1116: Epstein Files: Worse Than You Thought

22:58I guess the Emiratis just really believed in Eric Trump's business plan and his crypto expertise. Is that what we think? Yeah. For a company that was, I don't think they had a product at the time. And when the 49 % stake that they purchased actually didn't get you access to the future revenue on the only thing they were selling at that moment. So, yeah, no, definitely that's what happened. First of all, I just want to say shout out to The Wall Street Journal for getting this scoop. Like, thank God liberal billionaire Rupert Murdoch is using his power for good, right? While all these other, you know, right wing assholes like Jeff Bezos just turtle and buy Melania documentaries.

23:33I mean, so by the way, before this story, what we knew about this UAE AI chips deal was that an Emirati backed investment fund called MGX the last last spring made a two billion dollar investment into a crypto company called Binance. And they did it using the Trump family's stable coin, their new cryptocurrency USD one, which is from World Liberty Financial, the same company. So that came out of nowhere. It instantly made USD one one of the most highly circulated stable coins in existence and then reportedly makes the Trump family 80 million dollars a year in passive income. Um, then right after that, the Trump agrees to provide the UAE with these chips.

24:08So we already knew that there was like a totally corrupt drug deal, but this report is even crazier. Like they just bought this company outright. There was no disclosure. $187 million goes to the Trump family. Another tranche of the money goes to, uh, Steve Whitcoff's son who remember like, as this is all happening, Steve Whitcoff is named the kind of like emissary for everything. He's going around the world. He goes to a crypto conference in the UAE. And then two weeks later, the contracts to make this purchase just magically appear. And so it just this confirms what we know, which is that Trump and Steve Wyckoff, they're running around the globe.

24:42They're talking to autocrats and they are steering money into their family's pot. And like Jared Kushner has gotten a bunch of money from the Emiratis. We also know the Emiratis were pushing Trump to pardon the Binance CEO. This guy CZ. That obviously will help your two billion dollar investment. if, you know, that company gets right with regulators in the U.S. So it's like, what do you fucking do with this? This is corruption. You meet and remove the president. Yeah. It's corruption like nothing we've ever seen in this country. And it's like a one day story. Well, and it is a great example of why impeachment is the only remedy, because John Roberts and his court would say that the lifting.

25:25Yeah. Giving them the chips was official business, which it was. Right. Yeah. But obviously we know that there is a personal stake there. And so what Roberts and the court would say in that opinion is, well, impeachment is the remedy if you think it was if it was a conflict. And the Republicans are just like, no, no, no, it's totally fine for your family to take half a half a billion dollars and then to literally sell America out by. And one of the reasons, by the way, they didn't want to give the UAE these like very advanced AI chips, aside from the fact that it's a foreign government. But weren't they concerned?

25:57Wasn't there a concern that they were doing deals with China? They're super tight. The Sheik's company in particular is called G42 was supposed to get one fifth of the 500 ,000 of these Nvidia chips. They're super tight with a bunch of Chinese companies, including one called Huawei, which provides like a telecom infrastructure. And the United States has spent decades telling other countries to get Huawei the fuck out of their countries, places like the UK, because there's concern that you could do create like backdoor infrastructure to spy on them, which is why there was concern in the Biden administration about about selling these chips to the Emiratis.

26:28And by the way, these are not, these are like the Blackwell series chips, like the best of the best Nvidia chips that no other countries can really get unless you're like a super close ally and partner of the US and yeah. Or own almost half of World Liberty Financial. You just could increase the right guy. Yeah, it's also, there's something struck me that it was right before the inaugural, right? That before he'd even taken office for a second time, he had already decided that he was going to be the most corrupt president in American history. and even saying that is an understatement really. He was going to be as corrupt as the most corrupt autocrats in the history of the modern world, that he was already going to be a Putin-level corrupt figure.

27:07And what would happen in a normal time in a functioning civil society? Yes, of course, there'd be impeachment hearings and his removal, but even maybe before that, there would be a Department of Justice investigation. There would be congressional hearings. There would be outrage that would continue that would be bipartisan. There would be Republicans going up to the White House to say that it's time to step down because the country can't survive having a president this corrupt. Like those are the normal things, right? That you could imagine happening, how this would have worked even in the previous Republican administrations.

27:38We've never had anything this bad. And it's, you know, when I was a kid, I would obviously struggle with deadlines. And if I would hit a deadline, but if I missed it, I would never, just simply would never do the work, right? If I had a paper due on a Monday and I missed the Monday, it was like it never happened. Weeks, months, it would be a disaster. I would do that too. Because once you're on the other side of the mistake, what's the point? And I do feel like with that's where we're at with the Republicans, they have their one... Impeachment is the mechanism or any kind of accountability. And because that is impossible, we are kind of through that.

28:09And now Trump can do anything. There's nothing they can't look past because they've looked past so much already. And we talk about this all the time. It's so gobsmacking. It's so crazy. He should be impeached and removed. That is obvious. That's what should happen. But it can't. And so we sort of live in this world where there's no accountability yet. It's also it's just like you can't write something this outrageously corrupt. Like you can't make something like this up. It's like a Middle Eastern autocrat who also maybe does deal with the Chinese government for like an American asset that has like incredible national security implications that you're selling out for half a billion dollars for the president.

28:49Like what? Yeah, those chips are how we make pictures of women with six boobs. We can't have the Chinese get control of that technology. Next thing you know, it'll be saying things. That's the problem with AI, right? Terrible, mediocre writing. I mean, the thing is, the Emiratis, like, they have a bit of a DC halo because they throw a lot of money around to think tanks. They hire a lot of former generals to come give speeches or consult for their military. They have an ambassador who's been around for a long time, hosts a lot of events at Cafe Milano, you know, a bit of a man about town. But this is also a country that has been funding the other side of a absolutely devastating civil war in Sudan for the better part of two years.

29:32They're funding this group called the RSF that is leading to the worst humanitarian catastrophe on the planet right now. So I do think it's just worth thinking about like the foreign policy of the people that Trump did this deal with, because it is really gross when you kind of get past the bullshit in the glitterati fucking appetizer course at Cafe Milano and see what's actually happening. I don't know the foreign policy of any of the governments he's done deals with that he likes that is a good foreign policy. Any good bribes? Yeah, who's he doing deals with around the world and foreign governments that they're not either repressing their own people or others or causing conflict?

30:08He does have a type, doesn't he? The tensions are with Canada and NATO and the like. Like the connection to me between the Epstein story and this is like these people are buying their credibility with their conferences and their, you know, and comedy festivals in Saudi Arabia, all the people that Trump is doing deals with. They're sort of investing in the kind of appearance of polite society to lend them credibility. And it works. People make the trip, they take the money and they use their wealth to kind of hide the monstrousness. Yeah. I don't know if you guys saw that Trump's also looking to steal another$10 billion from us, the American taxpayers.

30:48Earned it. President is suing the IRS for$10 billion with a B in damages over the leaking of his tax returns in 2019 and 2020. You might remember he's also suing the Justice Department for$230 million in damages. Seems like small potatoes now. Over the investigations that led to multiple grand juries indicting Trump on multiple criminal charges. and since the DOJ now does whatever Trump tells them to do, you can imagine that they may settle this case favorably for the president. Trump basically acknowledged the conflict on Saturday night when he was talking to reporters, though he seemed to just find the whole thing rather amusing.

31:25Take a listen. I have to work out some kind of a settlement. I'm supposed to work out a settlement with myself. I think what we'll do is do something for charity. You know, we're thinking about doing something for charity. We're going to give money to charity. we can make it a substantial amount nobody would care because it's going to go to numerous very good charities so he's going to steal 10 billion dollars from the federal government and claim he's going to give it to charity that's what he's saying but do the press conference on it in black tie yeah because that's that's fitting i think he was just he was yeah he was at the alfalfa dinner saturday night which was a bunch of uh you know elites uh just fucking cracking jokes yeah yeah cracking jokes monopoly how many people in that room were in the fucking fucking it's crazy I realize that the corruption isn't quite as, maybe it's not as brazen or as big of a deal globally as the UAE thing that we just talked about.

32:15But just taking$10 billion from the Treasury for yourself. It's just lazy. I mean, talk about things that I think that would piss Americans off. Yes, yes. $10 billion. You know how much a one-year extension of the Affordable Care Act subsidies cost? $30 billion. That is a third of the extension that they said that we apparently cannot afford. 20 million people are seeing their premiums go up. And yet he wants to pay$10 billion out of the treasury to himself just so he can promise to give it to many good charities. Could have hired more ICE guys with this. Yeah, many other possibilities. The president of the United States is filing frivolous lawsuits against the United States.

