Trump Honors Dead Friend, Restarts War

25:46And Graham says, to try to be relevant. And he also said, I've never been called this much by a president in my life. It's weird and it's flattering and it creates some opportunity. And I just, I found that to be so sad because this is a man who over the course of his career - Credit for honesty. Credit for honesty, but he went from being defined, he defined relevance for himself as first being John McCain's sidekick and then being Donald Trump's sidekick. And he just didn't care about the cognitive dissidents that came along with the two or the vile things that Trump said about his best friend.

26:15And I mean, love it. I thought you ticked through all the policy area as well. The thing it seems like he got policy wise was a war with Iran. So congrats on that. But the other thing he thinks he seems to be excited that he got was 63 appearances on Meet the Press. And there would have been a 64th this Sunday. And that's just such an ephemeral definition of relevance, but it's also such an indictment of the DC establishment press that this man is a fixture on these shows because he's primarily booked on these shows to advocate for starting a war somewhere. And so, you know, look, I'm not attacking him personally, but I think it's like what you don't want to be in Washington.

26:57You know, you want to stand for something. You want to be care about something. You want to do something for people and not just be relevant. Yeah. I mean, people's motivations are complex. And when you talk about to a reporter like he did about wanting to stay relevant, the generous interpretation there is Donald Trump is the president and this is where my party is. And so I'm going to try to be relevant to sort of get my policy preferences, you know, move forward in any way that I can. There's also the less generous reading of staying relevant is like, I want to be in the mix. I like being close to power.

27:32And, you know, Peter Baker had a story about him as well. And he recalls running into Graham outside of a restaurant in D.C. And Graham was on the phone with Trump at that point. And he gets off the phone and he says to Peter about Trump, he's a lying motherfucker, Mr. Graham allowed with a shrug, but also said, quote, a lot of fun to hang out with. Mr. Trump, he said, was so dominant within the party that he could do almost anything with impunity quote he could kill 50 people on our side and it wouldn't matter mr graham observed honestly that is a pretty accurate honest uh assessment of donald trump and lindsey graham's relationship with donald trump which is he's a lying motherfucker but i'm sure graham had a lot of fun but he takes me golfing hanging out with like that's literally what it is and that was by the way you know this story mentions this as well that like john mccain and lindsey graham you know had a falling out over this towards the end of john mccain's life and john mccain was like why do you have to golf so much with them?

28:30Like, I get why you might want to be trying to like push them in the right direction here and there. And this is the first term, of course. He's like, but why are you golfing so much with them? And, you know, that was sort of a sad following out. Maybe a little jealous, you know? He's like, oh, you've made new friends at college, you know, and now you're not hanging out with the old crew. It just speaks to the power of personal politics. And like, he's nice to me. There's a lot of people that know better about Donald Trump who are smart, who know he's doing bad things for the country, who are like offended by ice raids or whatever.

28:58but are like, well, he was nice to me that one time. And I think, you know. It's like, of course. I believe that Donald Trump can be unbelievably charming to people. Yeah, I get it. I've fallen for that myself, you know. Yes. The thing about Trump too, like John Thune gave a speech, was clearly like surprised and devastated by the loss of Lindsey Graham. People that like Lindsey Graham really like Lindsey Graham. Charming, funny. That kind of politics is hard in an era when someone like Trump is president. And it's like beyond just the the way in which he kind of flipped on Trump, like the kind of politics he seemed to like, which was personal and kind of making deals and joking around.

29:39Right. Like it is a democratic practice. But when one of the people you're working with attacks, the legitimacy of the other party undermines democracy, is like hostile to like tries to prosecute his enemies. Like the jokes don't work. It doesn't make sense anymore. Like the kind of the thing that you think you're doing or actually not doing anymore because you're practicing. I do think like genuinely practicing what you view as the best way you do democracy in a with a with a with a collaborator who actually doesn't believe in it at all. And like all the people lamenting the end of the era, like the era of John McCain and Lindsey Graham and that kind of like, I don't know, like raucous bipartisanship where you mixed it up and argued.

30:25And then Lindsey Graham writes the tribute to Hillary Clinton in Time magazine. Like if that's the kind of politics you're wanting, then the enemy of it is Donald Trump. So Graham's sister Darlene will only temporarily fill the seat. South Carolina will hold a Republican primary this August to determine who will face Democratic Senate candidate Annie Andrews this November. You guys think this is still a safe seat for Republicans no matter who wins the primary? Or would anyone like to argue that Dems have an outside shot here? I mean, in such an anti-establishment year, I guess you always have an outside shot.

30:59I don't know what that candidate looks like, you know, like a hardcore, like, burn down both parties suck. Trump wins South Carolina by 18 points. Graham won against Jamie Harrison by 10 points. 10 points, yeah. The swing in some of these off-cycle elections has been around 13 points. So is it hard? Absolutely. Is it impossible? No. Yeah. It depends on who the person is. Yeah. So there are names that have been floated. Nancy Mace, who just had a stellar performance in the gubernatorial primary. I love her posting just when I thought I thought it was out. They pull me back in. Nobody's pulling you anywhere.

