money, interestingly, was it was originally from the CHIPS Act. And then it recently got diverted into this somewhat odd secretive defense program called Secure Enclave, where Intel is the exclusive provider of chips to just do this thing that we don't know what they're doing. But that money was originally from the Chips Act. So it's basically all Chips Act money. So I think that was it. I also say this is entirely speculative, but I think it's probably not a coincidence that Trump went from saying the CEO was going to be fired, should be fired to, you know, 10 days later, the CEO being like, oh, you know, we're going to work together and the like.

1:19:15And so I think it's it would not be surprising that there was a connection between those things. And let me just say one other thing which is connected to what you said. The the video kind of embodies this thing that we've seen over the last few months, which is CEOs basically kowtowing to Trump. You know, we saw Tim Cook do it. We've seen host other CEOs do it as well. There is something about it that just feels just like creepy. And it really does feel like, you know, this is the kind of extreme version of it where it's not just that the CEO is sort of paying obeisance to Trump. It's that he's actually giving Trump 10 percent of the company in order to kind of keep things copacetic between them.

1:19:58Right. That it's sort of a well, that that's what I'm getting at here, too, which is, OK, fine. Sure, of course they want the money. But this is about more than that. This is about seeing value in a good relationship with Trump for a bunch of future business reasons that that may that they may know about or may may anticipate. This is also not rooted in law at all. Like there's no right. Like there's no the Chips Act did not make any claims about the investment for equity. Congress has not passed any kind of law for how we hold stocks. We don't have a sovereign wealth fund, though. Trump claims to.

1:20:34He wanted to create one. Lutnik is out there saying this is a down payment on a sovereign wealth fund. Now, I've seen some people try to defend this and say, you're just a bunch of liberal idiots because you're going to turn down. You like the old way where we just gave companies money. We've been doing Tesla. We've been doing all kinds of things to help our industries. Why doesn't Uncle Sam get its beak wet? Why can't we get a taste of it? Can you just talk about like, like, what is your reaction to that argument? Like, like, like, why are you so offended by this is just a good deal for America?

1:21:08There are a couple aspects of it. I mean, I think it's true. I assume there are people on the left in particular who are perfectly happy to see, you know, this company kind of a big company called on the carpet by the government and having to hand over money. From my perspective, I think there are a bunch of problems with it. The first is just the obvious problem of having the government be a major player in any business, right? Which is that it means that the government is invested in that business's well-being, which then means that the government may look out for that company. It may cut its extra deals.

1:21:40It may make it easier for that company to find customers. It may do business with that company in a way that it would otherwise wouldn't do because it doesn't want the value of its stake to drop. Alternatively, it's also the case that the company now has to think about the government. Right. Because in theory, as you said, I have no idea. We have no idea how this thing is going to be structured or what rules are going to govern it. But in principle, it seems like, you know, Howard Lutton could decide tomorrow he's just going to sell the stake. Right. Which would crater Intel stock price. So Intel is going to have to like worry about, well, how do I make the government happy?

1:22:15If I'm, you know, building a new chip fabricating plant, do I have to put it in a place that the president will make the president happy or will make the next president happy or whatever it is? So those things, I think, are all really problematic. And then I think what follows from that is that other companies, Intel's competitors, are going to have to start thinking like, oh, do I have to make a deal with the president now so that I don't get screwed over on tariffs or, you know, the government doesn't come down on us in some way or another? you know, they're basically competing to one degree or another against the government now.

1:22:48And and so in that sense, I think this kind of thing feeds on itself and creates a sort of model where companies are just having to constantly pay too much attention to what the government is doing. There's one other aspect of this that I think people maybe don't really haven't really followed. And that is that taking equity actually defeats the purpose of the subsidy. Like the point of the subsidy was that we wanted to incentivize chip production in the United States because we thought for economic and national security reasons, it was important for companies to invest here in the United States.

1:23:23Well, the point of the subsidy is like, we're going to reap all these benefits, social and economic benefits. So we're going to in effect subsidize, help subsidize the production. But if I'm exchanging, if I'm demanding the total value of that, and actually a little bit more than that in equity, there is no subsidy. And so now companies, if we, you know, have another subsidy program, companies are going to have to say to themselves, I don't know, do I want to do this? Because if I do it, what's going to happen? Is someone going to come to me a year from now and demand 10 % of my company in exchange?

1:23:52And so I think it makes even that kind of policy less effective than it would otherwise be. It gets at how the way Trump does business is actually not beside the point, right? Like there are many objections to sovereign wealth funds, right? Like Norway, I believe has one. And as a point, it doesn't, I'm not sure if it's how ironclad this rule is, but it invests outside of Norway, right? It invests outside of the country to avoid the influence of politics domestically. Even if the United States created a sovereign wealth fund, which would be quite silly given that we have a massive fucking debt, right?