32:54So he can use his position to settle them favorably. It's, again, he should be impeached and removed from office. We're just watching it unfold. I was watching all this, the Epstein files and all the involvement of all these people inside the Trump administration. We didn't talk about like Lutnick's in there. A lot of people are in there. And then you look at like the UAE case, this lawsuit. There was a CBS got their hands on a memo. And if you saw this of the Capitol, the insurrection prosecutors wrote a memo to congressional leaders. Do you see this? No. Where they recommended what the what Congress can do, because DOJ will obviously not do anything to investigate the immigration abuses, to investigate ICE and detention center abuses and other things.

33:41And they laid out all these things that Congress could do, which would be about preserving records in the case of inevitable prosecutions in the future. And the point they made is there are FBI agents and federal prosecutors who have left because they're disgusted with the politicization and the sort of the capture of these bureaus that would be available to do these kinds of investigations. And I and whether it's as part of the midterms or whether it's a part of a kind of a presidential campaign, I do think talking about how Democrats are going to declare war on corruption and put a real program of like, I think it should be primetime hearings, 9-11 commission like law that kind of says, here's how we're going to investigate this abuses of the power of power, the capture of the Department of Justice, the theft by the president, the corrupt acts by the president and create like a kind of framework for how we're going to be treating this.

34:29like a really big deal in the future, whether it's in 20, whether it's while Trump is in office or after. And as part of that, bringing on prosecutors, bringing on law enforcement to help kind of lead a true kind of credible investigation through Congress, I think is one thing. We think Bob Mueller's up too. Yeah, let's get that guy out of the fucking mothballs. Him and Mueller can, him and Garland can team up and it'll be a, won't they or won't they? Yeah. Like a hundred years, look up a case. Yeah, you mentioned Howard, Letnick, we should just mention, he said he'd cut Jeffrey Epstein off in 2005.

35:03He told a really detailed story about how he and his wife walked into the house, saw a massage table, thought it was gross, never spoke to him again. Turns out he went to the island in 2012. So good job, Mr. Letnick. I do enjoy Trump suing the IRS for these documents getting disclosed as he's having his hand-picked goon, Bill Pulte, use his authority at the Federal Housing Authority to dig through mortgages and try to prosecute people that Trump doesn't like. That is kind of chef's kiss. Like in some sense, in the narrow sense, Trump has a case in this instance because you can sue the government for breaches of privacy when it comes to IRS data.

35:36Of course, he should have released his taxes when he ran for office. Of course, 20 billion is an absurd amount. Apparently, he's saying the$10 billion figure is a$1 ,000 per disclosure level that's specified in the law multiplied by an estimate of the number of times that Trump's tax information was published or broadcast. That's how they did the math that got them to the clean$10 billion. Beloved, I was trying to think, like, similar to your point about Congress, like, doing this just suggests you've given up on political considerations in any way. Because nothing could be more popular than suing yourself for$10 billion or suing the taxpayers for$10 billion and being on both sides of the transaction.

36:13He just clearly is so greedy that he does not care. Yes, I think he doesn't care. And I think, you know, this is like they feel like they're throwing so much stuff at us every single day. I mean, this was like Bannon, you know, at the beginning. It's like, oh, you do you do three horrible things a day. And the first two, you know, they can only people can only pay attention to one and the other two go under the radar. Right. And I do think you're right. Like, love it. Democrats should make a huge deal of this. I think it should be the challenge with the hearings and the investigations is the country.

36:45Most people want, you know, what's on their mind. Most of all is like, what are you going to do for me? How are you going to help me? And like, you know, do I want a bunch? I would just be like, we're getting all your money back. He stole a bunch of money from the country, from you. He's in. He tried to sell out a bunch of the country as well. And we're getting it all back. So we're getting your money back for you. I think that's good. I think that's good. We're going through the couch cushions and and all the and all the people who've gotten hurt too. You're going to be able to, uh, that the government is hurt under Donald Trump because he broke the law.

37:11Um, we're going to make you right as well. Yeah, I think that's right. I think, I think you'd have to tie it back to the ways in which this was ultimately about pursuing his own interest at the expense of the country. I do think any broad investigation into Trump corruption will ultimately lead to tariff decisions and the higher cost people paid. But I, and then I, and I do think you'd have to then like really make it clear that it's about not just sort of looking back, but about the reforms you would need, right? Because you would, and you know what, some of this is not going to be like top polling message.

37:41I think there'll be popular programs, but no, not everything we're going to have to do to fix our democracy is going to be able to tie back to affordability. But like, we got to figure out some kind of return to independent counsel. There are reasons that was allowed to expire, but man, what a different world we'd be living right now if three judges could appoint an independent counsel to investigate crimes by the president. Now, I don't know if the Supreme Court, which is now believed that the president is above the law and the unitary executive, like I don't know what happens now. It was held up by the vast majority of judges last time it was in front of the Supreme Court.

38:15Would that happen again? I don't know. But constitutional amendments around the pardon power, stepping up congressional oversight of the administration, like a lot of steps that we should be talking about that are forward looking about preventing this kind of thing from happening again and attacking the ways in which Trump abused his office. One other just, you know, talking about inherent contempt is too late when the person who you're trying to get is already not reporting. I would like to start hearing congressional leaders start talking about the fact that whatever we do to investigate the Trump administration, that they will use, if necessary, inherent contempt to arrest and detain people who do not participate.

38:51We need to like Congress needs to start asserting it's it's article one. It's, it's first on the list. They need to start reasserting their authority, uh, and, and make clear that they will, if necessary, uh, enforce subpoenas and hold people in contempt and, and make them testify. Yeah. And then it'll be the, it'll be, uh, Congress's goons versus the, uh, the federal government's goons facing off. Yeah. And look, I don't know what, I just, I feel like we can't play chicken with them. And I just, we have to, and, and by the way, like, do I worry about that power being in the hands of Republicans.

39:24Of course I do. Of course I do. But we have to assume that we can use the power effectively and make a case to American people if we are able to win the Congress. Tommy, to your point of Trump not caring about the politics, we got a, he talked more this weekend about the gigantic new commemorative arch. Arch. It would be an arch. Arch, right? I think an arch would be a box. Arch would be a... I'm thinking of the arch. We've got the golden arch. Oh, that's a French. So it's a new arch he's constructing on the Virginia side of the Potomac. The Washington Post reported over the weekend that the latest plan is for the monument to be 250 feet tall.

39:59Of course, that's for America's 250th anniversary, of course. Happy birthday, America. That's tall. That's a big arch. It's 150 feet taller than the Lincoln Memorial, only 40 feet smaller than the Capitol, the U.S. Capitol. the Lincoln Memorial will sit in the shadow of the Trump Arch fucking imagine what an eyesore the one in St. Louis is 630 feet tall this one sounds kind of lame is this a good place to say that I also think they fucked up the World War II Memorial no it's not the place for this I just think it's too fucking literal here we are just living through this emergency, but let's go back and talk about that.

40:46He also announced that he's going to be closing the Kennedy Center, whose board he now controls for two years for a complete renovation. Who knows? Maybe it has to do with the fact that no one wants to perform there anymore. So he's like, no one's coming here? You know what? Then it's closed. That's it. It's done. My birthday party is canceled. Right, exactly. One Kennedy Center event that did still take place last week, the world premiere of Melania, the documentary great box office numbers you guys see that i had fun thought it was pretty entertaining i saw it twice i gotta say on the arch it doesn't bother me because next democrat's gonna shut this stupid thing down right we can't this is not gonna get built by then we're gonna bulldoze a whole arch i don't how fast can you build a fucking giant arch i have no idea it's a good point maybe it's fast especially one that's i'm sorry taller than the lincoln memorial we're making it bigger than lincoln memorial come on this is crazy matches you go i care less about trump building arches that we can perhaps tear down or stop if they don't get finished obviously he says he's gonna finish everything in a snap of i don't know how the east wing can the east wing ballroom's going but it seems to be slower than than originally predicted i am worried about the kennedy center in the grand scheme of trump abuses we it's if he fucks up the kennedy center it's a building uh we'll be okay but uh you know they have this obsession with like neoclassical architecture, architecture that evokes like the Greeks and the Romans and the sort of classic forms.

42:11And it's sort of a vaguely fascist mindset. But the Kennedy Center is a beautiful place that I'm sure they don't appreciate. And then he's talked about wanting to build a bigger entertainment complex. Have you seen this? In one of his posts, he said, not only are we gonna renovate the Kennedy Center, we're gonna build a bigger and more beautiful entertainment complex. And like, that's a beautiful building. Like UFC cage match vibe. Oh, that's not bad. Yeah. And so I worry about them fucking that up because it's harder to fix it. Oh, you worry about it? You don't think they're going to nail it?