31:39You are. Nobody wants you. Yes, it's so the algorithm has pulled you back. Yeah, it's like they vote like, oh, right. Fine. I'll do it. No, no, no, no. They the Russians. They are responsible. Ralph Norman. Cuckoo. Joe Wilson. Joe Wilson, now seen as the elder statesman. Yes, exactly. I was just about to say that the guy who screamed you lie at Barack Obama way back when, Lieutenant Governor Pamela Yvette, all these have been floated. Yeah, Cook rates it as a solid R. And, you know, the case for Andrews is she is a real candidate. She's a Charleston pediatrician. She's raised$8 million,$3 million cash on hand.

32:18She was actually out raising Lindsey Graham's campaign. And so, you know, enough of a shift. You get a really kooky Republican nominee. Who knows? But yeah, outside shot. Lindsey Graham left quite a hole. So close. So close. We almost we almost get out of this. We should also talk about McConnell, who offered a proof of life photo as an attempt to finally quiet the rumors that he was dead or incapacitated after being rushed to the hospital following a collapse at his home on June 14th. On Sunday, McConnell released a statement from himself and his physician who stated that his prolonged hospital stay was the result of a fall associated with his post-polio condition and that he was also being treated for a mild case of pneumonia.

32:58There was also a photo of McConnell sitting in a hospital bed holding the Sunday sports section of the Washington Post alongside his wife, former Labor Secretary Elaine Chao. you guys will be shocked to learn that many in the poster community are falsely claiming that the photo was reused from 2023 or ai generated um uh one one person who decided to buy that was wisconsin senator ron johnson can't believe they got ron who gave who gave an who gave an interview today saying i just heard from a source that was an older photo the source was yeah who's your source. That's so funny. You know it was a tweet that got texted to him.

33:37Of course. What have you guys made of the fact that so many people online, left and right, and the U.S. Senate are convinced that a very alive Mitch McConnell is not alive? I watched a video of someone analyzing the shirt collar. Did you watch? No, I did not. I'm not buying it. I was interested in what the theory is. Oh, I know.

33:59It's more just how you're spending your time. That's what you believe. The shirt was kind of folded in the same way as another photo from the past and that it was sort of brought in. I don't totally buy the theory. It did look like it was different to me. It is weird that we're doing like Zapruder film breakdowns of photos in the videos that CNN posted. Well, here's the thing. The thing that's like, to me, is just like you had a fall and then a mild case of pneumonia. And that's why we haven't heard anything for the last. That, to me, was the weird part. And then and I know there wasn't cardiac arrest, even though there's like a lot of reporting about the audio from the dispatch in which you were found in cardiac arrest and unconscious and resuscitated before being brought to the hospital.

34:38Maybe it wasn't him. Maybe it was somebody else in that house. But like part of this is he's a single photo holding the day's newspaper. That's what hostage takers release to give you as little as possible. Yeah. Right. Like, oh, you're the state. The test for a senator is not. Are you alive? Right. Yes, that's a bare minimum, but not sufficient, but not sufficient. So perhaps a video might be helpful. So, of course, there's going to be a lot of speculation, especially when a lot of old politicians have been shown to be lying about their health and hiding how sick they are over and over and over again.

35:16Jill Biden saying she thought Joe Biden was having a stroke, a lot of reporting about the concealing of how he was aging. Mitch McConnell disappeared for three fucking weeks. They were rolling Dianne Feinstein to the Senate after she was no longer copus mentis. So, yeah, people are suspicious when they're told that an aging politician is fine. Like there's a conspiratorial mindset on the Internet. There is obviously paranoia on the Internet. It flourishes there. But it is, I think, not unreasonable to be skeptical when you hear from politicians that they're ancient and fine. Well, and I think some podcast I was listening to on vacation.

35:51Maybe it was this one. You guys talked about the. I don't listen when I'm on vacation. I don't either. A few things I wanted to catch up on. There was a, there's also political implications, which I think fueled the conspiracy theories, right? Which is, and I believe that it's, it was August 3rd or 4th. It's August 3rd, yeah. That like, they were worried that maybe Thomas Massey would jump into a race and as an independent and then tilt the race to the Democrats. And so there's some kind of machinations there. And BTC was floating the theory to me that there was concern that Andy Beshear might run and could actually win the seat.

36:23Now, I had not heard that until I talked to BTC, but I like it. Well, I'll see it. Brian Tocco, yeah. If there's not enough on the lingo. And then Andy Beshear was also saying that he is going to challenge the constitutionality of the Kentucky law that says he can't appoint a replacement because he believes that the constitution of the state is clear and that the law violates it. Also, the implications of what would happen in a Senate for just those several weeks where they're losing a vote. you have Tillis, even with whether McConnell, McConnell's absent regardless right now. The four people like Cornyn, Tillis, Collins, and Murkowski, if the Graham seat is filled and McConnell's back, those four can lead to a tie, right?

37:09But if they all vote no right now, they can really kind of gum up the works. And the Graham seat is filled tomorrow. Yes, the Graham seat's full. That's not happening. Or Tuesday, I think it's supposed to be filled on wednesday but but you start to think about what would happen in a lame duck if there's a supreme court vacancy oh yeah right like that to me is where they're like oh gotta gotta get that mcconnell gotta get that proof of life i also think like everyone thinks every photo is ai now that's i sent my friend a photo of erling holland with um a stuffed raccoon holding a tequila bottle and he asked me if it was real so thanks for that fucking saml every funny photo i laugh at now i do the same thing i'm like is it real is it ai and the liar's dividend even the ai checkers now and And they're like, they do that on some of like the writing, you know, they're like, oh, 80 % that this was written by AI.