1:24:27We don't have, we're not, we don't have a surplus of oil wealth. But even if we did, there would be all kinds of questions about the benefit to taxpayers, the way it distorts the market, the influence of politics. All of those would be questions. This is being done lawlessly, which means companies have no idea when Donald Trump will come knocking, which is I think like you describe it as creepy. It's un-American to have CEOs showing up at the White House with baubles and and and and like pledging their fealty and using his slogan. But it speaks to me about how dangerous this is. And I'm wondering if you're surprised at all by how, first of all, how obedient these titans of industry have been and why there isn't any more of a kind of collective response from corporate America about how obviously stupid this will be in the long run for them to go along with it.

1:25:24I think it I think the reason I think the fact that there has been no collective corporate response speaks to some degree to the fact that there is no easy mechanism for corporations to kind of work together. I mean, I guess, you know, there are organizations like the Business Roundtable, whatever. But I think that each company is essentially trying to look out for itself. And in doing so, the idea of a collective response just becomes kind of hard to pull off. But I think the bigger problem here is the one you kind of pointed to, which is this is the way Trump is basically running the economy, right?

1:25:59He's running it as essentially a tool of his own personal interests, right? Not personal, like necessarily enriching himself, but it's just he's like, he loves tariffs. So he's imposing all these tariffs. Companies are essentially going along with it until they, I'm sure they're hoping the Supreme Court will overturn them. But if the Supreme Court doesn't do that, then they'll just have to find ways to work around it. And I think it is, un-American is, I think, actually the right word. I mean, you know, the American economy was real. Look, the government plays a role, big role in the economy. But I think the American economy was really built on the principle that you don't want government picking winners and losers.

1:26:37and certainly don't want it picking winners and losers in this dramatic a fashion. And so I think the fact that, you know, companies are going along with it is I think a lot of them just don't know what to do at this point and are trying to figure out how can I kind of manage this problem without actually kind of wrecking my business. And that's, I think, where they are at the moment. So as certainly members of the administration have now been out there saying this is going to be the first of many deals. The TikTok, which is continuing to function completely outside of the law, ties into this because Trump talked about the U.S.

1:27:16taking a stake in TikTok. Can you just talk about what happens next? And then a little bit also like about Republicans who I'm old enough to remember when Republicans thought seizing the means of production was a problem. Yeah, I mean, And I think the overarching problem here is really this question you've kind of mentioned a few times, which is lawlessness. Right. I mean, Trump is doing all of this stuff effectively without any statutory and certainly without any constitutional justification. I mean, there's just nothing that really authorizes him to do to do what he's doing. And that applies, I would argue, not just to, you know, taking this 10 percent stake in Intel, but it also applies to his entire tariff policy.

1:28:04Right. All of which is effectively conjured to a large extent, I think, out of out of thin air. And I think the real player here who has been totally silent is Congress. So you have plenty of Republican, let's say not Republicans, but sort of libertarians who have been, you know, invading against the tariffs and certainly are invading against this. The Cato Institute has been excellent on these issues all the way through. But Republicans in Congress are just happily going along with this, both or quietly going along with it, at least, both on the tariff front and on this. And I think until they stand up, and I don't imagine them standing up, it's really hard to imagine anyone other than the Supreme Court stopping Trump and Lutnik from doing this.

1:28:50You know, I mean, Lutnik is just – this is just the way – Lutnik, I think, is just completely – they're just indifferent to the idea of like – yeah, they're just indifferent to it. It's like you can't do this. Like why? Why can't we do it? We're just going to do it. It's a great idea. And you're like, but you don't have any you have no legal justification or tools for doing this. It doesn't matter. It's the it's so like the amount of sway lawyers have in Democratic and previous Republican administrations, I think, would shock. It would shock you if you compared it to what's happening here. Is there like do Intel shareholders have any claim here?

1:29:28Because they were entitled. The Congress passed the money. The money was in until was Intel was going to get the money and Trump interferes and then demands shares at a discount. And they have to have some claim to something here. Right. Yeah. I mean, I assume Intel shareholders, some Intel shareholders will sue because, you know, effectively their stake was diluted by 10 percent. I mean, Intel, again, is trying to claim that, no, no, no, the money, you know, was was was injected into the company. And it's like, no, come on, you were supposed to get this money. It was all set. Because Intel still has lawyers.

1:30:02Because there's still lawyers with some sway over there at the chip place. Yeah. And so I assume Intel shareholders will sue. I think the problem is that it may well run into the business rule, business judgment rule, where the board will say, we really thought this was in the best interest of the company. And so therefore, you have to go with us and trust what we did. Now, I find that I'm very skeptical of that, but there's a lot of deference to boards of directors in corporate law. But how can you claim it is in the interest of Intel to do this without basically saying it's a bribe because we did it because we think giving Trump this month, this is this stock will produce ancillary benefits outside of this deal.