42:38Well, I just think, yeah, I don't think that the architects are there. When I see that colony with all the - It's a little too rococo for me. When I see what they did to the East Wing colony, I can't imagine. You know, as they said in Beauty and the Beast, it's not Baroque, don't fix it. You know what I'm saying? No, he's going to fuck up the Kennedy Center for sure. I do prefer him focusing on architecture than on - the destruction of democracy. He should be, yeah, if he woke up every day for the next three years and just focused on the arch and the ballroom. Blueprints, hard hats. And like nothing else.

43:09Ribbon cuttings. Anything like that is great. I agree. I agree. Melania, biggest grossing documentary in a decade. Highest for the non-music domestic doc. Yeah, I was going to say because Taylor Swift's Arizona store doc opened up at like, you know, 10 times that. But also, also when you spend seven, when you spend $75 million. 40 for the doc 35 on the marketing and you make back 8 million in the opening you don't make that no you net 3.5 because half goes to the theaters i mean yeah all it took was 35 million in marketing and relentless promotion from the most famous person in the world and current president donald trump to get you know it sounds like a bunch of old people in trump areas women over women over 55 were like 70 of the audience and they also you know those people got to say we're sticking it to like liberal Hollywood because people had started making fun of what was expected to be a low open.

44:02So we feel stuck. Trump fans parting with their money to please him. No longer a surprise to me. I just it's a bribe. I found it's just so like all the the there's a there was a couple of people that all like they pride themselves in being kind of free speech warriors for like tech bros finance guys praising the eight million saying gotcha libs. And it's like I get that like you didn't like wokeness because you thought it was about the feelings of people that you're not fans of, but your entire operation here seems to be at the feelings of Donald Trump because you seem to be involved in business.

44:35Is$75 million for a movie that makes eight good business? Or is that a bribe in every fucking theater? It is funny because none of them are saying like, wow, what a great doc and like our first lady is wonderful because they only care about being able to own the libs with the documentary. I'm pretty sure Melania had Final Cut. I mean, she was like an EP on the project. It would all apparently look staged. Of course she did. The spend coincided with Amazon firing 16 ,000 people this year, 14 ,000 more last year. The thing, but for Jeff Bezos, again, like what is the point of having fuck you money if you never say fuck you?

45:09What are you doing, man? I mean, he does say it to the Amazon workers all the time. That's true. Actually, big fuck you to the Washington Post as well. He's saying a lot of fuck yous. Yeah, well, I guess it's just not to anyone powerful. It's a whole society when we all got to see the Brett Ratner photos spill out of the Epstein files. The director of Melania was all in the press this weekend for another reason too. Another one. Another one, part of the cabal. Was welcoming. Was it Pete Hex out today? Sort of a big kind of welcoming. He's sort of staying good. Welcoming for what? I think he was getting a visit to, I don't know, wherever he sends up those penis rockets, I think.

45:41But I'm not sure. You can check the facts on that. But yeah, there's sort of a despicable lack of kind of moral courage on the part of our wealthiest elites, something that has come up several times during this program.

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48:31It's been a week since Trump told reporters that his paramilitary squads would, quote, de-escalate a little bit after they killed two American citizens in Minneapolis. Since then, the president has called Alex Preddy an insurrectionist whose, quote, stock has gone way down. and told reporters that he actually won't be pulling back the operation in Minnesota. A federal judge there also just declined to block Operation Metro Surge, at least for now. ICE, which had issued guidance earlier last week, saying that they'd be returning to targeted enforcement operations, issued a new internal memo on Friday, giving agents the green light to arrest people without a warrant.

49:05Then on Saturday, Trump was asked about his announcement that federal agents would only respond to protests in Democratic-led cities if they asked for help. Here's what he said. Back to your post on ICE protests, what did you mean when you said people will suffer an equal or greater consequence? If they do anything bad to our people, they will be, they will have to suffer. I'm sorry. They will get taken care of in at least an equal way. You know, you see it, the way they treat our people. And I said, you're allowed, if somebody does that, you can do something back. You're not going to stand there and take it.

49:41You know, I think they already know that. That's not how the justice system works. Yeah, they did murder two people in public. So I think they know that they can do whatever they want. I think you're thinking of the original. Yeah, that's the old high for an eye. That's like, you know, that's justice classic. Yeah.

49:58Old Testament justice. Literally. Another book he has not read, but yes. How are you guys feeling about the de-escalation? Were you de-escalating? I interpret everything through the prism of Donald Trump. his personal reaction to seeing things on cable TV that he does not like. To the extent there are changes, it is to discourage that from happening again. Hopefully, it creates improvements on the margins for communities affected, but I have no hope for the underlying policy as long as Trump and Stephen Miller run in the show, unfortunately. Yeah, we have, Holman said, there will be a reduction in forces.

50:32There's an objective way to know if they are pulling back and that's getting some of these people out of Minneapolis. and regardless, like I do think whatever they were planning to do after Minneapolis, I have to think that what has happened there in the Twin Cities has changed what was going to happen next, right? Because - I mean, they did cancel Maine. They canceled Maine, right? They need that Senate seat even though they all hate Susan Collins. And so Susan Collins got that word from Noam that they were gonna pull out of, which they called, by the way, she was called catch of the day. Yeah.

51:01Disgusting. But whether there were rumors about them going to Philly and other places, we don't know. but it does seem like it has at least whatever Trump says in the moment as Tommy said they are at least aware that they need to change the images on screen Also, Kristi Noem just announced body cams everyone's going to get body cams They're trying to get ahead of this now that they've negotiated an extra two weeks over DHS funding and one of the demands was body cams On the body cams thing, I'm like, great, fine But we have a lot of these, we have a lot of this violence, killing and all kinds of other lawlessness by ICE on video.

51:43And it doesn't seem to be working all that well since we barely got an investigation into Alex Preddy's death. And the federal government has refused to open an investigation into Renee Good's death. So not great. But yeah, I mean, I think that I think to me, this is like keep up the pressure. Yeah. because they are not going to do any of this on their own. When you do pressure them and you do make a big deal out of this, you do start getting some improvements on the margins and you can't let up because if you let up, they will just go right back to doing what they do. And all the pressure in the world is still not gonna solve the problem, but at least it's going to make some improvements.

52:25Yeah, I also would say that body cams are also on when, would be on in places where people no longer have their phones, right? There was a report out of the Twin Cities about somebody that was brought to a hospital. He had terrible injuries to his face and injuries to his brain, like multiple fractures. And the federal agents claimed that he had run into a wall. all the nurses and health providers like denied that, didn't think that, or at least felt that seemed not credible, including someone else, they had not kept their story straight. And so we just have no idea what's going on behind closed doors, a lot of reports about what's happening in these detention facilities that are awful.

53:12And so, you know, body cams. Well, on the body cams, you need like mandatory activation of the body cameras. You need some sort of like clear rules around retention of the footage and access to it so like there's a lot of ways to kind of just slap a body cam on someone for it to mean nothing i think that the results are mixed regardless but at least there's transparency hopefully if done right well to your point like the no amount of reform no no no protections will uh work if lawn if the federal agents know that their bosses will protect them even when they break the law which is why you have them lying and you can't trust what's coming out of ICE.

53:50You can't trust Nome. So yeah, like the main problem is, well, one major problem, regardless of what we get through law, is the fact that their leadership will defend these people, even if they commit terrible crimes against people. One piece of good news out of Minnesota is that five-year-old Liam Conejo-Ramos and his father Adrian are back home with their mother and brother after a federal judge ordered them to be immediately released from a Texas detention facility in a scathing ruling that accused the government of cruelty, lawlessness, and traumatizing children. Texas Congressman Joaquin Castro, who had visited Liam and Adrian last week, personally accompanied them home.

54:25Unfortunately, Liam's case is in no way isolated. The New York Times reports over the weekend that at least 3 ,800 children under 18, including 20 infants, were arrested and detained by federal agents last year. Since March of last year, more than 1 ,700 children have been stuck in detention centers. What did you guys make of the judge's ruling and whether all of this might help other children who are being detained under just horrific conditions right now. I mean, I think all of us felt like this is one of the most sickening stories you've seen in a while. Locals say ICE tried to use this kid as a bait.

55:00DHS was like attacking his father repeatedly. These are pending asylum claim. It sounds like these people are trying to come to the country the right way. Like Liam is out, thank God, because of a massive outcry and because of attention to his case. Like shout out to Congressman Castro. That's incredible what he did, like exactly how you should be using your power in this moment to draw attention to issues and also like get change at the margins. But we can't replicate that in all these cases. And, you know, there's a horror stories of people in detention of ICE or CBP detention in places all across the country.

55:29It's so fucked up that like they were picked up in Minnesota. They take them to Texas. Then they just, there's been releasing people in Texas who have no connections there. Like how the hell are you supposed to get back home? You're just a migrant. You have no money. You have no connections. You don't know anyone there. Maybe You don't have your phone. So I don't know. Like, I'm glad to see this little kid is out. God knows what trauma, you know, will stick with him for life. I mean, you know, when Congressman Castro visited last week, his report after visiting to everyone was that Liam was depressed.