37:55And you're like, was it? Is that right? Is that lying? Like, and if we're just, let's be harsh. Like, this is 100 % Mitch McConnell's office's fault. Like, their boss went into the hospital on June 14th. They didn't offer any real information for weeks. And then they did this weird leak to the worst liar and asshole on CNN, Scott Jennings, and had him claim that he'd just done a 20-minute call with Mitch McConnell where they talked about NATO and Iran. That was the funniest aspect of this whole story for me. not the conspiracies, the like, and was Foon say the same thing? Or were you a lot of them?

38:23Barasso said the same. They were like, yeah, because it's like, oh my gosh, you've had pneumonia, you're in the hospital. Quick, let's talk about the straight of Hormuz. It was like a head of state readout that you would do from the White House. And also, by the way, the two leaders talked about the following issues. One of the topics that came up in both their conversations, according to these reports, was the Graham Plattner story. And it's like, so you're talking to Mitch McConnell. You say he's your friend. You identify him as Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky senators, if we were thinking and you were talking about somebody else.

38:48You think he might be dying. Your last conversation is going to be about Graham Plattner in Mado. You know what? Before we throw too many stones from our glass house, I'm just envisioning one of you guys in the hospital and me trying to call you. Yeah, we pivot pretty quick from the emotional stuff. Tommy, how's it going? Hey, how's your family? Did I miss anything in the news? What's happening on Twitter? And he'd be like, you don't want to know, buddy. It's actually worse out here than in there. We would, though. We would probably joke about politics, unfortunately. We don't talk on the phone.

39:14We don't talk on the phone. I haven't answered my phone since 2013. You guys aren't phone friends. If you guys are in the hospital, maybe. Maybe. We'll see. Yeah, no, the Republican Congress. Text me. I don't want to take a call. That's true. That's true. Okay. Thank you. Noted.

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41:47The Republican Congress does have quite a to-do list, though. They've got the Todd Blanch confirmation, AG confirmation. They've got Jay Clayton for DNI, the NDAA that we just talked about, the Iran War Supplemental, FISA. The whole FISA thing that we talked about before the break, That still hasn't been renewed. I think Todd Blanchard is in trouble. I hope so. I think Todd Blanchard is in trouble. He's supposed to have a hearing this week. We'll see if it continues. But a number of questions swirling. We're going to talk about the war against the press next. But there's that. Even though it's DHS, there's now been two other ICE killings we haven't even talked about.

42:26There's a man in Houston that ICE killed. And now just today, as we're recording on Monday in Bitterford, Maine. where I just was. There was a, it seems like a 26 year old Colombian man who had complete authorization to work in this country and was shot and killed. And the warrant that ICE had was not even for him, apparently. And so I would imagine and hope that Todd Blanche at DOJ would get plenty of questions about what kind of investigation they're going to lead into these killings. Susan Collins just said that, you know, the DHS inspector general out of Boston is going to like take over the investigation internally but i don't really have a lot of faith in an internal dhs investigation which is a more inspector general yeah right it feels like the doj or or it feels like the fbi has to get involved but again thom phillis needs to just decide to like like man up and fight this terrible appointment and care about stuff i mean like he says things occasionally that are helpful and he's critical of trump but like use your power while you can dude also with mcconnell gone i think that eliminates their one seat majority on the Appropriations Committee.

43:31Yes. And they can't schedule hearings and it might impact the supplemental funding requests for more Pentagon spending or something. More broadly, it's just like, it's a reminder that the margins in the Senate and the House are so thin that you have one death or one prolonged absence or one something. It can just like completely hamstring the party in power. I gotta say, I think that supplemental is never getting through. I think that. Not before the election. Even though that's only 51 votes. Like, you have Collins, Houston in Ohio, and Sullivan in Alaska who are all facing very tough re-elections.

44:02You can't let all three of them go. You also have Murkowski. And then you have Murkowski who just out of principle. Imagine that. I wanted to do it, but that's four Republicans on a supplemental to vote for more money for war. And then maybe you get Fetterman, but... Also, the House is tricky. The House is tricky. There was a... Even the Republicans internally are calling it a zombie Congress now. They have no margins. And they're all angry and they're all mad at each other, too. They're not there's not like a well-run machine here. Let's talk about the latest front in Trump's war on the press.

44:34Late on Friday, the administration issued subpoenas to four New York Times journalists who reported that the White House, at the urging of the Secret Service, had decided to use the old Air Force One during the NATO summit in Turkey as a security precaution. FBI Director Kash Patel, who spent eight hours working from the White House on Friday, has been tasked with overseeing the investigation. the Times, Senate Democrats and press advocacy groups have all criticized the move, which came through the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Jay Clayton, who's also Trump's nominee for director of national intelligence.

45:03The DOJ wrote on Twitter on Saturday that, quote, every administration has addressed the crime of leaking national security information, adding, quote, reporters are not the targets those leaking classified information are. What did you guys make of this one? This is just an obvious effort to punish and scare these journalists, because a normal leak investigation would figure out who in the government had accessed the information. They tried to narrow it down and attempt to find the leaker that way. But instead, they sent a bunch of federal agents to the homes of these reporters on Friday night, and they were like, show up to a grand jury on Wednesday.

