1104: Empire State of Mind

23:50But there's this moment when he's like hopped up on the adrenaline of the fun of the action. He's like, oh man, this is going great. And the action slows down and he has to puke outside the car window. That's what that reminds me of. They're high. They're high right now. Lindsey Graham was bouncing. You could see him. This is shock and awe. This is the immediate aftermath. The U.S. military is able to do what it is ordered to do, and they are high on that. And let's see what happens next. And so people know, because obviously Trump has had quite a few gaggles on Air Force One where he just, you know, shoots his mouth off and says something kind of crazy that then the rest of the White House and his advisors try to clean up.

24:26Like, you know, the the Trump team account tweeted out a picture of Trump astride the Western Hemisphere. Taking a shit on it. Yes. Stepping over with one foot and basically Greenland and the other in South America and over it and caught to saying the Don Road Doctrine. And then I think just on Monday, the State Department has just a picture of him that says like, this is our hemisphere. So I think there's something happening, by the way, where the social media people in each of these departments are the kind of like biggest Trump freaks. and they spin the whole media and left up. That's what happens when they're posting out of DHS.

25:02That's what the State Department posts, the White House posts. And like - These are the people who excitedly read the I Love Hitler group chat story in Politico. Yeah, the one that wasn't released that they're in. But no, like I think like they are there to spin everybody up and they just don't see a cost to acting like this and getting everybody worried because they think they can do their little reassurances to the serious people in the kind of deep within the article, the Susie Wiles style articles where they can get into the deep of actually it's a smart people really running things carefully yeah and in case you're not like a meme person but you like sort of the rhetorical flourish of a uh a c-plus santa monica fascist steven miller who apparently is going to um have a big role in governing venezuela perhaps viceroy steven miller he's finally he's finally got that class presidency he's been gunning for for half a century he uh he took to twitter uh in an attempt to expand on the thinking behind the Don Road Doctrine, where he argued that the era of empires and colonialism, quote, built the modern world, and then when it ended after World War II, the West engaged in, quote, self-punishment by sending aid to its former territories and opening its borders to immigrants, thereby betraying our, quote, native citizenry.

26:13So do we have to make the argument now that colonialism was actually bad? You know, Stephen, you know who didn't love colonialism? The founding fathers. Oh, okay. Boom. I might point you towards a document once stolen by Nicolas Cage called the Declaration of Independence that was specifically against it. I mean, the biggest fact check for Steve there is he says, he says, suggests that empires and colonies were dissolved out of the goodness of their hearts. I think there was some armed conflict in there that Stephen seems to be forgetting. And it is shocking that we do have to argue that colonization was bad, but it seems like we do.

26:51The most prosperity this country has ever seen came immediately after World War II and the decades after when we welcomed immigrants into this country and had sort of like built the greatest economy and the biggest middle class the world had ever known. That's just some interesting history as well. Notable. It's not like everybody was walking around 1945 and saying like, things are great. We got to keep this going. Like, you know, we'd just been on the other side of the greatest conflict in the history of human civilization. And then what follows. Which, who knows, maybe not the right side anymore, according to the history books Donald Trump wants to write.

27:29Whatever reason this reminded me of, it was, you know, those people were critical of Grant because they're like, he's an alcoholic. Your general there is an alcoholic. and Lincoln, you know, apocryphally says, well, whatever he's drinking, send it to my other generals. It's like, okay, you have a problem with the way in which we welcomed immigrants from 1945 to 2025. The greatest period of economic transformation in the history of planet Earth, not just for the United States, but for vast numbers of people all around the world. And by the way, not just for the richest people, if you look at the bottom 80%, talking about an incredible improvement of quality of life.

28:04Neoliberal, neoliberal. That has never before been watched. Lefties clip this and get them. You're right. You're right. Like air conditioning, decline in maternal mortality and infant mortality, wealth, cars. NAFTA. Sure. I'm just speaking. For no regular partners, we agree with you. Yes, I know. We agree with you. And so, like, what are you talking about? It's such a pathological point of view. And it points to something so deeply broken about him in this worldview, which is you care so much more about preventing people you don't like from having anything that you'd be willing to hurt the people you claim you're advocating for, which are Americans.

28:44Because we built this system and benefited from it tremendously. Problems, flaws, of course. But the idea that you're going to tear it all down and that's for us and not just to hurt people that you don't like for reasons that have to do with the color of their skin or where they come from or who was mean to you in high school. Like it's just it's all so perverse and obvious. It is just frightening that you would have to actually argue with Stephen Miller that taking away someone's self-determination through colonization is bad. Like treating someone as just a – treating a race or a country as inferior is bad.

29:16Extracting their resources is bad. I don't know that he would agree with me when I said those things. And like the rest of the world is taking this very seriously. Like the UN Security Council met Monday about the United States. We were condemned by a bunch of our allies at that meeting. Leaders across Latin America, the Brazilians, the Colombians, Mexicans, especially leftist leaders, they're holding emergency meetings about how to deal with the threat from the United States. The prime minister of Denmark has said she thinks the Greenland threat is a serious one. Like that conversation was kind of tinged with like, oh, he's just, you know, Don being Don, he's trolling, whatever.

29:50Like you said, like the social media idiots were just like having fun with it. No, I don't think so. I think everyone in Panama is probably thinking, oh, that all that Panama Canal talk. That was pretty serious. Like we are still in the midst of a diplomatic and economic rupture with Canada because Trump kept threatening to annex their country. And like everything what he just did in Venezuela is terrifying people around the planet. But it's also, I think I remember, I can't remember if it was the 2016 or 2020 campaign or whatever it was, but there was like, oh, Trump's trying to take us back to the 1950s.

30:23Remember that was the thing, you know, Hillary said it or Biden said it, I can't remember. But this is way beyond, this is way before that. This is even before the 1900s, 1800s. I mean, this is like the strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must. That is the Trump-Miller worldview. And it's also ceding some power and influence to China and Russia. In this, like, China gets to control Asia. That's the question. That's the question. Does Russia control Europe? And then we get the Western Hemisphere. But it's like, so it is not a world anymore of it's not a rules based international order anymore.

31:02There is no international law. It's just the strongest company, the strongest countries with the most nukes get to divide up the world. And hopefully then once the world is divvied up, Trump and Xi and Putin, you know, can get along pretty well. Yeah. You're saying that this is our hemisphere and that's your hemisphere is actually a much weaker position for the United States. Yeah, you know, Vance says this in one of his various defenses about how, like, I don't think living in a palace in Caracas should protect you from the law. I don't think that lends you any special legitimacy. I actually think there's some truth to that, right?

31:33Like, no, like claiming you own a country, that you run a country, even though you stole the election. Like, I actually don't believe that makes you legitimate. I believe in democracy. I believe in those things. But the question is what to do about that. The question is what to do about that. Justify killing 80 Venezuelans and 30 Cubans on the ground. Well, the reason you say that, you say, well, what does lend legitimacy? And it's a legal order, a rules-based order that we defend that has certain values and precepts in which people, which individuals with the most power don't get to decide what happens.

32:01Letting the opposition that was the rightful winners of the election take power, that would be one. Or even suggesting that you're doing it on their behalf, which of course they don't. And the reason that's important is not just because it's right and just and all the rest. And I actually find people saying like, oh, this is going to be permission for China to go into Iran or Russia to do more in Ukraine. they've already taken that permission because they don't believe in these rules. Well, I think it's different. I think for the Russians, they have gotten every signal they ever could have wanted that Ukraine can be theirs.

32:26At least 20 % of it may be more. The China piece is an open question, I think. I think Trump would trade away Taiwan for an economic deal. We don't know that yet. It gets a little more complicated when we're talking about the Senkaku Islands, like some disputed territory between them and Japan, a treaty ally of ours. What happens then? But the point I'm making is only, yes, I agree with that. My point is only that these are other places that do believe in a power-based system. And perhaps the only reason they're not going into Taiwan is because they're worried about the consequences. But the deal we made and what made our system attractive, and by the way, one argument that the Soviets made and that our enemies made in the Cold War was that our ideology was inherently expansionary because freedom is expansionary and democracy is expansionary because we believe it is something fundamental people deserve.

33:10And the deal we offer, right, is you get to become part of this order. And not only will you be protected by our power, you'll be protected by these rules. These rules will be good for you because you will be safe inside of them. And when we attack that, we attack the thing that allowed us to become not only like this hegemon, but also incredibly wealthy because we built a system in which you didn't need as many walls, which meant you could have trade and you could have bridges and all the rest that came along with the success of America of half a century unprecedented in human history. And I think that the aging of that system and the failures of that system has now left people who are in favor of that system making a lot of arguments about like, but the rules, but the international order, but the institutions, right?

33:52And this is the need for a renewal of that argument because the arguments that start crazy on their side become like their main open public arguments. Like in the 2028 primary on the Republican side, if there is one, like they're going to be making the case that like what's so bad about a world where Russia and China and the United States split up the world and the strong countries make sure that the weak countries don't cause any trouble and everyone lives in peace. What's so bad about that? And like, we're going to have to have an argument. Yeah. The other part of this, I was thinking about, I don't know, Tom, if you remember this, but like for whatever reason, it came to mind because maybe it was in Los Angeles.