56:00He was sleeping the whole time he was there. He was sick. And now we find out that the Dilley Immigration Center in Texas, where Liam was being held, there's now a measles outbreak there. um so it's real hhs and dhs really working together to uh fuck up the country on this one yeah when trump did family separation like they never successfully reunited with hundreds of lots of kids uh with their families like a lot of the stories we're hearing are from citizens whose spouses are non-citizens and they can they're safely in the country they can call lawyers they can get help but there are people that have no connections once they're picked up and they They are just in the system, silent.

56:39We have no idea what's going on with them. And we know that they're making mistakes, that they're losing track of people, that they're not able to keep the records of it. I mean, they're standing up a mass deportation program as quickly as they can with a bunch of incompetent doofs on the ones and twos. So it's just an absolutely kind of, it's a mix of kind of cruelty and like the malevolence of it combined with just a kind of gross incompetence across the board, knowing that as long as the Republicans are in power, they will never face accountability for it. I don't know if you guys caught the Star Tribune story about the conditions inside the federal detention center in Minneapolis.

57:10I think it's Whipple. I think you guys visited, right? But there are reports of one meal a day, overflowing toilets, denial of medical care, cells so crowded that people had to take turns lying down because it wasn't ever for everyone to sleep. And, you know, the Trump administration continues to try to ban lawmakers from surprise visits to detention centers. A judge once again just blocked that policy. Judges keep saying no. The law says that they can go whenever they want. if they're members of Congress and the Trump administration just pretends it's not the law. Because for what we were saying earlier, right?

57:42Like there's no cameras inside there, right? No one's filming with their phones. There's no body cam. So we don't know what's happening in the detention centers. They're also buying up new warehouses all across the country because they want to like build more of these detention centers. They're treating people like absolute fucking dog shit in there. I mean, I think 32 people died in ICE custody last year, 17 in Customs and Border Patrol custody and in January alone of this year. six people have already died. There was that other case where the administration was claiming it was a suicide, but the evidence suggested it might not be a suicide.

58:12And the coroner, right? The autopsy. Autopsy, yeah, that it wasn't a suicide. So like, we're just, we're not getting the truth out of these places. They want the notice because, you know, it's like a Jesus has come and look busy situation. Like they want to have a chance to be ready for any inspections. And I just wonder if, like to people that would defend the administration on this, what if Cheesecake Factory announced that they'd only allow health inspections with a week notice? Do you think that you would want to go eat there? No. And corporations are making a lot of money. I mean, the Financial Times reported that companies, including Palantir and Deloitte, have collectively made more than$22 billion in contracts at the heart of the ice crackdown.

58:48So I think I think, like you said, Castro going like more, more Democrats should visit these detention centers. I think that's a good it is a good use of your power right now. So we haven't had a chance to talk about Trump's DOJ arresting Don Lemon on Friday, along with another independent journalist named Georgia Fort and several activists, all of whom were charged in connection with the January 18th anti-ice protest at a Minnesota church. You'll remember that both a magistrate judge and a federal judge refused to sign off on the government's initial attempt to get an arrest warrant for Lemon and his producer with a federal judge ruling, quote, there is no evidence that those two engaged in any criminal behavior or conspired to do so.

59:26But here we are. How big of a deal is this? When the Department of Justice is arresting people for doing journalism, using a kind of specious application of a law, because the attorney general is a tool of the president. And regardless of whether the case is upheld, just trying to get a good news cycle to stay in his good graces. Like we are in such a dangerous place. Pam Bondi is just such an empty vessel. What a complete like moral evacuous, just an empty, empty shell of a human being. And so you just look at what Pam Bondi's willing to do and like, I just don't think there's a bottom. I think she's worried about public embarrassment.

1:00:09I think she's worried about what Trump thinks. I think she's worried about bad headlines, but she has no ethical compunctions. Like nothing will stop her from doing something like this. They're just like her friend and colleague, Kristi Noem. Yeah, Cash Patel. Pete Hexeth and - All the Stephen Miller and all that. That's why you pick a bunch of middling incompetent fucking mediocrities to run your agencies. I think it's a huge deal. Like, John Lemon might get out. He, a judge, might toss this case. It's an obvious First Amendment violation. But the process is the punishment. It's scary. It's expensive.

1:00:38It's intimidating. And it's not happening in a vacuum. The Fed's raided a Washington Post reporter's house recently. They took our devices. The Pentagon is forcing its press corps to basically try to get them to sign rules that said they'd run stories by them before reporting. He's suing half the press corps. He's intimidating people to make better coverage. I mean, now the TikTok US operations are owned by a bunch of Trump lackeys. Like the state of the free press in this country is going in a bad direction. The indictment is ridiculous too, because it's like, you know, basically what they have to prove, because they're charging the FACE Act, which says that you, it was originally for abortion clinics, for processing outside abortion clinics, but it's also for churches as well, right?

1:01:18Like you can't, And it says, it makes it a crime to use force threats or physical obstruction to intentionally interfere with anyone seeking to exercise their right of religious freedom at a house of worship or to intentionally damage the property. Right. And so it's not trespassing. Right. Like you have a trespassing case. If you say, OK, this is a private church. People came into the church. We told them to leave. They wouldn't leave trespassing. That's not what they're charging here. They're charging this the face act. Right. And so to make that stick, you have to you can't say that Don Lemon just came into the church with the protesters.

1:01:47you have to say that Don Lemon was threatening and obstructing and all this kind of stuff. And so they have these, the indictment reads like, and then he just starts like peppering the pastor with questions, threateningly with the questions. He'd be like menacingly puts his hand out. And the right, you know, I saw a fucking Scott Jennings tweeted this, but he was like, oh, so Democrats position now is that if you are holding your phone up and filming something that you can break any law, because then you just call yourself a journalist. It's like, no. Oh, come on, man. That is so stupid. They were like, he shouldn't have just, he shouldn't have charged into the church.

1:02:19And it's like, again, there's like a, there's lesser charges and there's lesser things to do to someone who walk into a church who is clearly interviewing the pastor, the other people, everyone else. Just covering the protest. And to say that like he was physically obstructing and threatening them. It's such a ridiculous defense because if Pam Bondi had not charged on them with this, it wouldn't be like he was on the outside being like, Pam Bondi should charge him with this. It would never have occurred to anyone a million years. Well, and the other thing is how many. Ridiculous. How many departments of justice, right, when a magistrate judge refused to issue the criminal warrant and then it gets kicked up to a federal judge?

1:02:52First of all, what Department of Justice would say, oh, the magistrate judge said no criminal, no arrest warrant. We really want to get this person. So we're going to go up and we're going to appeal it. So then they appeal it to a federal judge and the federal judge is like, no, there's no evidence for this whatsoever. And then the Department of Justice is like, fuck that federal judge. We're going to a grand jury where we know we can get an indictment much easier because the defense doesn't have to offer any kind of evidence whatsoever. You're not there for it. There's no judge there at all. So we'll go that route.

1:03:19Like that is the authoritarian nature of what they're doing. Right. Like continuing to look for ways to arrest Don Lemon even after multiple judges and federal prosecutors have quit over this, too. There's another eight federal prosecutors, by the way, who just broke before we recorded, who are in the Minnesota office who are quitting as well. It's the core distinction. You find a crime and you look for the person who perpetrated it. You don't find a person and then look for the crime that they committed. That is what they do. That is Pam Bonney's main role. I think it might have something to do with why the DOJ is having to recruit on Twitter now.

1:03:52Because every time they try to do one of these things, a bunch of people quit. And they're trying to figure out how to replace career and seasoned professional prosecutors with fucking bozo goons from the fucking law internet. Blue check who's ever posted Pepe the Frog. Come join the Department of Justice. We need you. And by the way, explicitly saying if you support President Trump and our crime agenda, anti-crime agenda. Well, really, it is a crime agenda. I had it right the first time. But yeah, like just absolutely going. Not to be outdone by Pam Bondi. Tulsi Gabbard is also out there trying to score points with Trump in the MAGA media world.

1:04:24Last week, Dan and I talked about the FBI raid on the Fulton County Elections Office in Georgia, where a photo showed Tulsi talking on the phone in a baseball cap. It's real ominous. Yeah. Real ominous seeing the head of the head of national intelligence. It's like you're trying to be kind of, you're trying to hide, but you're not doing a very good job of it. Spy chief, like baseball had to stand in the picture. It's not that hard. So now we know the New York Times reports on Monday that the day after the raid, Tulsi facilitated a call between some of those same FBI agents and Donald Trump himself.