45:33That's not the normal process. Also, the FBI, there's a weird anecdote in the story about how the FBI was the one warning the reporters not to publish in advance. I don't know why they would be the ones or asking them not to publish in advance for security reasons. And as you mentioned, like Cash Patel gets summit, he was going to fly to Chicago to see his girlfriend perform at a country concert. Every story notes that it's in the parking lot of some venue, which is very funny. But instead, poor Cash couldn't go to Chicago. He worked out of the White House for eight hours, apparently constantly updating the White House staff on this investigation into these journalists and coordinating with them.

46:09And so it's so obvious they're trying to punish this reporting. Apparently, Trump was very mad about the reports about Air Force One, on some level, you can step back and be like, okay, reporting on security measures embedded in Air Force One, like there is a risk there. But everyone knew about this. Like this was sort of like the conversation about the Qatari gifted Air Force One in advance was that you couldn't put in place these countermeasures, specifically the missile defense stuff in time for Trump to use it. And it sounds like that's what happened. I mean, that was the assumption was that piece of whatever countermeasures that had would be the hardest and take the longest.

46:45Yeah. And so if we already, everyone was speculating once he wasn't taking that plane back, there's going to be reporting on why the why is security is if Trump is pissed now that he won't be able to use the plane because now the secrets out on the fact that the plane isn't as secure as the original ones that took a decade to build. Just another lesson by American, you know, for sure. Yeah. The the and then and then the DOJ putting out this statement saying, oh, a lot of classified leaks have often been investigating, which seems to be confirming the story, right? Because they're now saying, so there was...

47:22Yeah, every leak investigation kind of confirms the underlying reporting, but yes. But also, like, they're trying to say, oh, well, we're just doing this sort of normal course of investigating a leak. But as Tommy said, the sort of, the operations are reversed. But also, like, there is an understanding that if you're trying to get information from journalists who are covering, that that is a serious thing to do. Garland put in place protections for journalists to protect against this exact kind of thing. Pan Bondi rescinded those protections. Yeah, I mean, going after the journalists, subpoenaing the journalists 48 hours after the story is just completely backwards.

47:59Just for all the people who are going to be like, oh, Obama, the Obama administration did this and other administrations, it's usually the last resort is to subpoena a journalist if you absolutely have to. You don't start the investigation that way unless you just want to intimidate people. And like half of the leak investigations under Obama were holdovers from the Bush administration. Like there's all these caveats to this. Look, I understand the criticism of it, but anyway, it's just not comparative. It's just really, they're not the same in any way what happened then and now. All right, one more explosive piece of news before we get to Love It's interview with Brian Tyler Cohen.

48:31The country is currently experiencing a cyclosporiasis outbreak, a parasite that causes severe intestinal illness and diarrhea. Cases have been found in over half the states in the country, including over 2 ,500 cases in Michigan alone. While cases of the intestinal illness tend to rise in spring and summer of every year, this year's outbreak has been particularly extreme, raising questions about how the administration's cuts to the FDA and CDC may be affecting the federal response. Nicholas Florco at The Atlantic pointed out that as of Friday, CDC's case tracker of the outbreak had not been updated, reporting less than 200 cases, an obvious undercount, just Michigan alone has more than that.

49:08My only question is, Is RFK Jr. at fault for America getting explosive diarrhea? I think the question is worth asking. I think we don't know. But CDC has lost roughly a quarter of its workforce. They stopped requiring surveillance of cyclospora after it's been tracked for decades. Yeah, one of the ones that it's cut one of the pathogens that they were tracking in the budget cuts. And it's also just hard to measure the cost of having like just incompetent boobs at the top of all of these agencies. Like there's a lot of there's a lot of just dogs that aren't barking. Right. The kind of thing like serious professionals do.

49:49Because they have explosive diarrhea. Right. Because they're yeah, they're they're sort of in a permanent squat. You know, when your dog has that, you know, a dog sort of has that those long poops. You know, they're just, you know, like walking across the lawn because they're just in a poop position for a long time. That's Michigan right now. That's pure Michigan. They're not even having, there's no lettuce and tomato on the Taco Bell Supreme anymore. That's what this country used to be. That's what Trump has done. I was reading about this in the Wall Street Journal and the following sentence was, she went to her local Taco Bell on July 7th and by the next day her stomach was upset.

50:18I'm like, it's like a dog bite. I think I've had it since I was 17. I mean, my reaction to this was what you said, like what disease are we not tracking because of Doge? because R of K thinks vaccines are causing it. Like, God help us all. Still a screw worm on the border. Yeah, there's a worm eating cows in Texas. Feels like that should be a bigger deal. Also, I mean, I was at the farmer's market this weekend. We didn't buy like raspberries because Hannah had seen something somewhere that said raspberries might have it. It's like, I don't know. It's scary. Not to get darker about this, but this for me goes into the category of like the high class problem that Brian writes about in his book, after Trump, how do we willpower?