34:30But I remember there was the summit of the Americas in 2022 and Biden decided not to invite Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba. And then there was this revolt by Mexico and a few other countries. And those leaders refused to come in this summit that was supposed to be about American leadership in the region became a story about conflict and American weakness and Biden's fecklessness. And in the story, Kamala is on the phone begging the head of Guatemala to come to the United States. And it was just pathetic. It was just pathetic. And I like I look at all this and I say, all right, I am against regime change wars.

35:02I am against this kind of like empire. But what is the Democrat? What is this? What is like the policy that Democrats offer? Like, what do we say about what it means for us to lead? And not just Democrats as in the Democratic Party, but like pro-democracy forces, liberal democracies all over the country. Because, I mean, you mentioned the U.N. too. And my mind went to like, oh, is the U.N. going to write some strongly worded letters? Because we have like the U.N. has become toothless at this point. Well, I mean, yeah. Were they going to censor us at the Security Council? We're going to veto it.

35:29Right. It's like just silly. It's a bunch of people saying illegal. Yeah. No, but it's bad. I mean, we like, you know, every once in a while you look in the mirror and like, am I the baddie? And like we're pretty firmly there. And like before people well actually me like the Obama administration made a bunch of mistakes. And like, I'm talking about this from the experience of watching the Libya operation and thinking it was launched with good intentions to prevent Gaddafi's forces from massacring everyone in eastern Libya. And then watching over the years as how it is unraveled. It has led to a horrible security situation for people in Libya, but also destabilized all of northern Africa and parts of the Middle East.

36:04I mean, like these are these things. Once the toothpaste is out of the tube, you have no idea what is going to happen. And I think all the triumphalism on day one of regime change operation is so short sighted and stupid. And it feels like Iraq all over again. The oil was going to pay for itself. Kind of bullshit arguments are just like everywhere. And it's hard to watch this happen. And all of that is true. And I completely agree with you. I think there is a difference, too, which is a lot of times the debates over the use of force and whether to get involved are like tough calls. I think Libya was a difficult call.

36:36And I think you're right. It turned out like a fucking disaster. But, you know, Gaddafi was like in the process of massacring his people. And, you know, so it was like, do we stop it? Is that going to get worse if we stop it? Or is it going to be worse if we don't do anything? Right. And you can go through all the different interventions like that. And some should have been easier calls than others, for sure. But this one is like, oh, no, no, no, no. We just want the oil. There's no national security. We just want the oil. The rationale changes every other day. Sometimes it's fentanyl. Sometimes it's drugs.

37:01Sometimes it's Hezbollah. Or now, yeah, or now, which I hear Steve Bannon was like, I don't fucking know what Rubio was talking about with Hezbollah. He's off message there. We got to make it about the... Bannon's full of shit on this, by the way. He was opposed to this, and now he's like, oh, it was masterful. Okay, Steve. But it is the oil thing, and now it's the we want to control the Western Hemisphere. Now they're just going for broke on this. Yeah, and that's the Don Road Doctrine. I mean, that was in the National Security Strategy, so we all, like, in some sense should have seen this coming.

37:26I am like, well, I know we're going to talk about the politics for Trump. I think, you know, I know you want to talk about the polling there, too. Let's do that. It's, you know, it's obviously, like, too early to know how all the politics are going to shake out, but early clues in some polls. We love polls. A Reuters poll out Monday found only 33 % support for the operation and 72 % worried that the U.S. will become, quote, too involved in Venezuela. The Washington Post conducted a poll by text message of a thousand Americans that was about evenly split on the question of the U.S. sending the military to capture Maduro with 42 % opposed and 40 % supportive, though more lopsided on the question of whether Trump should have gotten authorization from Congress.

38:0463 % said he should have. And Trump's plan to take control of Venezuela and choose a new government, which only 24 % support. To me, that's like the key number. You also have your Marjorie Taylor Greene's and Candace Owens's and Thomas Massey's out there criticizing this, which is driving a new round of, you know, is the MAGA base dividing over this. What do you guys make of the politics on this issue for Trump and for other Republicans, and you can take it separately if you want. Is this something that further divides MAGA or brings Republicans together? So I'm very worried about the political lesson that Trump is going to take away from this operation and from the Iran strikes, no matter what the polling eventually says, because so far there has been no cost to him politically, right?

38:49From like relatively limited military actions, at least in terms of timeframe, like no U.S. service members were killed. Congress hasn't done shit about it. Most voters probably don't know this is happening, right? Like most people just as crazy it is to people listen to this show or just checked out. And so meanwhile, Trump himself is surrounded by hardline anti-Maduro, anti-Cuba forces every time he's in Mar-a-Lago. Bibi Netanyahu visits him like every other day, wherever he is. And I fear that Trump is going to take these military actions, love the wall-to-wall press coverage, love being told how bold and daring he was and historic this action was, and then decide that, you know what?

39:30I actually love intervention. I love like helping the Delta Force guys solve our problems. And that could mean, like he said earlier, like toppling or doing something else to topple the Cuban government, maybe does something to fuck around in Colombia. He's already threatening airstrikes in Iran if the Iranian regime cracks down on protesters. We've talked about Greenland. He did airstrikes in Nigeria over the break, Did airstrikes Nigeria over the break, like for no reason. And so, you know, look, if these military actions are limited to like one night of airstrikes and he walks away, I honestly, I don't think there will be a MAGA revolt.

40:03I think they'll mostly be fine with it, even though he's basically adopted the Lindsey Graham foreign policy after years of calling him like a bloodthirsty, lunatic, neocon warmonger. But if this turns into this prolonged occupation of Venezuela, I think that will be a massive political problem. And that's already showing up in the polling. 70 % of people are like, what do you mean run Venezuela? We don't want that. You're right though. He's very, um, because he's a TV president. I mean, he's, he said, he's like, oh, I was watching the whole operation on TV. He does think he's playing video games that, and so these interventions, cause everyone's like, oh, the hypocrisy of, you know, he, he said he was going to be a peace president, but he's doing all this war.

40:40Well, in his mind, probably what he doesn't like is quagmires, right? Where we're spending a lot of money and, uh, we lose a whole bunch of American lives. Or lose, period. Or lose, period. That's where Americans land on wars. We don't like losing. We don't like looking humiliated. And Donald Trump, the TV president, who just watched politics on TV, that is where he is. And so he thinks to himself, now that he's got all his toys because he's in the White House, well, I can bomb this one and that one and fire this and, you know, airstrike here and I look strong and it gets me some good headlines.

41:10Yeah. And then that's it. I mean, I don't know. When people say, oh, is he going to send in American troops to Venezuela, like, I can't see him. Who knows? Who knows what will happen? I hope this doesn't happen. But like, I can't see him sending in a huge ground force in Venezuela. If things go bad there, I can see him just being like, eh, let it. Why is he leaving? I mean, he's leaving. Who cares? Let them deal with it. He's leaving the current regime in place, in part because he doesn't want to put troops on the ground. I think he draws a hard line between, I think, military interventions that include troops are very different to him than just bombing or raids like this.

41:40I think he views the raids. This is exciting and daring. and luckily nobody was killed on the American side. So it looks like a perfect success to him. And air raid, you know, Soleimani, the most recent strikes in Iran, like he'll keep doing that. Yeah, I think the question is what happens if this doesn't go as planned and all of a sudden there's chaos in the streets and the only way you can get what you claimed you were getting is with troops. What happens there? And I agree with you. I think he is extremely reluctant to deploy American troops. That is the big question. Like what happens if Delce Rodriguez, the acting president says, fuck you and doesn't let Exxon get access to the oil field Donald Trump wants.

42:14He said like the stakes for her could be even worse than Maduro. Was he threatening to kill her? Because that's sure what it sounded like to me. What if there's some rogue general in the Venezuelan military who stages a coup, you know, like Polta Chavez? Are we going to re-intervene then to disrupt that? What if like the FARC or the ELN or one of these groups like just does a bunch of things to make political instability? So there's just, you know, it's chaos down there. There's more migration. Like things get worse. There's just so many ways they could break badly. If I'm Trump and that happens, I send in another round of airstrikes and then say, let them deal with it.

42:45Screw it. And then the migration problem that you're talking about is real. But it happens, you know, then he closes the borders and he gets tough on migrants. Right. I even like God forbid that there is some kind of a terrorist attack either here or broad against Americans and American interests. Even then he's going to be like, well, that's not my fault. That's the fault of this. These foreigners. That's why we got to bomb them more. Right. I mean, this is what happens. But like most of it, like something like 8 million Venezuelans have left the country. I mean, Hugo Chavez and Maduro ran the country into the ground.

43:16I think their GDP was cut by like 75%. People were impoverished. It went from the richest country to impoverished. Most of the people who left Venezuela, though, went to Colombia or Ecuador or Panama or Brazil or other countries in the region. Like if more people flow out of Venezuela, it's going to further destabilize the entire all of South America and reverberate in ways that we just can't see right now. In the same way, like we didn't see in the early days of the Syrian civil war, the way it would lead to like the rise of right wing neo-Nazi parties in Germany, you know, a decade later. So, yeah, that happens.