1:04:55They got a direct line right to the president. The call was short, according to a U.S. official who, quote, compared the conversation to a pep rally or a coach giving an encouraging halftime speech to his players isn't that wonderful um this is not the it's not the only gabbard story in the news though uh the wall street journal reported on monday that a u.s intelligence official has filed a whistleblower complaint alleging wrongdoing on gabbard's part that is supposedly so highly classified that the complaint is kept locked in a safe and it allegedly implicates another federal agency as well uh who would like to take a stab at what the hell tulsi gabbard has been up to sure i'd love to i So I think the key to understanding what Tulsi is doing up to in both these cases is if you think back to last year, March of 2025, Tulsi testifies for Congress and she says Iran has not decided to get a nuclear weapon.

1:05:43A few months later, Trump decides he wants to bomb anyway. He's asked about her comments and he says, I don't care what she thinks. A couple of days later, she revises her views so that the intelligence case matches Donald Trump's opinion. It's best practices in the world. world. Fast forward to January 1st, 2026, first day of this year, Tulsi posts a photo of herself on the beach in Hawaii doing yoga. And then two days later, the United States invades Venezuela. She was completely cut out of the planning of that operation. I think she's seen that she is like on the outs with Trump, doesn't want to get fired.

1:06:13Not much of a warrior pose. Yeah. She's hemorrhaged. When you think about it. She's hemorrhaged her policy principle. She was an anti-regime change person, right? That was her big thing. She served in Iraq, didn't want regime change wars, hence supporting Trump. Fine with those now. So now she's like, whatever. I do think there's a deep state. I'm fine being like the fraud czar. But the IG report thing is crazy. I think like my total speculation guess is that there is some intelligence that implicates someone close to Trump. Like a hypothetical one is you could imagine a whistleblower talking about Jared Kushner who doesn't have a clearance, not part of the government getting access to intelligence information or sharing intelligence information with foreign officials or Steve Whitcoff for flying around the world and negotiating with Vladimir Putin on WhatsApp or whatever the hell he's doing.

1:07:00And like the reason it could be so sensitive is maybe we learned about this through collection on the other countries. And it's so sensitive. I'm making all this up. Like, this is just purely hypothetical, but it's really weird. It's really weird. And, uh, she has an obligation when there is a whistleblower complaint like this to brief it to Congress. And I think two weeks after receiving it, and they haven't done that. And that's a huge breach. Yeah. It's not an avocado. It's not like they're waiting for it to ripen. It's not like the information in that safe is getting less inconvenient for them.

1:07:31And then what's strange in the story is you see that they're kind of trying to figure out a way around sharing some of it. They were flirting with talking about executive privilege and other ways of getting out of sharing all of it with Congress. But the sort of the lamentation, like we don't know what to do with this thing. Follow the law. Right. Show it to Congress. You don't have a choice. Also, just not for nothing, but the president of the United States talking through the intelligence director directly to the FBI agents who participated in a raid on a county elections office in which the president himself has been implicated in a crime way back a couple seasons ago.

1:08:13Right. That he's now trying to cover up or do whatever. Imagine Avril Haines, Joe Biden's DNI, being at the Mar-a-Lago raid, tossing her phone on speaker and Joey gives an attaboy to the troops there, you know, raiding Melania's underwear drawer or wherever the fuck. Not even going through Cash Patel. They're just going right over the whole chain of command in the FBI. Just the agents on the ground. Trump wants to, because he's like, it's like a coach during halftime. Yeah, I think it's wishful thinking. Yeah, it's wishful thinking to think this is part of a cover up. I think there's sort of a drumming up of something new and fake.

1:08:45This is about this. I think this is about future election theft, not past election theft. Well, it's both because for him, he wants to. We got to set the record straight about 2020 and we got to make some arrests. So then we go. Then we can go to the future. Yeah, you're right. He said something today to Dan Bongino, who was until recently the deputy director of the FBI, about federalizing elections in 15 of the crooked states or something like that. So yeah, he's got it on the mind. Yeah, he's been on that beat. He's been on that beat. So yeah. They will take whatever they found. They will use it to claim that this is the reason.

1:09:17There's some pretext for some takeover. He said we should take over the voting in at least 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting because we have states that are so crooked. Well, yeah. The worse the polling gets, I think the more animated this project will become. They have good reason to worry because on Saturday, Democrats flipped a Trump plus 17 state Senate seat in Texas. winning it by roughly 14 points. That is a 31-point swing. The Democratic candidate, Taylor Remmitt, a union president and Air Force veteran, defeated the Trump-backed candidate, Lee Wamsgans. I know, I saw - Any relation?

1:09:50Tom Wamsgans. I saw the name Wamsgans. I was like, how is that even possible? That was a made-up comedy name. Yeah. The Dutch? The Dutch name? Yeah, it was a runoff for the 9th District around Fort Worth. Again, this is a state Senate district, but about a million people in that district, so big district. The day before and the day of the election, Trump had posted to Truth Social in support of Wamsgans, giving her his cherished endorsement and calling her phenomenal and a, quote, true MAGA warrior. But here's how Trump reacted to her loss on Sunday. A Democrat won your special election in an area that you had won by 17 points.

1:10:25What is your reaction to that? I don't know. I didn't hear about it. Somebody ran where? In Texas. Special election for legislative. The ninth state Senate seat. I'm not involved in that. That's a local Texas race. You mean I won by 17 and this person lost? Things like that happen. It's true. They do happen. Things do happen. It might happen a lot more. What do you guys think about the, a lot of hype around this? Overhyped? Underhyped? What do you think? I think, well, I saw people making a Senate map where if we see, if we have a swing. Oh God, did they? Yeah, a Senate map where if there's a swing of 31 points or roughly 31 points, it would mean Democrats would be able to get to 59 or more 50 to 60 Senate seats.

1:11:05So, I mean - Straightforward from here. Fun to think about. Look, whatever the implications of a specific special election at a moment of just absolute kind of Trump doldrums and sort of dissatisfaction in the country. And like the question I had about it was though, like, is there really something happening with, like between Alex Preddy, the anti-Second Amendment stuff, the turn against ICE, the lack of focus on affordability, the endless headlines about Trump taking over the Kennedy Center and building arches. Like, is there something deeper happening? Like, is there an actual sort of weakness in his, not base of support, but whatever, the two columns over?

1:11:45Like, is that real and could it be lasting? Like, is this a low watermark or is it the beginning of like a real unraveling? I just don't think we know. Yeah. I was thrilled to see Tom Wombskans in Death by Lightning, which I watched one episode of. Isn't it great? It's about the president getting killed? Quite good, yeah. Garfield. Garfield. Was the doctors digging around in there? The doctors dug around in there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I talked to Bobby Polito about this race in the interview today. First of all, everyone check it out. He's really cool. He was in town to go to the Grammys because he was Grammy nominated.

1:12:15That's where the traffic is. Careful, that's where they get you. Don Lemon. Ask Don Lemon about that. Very interesting guy. Not your traditional congressional candidate. But I was talking to him about his district and the gerrymander that's happened in Texas and whether he thinks that Republicans may have over over torqued it. And he feels pretty optimistic that they have over assumed their ongoing support with Latino voters in particular. And, you know, this state Senate seat is one little indication of that. But there might be a broader set of numbers coming our way. At least three of the five seats that they squeezed out of there in their gerrymander, I think, could be at risk now.

1:12:54Listen, I wanted to say that they've over gerrymandered. Then I was told that that was wishful thinking. And now it's back to not being just wishful thinking. Who's your strama? Which mention are you going on? There was a consensus. Are you on a Peter Twinkle? Was it NIMBY Twitter? This is weeks ago. Not NIMBY Twitter. Don't get me started on NIMBY Twitter. Well, it's unbelievable what's happening with NIMBY Twitter here in Los Angeles. But the point I was making is only that I think are we back into saying that they may have over-gerrymandered? That it's back to being possible. Because it was seen as Pollyannish for a while.

1:13:25That's all I'm saying. It was. You were so right so early. I didn't know. I'm not saying I knew. To your point about something deeper happening. So this was a runoff this election. The first election was in November. So the same district and all the Republican candidates combined versus the Democratic candidates combined. It was GOP plus five. So that was that was good enough for Democrats. That was plus five in a Trump 17 plus 17 district. And this was then 14 points. So there was another like 20 point swing just between November and what is it? February? And the Republican had way more money.