51:00like public health agencies have been so decimated under trump and this is the true with almost every agency across government it's like i don't think people understand that when they leave and a new administration comes in um it's going to be incredibly difficult to replace all of these experts and officials because you can't just like people got other jobs you can't just call up everyone that trump uh fired and who had been who had all this expertise for decades and be like oh yeah can you come back now and it's gone new jobs and so michael lewis wrote that book about all the the data that's being lost um or there's a section of that book about the federal government that talked about all the data and that is not being tracked or the longitudinal studies that are that were ended all the research that was terminated right like that's just a price we're going to pay for a very long time and all the investments it's mrna vaccines and other things that could provide the like game-changing you know cures of the future yeah and i think the next administration is probably just gonna have to be honest about the hole that we're gonna have to dig ourselves out of because there's a political issue with that too, where suddenly there's an outbreak and, you know, the next Democratic president or the CDC official is like, well, we were hamstrung by all the cuts in the Trump administration.

52:07No one's going to be like, okay, no, don't worry about that. We understand. Yeah. Look, we spent on, like, there's so many ways in which what we're talking about are all the kind of offensive, like not morally offensive, but, you know, proactively offensive ways in which Donald Trump is, you know, destroying institutions and wrecking the government and focused on the wrong things. But I remember when we were working on some speech about some unrelated topic and there was a fear about swine flu. And so there was a meeting and it rose to the level of the president and then he gave a brief topper at some speech.

52:42Swine flu topper. Swine flu topper. And he ran through what the latest he learned from the agencies and what people needed to know. And that did two things. One, it informed the public about an ongoing public health threat. And whenever the president speaks to something, it is an organizing force inside the government. Gets people to attend to something, figure out what they're doing, explain what they're not doing, what's happening. And none of that happens when Donald Trump is president. None of it. And there's just a, like, it's a hard to measure price because it's the cost of incompetence that just shows up in people being sick after you're going to talk about i think everyone here has been um uh quite sober and serious and talking about senator graham and not talking about all the jokes that were being made on twitter over the weekend but i didn't need to read one which was from an lol gop which has said they have to move the dead senators quickly so bobby jr doesn't try to eat them tommy um as we were talking about this i was thinking to myself can i read that tweet is it too much no and i'm glad you did i got you i'm really glad you did i'll leave i'm glad you did I'm glad it got out of the pot because it was a good one.

53:41That's a good place to leave it. Do you think he was gay? Okay. I think probably, but we'll never know now. It doesn't matter. It never mattered in the end. It never mattered. It never mattered. Did you see that Trump ordered all flags in the United States to half staff? And I know this is my only, no one cares about this with me. He does not have that authority. He is responsible only for the flags on federal land because it's a free country. And the sovereign states of this country can decide what they do with their flags. and the sovereign citizens can decide what we do with our flags and if we want to lower our flags for lindsey graham we can do it i appreciate that weho lowered their pride flag to have staff as a little bit of control they did they really and the american flag both of them together which i thought was a little bit of a but a moving a moving troll you know yeah exactly um but i hate when donald trump orders everyone to lower the flags like there's a free country as far as i'm concerned all right well on that note after the break love its conversation with brian tyler cohen about all of this.

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56:06Joining us now, he's a progressive host and author of the new book, The Day After, How to Wield Power in a Post-Trump World, which is out today. YouTube's best boy, Brian Tyler Cohen. Welcome to the show. Love it. Thanks for having me. So you have your new book out, which we will talk about. But before we do, I wanted to get your reaction to what we're seeing right now in some right-wing media. I want to start with Tucker Carlson, who has become increasingly critical of Trump. Let's let's roll a clip. You betrayed us. And it's the betrayal that makes it so bitter for people like me and maybe you who voted for Trump and I campaigned for and with him.

56:48You know, it's like, really, we really believe that you were going to at least try. And in the end, it's all about cryptocurrency scams and wars for Israel. I mean, I can't believe you did that. Hiding the Epstein stuff. So he goes on in that video to say that that that you can't even ask questions about Butler. So there's a mix of his America first stuff, the anti-Israel stuff and the conspiratorial stuff in there. What do you make of Tucker's turn against Trump lately? I don't know that it's so much this virtuous stand as it is Tucker recognizing not where the puck is, but where the puck is going.

57:32And he can see how unpopular Trump is, how he's losing popularity even within in his own base. And it's because he has defied his own campaign promises. I mean, it's nobody forced Trump to engage in a foreign war in the Middle East after promising no new wars in the Middle East. That was him. Nobody made Trump suppress the Epstein files after they all campaigned on releasing the Epstein files. Nobody forced Trump to launch a trade war in the against all these foreign countries that would raise the prices of everything. That was him. And so obviously that's rubbing the Republican base the wrong way because it's completely diametrically opposed to everything that Trump campaigned on.

58:10Tucker wants to retain relevance in that base. That is his audience. And so he can both give himself a little bit of independent cred by going after Trump on stuff that's already unpopular and kind of recognize that Trump is not going to be there forever but he wants to have a longer career than I think what spans just Donald Trump's specific tenure in office. And I think that's, look, he is a savvy operator. I think that's what makes him a little bit more savvy than a lot of other people in that space who only recognize, okay, right now I have to tie my fortunes to Donald Trump and whatever he does, I have to blindly defer to him and that's it.

58:51And I think that that's going to drag a lot of people down because they're only focused on today and not tomorrow. Yeah, it's interesting. You know, Tucker is a challenge for Trump because Tucker has fuck you money and seems to be pretty happy wherever he's ensconced making his shows from his home. So he's not on. I mean, he's on the take. He's on the take. But he doesn't need Trump in the same way that, say, like a bunch of other either media figures still feel like they need Trump or or members of Congress or others in the conservative ecosystem who are afraid to be on Trump's bad side, in part because they don't feel like they have a they need him.