1:30:47Because as you point out, the stock is worth more than the eight billion or nine billion that's going to come via the Chips Act. So they have to come out there and say, giving Trump equity will produce a benefit. I like there's no I don't understand or, you know, I'm not I'm not as good as their lawyers. But but that to me is the first assumption. No, I mean, I think that's true, because even if I'm sure, you know, Intel will try to argue or will argue that the Chips Act grants. Well, in theory, there was, you know, the Commerce Department could have turned them down or rejected us, blah, blah, blah, blah.

1:31:20But even if you accept all that, as you said, or I guess, as I said, there's a gap between the value of the equity that Intel gave up and the total amount of money that they were going to get from the government. And that is basically just a gift. I mean, it's just a gift. That's all it is. And so trying to explain to courts why they gave that gift. Yeah, I'm sure it will. They will have to construct some argument about, you know, the future value of the relation. It'll be really interesting to see if this goes to court, if they actually try to make an argument along those lines, because it does feel like that's basically what happened here.

1:31:57I mean, obviously, the CEO can't say I didn't want to get fired, so they will have to come up with some other explanation for it. But that raises all his personal interest is different than that of the shareholders. He has an obligation to shareholders that's called into question by this, too. Totally. I don't know. Anyway, tough year for the wisdom of crowds, James. Well, tough year for at least the part of the crowd that voted for Trump. Yes, tough, tough, tough. James wrote a book called The Wisdoms of Crowds. It was a hit. James, any final thoughts on this? Do you think we should get a stake in TikTok as Americans?

1:32:31Are you enjoying the experience of being an Intel shareholder? No, I'm not an Intel shareholder. But I, the one thing I would say is - Well, yes, you are. Presumably you're a taxpayer. I guess I am now. I will be soon. But what I will say about that, actually, let me say one thing about that, which is part and parcel of this whole thing. To me, one of the most frustrating things about this beyond the lawlessness and the indifference to any kind of sense of the rule of law is simply the fact that they tell us nothing. So like a good example of it, this is one version of it, we don't know how it's going to be structured.

1:33:04We don't know whether there'll be any rules on what we can do with this, what Lutnick can do with the stake. But go back to Lutnick's story about the$600 billion or whatever it was that Japan and South Korea were supposed to put in, are going to put into the United States as part of these trade deals. We have seen nothing. There's literally no paperwork. We have no idea what it is. Lutnick said that the president was going to be able to invest that money at his discretion. Again, totally unconstitutional, no statutory justification for it. But set all that aside, we don't know what it looks like.

1:33:37It's just something that these guys are telling us. And we're supposed to just go along and be like, okay, I guess that's the way things are. I mean, it really is extraordinary to me, um, how indifferent to the law they are. And, and, and by the way, that is the experience of trying to understand what's going on in some of these arrangements that also had to do with that soft bank announcement, all these different announcements. You, you, you come into it and you say, have I just missed the brief? Did I miss the memo? Have I missed the documentation or is they're really just nothing. Yeah. And it feels like there's nothing.

1:34:08I mean, you know, I mean, Lutnick was on TV the other day and he said he was talking about, I think I can't remember what agreements he was like, well, it's not like you're going to get a 250 page trade agreement or anything. I was like, why not? Why not going to see what it looks like? Well, and again, like we, and, and given that they are doing this outside of Congress, presumably they would have some sort of sense of propriety to say, yes, because this is outside of Congress, we're going to actually create a process to help you understand what's going on because there is no law about what happens when treasury seizes stock from Intel.

1:34:40Where does it go? Where do we hold? Where is it going to go? And are we opening a Vanguard? Yeah. Who's managing it? Like, I mean, literally can Howard Lutnick wake up, you know, a month from now and be like, you know what, this is terrible. I'm just going to sell it. I mean, could he do that? I have no idea. And it is quite extraordinary that they, they just don't care. I mean, you know, it's the, that sort of recurring motto about, about Trump is like, nobody cares. And it just feels like, I don't know. Everyone's like, all right, I guess that's just how it is. Everybody except us, but - We care and other people listening care.

1:35:08Yeah. And that's a good, that's where we'll have to start. We have to start. James Sirwicki, thank you so much for your time. Good talking to you. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.

1:35:22Jon Favreau:That's our show for today. Dan and I will be back with a new show on Friday. Talk to everybody then. You guys are gonna burn the flag, right? Mm-hmm. Do you guys see that the White House tweeted a Kilmar Abrego Garcia photo that is the Shepard Fairey with MS-13 with the Obama logo on it? I saw they had done that way back when it was a first story. But yeah, they're... Why'd they leave the logo on? I don't know. They're pretty sick. To send a message. To us. Yeah. Anyhow. Message received. Thank you. If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad-free and get access to exclusive podcasts, go to crooked.com slash friends to subscribe on Supercast, Substack, YouTube, or Apple Podcasts.

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