1:14:04Way outspent. And so now turnout was low, right? Turnout was about probably a third. Seven people. So it's about 100 ,000 voters. It's about a third of what you'll get. Maybe people in Texas who know this kind of stuff estimate for the for the midterms, about a third of what you'll get. and you know lower for a special but it wasn't low and then uh like highly concentrated democrat it was because about 50 plus of the voters were republican primary voters so that means that the democrat won by a lot of republicans or a lot of independents especially and some republicans uh deciding to change their votes which is huge well luckily today in the texas senate race everything seems copacetic everyone involved in that primary no one is posting videos I think it's important to take random TikToks and then decide that they're gospel for those who don't know what we're talking about there seems to be some sort of beef between James Tallarico the former candidate in the race I don't know and Colin Allred Colin who we really like he's been on the show cool guy I don't know what's happening down there I wish they would just pick up the phone talk on the phone yeah one thing we should do is win the Texas Senate race and so that's just that's just something everyone should be thinking about I'd love to or at least try try right we should not maybe not throw the race before it happens.

1:15:22That's one thing that we should think about. I don't know. I don't know. It's just a thought. We do need it. We do need it. We do. I'd really like to win that one. Oh my God. We need Texas. We need to get those electoral votes someday too. One day, one day those Texas electoral votes are going to come along. Yeah. Lucy with a football that's safe. And if they don't, there won't be a Democratic president. Hey, hey, hey. There won't be even either way. So you're saying there's a down. Don't blame Texas. Speaking of Democratic presidents, as we were recording, Bill and Hillary Clinton agreed to testify in the House Oversight Committee's investigation into Jeffrey Epstein.

1:15:54I heard they rejected them. Now they don't want them? Yeah, I heard they still want to go forward with contempt. It's like, hey, guys, can you see you belong together? Also, by the way, James Comer, listen, I know it sounds like I'm a partisan Democrat, and I am, but how would some fucking inherent contempt feel right now, huh? Put a little pep in your step, huh, James Comer? I'm sure that's where they were headed. A couple sergeant arms flying. I'm sure maybe that's why they're rejecting it. Honestly, I don't know. They're going to arrest them no matter what. They're going to show up at the hearing at the scheduled time in the scheduled room, and they're still going to arrest them.

1:16:26I don't like the cut of your jib. Arrest them. And then Trump's going to do a conference call with the whole room. Yeah, and Tulsi's going to be there. Anyway, when we come back, we will have Tommy's interview with congressional candidate Bobby Pulido.

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1:18:46He's a Latin Grammy winner and a Tejano music icon currently running for Congress in Texas's 15th district. Welcome to Pod Save America, Bobby Pulido. Great to see you. Thank you. In person. thank yes in person yes we were most people don't know what the hano is so if you're white yeah or black and not hispanic you're like what is that well uh yeah it's kind of like selena so i tell everybody it's what selena did i want to hear a lot more about the music piece of this because you're you're in town because you went to the grammys last night in person in los angeles right correct i was nominated how to go i lost i'm sorry it happens is that okay is it just is it a thrill to be nominated i've lost more than i've won and i think most have i mean you saw most of these people you see you see like lady gaga going against justin bieber and other titans only one wins right right and so so uh it's it's a very hard award to win do the competitive juices flow when you when you're up there you know what i won two latin grammys latin grammys which is a not the American Grammy.

1:19:51And it's really more pressure when they expect you to win than when you're not expecting to win. Right, right. Because if you're not expected to win - Like, who cares? Who cares? I wasn't supposed to win anyway, right? Right, yeah. But if you're supposed to win and you don't - Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Yeah, there's no expectations. Like, you don't write a speech. You have a couple too many drinks. Then you have a good time when you get up there and kind of say your piece. See, okay. It's work. We were chatting on the way in. Yeah. You were telling me that no matter what the event is, it's work.

1:20:21But like, okay. So I didn't watch last night because I was dealing with a three-year-old and a one-year-old. I'm like a sporadic award show watcher. The ones where it's lots of long speeches. Yeah. That seems very boring to me. But the Grammys, it's like a really cool, interesting concert every time. It was a good show. I liked it. I'm an old school guy. So I like the older artists. I don't really know the younger artists, right? So I really like see Lady Gaga. I thought she was great. You know, Bruno Mars. I thought that was great. You know, Post Malone singing with Slash. And like, that's cool.

1:21:01That is cool. Yeah, that's cool. They do a good job like mixing, matching. Yeah, yeah. I hate that feeling though, when all of a sudden you don't know what the kids are listening to. I feel like my brain, the older I get, is kind of like hardening. It's like getting new music in there until a stick. I guess if you see someone in concert, that's when you create an experience. That's true. I think it creates that memory, that affinity. But you know there's so much talent, man. They're all talented. There's no slouches there. Everybody's good. Yeah, and they work their asses off. That also too. Yeah, a lot of bloody fingertips on the guitar over years.

1:21:33Yeah, lots of hours of practice and stuff. But people don't realize how hard it is to walk and to be in an award ceremony with your wife. Why is that? Because she's got to wear high heels because that's what they say that looks good. But she's got to walk like 10 ,000 miles, right, that day. And she's complaining. She's in pain. I would be. I mean, it's work. Do you wear boots? I wore boots and a hat and all leather. Okay. Like the S &M version of a cowboy. Which that is exactly what we need, I think, to win a congressional seat in Texas. All right. Let's talk some politics. So a Democrat just won a major special election victory in Texas over the weekend.

1:22:13They flipped a Texas Senate district that Trump won by 17 points in 2024. And I think this was against like a much better funded opponent, right, on the Republican side. Yes, correct. What do you think happened in like, is it irresponsible to read tea leaves and try to divine what this says about 2026? I think a little bit of both. Okay. There is, it's good news. Yeah. It really is. Because I mean, Trump won my district by 17.9 points. Oh, interesting. Wow. Right. So don't think for a minute, I wasn't looking at this and going like, okay, I want to see how this goes. You're like, here's that 0.9.

1:22:46I did not expect him to win by 14 points. I thought he may eke it out. This is a big deal. And then if you look in the Hispanic districts, he overperformed Kamala by 40 to 50 points. What? 40 to 50? Yes. Wow. Yes. So in the Fort Worth areas. So this is, it was very surprising. I was very shocked and very encouraged. And I'm not surprised to be honest with you from what I'm seeing on the ground, even where I am. Well, so let's talk about that. So you're running for the 15th district. For those who don't have a map ready in their brain, it's like it's as far south as you can get in Texas, right?

1:23:32Right on the border. And then it goes, shoots up and then kind of east of San Antonio. Is that the new map? That's correct. I gerrymandered it. Yeah, we'll talk about that. So Wikipedia tells me the district is 80 % Latino. Is that right? Yep. Okay, thank you, Wikipedia. You got parts of the Rio Grande Valley where Democrats got crushed in 24, right? No. No, you're touching. There's the, yeah, there's a caveat. Okay. Tell me the caveat. Well, they, they gerrymandered it to make it seem like South Texas was red, but in our, our elected representative right now, Monica de la Cruz has never won the Valley.

1:24:06Okay. She's never won South Texas. Um, even with the Trump wave, she lost. Oh, right. Okay. Right. So, so where she did is she picks up the margins up in the Northern and just blows it out like 80, 20. And that gave her the win. Okay. Well, so, But just on the South Texas piece, there was that big swing, right? There was. To Trump. There was a huge swing. Why do you think that was? What happened? I think the candidate didn't resonate with him. And I think, I hate to play into our own stereotypes as Hispanics, but I think since I'm a Hispanic, I'm Latino, I can do it. Say whatever you want. If there's a stereotype that fits us, it's we're very aspirational people, right?

1:24:46The reason why a lot of Latinos come to the United States is for a chance to work and actually make it. I think if you think most about Hispanics, they're hardworking, very family-oriented. And they come normally from countries that if you work really hard, you get nowhere. Nobody wants to come over here and work really hard and get nowhere. And that's where we are right now. So a lot of people in the Hispanic community were saying, like, we voted for Trump because we thought I could work hard and actually do something. so it's economic is a big thing and then you tack on this the cruelty that's going on right now the fear with the raids and things like that that is also affecting the economy then there's a huge huge backlash against it yeah i think you're making an important point too which is like i think for someone who's a political obsessive like me i think of trump the candidate but a lot of people still think of the businessman right that's right reality show like the billionaire The billionaire.

1:25:41You want to be rich, right? Want to be rich. Give me some of that. Yeah. When you're doing town halls, like what are you hearing about? And then secondarily, like what's the conversation about border security and immigration policy like today as compared to maybe a year ago? I think it depends. I've already visited all 11 counties. I'm not even in my primary yet. You're working. You're out there. I've been busting my butt, man. And I, I, my wife is the best person in the world because when you retail campaign, it's the most time consuming type of campaigning. You're actually grassroots on the ground meeting voters.

1:26:18That's what we're doing, taking their questions. And, and look, it depends because in the Rio Grande Valley, immigration is a big deal because we're in a community where 35 or 40 % of the people speak Spanish. and when you see that the administration is racial profiling also based on language, that's a problem. Yeah. In a community with a lot of people that speak Spanish and, you know, so it affects our businesses. We get a lot of, we've always historically depended a lot of tourism for Mexico and right now tourists don't feel welcome. And so they're not coming and spending their money like they should.