59:30They need him. But also, B, they don't feel like they have an independent, trusted relationship with the base. You know, you see you see the the Republicans just wanted to have an event with Trump to sign the housing bill. Trump allows the housing bill to become law, but doesn't sign it as a fuck you to the Republicans because those Republicans want their event with daddy. They want to take the picture because his imprimatur on the bill does more than any words they can say because they don't have that kind of relationship. and Tucker does seem like he's in a different category. Like their brand is just kind of glomming on to whatever Trump does.

1:00:07And frankly, there are no, we've seen there are no longstanding principles. There are no core beliefs or core values. It's just whatever Trump says becomes gospel for these people who are hangers on for Trump. I mean, these people were anti-war during the campaign. Now they're all explaining why actually what Trump is doing is completely fine. They have the ability to rein him in. they're a co-equal branch of government, but instead they just day by day contract all of their autonomy over to him. And so whatever stance he adopts, whatever errant synapse fires in his brain and words fall out of his face, that becomes gospel for this GOP.

1:00:41And you're right, Tucker doesn't abide by that same principle. He doesn't need to. It's not like Trump can post a mean tweet and end his career in the same way that he can for somebody like Bill Cassidy or John Cornyn. But really what it does is just destroy the Republican brand. But that's what Trump wants. He wants the brand to just be slavish devotion to him and whatever he says and does. Yeah, it is also the ways in which Republican politicians, Trump media figures deal with the conspiratorial mindset in their audience, whether they ignore it, embrace it, fight against it. You even seen like right wing figures like Chris Rufo talking about the danger of this kind of thing.

1:01:29You hear that in a lot of what Tucker has been doing. You also hear it in Candace Owens and Ben Shapiro. Let's just roll the clip without any introduction. Today, we are going to uncover the real murderer of Charlie Kirk. It's time. We've been working for months on a deep and detailed investigation. It's not who you think. Today, we are going to discuss who was really behind Charlie Kirk's assassination, Candace Owens. So Candace Owens has obviously been saying unhinged shit about the killing of Charlie Kirk. And Candace Owens has also been at war with Ben Shapiro. I think this is his way of striking back with some parody about it.

1:02:18It's also coming at a time in which maybe in part because of the conspiratorial turn on the right, like Ben Shapiro has lost some relevance, lost some audience. What do you make of that little civil war? I mean, look, the reality is that when it comes to conspiracy theories online, that's the currency of the internet. That's even more pervasive in right wing circles. But the interesting part of this is, in large part, that's what Republicans tapped into as it relates to Epstein and that brought a lot of people into the political process it's why a lot of people voted they believe that there was this you know basically upper echelon of politicians and people who can commit heinous crimes with impunity and that gained a lot of traction and when we saw that that was in large part what happened with the Epstein files it backfired on Trump because now you have people who believed it and and it was largely borne out in what we saw.

1:03:19And Trump decided not to not to release anything other than, you know, half of the files, deigned to release half of the files, but continues to hold on to the other half. And so in this instance, you have people who kind of bought into what felt like a conspiracy theory. It ended up being in large part. I mean, there were obviously elements of it that were untrue, but in large part accurate. And and now it's turning against Trump because he continues to suppress these files instead of release them. So I think that's one instance in where in which, you know, you have a political party that is already prone to this stuff.

1:03:57And it's going to create a lot of, I think, disaffected voters on the right, because this is where they operate. This is where they live. And now they can see that Trump has no interest in actually delivering on that specific point. The Epstein files as this way of signaling that you're willing to take on the powers that be, right? Whatever that means. But also part of it too is like the comfort of some far off enemy that is truly the ones responsible. That's a lot of what Trump does more broadly. It's this idea that what is the source of our ills? It's not structural. It's not systemic inequality or broken systems or the failure to build housing or just the like the the ordinary, quote unquote, ordinary dangers that lurk for children everywhere, that there is some like super plot of of super elites.

1:04:51And that's the real threat. Now, two things can be true, right? Like there was and is now a big cover up around Epstein. There was a network of connected people who supported this person even after he was exposed. There's clearly nefarious doings in how he got such a slap on the wrist when he was first brought up on charges. And obviously Trump has been covering up for him. But that a lot of right wing media is about this sort of comfort of like you are the folk. You are the good people in the good communities. And the enemy is it's the immigrants or the trans people or the cabal of Jews operating a pedophilia ring.

1:05:30Right. When when like actually like the real challenges and problems in your life are closer to home, but it's much harder to to face that. And a lot of right wing media is just about stoking that feeling and telling people over and over again that like they're doing. Hey, keep at it. Keep at it. Once we get rid of these once we get rid of these trans swimmers and and and Jewish cabals, then everything's going to be coming up America. You know, we've seen this as a recurring theme for so long. I mean, I remember elections where it was migrant caravans and then it was gay marriage and then it was trans people.