43:49And suddenly the Don Roe doctrine ends at the southern border. Not so good. What are you talking about? I meant the quadrant. So Democrats, unsurprisingly, have been roundly critical of this. But obviously, because it's the Democratic Party, there's some drama. Axios had a story about some Democrats having misgivings about this whole thing. They quoted three centrist and or vulnerable House members, anonymously, of course. Emotionally vulnerable, yeah. Yeah, emotionally vulnerable, and they courageously went on background here. One of them said to Axios, quote, I think it looks weak. If you don't acknowledge when there is a win for our country, then you lose all credibility.

44:27Another said, quote, as Democrats, we can't just condemn what happened. And then another one, the third one said Maduro was bad. Glad he is gone. You can't have it both ways. Anyone want to respond to the to the centrist House Democrats? Not really. I mean, I just think like there's no doubt that Maduro is a bad guy. He's corrupt. He stole elections. He locked up the opposition. Right. There's no doubt the U.S. military is the most dominant fighting force in the world. They will win every battle we put them up against. But what I'd say to this House Democrat is like, you have no idea if this was a win for our country.

45:02No one does. We can't tell the future. It felt like a win when Saddam Hussein was found in a spider hole. How'd that turn out? It felt like a win when Gaddafi was toppled. How did that turn out? Again, Trump has said, we want to run the country of Venezuela going forward. To take their oil and left the regime in place of the guy he just replaced. If you can't look at that and say what Seth Moulton said, which was, this is insane. Bolton was great. He said, this is insane. What the hell are we doing? Yes. That to me, that should be everyone's. Ruben Gallego was out there. He was excellent. Cory Booker had a good statement.

45:35What did you guys think of the other Democrats who were out there from the statements you've seen? I thought the Cory Booker statement, I think, stood out, if only because it put it in the broader context of what got us to this moment, which is a completely slovenly and pathetic Republican Congress that has not been willing to assert its constitutional authority in any way at any time, right? Donald Trump couldn't even do the courtesy of the briefing, the leaders of the Intelligence Committee and the leaders of Congress, the way you would about a covert operation. They're claiming because those people would leak.

46:08Meanwhile, he's telling us he told the oil companies at events, or at least they may have known it was coming. Although I think that's probably him just, who knows what he fucking means. But regardless, like the reason we're in a situation where Donald Trump feels so emboldened is because he knows that he will face no accountability from Republicans in Congress. And so I do think when people go out there and say like, this was illegal, this was illegal, it sounds pretty feckless and silly because to who? And to what end? And so what? And at least pointing out like there is a world in which we have a Congress that's willing to hold an administration accountable is a world in which doing illegal things could have consequences.

46:46Unilaterally launching a regime change war is a bad idea. We know this from a lot of pretty recent history And I don't think we should be scared to make that case. I also think the key on these statements is to make it bigger. Like Seth Moulton was great. Like, this is insane. Mark Warner made strong points about China and Russia. He talked about the hypocrisy of pardoning Juan Orlando Hernandez, the actual narco kingpin from Honduras that Trump just gave a pardon to. Tim Kaine was good. Thomas Mastey was strong. But like, again, go big. Like, this is not about whether Maduro was a good guy or a bad guy.

47:17There are a lot of bad leaders in the world. We are not going to depose them all. I thought we'd agreed that we don't want to be America's policeman. And then you start to wonder, OK, how are we picking and choosing? Why aren't you deposing Kim Jong Un? Well, it's because of Trump getting love letters from him, but also because he has nukes. Right. So if we want every country that is scared of us to suddenly race to get a nuclear weapon, like this is a great way to do it. Yeah. And by the way, also just pardoning the Honduran leader who was a drug trafficker. Like just the lack of any standard, any kind of ideology behind any of this.

47:50It's just it's all so capricious and dangerous. I totally understand focusing, if you're a Democrat in Congress, focusing your ire on Trump not going to Congress. You are in Congress. It's your job. It's your prerogative. I think that is important. I do think that when something like this happens, the focus, the focus of the statement at the beginning is just, what do you think of this? Exactly. Because I did see a lot of like, you know, throat clearing about the congressional authorization. But then you can tell they're too scared to say that this was just a bad fucking idea. And it's like, you know what?

48:23Donald Trump's never going to Congress. It's not happening. And we don't control Congress. Democrats don't control Congress anyway. And Republicans are shameless. So the most important thing you can do right now is to help shape the public debate by telling people exactly why this is such a fucking horrible idea. You know, that to me is like number one. Yeah. But this is where I do like, I know it sounds like I was like, actually, before we even recorded, I was like, am I just, is this a bias that I have to just think about the ways in which Joe Biden failed? But I do think that one of the reasons you see Democrats kind of unmoored a little bit, I do think for the most part, people have been critical, and this is a few random people speaking on background, but I do think there is a kind of, well, when they say it's weak, what they're really getting at is, well, Maduro was bad, and it would be a better world if Maduro wasn't in power and that election had been allowed to carry through to the rightful winner.

49:09What did Democrats do to make that happen? There was Democratic backsliding in South America while Joe Biden was president while claiming all these values, claiming to speak for all of these values. So what is a full throated, like moral, righteous policy that Democrats would embrace that doesn't seem kind of feckless and weak in the face of authoritarian rule of China's expansion, of Russia's expansion? Because I don't know the answer. I'm not an expert, but that does seem missing. Yeah, I think the challenge is, you know, military action, things getting blown up. It looks strong. It looks decisive.

49:42And Democrats have all these scars from the Iraq War in 2003. And, you know, thinking that like the military actions automatically coded as strong and diplomacy is weak. But I just think voters are actually smarter than that. And like, it's like, you know where they should have scars for all the ones who cast the vote in favor of Bush's war, which is a vote that haunted most of them for their political graves. Exactly. And like, you know, to your point about the kind of mealy mouth process focused statements, a lot of Democrats made those kind of statements about the Iraq war. And they're like, well, actually, what I voted for was for him to go back to the U.N.

50:13with firmer footing. And it's like, guys, history is not going to remember you that way. Are you for this? Are you against it? Are you for the Don Rowe doctrine and the next phase of toppling the Cubans and the Colombians and taking Greenland and Panama and whatever else? And I would also say like this to me is an easier one. And I know Dan wrote about this in his message box. This is an easier one than the bombing of the Iran nuclear sites for Democrats, which some Democrats were like, you know, it's good that he did that because that was about like, OK, there are these nuclear sites. We bomb them.

50:42Did we get them all? Do we not? That's the question. But the Trump administration told us after the Maduro raid that it wasn't really about Maduro. It's about the oil. So Iran with a nuke threatens us. People can die if Iran is a nuke. There's no threat to the United States from Maduro. They're trying to call fentanyl a WMD. But yeah, this whole thing is like Maduro is a bad guy. But they're not saying that it's because Maduro was a bad guy. That's not what they're saying because Maduro didn't give them the fucking oil. The regime's still in place. The same group of people. They're down one guy.

51:14I will say, too, I haven't seen a lot of 28 contenders that have put out statements. Pritzker I saw tweeted, Gallego, all the ones in Congress said something because it's Congress. A little quiet out there from the rest of them. Oh, Kamala had a very long statement. Yeah, that's right, Kamala did. And we think of her as a 2028 candidate. We for now, for now we do, yeah. Yeah, the other part of it, I just, what would we have, what would have this, like as you both were going back and forth about how quickly we'll be able to exploit the oil reserves of Venezuela, I was saying, what would this show have been about otherwise, right?

51:41And what would we have been talking about today? And it would have been - Our next topic. But it just like, Like, like he has decided that he wanted us all like he he did. He chose this. He chose the timing of this. We're all now talking about this rather than the failure on to get any kind of Obamacare extension through the failure to attack any of the problems he claimed he was going to attack. And like that doesn't go away. He gets a couple of days of of of tough guy, bomb guy news stories. But like the the the apparently he wanted it. He wanted it to happen on Christmas Day because he likes the dates.

52:10But then there's some some weather stuff and they had to they basically like to the weather sort of in the conditions and the political realities also kind of like it was wet and it was windy and you can't fly helicopters and that kind of weather but what a dickhead there's a lot of service members and government officials who have to work when you invade a country and do it on Christmas just because you're also it was like a real screw situation I guess it's my fucking consolation prize I'll bomb Nigeria instead because I couldn't get the Venezuela thing done on Christmas incredible

52:44Pots of America is brought to you by Article. We love Article here at Crooked Media. We've got a bunch of stuff in the office. We've got chairs, we've got couches, some desks, like all kinds of things. They look great. They were affordable. They showed up really fast. And that's because Article offers a curated range of mid-century modern coastal and Scandi-inspired pieces that not only shine on their own, but also pair seamlessly with nearly any other Article product. This thoughtful design approach makes it easy to mix and match, helping you create a space that feels cohesive and stylish. Article takes great care in curating its collection, focusing solely on high-quality, meaningful pieces that will stand the test of time.

53:19There's no filler. Every item is chosen for its craftsmanship, design, and lasting value. Article offers fast, affordable shipping across the U.S. and Canada with options for professional assembly if you prefer a hands-off experience. Article's customer care team is available seven days a week, offering knowledgeable support and even free interior design services to help you get your home just right. With Articles 30-day satisfaction guarantee, you can shop with confidence knowing that if you're not completely in love with your new furniture, you would easily return it. Articles offering our listeners$50 off your first purchase of$100 or more.