1:26:55You know, especially the dollar keeps declining, it's bad. The pesos should be really good. they should be coming in droves. Right. And so the economy is not doing well. And there's going to be a big backlash about it. Well, the good news is we also pissed off the Canadians. So they're also not visiting. Not just a kid. We pissed off every ally we've ever had. We're working on pissing off most of NATO. Right, the European Union. Not a lot of flights from Greenland these days, I'm guessing. No, I don't think so. Yeah. Well, I do want to ask you about the economics of this ICE crackdown. because I mean, you know, I'm reading articles about kids who haven't gone to school in a month.

1:27:31Correct. That's right. Families who can't go to a job site. I know someone here in LA whose husband was picked up and detained for hours when he was trying to work a construction job. That's right. And then, you know, he just like didn't have his papers on him. But then he didn't go to work that day, right? And it flipped out everyone around him. That's right. So it's like, what are you seeing in terms of the economic impact? Oh, that's a huge deal. I mean, look, the builder community right now is struggling big time. Think about it like this, right? We talked about the aspirational nature, who we are.

1:28:01We're always trying to work. So a lot of these construction owners of these construction companies, this is the first generation where they're actually making money. Because before them, they were busy trying to do the work. Right, right. Or their parents were, and they wanted them to now get out of that. And so now when they're starting to get there, they don't have a workforce. Yeah. What do you do about that? I mean, that's the problem. Right. And they get really angry because people say, just hire American labor. It's like, I'm putting ads out. Nobody wants to work those jobs or they don't know how to work those jobs.

1:28:35Right. So what do you do? Once business slows and construction slows, construction is houses get more expensive. Right. And then realtors get mad because they don't have enough things to sell. And so it's just a domino effect business-wise, which historically the Chamber of Commerce vote tends to lean Republican. And right now they're very angry about this because it hasn't. And us as Democrats, Tommy, we haven't been really good salesmen of ourselves on economics. When you go just look at our economic history, Democrats have always been better on the economy. Historically, I mean, we've always been better.

1:29:15And we just don't sell ourselves that way. And people think Republicans, oh, successful businessman, and they're better for the economy. And that's just not true. Yeah. I wonder whether it is. It's just sort of a cut taxes equals good business in people's minds. I'm wondering where this disconnect comes from. You know what? That equals deficits. Yeah. That's why we're in debt. Right, right. Yeah. Our kids' kids will be paying out. That's exactly right. And it's because of Republicans, to be honest with you. Well, look, I agree with you on the Joe Biden. And he handled inflation, I think, better than a lot of countries did, but it wasn't good enough for people.

1:29:48Correct. Correct. Correct. Well, we printed a lot of money. Yeah. Yeah. We printed a lot of money. But also, you know, I think immigration was also a big driver of votes against Biden. Absolutely. And, you know, look, I'm not a I'm not a fan of Governor Abbott, as you would might. Me neither. Texas governor. We agree. He seems like not the nicest guy. But I think politically speaking, he did have an enormous impact on the national debate about immigration through this sort of sustained busing of individuals. And so, like early on, I think people probably remember Ron DeSantis flies a bunch of people to Martha's Vineyard.

1:30:19It was so obviously a stunt and so obviously shitty that there was a backlash. But the busing was just relentless. And again, like treating someone like a political prop or pawn, I think, is like morally wrong. Agreed. But there's another piece of this that's like, well, OK, why do just border communities need to shoulder the economic and kind of social burden of having a bunch of people in their communities? I'm just wondering if you could like talk about how people you knew felt at the end of the Biden days. And that conversation has changed. I think what it was is is there was a disappointment that for three years he didn't go there and didn't address the problem.

1:31:02in year four um actually james langford had a a deal negotiated right that trump eventually killed because he wanted to win right and so we didn't really do a good enough job educating people on on how they themselves also had a hand in this but but it took too long so you know you got understand in south texas there's a lot of border patrol agents and they vote and so do their families. And they felt, I mean, I have friends and family in border patrol and they felt that they had been, they didn't sign up for necessarily for processing people because that's what it was becoming with the asylum seekers.

1:31:43And they're like, I signed up to patrol the border, not to be processing people, right? Because that's all they were doing was just processing. And then the people would fly to wherever they wanted to fly. And that created a lot of resentment. It really did and and and i don't want to ever sound like inhumane about that because that's people's spirit they're always want to to look for a better life that's that's natural um that's a part of what our ancestors would have done for us so but it took four years for him to sign an executive order which in year four that immigration slowed down considerably because of he addressed it which just took too long yeah it's like way too long no but i think you're making an important point which is like i think it's important to to hear from people like you who like live in these communities and no friends and just understand how complicated things are right like yes you have a bunch of friends in border patrol i do they're good people they are they're not trying to harm anyone and also like look we're all horrified by what's happening with ice uh the the video of the murder of alex preddy by two terrible guys horrifying right horrifying and then pro publica just published their names.

1:32:51It seems like the two men are Latino and they end up killing a, a white protester, which I think is just the perfect example of like the scrambled racial politics of all of this. Right. Because these guys are like at a organization that is recruiting people with white nationalist imagery run by Stephen Miller, who is an out and out racist. And it's just like, nothing is what you'd expect. And I think we all need to get comfortable with the complexity, you know? I agree, Tommy, but I also don't feel like, I feel like we're putting a lot of emphasis on ICE and not emphasis on this administration, right?

1:33:30People, like right now, ICE is the boogeyman. Last night at the Grammys, everybody was out, ICE out and F ICE and it's, ICE has always existed, right? I mean, whatever you want to call it, we need a force to get rid of bad actors in our country that are criminals and bad people. That's that you need that. You can't not have that. But I think when we when we just make a focus about ICE, we take off the focus on this administration that's actually using them in that correct in that manner. Right. The political decisions driving. That's the problem. Right. It's when they tell them and they go berate them in the White House and say, get me 3000 people.

1:34:09right now you're forcing them to be overly aggressive to meet quota numbers yeah that's very different than saying how they campaigned we're going to go get out the bad people right that's not what they're doing that's absolutely right and and so so there those are two separate things where you say hey go get out the bad people nobody's going to tell you you can't do that but when you're deporting gardeners and grandmas right and then you go in and you and you're violating constitutional rights you know fourth amendment just like crazy this is this is not who we are we can't be that yeah and we have to call the administration out on it because it's easy they're going to just go well it's isis fault yeah that's the boogeyman no it's you yeah right it it's it's steven miller it's donald trump it's it's it's the people that are enabling them that who that's who has to be called out and we can't give them a pass so it doesn't sound like you're in the kind of abolish camp of the solution to this problem look it's been branded really poorly now i don't know it's a bad it's got you know you give love a bad name you give ice a bad name well they did um but but you got to have some type of of administrative arm to get rid of the bad people that i'm i'm for that i don't think anybody's going to disagree with that right because there are bad people in every walk of life.

1:35:32But the way they're doing it, I think that's where it's bad. And I'll tell you, look, last night was a room of people in the industry, right? And artists, we're emotional, man. We pour our heart out in the music, right? And so we are probably more emotional than most. But most Americans, especially, and I live, I live in a rural district. People aren't exactly that emotional. They're more, okay, let's reason with this. Let's find some common sense solutions to this. And I want to caution, you know, because I kind of, I come from both worlds. I live in a rural area and I'm in an industry that's very, very much emotional.

1:36:15And we kind of have a blend of it and say like, yeah, I don't think abolishing is the right word. I know that's the emotional response to it because of what we're seeing and it's tragic and I hate it. I hate it as much, believe me, with every fiber of my soul. But we have to be smart on how to point them out and let people know why we got here. And we got here because we were sold a bill of goods and we voted for the wrong person. Not we. I did not vote for that. What I'm saying is as a community. As a country, yeah. As a country. No, I agree with you. Look, obviously Trump and Stephen Miller are the drivers of this.

1:36:50I think where I kind of personally land is blaming ICE is almost too simplistic. Like CBP, obviously, has been a huge problem here. It needs reforms there. You need reforms of ICE. I also think the Department of Homeland Security is a complete and total fucking disaster. It is. We created it after 9-11 in this climate of fear. And we made, securitized all these functions that maybe would be better in the Department of Justice or other places. So there's a broader rethinking that needs to happen. But it's probably bigger than just ICE in my view. I agree. It is. I mean, you see the secretary of Homeland Defense.