1:06:09And it's, you know, they're really effective at finding some boogeyman to vilify as the source of all of society's woes. I think that they're going to run up on a wall in this election cycle because obviously they're all trying to do it again. You know, they they run the same playbooks over and over and over again. In some ways, Republican elections from the early 2000s look identical to what they're saying today. But they ran an entire election cycle based on culture wars in 2024 and trying to perpetuate this idea that, OK, if only we can get they thems out of out of swimming, then then everything will be solved.

1:06:46And in fact, now these people, the Republicans, have full control of government. They have the House. They have the Senate. They have the White House. They even won the popular vote on that message. And what do they have to show for it? There's no Democrats in control to gum up the works. So what Republicans have to show for it right now is a country that is sicker, poorer, and hungrier than it's been before. A country where prices are not going down, they're going up. Inflation's not going down, it's going up. Healthcare is not more expansive. It's been contracted. Food assistance is the same.

1:07:12We have not fewer wars, but more. The Epstein files are not released. They're being suppressed. And so given the fact that there's no Democrats to blame for any of this, Republicans are going to have to confront the fact, and especially their base, confront the fact that, hey, maybe if I keep voting on these culture war issues, especially issues where like 10 people in the NCAA are at the heart of our entire national discourse, then that's not going to result in better outcomes for regular Americans. That's just going to be more culture war issues that allow Republicans to consolidate power and then just do with that power what they want.

1:07:50And Trump, kind of unable to grapple with the actual problems he claimed he was going to fix, is distracted by the reflecting pool in the ballroom. He's doing pit stops on the lawn. He's doing challenger campaigning. He's doing the kinds of things you do when you're out of power, complaining about the things you complain about when you're out of power. But of course, he, you know, he has the controls. So now let's talk about what happens if I believe they're called Democrats. That's how you pronounce it. I've never I've only read it. I haven't heard it said. I've never seen one. But these Democrats.

1:08:21Very elusive. An elusive creature. Yes. These Democrats. And they're I think they're nocturnal. No, but but their main weapon is the strongly worded, strongly worded letters. So, look, the hope, right, is that we can win the House. The Senate is not off the table. I want to get to what you're talking about, what you hope for Democrats in a post-Trump world. But before we get there, Democrats would have to model what it looks like for them to be in power if they win the House. What do you think a Democratic House majority that has control of committees and subpoena powers but can't legislate without getting things signed by Trump, what does that look like to you?

1:08:59It looks like investigating what we can investigate right now, which is the rampant corruption that we're seeing across the government. I mean, my God, Trump's kids are taking in millions, hundreds of millions of dollars in government contracts, DOD contracts. We're seeing short sales five minutes before some major White House announcement that makes somebody a millionaire 100 times over. We're seeing these foreign investments via World Liberty Financial into Trump's meme coins and stable coins and cryptocurrency. All of this stuff is happening in broad daylight. It's clear that it is beyond illegal, but there is this sense that crime is just legal in the Trump era, so long as a Republican commits it or you're willing to pay Trump the requisite amount, you know, a million dollars to get a pardon or whatever you need.

1:09:47So I think that in this rare sliver of time where hopefully when Democrats have the gavels, they'll use that time. Obviously, you can't legislate, but you can use that time to investigate this stuff. And by getting a lot of this stuff out there and starting these investigations, hopefully you pave the way for the DOJ to pick up a Democratic DOJ to pick up where they've left off. I mean, the January 6th committee in large part was able to inform the prosecutions that came afterwards. Now, I would argue that those prosecutions came too little, too little, too late. And the fecklessness of Merrick Garland's DOJ is in large part why we're here.

1:10:24But the reality is that we can use this time not only to win the messaging war, because this stuff obviously resonates. I mean, restoring the rule of law against a corrupt government is in large part what Trump himself ran on against the Democrats, except he's doing it a thousand times bigger. But it also has some practical effects because then you can have a DOJ that uses a lot of what Congress was able to find on these fact-finding missions to actually move forward and prosecute some of this illegality so we can get back to a world where law and order actually exists. So there's a lot of polling about about views of Democrats and Democrats.

1:11:05It is a deeply tarnished brand. It is unpopular, obviously, among Republicans, but also Democratic voters are deeply frustrated by the Democratic Party. We've seen insurgent campaigns defeating incumbents. What does it look like to have a Democratic Party after Trump that you think meets the moment and meets the expectations of the most engaged Democratic voters? So I think if Trump has shown us anything, it's that a lot of the institutions that we take as a sacrosanct are not. I mean, Trump has barreled through everything. He doesn't listen to the law, the Constitution, the courts, attorneys, any other branch of government.

1:11:47He just does whatever he wants. I mean, you would not find a Democrat ever who would get into office and then raise the East Wing of the White House to the ground. It just wouldn't happen. There's so much deference to norms and traditions and institutions. Trump has shown that if there's a will, there's a way. Now, he's done it for self-enrichment. He's done it so that he can enshrine the Oval Office in gold and build a ballroom for himself and launder money through foreign countries into his own pockets and his family's pockets and build up his real estate portfolio. So he's doing it for bad reasons.

1:12:21My argument is that Democrats should look at what Trump's doing and use that for virtuous reasons, to deliver Medicare for all. It is long past time that we have universal health care in the richest country in the world. It's crazy that we don't. To combat climate change, the existential issue of our time, to expand voting rights, especially at a time when they're contracting across the country amid the fall of the Voting Rights Act. There are so many things that we can do that we allow these norms and traditions to block us from doing. But I think we have to get past this idea that even the smallest speed bump is going to be an obstacle for us.