53:48To claim, visit article.com slash crooked and the discount will be automatically applied at checkout. That's article.com slash crooked for$50 off your first purchase of$100 or more. This podcast is sponsored by Squarespace. Squarespace is the all-in-one web platform designed to elevate your online presence and drive your success. Squarespace provides all the tools you need to promote and get paid for your services in one platform. Whether you're offering consultations, events, or other experiences, Squarespace can help you grow your business. Create a professional website to showcase your offerings and attract clients with their complete library of professionally designed and award-winning website templates with options for every use and category.

54:23No matter where you start, your website is flexible to what you need with intuitive drag and drop editing, beautiful styling options, unrivaled visual design effects, on-brand AI content, and more ways to list what you offer. No experience required. Make smarter business decisions with Squarespace intuitive built-in analytics tool. Review website traffic, learn where to focus engagement, and track revenue from bookings, invoices, or product sales all from one place. Squarespace domains make it easy to find the best name for your business at one fair, all-inclusive price, no hidden fees or add-ons required.

54:50Every Squarespace domain comes with advanced privacy and security tools included to ensure your domain remains online and protected. Head to squarespace.com for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, go to squarespace.com slash crooked to save 10 % off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's squarespace.com slash crooked.

55:10Speaking of Democrats, Tim Walz made a surprise announcement on Monday that he will be ending his campaign to seek a third term as governor of Minnesota. walt said that he decided to step aside because of the political attacks he's been facing over a massive social services fraud scandal in his state that's become a maga obsession and spawned all kinds of right-wing conspiracies um we covered the fraud scandal briefly in a previous episode i honestly can't even remember when but we did but basically a non-profit stole tens of millions of dollars in pandemic relief funding from the government by saying the money was going to meals for kids.

55:45It was called Feed Our Future. It was the nonprofit. And some futures were pretty handsomely fed. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Not the correct ones. But yeah. Biden's DOJ investigated. Dozens of people were indicted in 2022. This is an old one. Many were convicted and Walls announced new oversight policies. Then right after Walls announced his reelection bid in September, this September, Trump's DOJ announced investigations into other Minnesota social services programs. And they are currently arguing that as much as 9 billion may have been stolen. And so far, 90 people have been charged altogether, both in the Feed Our Future original case, but then there have been a couple other cases.

56:26All these investigations are kind of blurring together, but they are separate cases. But what made this an even bigger deal in MAGA world is that most of the people who've been charged are Somali Americans. And then the day after Christmas, a right-wing influencer named Nick Shirley released a video that's since gone viral where he made a bunch of unsubstantiated claims about alleged fraud at Somali-run daycare centers in Minnesota that he visited. That led to the Trump administration announcing a freeze in child care funding nationwide while they investigate, as well as just a general freakout on the right among everyone from Donald Trump and Elon Musk to nearly every Republican and conservative influencer.

57:08It was just like the couple of days on Twitter and online and on YouTube before Venezuela were just this is all they were talking about, including by Elon Musk, who has jumped back into posting about politics, calls for all Somali American citizens to be denaturalized and deported, including Ilhan Omar, and for Tim Walz to go to jail and be tried for treason. That was one that that Elon Musk also promoted. Trump continued the attack in response to the Walls News on Monday and accused the governor and Ilhan Omar of, quote, stealing tens of billions of taxpayer dollars, which, of course, isn't true at all.

57:44Now that Walls is out, Amy Klobuchar may jump into the race, where she may have the honor of facing my pillow guy, Mike Lindell, if they both win their respective primaries. Amy Klobuchar holding a hairbrush, tapping against her hand as a bunch of fraudsters come and bring cash back to the governor's mansion, just put it in front. That's awesome. I think that's cool.

58:08That is cool. She'll clean it up. Yeah, she should do that. What do you guys make of the fraud story and the MAGA obsession over it? So there was fraud. It was very serious. The people that committed the fraud should go to jail. Many of them have. Not only that, they've recovered tens of millions of dollars. Well, not all of it. Can't recover all of it, but they've tried to recover a lot of the money. That's what you do. You find people who committed crimes and you prosecute them. You don't punish communities because we don't believe in collective punishment. And if just because somebody that committed a crime is the same ethnicity as you doesn't make you in any way whatsoever responsible.

58:38That was sort of a to be a kind of status quo ante that I came to the table with. But apparently others no longer have it. Also, there was so much pandemic fraud. There was so much. This is one example. This is the top of the list now. Sure. I get maybe. Maybe. The PPP fraud was very huge. That's that's like way up there as well. Tons of other small business administration fraud. Remember, there are all kinds of reports about people taking millions of dollars from the government, really wealthy people taking millions upon millions of dollars from the government. But this is what they care about.

59:13This is what they're focused on. Why? Because it affects a community of immigrants they don't like. And so they are making this the issue. Does that mean that it wasn't a situation in which, given the scale of the theft, it shouldn't have been caught earlier? Or I guess more to the point, once it was seemingly exposed, stopped earlier, like what were the reasons it was allowed to continue? Some of that is legal and judicial, but some of it clearly is administrative. Like these are all really important. You ask them, we don't support fraud. But the idea that now this pain needs to be visited on every daycare in the country or every Somali immigrant, it's just racist.

59:48Yeah, it really is combining the two passions right now of like the, because Elon and like the all in boys were all over this. And it's like their thing is, is, you know, Doge 2.0. They want this to be Doge 2.0, even though when they were running Doge 1.0, they didn't seem to find any of this fraud. Weren't so good at Doge-ing. No, they weren't so good at Doge-ing, but now they're back. And they are saying things now like most of your tax dollars now go to fraud. The government is just one big 30 % of all your tax dollars go to fraud. Now, this is the greatest scandal in the history that if we just cut out the fraud in the government, we would balance the budget and no one under$500 ,000 would have to pay any taxes anymore.

1:00:27This is the shit that they're all pushing. And then you've got Stephen Miller pushing the like, oh, this is a great this is a great way to show that any immigrant in this country, even those who've become citizens are are bad and should be deported. Yeah, I think it's sort of like a three part MAGA obsession. And yes, like the fraud is it's horrendous, right? It's a ton of money, like billions of dollars at all. So it's like you're pretending to feed hungry kids. You're pretending to provide services to kids with autism. Like, fuck these people. Lock them up, throw them away forever. Make sure it can never happen again.

1:00:55The MAGA obsession, I think it's like one, it happened in a blue state, right? So you can blame Democrats and you can blame and you could use it to attack the social safety net and the welfare state generally. Right. And that is part of their project. You attack the value of government in service of slashing taxes for the richest people in the country. That's like Republican 101. Second, because, you know, a bunch of Somali descent, people of Somali descent are have been arrested. That gets right. The Stephen Miller like nativist going. It also gets a racist going. And then third, like social media algorithms are designed to explode stories like this, especially on Twitter.

1:01:28If a right-wing, anti-migrant, anti-liberal video appears on Twitter, Elon Musk is going to find it and retweet it and respond to it and juice the fuck out of its reach. And then I think journalists scroll past that video and they see like 170 million views, a totally made-up number, by the way. I do not believe a single metric that man puts out about view counts on social media or his businesses or whatever. But then they decide like, oh, this has been under-discussed. This has been ignored by the mainstream media. Meanwhile, like Google, three weeks earlier, a month earlier, the New York Times had a bunch of really great reporting about this fraud.

1:02:04Minnesota news outlets have been covering the story. Often they say, why won't the media cover this story I learned about from the media? There's a link, yeah. The other part of it, too. And the Justice Department, which has been on the case since 2022. Exactly. The other part of this, too, is I do think like one of the reasons there should have been more enforcement and checking is because it was a pandemic emergency and they were trying to, A, get money out the door. And B, they were worried about sending, they were worried about people interacting. Like that was part of a lot of the decisions that were being made in the early days of the pandemic to try to kind of help people in the crisis.

1:02:38And part of what we're seeing is just a desire to rewrite the history of COVID, which is all of this was unnecessary. All of it was fake. The social distancing, the protection, the need for people to stay home, which is why people couldn't work. All of it was manufactured, right? Like that is part of this too, the erasing what was happening during COVID. The other thing that feeds into this is, you know, I saw that Tim Walls gave an interview back when this happened in like 2022. And someone in his, I believe it was Department of Education or Health and Human Services, whatever it was there, in the state like flagged the irregularities.

1:03:09And they were like, we're going to have to stop this. And then Feeding Our Future sued them. And then in court and said it's because they were racist that they were trying to do this, which is even more disgusting. Yeah. So that's feeding into. Now, now the right takes that as like Tim Walls fucked up because he like no, no, no. The Walls administration actually tried to stop it earlier. And then there was a corridor. It was like a whole. But this feeds. I do think this feeds into a like what is the kind of deeper critique from the right that they want Americans to absorb, which is Democrats are afraid of being called racist.

1:03:40And they'd rather money go out fraudulently than deal with racism. And by the way, like I don't think that that is a totally unfair allegation in some cases. Right. Like there is absolutely Democrats who are afraid to attack a problem like this because they were afraid of being called racist. Certainly this auditor who reached out to these communities was like, look, if you don't want to see headlines all over the place calling you racist for targeting our nonprofit, then let us go. I do think it's really important for Democrats. You're seeing a lot of like. Whataboutism. Whataboutism. Well, actually, look at Trump, look at the crypto corruption.