1:37:23It looks like it's Halloween every time she comes out. She's got a different outfit. She loves. Cosplaying is different things. I just don't see, like, that's not, it's ridiculous. Yeah. It's not serious. It's not a great run organization. Let me ask you about Texas doing this mid-decade redistricting. The conversation in Washington is often like, how does this impact the balance of power, right? The number of seats are Democrats, Republicans. Like it's how do human beings in Texas feel about having this forced on them? Do they know? Do they care? A lot of people don't even know. It's, it's, it's amazing how many people have no idea.

1:37:58I still, to this day, ask people, people in the real Grand Valley tell me, hey, am I in your district now? They know there was a change, but they didn't really know. Like a lot of people didn't know what was going on. I sure as hell did. Yeah. When, when I was keeping an eye on it, when they were doing this and, and, and I'll tell you, Tommy, like for my perspective, I looked at this and went, they're assuming they're going to win those five seats. And they're also assuming that they're going to keep everything that they have. And from my perspective, I'm like, no, you're not. Not if I have something to say about it.

1:38:31You think this is a mistake? There's like the dummy mander, right? Oh, absolutely. Oh, yeah. Look, I was a political science major in college. And so So the nerd in me comes out sometimes, right? I try to keep it suppressed. You're in the right place, man. I try to keep it suppressed, right? But you look at it and you say, okay, everybody went on 2024 Trump numbers, which is what they did. But we went and researched 2022 numbers, which is a Biden midterm, which favors Republicans in the opposite party is in power. And there is a candidate named Rochelle Garza from Brownsville, Texas that ran against Ken Paxton for attorney general.

1:39:11she lost my district by less than one point that's not that red no no that's a little red yeah right now i looked at that and i went oh so on one hand i was really mad at what they were doing but if i could be honest like from my personal perspective i went well i don't hate it because well because 65 of the district now is new to her, to the incumbent. So she doesn't have the name ID in that district, if that makes any sense. No, it makes total sense. So like I'm a South Texas musician, right? Our music is very cultural to our people. You know, in our quinceaneras and barbecues, my music and music of my father too has been historically...

1:40:00We've been there forever. So we've toured those areas. We have friends. We have friends, right? We know the people. And when I saw this and I went, oh, you're giving me B-Ville, Texas, a Tejano town? Well, they're looking at it going, well, they voted 75 % Republican. And I'm going, yeah, but there are people. Yeah, they see numbers. You see human beings. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. Okay. So your staff, how often are they trying to get you to sing at events? play music how many events turn into concerts man you know what when we go do a ranch hall we sing them a couple of songs okay i go take their questions we feed them uh you got a guitar in hand what do we what do we no i i take a band okay the whole band not a whole band it's kind of like an acoustic set right it's an acoustic set so while they're eating food they're hearing our music yeah not my music but our type of music and then i go speak i take their questions i answer all their questions, which I might add, the person that we want to take down and defeat, Monica de la Cruz, has never done a town hall.

1:41:09She's never answered her constituents' questions ever. How do you do that? You hear that sometimes about members of Congress, and it's like, did she just move to D.C. and she never comes back? How is that possible? She goes and they hide her, and they protect her because they don't want her to expose herself. So they're trying to play her safe. They're hiding her. So what I'm saying is I'm going to be the opposite. I'm going to go everywhere. take some questions and take questions from you bring them on play some bangers yeah play some bangers we finished we we close with that and it went everybody's happy do you do covers ever just your stuff do my stuff that's fun god yeah i like sometimes we get to do live podcasts and it's really cool and we've gone out in front of big audiences and it's exciting and i love doing it and i get to be with my friends but every single time i walk out on the stage i think to myself god i wish i was doing something cooler for the next hour and a half like i had a real talent and i was playing music or i was funny i was doing a stand-up set no but you know what it's perspective is everything right it's i always took my approach to music it's work it's a job how so you mentioned your father was uh my father's a legend legendary musician it's like hank williams hank williams jr but yeah well so but not racist no i'm just kidding like but you know what i mean like the cultural thing hey look i get it i get there's a lot of legends in texas um you got some willie nelson uh thc drinks in the office right now so when you're growing up your father's being as big as he was in the business did that make you want to play music to you know what make you walk away no i was i was a texas boy stater in high school i went to boy state that that's like a whole government like i was a history buff i loved government i love politics and that's why i became a political science major i got an academic scholarship to go to saint mary's university in san antonio and so i did not want to be a singer that was not in the plans um my god so you're walking on that stage thinking god i wish i could do a podcast right now this is like grass is always greener that was my first love like i was but i was not like once i had success in music i recorded a song with my dad that's what did it right so i got two labels it really went really high and it hit and i had two labels in a bidding war i ended up negotiating my contract and renegotiating my father's contract in that same negotiation i got him a hundred percent raise hell yeah yeah and and so i ended up trying music i said dad i'm gonna try it out and see what happens and that ended up turned into a platinum record and then i've been at it 30 years that's incredible and so my music's kind of gone my life has gone full circle and I'm like you know what I'm tired of what I'm seeing right now I'm just a guy with an opinion I want to be somebody with my opinion matters and my I want to be a voice for my people and yes I would it would be a taking a huge pay cut from what I'm doing right now but it's worth it my my life has to mean more than just music in my opinion and and I haven't seen I've been really frustrated with the way things have been going with our political discourse.

1:44:14And I do think that I have a different perspective of where I come from. And I got nothing to lose. I really want to represent my people. That's exciting. Well, if folks want to help out, contribute, where they go. Yeah, they can go from Bobby Pulido for Texas. um my district is 11 counties and we're not a very we're very poor actually my district's very poor so we kind of have to go fundraise out of the district not my my i'm not gonna say poor i misspoke my district is broke and i say that because our spirit down there is we don't consider ourselves poor we consider ourselves broke because temporary because tomorrow we're gonna make it Yep.

1:44:59Yeah. Right. And so we're very aspirational, but we've been, we've been, she has like$2 million in her war chest and I have a primary. And so we need to fundraise aggressively, but I feel very, very confident that we're going to win and we're going to flip this district. I think it's exciting. I think it's inspiring when people come from non-traditional walks of life and run for office. Like why do we, not everyone needs to be a lawyer. You know what I mean? Like it's great when people from, from the entertainment industry run. who have a different kind of cultural connection. There's not many interchangers though.

1:45:31Have you seen this guy, Bobby Wine, running in Uganda? I have not. Check him out. He's like incredible, massive music star running against an absolute tyrant in the thug. But I'm talking about our country. I know. That's like not normal. No, it's not. It's like completely rare. Well, because I think people are turned off because people are worried that the minute you jump into politics, you're going to polarize half your audience and maybe they won't listen to you anymore and won't buy records. And it scares people. But I'm not that. Yeah. You don't seem polarizing. I'm not a polarizing guy, but I'll fight.

1:46:00Don't confuse the niceties for a fight. I haven't gotten to fighting for 20 years, so don't worry. It didn't end well for me. I had a giant swollen ear and it sucked. Yeah, I've had my fair share of bar fights. But I'm a Texas boy. I know, of course. You can expect that. But look, I'll fight for the people. And that's the bottom line. Our health care down there is a mess, man. she voted to cut Medicaid, Medicare, snap like all the things that our district really depends on she voted to cut and so you have to fight for what's right our healthcare system is in shambles I go get my healthcare in Mexico Really?

1:46:42Yes Cheaper, easier, why? Listen, musicians all the musician community we don't work for school districts or other things like that where you can pull it Right, right Health insurance is through the roof It got more expensive now with these ACA subsidies that expired. So we're on the border. But how many people that are not on the border are struggling right now? It's just ridiculous. I mean, we really have to get in there. And the biggest problem we're going to face is corruption because they have their claws in these politicians. Yes, they're good. And, you know, somebody has to go over there and just call them out for it.

1:47:21I love it. I love it. Well, the website again is bobbypolitofortexas.com. Great to meet you. Thank you for running. Thanks for coming in. And, you know, next Grammys, you're going to win one. And then, but also you're going to be elected official. So no new music, no Grammys. No new music. What if you get inspired one day? You're sitting in your office and you're like, you write like a diss track. Well, songwriting is therapy. It is. It is. Yes, it is. Well, thank you for coming. Thank you, Tommy. Appreciate it.

1:47:53That's our show for today. Thanks to Bobby Polito for coming on. Also, quick reminder, some tickets left, not many, but some tickets left for our upcoming shows in New Zealand and Australia. Wow. Next week, guys. Next week, we're going to be in Australia and New Zealand. We're in Auckland on February 11th, Melbourne on February 13th, Brisbane on February 14th, and Sydney on February 16th. Grab your tickets at crooked.com slash events. Hope to see some of you out there. And in the meantime, Dan and I will be back with a new show on Friday. 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.

1:48:29Also, 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 Illick-Frank, and Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farrah Safari. Austin Fisher is our senior producer. Reed Churlin 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.

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