1:12:58Our democratic officials are not in government so that they can pay deference to the institutions of government. They're there so that they can deliver outcomes for people. And if that means they have to find a way to circumvent these hurdles, these processes, then so be it. Because the reality is, I think we're going to have a small window of time where we already know that there was a largely disillusioned with Democrats block of voters. That's why they went over to Republicans. Now we have a disillusioned block of Republican voters because Trump lied about everything that he was going to do.

1:13:31So already trusting government is at extreme lows. We have a second, I think, I believe, we're going to have a second bite of the apple here where we can bring people back into this tent. But if we don't deliver, if it's good enough that Democrats can just notch symbolic victories and get caught trying before eventually something inevitably goes wrong, then I think you're just going to lose large swaths of the population. And when you have an electorate that's that disaffected, I think that's the conditions in which autocracy thrives. I think it does start to become about what it looks like. I agree in the sense that Democrats need to take from Trump a willingness to push harder against the lawyers, basically.

1:14:17And we have better lawyers than they have, but you got to sometimes, you know, push your lawyers fine. Like I think democratic administrations have been too differential to the lawyers, especially around questions that are kind of, I would say more like philosophical rather than like kind of on the page. But at the same time, the Supreme Court has had has given him immunity, which was a terrible decision. they've ruled with him more often than they haven't. But he has been stymied by the courts in part, especially the lower courts, in part because they have been so ham-fisted and so aggressive in trying to do things that are just run against the plain language of the law.

1:14:57So I do want us to learn the lesson from Trump that we can be more aggressive and move faster and try things based on what we believe are like solid legal grounds, even if they might be questioned by the courts. But at the same time, like he's cheating. We're trying to prove the game's worth playing, right? Like we're playing against cheaters, but we believe in the sport. We like the rules of the sport. We are, we, you know, we're trying to make sure people like, you know, like we, we were watching them get away with murder and bribing the refs and all the rest, but we're trying to make a case to people that democracy is a game worth playing.

1:15:32As you have in the book with, in the conversation with president Obama, we have a tougher job than they do. In part, we do believe in that part of democratic practice is understanding that laws are made by people and not one person deciding what the law is. Right. I mean, I'm definitely not advocating for tearing down our democracy. I'm advocating for making it work for people, making it a more efficient process. I mean, you know, you've spoken at length, whether it's something so granular as housing right here where we are in Los Angeles, or whether it's these, you know, these big issues like Obama's, you know, ultimate goal was to get single payer health care.

1:16:15That's what the ACA was initially viewed as being. So I think that, you know, in either one of those scenarios, either when you're looking at a local level or big ticket ideas on a federal level, it's not necessarily a matter of tearing government down. It's a matter of making it, making it work for actual people and delivering outcomes so that you're not just allowing yourself to be stymied by what Republicans view as the smallest speed bumps ever and what Democrats view as just immovable impasses. Speaking of immovable, they prop Mitch McConnell up holding up the newspaper like he's a hostage.

1:16:55Did you, do you find that reassuring? What do you like? Like, are we meant to? He's not speaking. He's just a statement. There's a picture of him. He is alive. I don't think that's the only question people have for their senators. What do you what do you think is going on with Mitch? I'm really skeptical of conspiracy theories. But I mean, he looked really good in that picture. Yeah. I think if you've just been unconscious for like three weeks, maybe you would have less color in your face. So look, again, I try not to spread conspiracy theories. We don't want to do conspiracy theories. We're responsible people.

1:17:29We're responsible people. But we live in an era where it's easy to fake stuff. And he looked damn good in that hospital bed. So I'll just leave it at that. I think conspiracy theories thrive online because it rewards people who are, it rewards kind of paranoid and kind of cynical sentiments. But it also, I think, speaks to something about this era where, like, I don't think you don't need to be a conspiracy theorist to have a lot of questions about a senator checking into the hospital on June 14th. There being audio from the dispatch saying someone was unconscious and in cardiac arrest. The only statements are coming from his staff and then the only sign of life is a single picture posted without any video or comment directly from the senator.

1:18:24So part of it is it's the Internet makes people not trustworthy, but so do these fucking people. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, that you cannot if you're a Republican, you can't be surprised when when this is the this is the environment you have to contend with the same environment that that you in large part created and nurtured is now kind of turning against, well, one of their own in Mitch McConnell. And hopefully this fall we can, you know, defeat some of them and then eventually have power and then we can wield that power. Brian, thanks for joining. The book is The Day After How to Wield Power in a Post-Trump World.

1:19:04It is out today. Everybody should pick it up and everybody should subscribe to Brian's YouTube where he is getting good information to people and competing with, as we're all doing, competing with the right on the internet to try to, you know, get some wins in that algorithm. Brian, good to see you. That's it. Love it. Thanks so much.

1:19:31Thanks to Brian Tyler Cohen for coming on the show. Dan and I will be back with a new show on Friday. Pods of America is a Crooked Media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts, and Farrah Safari with Reed Juerlin, Elijah Cohn, and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Matt DeGroat, Ben Hethcote, Jordan Cantor, Charlotte Landis, Kirill Pellaviv, David Tolles, Mia Kelman, Ryan Young, and Naomi Single. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.