1:04:13And that is 100 percent right. And it is totally valid. There's this most corrupt White House we've ever seen. I do think Democrats, we need to take this really seriously first, lean into prosecuting the hell out of the perpetrators, like fix the oversight problems, fix the social safety net challenges. because like, like this is like when healthcare.gov went down, right? Like if you, if you want to sell people on the role of government in your lives, being good and helpful and being worth your tax dollars, like we have to go that extra mile. Whereas Republicans have a much easier task, which is they just attack, attack, attack, and then say, I see government's worthless.

1:04:45Let's drown it in the bathtub, cut your taxes. When Kathleen Sebelius opened up that computer and there was just an exhausted pterodactyl trying to connect the liars. That was such a bummer. Yeah. You don't, you know, as a Democrat, like you don't care about fraud because it's an issue that Republicans are going to attack you with. You care about it because if you want to propose policies like this that change people's lives, like you have to, you have to make sure that people trust you with their tax dollars, right? Like when the better example of that is the Recovery Act. Remember we like made a big show of appointing Joe Biden as the, remember he was like the inspector general.

1:05:16He was going to make sure that none of the money was wasted on the Recovery Act. And, you know, they found like, there's a million, how much money there found Solyndra, right? And that was like the big thing. But we took that seriously because we're like, if this much money is going out the door, you better fucking believe we're going to make sure that it's not wasted and that there's not fraud. And I do think that's an important, like, you know, lessons for Democrats to learn as they're proposing policies. Yeah, the Energy Department loan program that Solyndra was a part of ultimately turned a profit, but whatever you're talking about.

1:05:42I can't. The idea that if you're going to bet on companies that some of them are going to go down, but on the whole, it's going to work. That whole, like, Solyndra was not any, I don't want to do a Solyndra thing. Also, a guy with a cool car startup ended up benefiting from that as well. Yeah, he did okay. What was that guy's name? Yeah, I don't know where he went. What do you guys think about Walls' decision and Klobuchar jumping in the race, possibly? I mean, look, I respect anyone who decides that for the good of the team, it's a step back when there's time. Yeah, I do too. Not referencing anything specific here, but you know.

1:06:14Yeah, for sure. Well, why not? I think it's better than other people hanging on. But yeah, look, I do think it's a little bit of an admission against interest here, right? because he's saying it's because of right-wing attacks and that it's important to continue fighting right-wing attacks, but you're also conceding to them by stepping aside. And I've seen some people say, some version of, like, I can't believe Tim Waltz is giving into this kind of right-wing attack. And I think two things can be true. One is there's a lot of unfair shit being circulated a lot of ways in which it's being exploited completely unfairly.

1:06:43But also he's the governor of the state and this was a massive fraud. And the scale of it compared to what they expected the program to be is just so gobsmacking that I understand why he would step aside. But it's clear he cares about the seat, cares about the state, and that he wants a Democrat to win that. And he thought it would be harder to do for reasons that are fair or unfair. Right. And then on Klobuchar, just so people know, so if she runs in 26 and she wins, there's also a Minnesota Senate race. Right now there's a primary with Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan and Representative Angie Craig.

1:07:19and so that's for Senate. And then if Klobuchar wins and she wins, as governor, she would be able to appoint her replacement in the Senate that would then be up in 28, I believe. And she also wouldn't have to get rid of, she wouldn't have to step down from her Senate seat. So it's a freebie if she wants to run and then if she loses, then she'd go back to the Senate. Yeah, I wonder how that affects the primary, if you let that primary play out or you sort of, now there's an extra slot. There's an extra slot, yeah. Oh, I guess you let it play out and then maybe potentially the loser of that primary could be appointed by a potential governor, Klobuchar.

1:07:53So we'll see. Getting ahead of ourselves there. Strong candidate. I mean, I also think Walls stepping back probably speaks to how miserable politics is if you get in like Trump's glare, like the eye of Sauron. I mean, do you guys see like over the weekend, Trump retruth some video that had basically alleged that Tim Walls had had some role in the murder of Melissa Hortman, the Minnesota state legislator who was killed along with her husband last year. I mean, sick, sick stuff. Because she spoke out about immigration or something. I think about the scam. I think she spoke out about the fraud and was like one of the few Democrats.

1:08:25And so this has been I remember this was going around when she was first murdered that like maybe this was a left wing person because she took this unpopular stance among Democrats. It's fucking. I mean, her kids were like begging Trump to remove the video. And as far as I can tell, he's not. I mean, it's just the cruelest person on the planet. All right. So we knew this was going to happen because of where the deadline fell. but the Department of Justice released the first big batch of Epstein documents on the Friday afternoon before Christmas week. And we haven't had a chance to talk about it because we were like, peace out, see you later.

1:08:55The new law gave the Department of Justice until December 19th to release what they have on Epstein. That day they posted a searchable database containing hundreds of thousands of files, including redacted documents, emails, photos and more, most of which lack context or order. some of the quote unquote highlights from the trove, photos of Epstein with celebrities like Michael Jackson and former President Bill Clinton, investigations into 10 co-conspirators of Epstein's and revelations that Trump, despite claiming otherwise, flew on Epstein's plane at least eight times in the 90s. However, DOJ admitted that it hadn't been able to get through all the files by the deadline.

1:09:33And there were reports just before New Year's that they're trying to borrow at least 400 government lawyers to help process over 5 million more Epstein documents. Hey, could I bump my lawyer off you? That's such a weird way to phrase it. Clearly, they're not doing a lot of work in the rest of the government. They're lawyers, right? Not a lot of legal. Yeah, I don't think that. And also, they were doing a terrible job redacting because apparently you could just highlight the black text and get the actual information. Any takeaways from the documents that we've seen from you guys? I mean, you highlighted the three big ones I took away.

1:10:00It's pretty notable that this federal prosecutor was flagging in January of 2020 that Trump was on Epstein's jet many, many more times. Why was he sending that email? What was he doing on that plane? The 10 co-conspirators point seems to completely contradict Cash Patel's claim that there was no client list or other group of people that he could have charged. And then I think you just come away thinking like the FBI screwed up this case so unbelievably badly over the course of decades because there's all these credible tips and witness testimony, even including from like the sister of one of the victims that could have been used to arrest Jeffrey Epstein so much earlier.

1:10:38And they just completely screwed up. The fact that this all begins with Palm Beach Police basically having this guy on sexual abuse of minors from the jump, from the beginning, multiple victims, and that it never moves forward. It gets pled down from the beginning and never leads to anything else. The other thing that jumped out to me, first of all, the fact that he was on the plane that many times was news to me. Maybe I didn't know if I had a real view of it before, but I suppose I had internalized that he hadn't been on the plane because there just hadn't been evidence of it. We hadn't seen it, right?

1:11:15He denied it outright. The first we heard of it was Susie Wiles saying it. Yeah, he's on the manifesto. In that interview, yeah. And the fact that he was one of the people that was just on the plane over the time. There were people that had just a rationale of like, of course he wasn't on the Epstein plane. That's not his style. He would fly himself. He wouldn't go to a place like that. He would do things. Like, there was just a whole story about how Donald Trump wasn't on the plane. That's a lie. Many, many times. Do you also, just the Wall Street Journal article that Jeffrey Epstein wasn't just a frequent visitor at the Mar-a-Lago spa.

1:11:40The spa would send young women to his house on house calls for massages. I mean, it is if you're wondering, like, why is Trump trying so hard to cover this up? Why has he tried so hard to cover this up for so long that does not where the explanation is not that he was in on it, that he was, you know, participating in this? it's that there's so much bad behavior from him around it being on the plane marjorie taylor green said over the break too that trump told her his friends would get in trouble uh friends of his would get in trouble if the files came out this whole thing about the mar-a-lago right like there's enough behavior that's maybe not chargeable criminal or you know but like pretty fucking embarrassing yes the cover-up the cover-up has always had to be the second worst outcome for Donald Trump.

1:12:31I will say also one other part of it is just as a sort of a whatever, a silver lining to the Epstein cloud is only that Donald Trump does not believe he has the power to cover this up. They don't believe they can delete the stuff, erase the stuff that there's too many people that are not loyal to Donald Trump that have the information, which is why they feel so stuck. Right. Like if they would obviously love to shred this, they would obviously love to make this disappear. They have no compunction about they're not into records retention, but they are trapped because inside of DOJ, it is not MAGA.

1:13:01One inch down, it is a bunch of people that are not going to go along with a cover-up, which is, like, I do think, a little bit heartening. Yeah. All right, there's plenty of other news from the last two weeks we haven't had a chance to cover, way too much, but we did just want to mention a few items that probably flew under your radar unless you're one of the real sickos out there, which is why we asked Crooked's biggest sicko, Elijah Cohn, to help us out. One of Elijah's many roles here is host of Terminally Online, which is our most hilariously unhinged pod for subscribers only, which is yet another reason you should all become subscribers at Crooked.com slash friends.

1:13:34Become a friend of the pod. You're going to have a lot of new, awesome stuff behind the paywall this year. So you're going to want to sign up for that. The number one way you could help independent media is to be a subscriber. So if you like the show, please subscribe. If you really, really love the show, go to Crooked.com slash friends. Consider becoming a friend of the pod member. Yeah. And so because Elijah spends his days never taking his eyes off the internet, he gave me a list of stories, takes and tweets. none of them had flown under my radar because i'm just as much of a sicko but i'm curious how familiar you guys are with some of these i was pretty offline by the way and every once in a while i would like go into my my phone and i would see that like that like basically it's yeah well just it's also just sort of like realizing your head up on normandy and probably on private ryan that opening scene i always think about that with twitter it's like they're in the they're under the water and they go back under the water well just sort of like it's almost like i like you guys just been in the casino the whole time i went to bed there are definitely days where it's like you're like i it's been off for like two weeks having a great time with my kids like spending great family time saw my mom saw hannah's parents and then you just like log it to twitter and you're like it is designed to enrage me and i'm like ignoring my daughter to like fire off who's that the hedge fund asshole who's bill akman specific stop drafting stop drafting i know i was way, Tommy.

1:14:48I was good until Elon and Chamath and fucking the all-in people and Bill Ackman, they all got, they started doing the fraud stuff. I was like, ugh. I had like a good week and a half. I'm proud of you. I'm proud of you. I was out. Alright, first one. Did anyone catch the marble armrest story? Does that mean anything to you guys? I actually missed this. I missed it. I didn't really care about the Kennedy Center stuff. Okay, so Donald Trump, can we put up the, for people who are watching on YouTube, you should all watch on YouTube. Donald Trump decided to post right before Christmas. What's next for the Trump-Kennedy Center, which is marble armrests.

1:15:21He said nothing's ever been done like this before. It's like, yeah, no shit. What? That is the crazy? Marble armrests? You want a wood, a nice soft wood there. Or something padded. This is what the Venezuelans are going to have to be pumping oil for. I can't believe people don't think he's focused on their problems. I know. Okay, here's a tougher one. If someone asked you what you thought about Gen Z looks maxing influencer Clavicular's take on Gavin Newsom mogging J.D. Vance in 2028 because Newsom's a Chad and Vance is subhuman. What would you say? I'll tell you something. I don't know that that interview, I didn't know about that interview, but I sadly do know all those terms.

1:16:01I do, I do. I'm a little too deep in this one, unfortunately. So looks maxing, as I believe when you, it is what it sounds. You just do all the things to make yourself look better, including testosterone injections, plastic surgery you know remember the dude who got calf implants on that mtv series i do remember that remember the end of that his cat he and his calf implants are still along he never got that girlfriend vinnie's older brother who is apparently the looks maxing is kind of an ideology that is adjacent to kind of white nationalism or the right wing because you always see clavicular talking to like nick fuentes and their buddies and then uh clavicular uh like ran over a guy hit a guy with his car yeah not familiar with that didn't get prosecuted it was a cyber truck yeah he took a cyber truck so anyway so he thinks jd vance is ugly and we have the clip we should great yeah let's play the clip i mean like this next election cycle who's gonna win it's gonna be gavin newsom against jd vance because jd vance is subhuman and gavin newsom mugs jd vance is subhuman yeah what makes you say that uh he's got a very short total facial width to height ratio he's obese very recessed side profile whereas Newsome is like 6 '3 Chad.

1:17:12So I just want to say - That's Manly by the way. 6 '3 Chad. That was Michael Knowles of the Daily Wire conducting that interview. Look, all you people out there with your horoscopes, I just want you to know that you and phrenology are coming into the light together. But yes, the return of phrenology was inevitable in our kind of demon haunted world. But yes, J.D. Vance has a recessed chin. Therefore, he does not have what it takes to be a leader. I also saw that guy saying that he takes so much testosterone that he no longer produces it. So I'm not sure that he is able to have sex. Like, look, we've all lived in a world where obviously optics and the looks of a candidate is like seen as part of how they get elected.

1:17:55Right. Like Barack Obama is a good looking guy. Like there was all this thing about the taller candidate always wins. But this guy seems to have turned looks maxing into a political ideology. And I think that that was new to me in the last couple of weeks. Did you see that Newsom got in on this? The Newsom press office account? Did he mog him? They posted a picture of J.D. Vance's face, a little fatter than it is today. And not the fake one, the meme, like an older picture of him when he was a little heavier. Got it. So that's something that happened. Yeah, that's what they do. Total Chad. Total Chad.

1:18:28Try mewing. Total Chad. You got to get that mouth tape. Mogging means someone looking significantly better or outshining others in attractiveness, style, or confidence. That's Gavin. I didn't really know that. Mogging the competition. How about the phrase globo homo? Oh, I'll open that. Give you a hint. It's related to the Maduro raid. I do know. Is this about the homo nationalists? Maybe. Elaborate. So there was a report about increasingly right-wing gays. Not the right-wing gays, where you wish somebody had higher cheekbones and filler lips, but right-wing homosexuals who are embracing anti-immigrant rhetoric because they are homo-nationalists who want to be free to be gay, but also don't want to be surrounded by immigrants.

1:19:11That's what I thought this was related. Didn't know about that. Different thing. Let's take our friend Tucker Carlson has the information. You're not gonna believe what this was. Yeah, I know. I'm not gonna go kill Nicholas Maduro because we don't like the way he's treating his people. It's possible we're mad that he doesn't allow gay marriage. That is a distinct possibility, but no one will say that out loud. Not defending the regime, just saying. And by the way, the U.S.-backed opposition leader who would take Maduro's place if he were taken out is, of course, pretty eager to get gay marriage in Venezuela.

1:19:42So to those of you who thought this whole project was Globo Homo, not crazy, actually. What's Globo Homo? Nope, definitely crazy. What's Globo Homo? Globo Homo is him thinking there is an international conspiracy to take out Nicolas Maduro because it's a conservative country that didn't allow gay marriage. That's his theory, that I guess a super gay deep state forced Donald Trump to launch this military operation to take out Maduro. Wow. Sadly, it wasn't the gays, it was the Jews in this case. Why not both? Why not both? Why not both? Why not both? Remember the kind of like the Megyn Kelly, Ben Shapiro moment when he was like, I don't give a fuck about Maduro being a conservative.

1:20:25He was sort of referencing that in the - Right, the idea that that doesn't matter. He's socially conservative. That's right. It's crazy. Finally. Because his point, by the way, was we should remove dictatorships. That's what Ben's point was there. Ben's point was like, he's a terrible guy. Like, we shouldn't like him because he's super conservative on social stuff. Right, right, right. All right. Finally, Zoran Mamdani was sworn in as mayor of New York City just after midnight on New Year's Eve and has already increased discourse supply to record levels. Which one of these Mayor Mamdani takes aren't real?

1:20:56One, the buses aren't free yet. Mamdani lied. Two, Mamdani needs to free Maduro. Three, Mamdani defeated abundance by implementing Yimby policies. Wait, one of those is not real? Or the two of those are real? I got to guess. I think the bus one is fake. I think that one's fake too. They're all real. It's a trick question. I saw in the wild a couple of versions of the free Maduro tweets. Okay. Amazing. Yeah. The defeated abundance by implementing. Because he said the word abundance in his speech, in his inaugural speech. And so then the lefties were like, yeah, he's basically, he's taking it. He's co-opting it because he's now, he's using the word, but it's like the socialist version of it.

1:21:43He's getting, he's getting democratic. He's, hey, you're getting socialism all over my abundance. I wasn't done with that abundance yet. And now you've got your socialism all over it. That's gross. there was another big like abundance dust up right before christmas and like i didn't know any of the people involved but like it's the i kept thinking i'm like tommy's uh what did you say on the pundys as he's so he was so right the fever pitch of it like the the the rage compared to the stakes we gotta build more houses so much rage so gotta build more houses yeah however we get it done it's great i'll just be bad about a new book in 2026 i just you know build more houses sometimes it's gonna be zoning and regulations sometimes there's rich people doing some bad shit.

1:22:20I don't know. It's both. I just, what the fuck? Just build, yeah, just build more houses. It's a fucking problem. I don't even care about the underlying policy. Just fight about another book. Just get another book. Oh, boy. I read The Candy House by Jennifer Egan. You did? Great. I love that book. It's a good book. It's like, that's one of my favorite books. I've been reading, uh. It's one of the books you've read. That's it, yeah. So I'll have five. I've been reading Fort Bragg Cartel. I'll give you a very different, um, window into the Delta Force community. Oh. Oh. It's very good. Finish Dead Wake.

1:22:47Oh, great. Really great. Really great. God damn it. I'm halfway through George Packer's novel, The Emergency. I interviewed him on offline and told him I was going to read the book and I started it. You know what book I read that I... It's great. I read Why Nothing Works. Oh, yeah. Is it Dunkelman? You got through that? Yeah, that is the rageless abundance. But that's the supercharged abundance. That's the longer abundance. That's an abundant abundance. I want to have a conversation with that author about how many times you're going to say the phrase, is it hamiltonian or is it jeffersonian i got it i fucking got it man i'm reading your book i'm here you've got me stop saying it it's very niche it's worth the read i'm learning a lot but how many fucking times you get to reintroduce the thesis an abundance of thesi yeah there's a thesis abundance how stupid you think i am i'm following your logic man trust me it's like genuinely getting annoyed at that professor i'm also reading the interesting um uh history of the intelligence war between East and West.

1:23:45Wow, you're really... It's kind of spies. Well, just on Kindle, you flip around. Let's keep the escalation going. We're also reading the Steven Pinker book when everybody knows that everybody knows. Oh, Epstein list guy. Good for you. Who else are you celebrating on Epstein's list? Everybody did not know that. Did not know that. Well, it does not come up. You might find it hard to believe it's not in the book. And also, by the way, before I even knew that, which was at this moment, I wasn't going to recommend it.

1:24:14so good good shit so good uh okay when we get back in the break you'll hear lovett's conversation with senator mark kelly but uh one reminder before we get to that we're headed to new zealand and australia in february i think it's like five weeks away it's crazy what gotta guess we gotta make sure we got the visas yeah oh yeah good again we might be staying yeah which which sphere of influence is australia gonna be i don't i don't think australia's gonna like it. Is that going to be the she? The she sphere of influence? It depends on how much money they're going to put in crypto in the next two years.

1:24:46How west does the western hemisphere go? Are we crossing the dateline? Are we crossing the dateline? Are we moving the dateline? I can see Trump moving the dateline. Anyway, we're going to be there. The Pod Save America hopefully just visiting tour comes to Auckland on February 11th and then three cities in Australia after that. Melbourne on the 13th, Brisbane on the 14th, and Sydney on the 16th. If you're a listener in one of those cities, or if you want to fly there, we'd love to see you. Tickets are on sale right now, head to cricket.com slash events to grab yours. When we come back, Mark Kelly.

1:25:21Pots of America is brought to you by Built. It's 2026. And if you're still paying rent without Built, it's time for a change. Built is the loyalty program for renters that rewards you for your biggest monthly expense, rent. With Built, every rent payment earns you points that can be used towards flights, hotels, lift rides, amazon.com purchases, and much more. And here's something to get excited about. Starting in February, built members can earn points on mortgage payments for the first time. Soon you'll be able to get rewarded wherever you live and unlock exclusive benefits of more than 45 ,000 restaurants, fitness studios, pharmacies, and other neighborhood partners.

1:25:53Some great things you could do them for are the travel portal. You can figure out that trip you always wanted to go on. There's Amazon for just basic stuff, like anything you need around the house. You can use built points to get it. And then lift rides. It's like if you need a ride, then you want to have a drink or two, you want to take a lift, you can use Bilt Points to pay for that too. It's simple. Paying rent is better with Bilt and soon owning a home will get better with Bilt too. Earn rewards and get something back wherever you live. Join the loyalty program for renters at joinbilt.com slash crooked.

1:26:20That's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T dot com slash crooked. Make sure to use our URL so they know we sent you.

1:26:29Joining me now is Arizona Senator Mark Kelly. Senator Kelly, welcome back to the pod. Thank you for having me back. All right. So Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth posted today that in response to what he called seditious statements and a pattern of reckless misconduct, the Defense Department is moving to censure you to potentially reduce your rank, cut your retirement pay, also threaten further action. The claim here is not just that you called on service members to refuse illegal orders in that video. It's that you've also described lawful orders as illegal. What's your response to this? that's a bunch of bullshit the entire thing it's ridiculous and it is uh you know stifling the first amendment rights of all americans especially retired people like me you know i said something that the president didn't like he said i should be hanged i should be executed i should be prosecuted and then his minion pete hegseth the most unqualified secretary of defense we've ever had you know he makes a decision that he's going to court-martial me under the uniform code of military justice for saying what is in the UCMJ, saying something that is lawful, telling service members they need to follow the law.

1:27:43They didn't like that. In that censure letter, by the way, they also put all these other things that I said that they didn't like. Now think about this for a second. What message does that send to other retired service members or people who have left the military, people on active duty, or just any U.S. citizen, don't cross this president. He might try to get you hanged, but if that doesn't work, he's going to demote you in the military if you're a service member or take away your pay. You know, this is, I got to say, I mean, I spent 25 years in the United States Navy, and I've been retired now for another, well, 15.

1:28:26Uh, I've never seen anything like this. I mean, this is what we've become as a country where people can't speak out against the government, can't disagree. So I, did you find out via the tweet? Is that how you found out that would be notified in any other way? Well, so I found out initially today via the tweet, they did send a letter to my attorney. This is the first time they've actually corresponded with my legal folks at all. Uh, but I think this says, shows the the unseriousness of these clowns here, that they're more concerned about getting likes on Twitter and views than they are running, seriously running the Department of Defense.

1:29:10Were you surprised that this was the attack that they took? Obviously, Trump has threatened all kinds of things. They've threatened you with court martial. This is an administrative action. They're making all these claims about how what you've done is so dangerous, and now they're going to kind of come after your pay. It seems even seditious in this in essential letter sedition. Right. Well, I think they realize if they put me in front of a jury, they would have been laughed out of court even by a military, you know, whatever military case here. So I think they reverted to this option where they don't think I have a lot of recourse.

1:29:45But I'm going to you know, I've got to stand up for the American people here. This is not just about me at this point. They're trying to shut everybody up. If you're a retired guy like me in the military or your former service member or you're just somebody speaking out against this president, Donald Trump wants you to shut up. That's not acceptable. So you made what set this up was the video you and several of your colleagues made basically saying that members of the military have to refuse unlawful orders. Clearly, you knew this was going to spur this kind of a fight or fight of some kind, right?

1:30:24No, I thought that even this guy, even Donald Trump would say if he said anything in response to what we said, he would say, of course, of course, members of the military shouldn't follow illegal orders. That's what I expected. I actually expected him to ignore it. So I guess part of this is that, look, like we've watched over the last several decades as presidential authority has expanded. Congress's role has been minimized. And, you know, presidents operate in this kind of a gray area about like what is the lawful use of military power? Like some of this, right, there is a genuine kind of philosophical problem here of when presidents aren't going to Congress at all.

1:31:13What is it? Yeah, well, these are different things, though. You're talking about constitutional authority of a president. And you're right. Over decades, we've seen an erosion of Congress's role and an amplification of the president's. There are some exceptions to that. The first Gulf War, 1991, I flew 39 combat missions over Iraq and Kuwait. That had an authorization for the use of military force by Congress. That's the way this is supposed to be done. But you're right, presidents often just kind of go it alone. And this Congress especially, my Republican colleagues in the House and the Senate have abdicated to the White House.

1:31:54Basically, carte blanche, do whatever you want, we're not going to get in your way. That's not what the founding fathers intended. You know, we are the Article I branch of government. We come first for a reason. And most of the power was put there. They're giving this up. But that's not what you're referring to. No, no, no. What I was referring to are those things that are so obvious to a reasonable person that, hey, I'm being ordered to do something specific. And that's got to be against the law. That's what we're getting at. We're not talking about big constitutional responsibilities and roles that the president has over Congress.

1:32:35No. And do you think that there are specific orders that members of the military should have already refused? Well, I mean, sometimes you don't know. Right. So what we did was a friendly reminder. We repeated the Uniform Code of Military Justice. It is the law. when a service member gets in a situation, they can go to their chain of command and say, hey, I've got questions about this. Can we talk about this issue? That never happened with me. In the early 90s, Desert Shield, Desert Storm, every order I ever got, even sinking two ships, very obvious we were well within our rights to do this. But it has happened historically.

1:33:20where members of the military have been ordered to do things that people should know that's against the law. And when the law and orders are in conflict, it says this right outside of West Point on a plaque. You go with the law. That's all we were trying to do is remind members of the military because we have a president who has talked about killing the family members of terrorists, family members. That means women and children. He has talked about shooting U.S. citizens, protesters in the legs. He's talked about sending troops into U.S. cities to use those U.S. cities as training grounds, which means you're going to use U.S.

1:34:01citizens for training for the U.S. military. So that's why we did the video. Now, you know, afterwards, you know, Well, at the same time, those had strikes that already started in the Caribbean. And I do and continue to have a lot of questions about the big picture legality of that. But we were, you know, our goal here was just to remind, you know, service members, because I don't want to see some young, you know, Navy, Marine, Air Force guy, Guardian. You know, I don't want to see these people finding themselves in a really bad situation. Well, aren't people already in that situation? I get like the reason I'm pushing on this is only because we don't need to be hypothetical.

1:34:47We have reports in The Washington Post that that the administration ordered people to be killed who were clinging to the wreckage of a ship. And there are people that had to execute that order. Should they have gone to their superiors and say, I worry this is unlawful? Well, I've been briefed on that in the SCIF, in a secure facility about that strike. I've seen the videos. I have more questions coming out of that than I had going in. And I think the American public needs to see that video. We need to have an open hearing on this and people need to answer some hard questions about why we are taking those kind of actions.

1:35:30uh but that is the that's kind of an example we didn't know about that when we made the video but that's that could be pointed to as a kind of an example of one of the things where we're getting at we talked about the broader issue of of congress not being involved in military action by the white house obviously this is uh uh we're days after uh the intervention in venezuela Well, Axios got a couple of Democrats to say on background, of course, that criticizing Trump looks weak on this. You've been very critical of the administration for what they've done here. What's your response to that? I think when it's appropriate, it is our job to be critical of this president, any president.

1:36:19I was critical of Joe Biden on things. It's, you know, our constitutional responsibility. And when it comes to the military, I sit on the Armed Services Committee. I'm the ranking member of the Airlines Subcommittee. I'm on the Stratforces Subcommittee as well and others. I sit on the Intelligence Committee. You know, one of the reasons I actually enjoy, you know, this job is the military stuff, the intel stuff. It's consistent with my background. I understand, you know, stuff about this. But it's also my job when this administration is doing stuff that makes us less safe, less prosperous, putting service members at risk.

1:36:58It's my job to say something. I mean, does this make us look weak, strong? We're we're in the beginning of whatever this thing is going to turn out to be. Right. He extracted Maduro. Maduro is a bad guy. He needs to be prosecuted. It would have been better if maybe he was overthrown. you know we're extracting a foreign leader out of his country what precedent does that set but donald trump has a habit of breaking shit and he has no plan here he says he runs the country we're running the country these guys behind he's pointing at like hegseth and rubio these we're running the country they're not running the country what would you like to see so there was also a report by the way in the washington post that the white house is potentially planning a large role for Stephen Miller in, quote, running Venezuela.

1:37:50I didn't see that. So what should happen? I mean, look, we're in this now. What should happen? What should happen? I think we should push for an election in Venezuela. We pretty much know who's going to win, I think, at this point. The opposition party won 70 % of the vote in the last election. Venezuela was a democracy for decades until Chavez. And then now, you know, this this joker showed up. So, you know, we need at this point to try to help them get back to that. Us running Venezuela. How does that help Americans with the cost of their rent and their groceries and their health care? This president has destroyed the prospect for Americans to have affordable health care.

1:38:43Millions of Americans are going to lose their health insurance because of this president and Republicans in Congress because they wanted to give a big tax cut to billionaires. And now his whole plan is, well, we're going to we're going to take over the oil operation here. More profit for more rich people. what are the consequences to U.S. service members if they have to go in there and try to really take control of Venezuela. When this happened in Iraq and we toppled Saddam Hussein, remember the jubilation in the streets, the statue coming down, the Iraqis are all happy? How long did that last?

1:39:23Country winds up in civil war and we're in the middle of it and there's a lot of dead Americans. I do not want to see that happen here. So I remember in 2022, President Biden held a summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, and there was this debate about excluding Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua. Then a bunch of leaders from other countries refused to intend in protest because those leaders have been excluded. And it became, you know, it was supposed to be an assertion of American leadership in the hemisphere. And it became a story about conflict and weakness. And obviously, that's just one summit. But to me, it does speak to some kind of a vacuum of American leadership that's existed.

1:40:08And I wonder if, like, in seeing what Trump has done and how dangerous it is, have we offered an alternative of what it looks like to really stand up for American values, democratic values in the region? This isn't standing up for values. I agree. I agree. But I'm saying, what is our alternative? Do we have an alternative? Principles when they're convenient. And if they're inconvenient, screw it. That's what we've seen from this administration. Threatening Canada? Do we have a closer ally than Canada? Who is the moral authority in the Western Hemisphere at this point? I don't know. I mean, what?

1:40:48No, I agree with you. What I'm saying is this. Look, Trump is doing a regime change. He's pardoning drug trafficking leaders. He's he's obviously entering into all kind of corrupt bargains here. He's he's playing footsie with Bukele's terrible. There's no moral leadership and no kind of ideological leadership. I'm saying what is our alternative? What's the alternative now? I mean, what's an alternative vision for what American leadership should look like? alternative vision. I get it. Yeah. So the alternative vision is what is in the best interest of the United States of America and our allies and our partners across the globe today and into the future.

1:41:35We need to be thinking, the Chinese think out 100 years. We can't be about like, what is in the best interest of us right now this second? We've got to be thinking decades. into the future, evaluating all the time, what are the threats to our national security? What are the threats to our economy? What are the threats to our future? How does this thing that Donald Trump just did in Venezuela, how does this affect us five or 10 years from now? And I can tell you this, it's going to have an effect. Is this a justification that Xi needs to go and take Taiwan, kick out the leader? He'll say, hey, you kicked out Maduro.

1:42:14We've got interests here. This is 90 miles from our shoreline, a lot closer than Venezuela is. So is that the justification? Or is this the justification that Putin needs to go beyond Ukraine and say, hey, you know, Kazakhstan used to be part of the Soviet Union, and they've got a lot of oil that they're not exploiting the way they should. We're going to work on that. And by the way, Donald Trump, it's kind of the same thing you just did in Venezuela. So what should we we need to have a government that can that is playing chess and not checkers. I mean, Stephen Miller running Venezuela, that guy's a moron.

1:42:55I mean, you talk about you want to ruin that country. You want to, you know, set this up for a situation that is not going to be in our best interest. Put him in charge. So, I mean, we have to be thinking ahead. We've got to have serious people in these jobs. We can't have a bunch of sycophants and yes men. Pete Hegseth, is he ever under any circumstance going to speak truth to power? I don't think so. So there's something so obviously ugly about somebody like Pete Hegseth going after you, somebody like Donald Trump going after you've served your country for decades. You've sacrificed a lot. And Donald Trump's a draft dodger, right?

1:43:38Five times. We see a lot of stories about the ways in which Trump is politicizing the military, deploying National Guard into American cities, doing these kind of lawless raids in the Caribbean. They're coming after you and other service members who have spoken out. What are you hearing from people in the military who are maybe not hardcore Democrats, but are certainly not MAGA, about what they about their response to this, about what it's like seeing the military being used and abused in this way? Well, it's it's quiet, right? They're not doing a lot of this stuff publicly. And I've been told by more than one occasion there are folks inside the Pentagon.

1:44:21There's the Donald Trump people, the MAGA people, and they're the quiet people. and when they see them go after a U.S. senator for something I said, that shuts them up. I mean, are they going to speak out when they see some defense contractor that's a buddy with Donald Trump, you know, fleecing the U.S. taxpayer? Or are they going to be afraid and they're going to think, wow, man, they went after that U.S. senator over something he said. I can't speak out about about this. So they're stifling, you know, free thought and speech. And what I hear from people, I mean, I was, you know, on a military base not too long ago, I'm not going to say where.

1:45:02And as I got into the car, one of the very senior people thanked me, you know, thank you for for speaking out. Thank you for what you're doing. We need it. So, yeah, there are people that, you know, that they get it and they understand the situation we are currently in. And we have a president that doesn't obviously doesn't listen to anybody and he's got a bunch of yes people around him. And that's dangerous. So last question. There's also now a move in Congress to try to reassert some kind of congressional authority over military involvement in Venezuela and beyond. There's going to be a war powers vote that Senator Schumer is going to force.

1:45:51Is there any hope that you'll be able to get Republicans on board to pass it? Behind the scenes, are Republicans questioning the administration's refusal to even let members of the gang of whatever it is, five or eight, the gang of eight know that this was coming? Like, is there any hope that Congress is going to reassert its authority here? There's a serious lack of spine on the Republican side of the aisle right now. There will be some people, obviously, that will speak out against this. I mean, Rand Paul being an example. There will be others, Lisa Murkowski. I think you'll see a few other people.

1:46:35But is that enough to really put pressure on the administration? Probably not. But I do show up every day for work being optimistic and hopeful things will turn around. That's what we need. I mean, if we're if we're going to keep this administration in check and possibly keep them from, a few days ago, I would not have said this, but keep them from invading Greenland? I mean, it sounds crazy, but in the last couple of days, after we just saw what happened here, and then he's talking about Greenland again and Stephen Miller's wife saying soon Greenland is going to be part of the United States. If we're going to prevent things like that happening, or maybe even going after Canada, I mean, how crazy does that sound?

1:47:29But who knows at this point, we're going to need the Republicans in the Senate and the House to stand up and say something. I was once at some sort of, you know, fancy conference that I had no business speaking at, and somebody was talking about what would happen if someone tried to invade Greenland. And this, I think, Danish academic was describing the mile high sheets of ice and the temperature and the conditions on the ground. And he said in his Danish accent, if someone were to invade Greenland, we'd begin immediately an effort to rescue them. Senator Mark Kelly, thank you so much for your time.

1:48:09Really appreciate it. And good luck in the fight. Thank you. Thanks for having me on.

1:48:19that's our show for today thanks to mark kelly for coming on dan and i will be back with a new show on friday talk to everybody then 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 also please consider leaving us a review that helps boost this episode and everything we do here at crooked pod save america is a crooked media production Our producers are David Toledo, Emma Illich Frank, and Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farrah Safari. Austin Fisher is our senior producer.

1:48:51Reid Cherlin is our executive editor. Adrian Hill is our head of news and politics. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer, with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Matt DeGroat is our head of production. Naomi Sengel is our executive assistant. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Ben Hefcoat, Mia Kelman, Carol Pellaviv, David Tolles, and Ryan Young. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

1:49:45We'll see you next time. exclusive podcast that is basically Pod Save America, but behind a paywall. So it's a little bit looser and more fun. And it's Lovett and Favreau and me and Pfeiffer and then other Crooked hosts. We go deeper on the news and cover more stories. You also get open tabs, which is a weekly behind the scenes newsletter from the show. Plus you get ad free episodes of your favorite Crooked podcast and all kinds of other stuff. Dan will come to your house and clean it once every quarter. Yeah. Clothes. Dan is very busy. Clothes only. But along with just getting great content, becoming a friend of the pod, joining our subscription community is the number one thing you can do to help us grow, to help independent progressive media.

1:50:20So if you ever thought about doing it, if you ever wanted more Pod Save America, consider going to crooked.com slash friends and becoming a friend of the pod.