Trump WH Vet Sees Impeachment for Trump & Bondi Amid "Bribe," Epstein & 'Illegal' Revenge cases

18:43Ty Cobb:There you have it. Ty Cobb is back with us. Do you view the history here, as well as Mr. Lutnik, lying about this while he was in office, while he was Commerce Secretary in the last year, as something that should merit his dismissal? And what do you think, given you have a lot of experience, about this sort of contrast that, you know, maybe it's for public pressure reasons, what they might call the, quote, optics. But the banks and some of the big institutions seem to be making more changes in response to what's come out than the White House itself.

19:17Ari Melber:Yes, you know, a lot of that can any other administration would have been gone long ago. But certainly this type of conduct would never have been tolerated by any other president without requesting his resignation. And frankly, the president shouldn't have to request the resignation of anybody with integrity in those positions when confronted with misconduct of this type in history. Even Nixon resigned when humiliated. Lutnick's testimony, interesting because he tries to minimize the incident on the island where he took his wife and children. And this is, keep in mind, this is seven years after he said he had no further contact with Epstein.

20:03Ari Melber:He said that it all ended in 2005 when he and his wife walked out of his house, you know, disturbed about their neighbor and their next door neighbor who remained their next door neighbor. And also, it's not only not only did he lie about the island visit and that conduct, but within within another year or two after after the island visit, he and Epstein both invested multimillion dollars in in the same joint venture. So this is this is these are deep ties. I mean, in Europe, you know, people just who are just mentioned in the files are resigning. Ludnik, having lied about his participation, should be long gone.

20:47Yeah.

20:48Ty Cobb:On the investigative side, I'll put up what we now learn from the DOJ. I thought this was one of the most striking documents. You don't usually see them in public, which is the inner circle and who they were tracing. Obviously, everyone has a right to a lawyer, but they don't have a right to lawyers who commit crimes. Everyone has you can use an accountant, but they were clearly subpoenaing and looking at some of these individuals. One of them, Brunel, and died and then died abroad. How do you interpret this, given your background? Obviously, it's possible that good faith, honest prosecutors did run down these leads.

21:22Ty Cobb:It just didn't find enough to prosecute inside the U.S. It's also possible that there's more to the story, given everything we've learned. How do you view it based on what we know at this time?

21:34Ari Melber:So I think there is a distinction between unethical, disgusting, inappropriate conduct and criminal activity. It's not always clear what that is. But keep in mind, there were very competent prosecutors involved in the Epstein cases. Maureen Comey, you know, in the Southern District was among the serious people that were trying to bring people to justice there, appropriately so. She prosecuted Maxwell. And I think the reality is there may not have been a lot of criminal cases, but there are a lot of people as to whom there was evidence contrary to what Bondi said, contrary to what Blanche said, contrary to what Patel said.

22:19Ari Melber:And they pretended to have reviewed every document, according to them, which we now know would have been impossible given the three million documents that they miraculously found and dumped last week. So this is really a scandal. It's a scandal that has multiple victims. We saw many of them in the well of the Congress the other day when Bondi was testifying and refusing to acknowledge their existence or apologize to him. And that's tragic. And and they deserve justice to the extent justice can be can be can be available. But it's not going to be available unless there's some transparency. And so far, what we have is a Justice Department eager to protect Trump and his donors and those who work for him, but but not at all eager to protect the victims.

23:09Ari Melber:And that is sad. And it's a shocking, it reflects the shocking decay of our government under Trump and bonding.

23:21Ty Cobb:Yeah, you put that very clearly. Decay, a moral problem that also has the legal and criminal questions on more than one issue, as I think we've covered tonight. Ty Cobb, appreciate your time. My pleasure. Thank you for having me, Ari. Thank you, sir. I'll tell folks coming up. We've heard a lot about how one political party might have a problem with these influential conservative so-called brocasters. Well, it turns out it's Donald Trump. He has a Rogan problem. It's growing. We'll explain. Meanwhile, Fox News is seeing the writing on the wall and telling the folks who watch Fox News their party may be in trouble.

23:58Ty Cobb:But next, we turn to one of these stories that, you know, it's Friday, getting ready for the weekend, maybe making Valentine's Day plans. But this is one where you go, OK, I still got to watch the rest of the news tonight. The Wall Street Journal blowing the lid off the infighting, the chaos, the petty blanket drama inside what many see as a failed DHS under Kristi Noem. That's next with Molly Jongfast and Jay Comandori.

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26:06Ty Cobb:There are firings that are described as basically incompetent or don't make sense. There is a nastiness and pettiness described in the article, a sometimes circus-like atmosphere. The journal says Noam also wants to pin blame on various other officials. She sees herself in a kind of a PR political war with the other immigration officials. She wanted the acting ICE director to sort of be the face of the problems in Minneapolis rather than actually solving the problems. Now, there are plenty of stories like this in every administration, but the sheer details here are still something. People told the journal that Noam demanded that they drop a new plan for ICE to carry out targeted enforcement in Minneapolis, but that was the approach.

26:47Ty Cobb:Of course, the director had been advocating that Noam would berate her staff if she saw Homan on TV, that she was keeping track of their TV appearances and is also angling with Corey Lewandowski for some sort of higher role or power within the White House or the Republican Party going forward. That is the scrutiny on Mr. Lewandowski, who, of course, is an original Trump figure all the way back from the first campaign, but that even though he is in this special government role at DHS and they fly on a government jet or a lease jet. They have security and it's DHS. They got officers all over the place.

27:21Ty Cobb:For some reason, Lewandowski kept wanting to take the unusual step of getting a kind of government federally issued gun. And the journal reports that despite his power and proximity to the president, this is just not done because at DHS, you have the people with the guns in those roles, not the executives also having guns. and a lawyer would not sign off on it. And then days later, that lawyer was put on administrative leave. Lewandowski eventually persuaded other lawyers to sign off on some aspects of this. Apparently he wanted a gun and a badge. They also apparently fired a pilot when they couldn't find their blanket.

28:01Ty Cobb:This was Lewandowski and Noem. Noem had to switch planes after a maintenance issue. The journal reports her blanket was not moved to the second plane. and a Coast Guard pilot, the journal reports, was fired over this, but then reinstated because, as you see there on the screen, no one else was actually available to fly them home. And as is often the case in these kind of backstabbing stories, even though the public accountability and transparency could be good, note at the end of what you see there, that was a quote according to people familiar with what happened. So if it wasn't Noam and Lewandowski, it's a small number of other people at that high-level plane situation who apparently want the public to know what's going on at DHS.

28:43Ty Cobb:I'm joined by Molly Jong-Fast, New York Times writer and MSNOW analyst, host of the Fast Politics podcast, and Obama campaign veteran Che Comanduri. Che, as I mentioned, you see articles like this throughout administrations, but the journal stands by its details and sources, and it really paints a picture of incompetence and pettiness at DHS which is also mired in these other problems, and sooner or later with enough security failures, killings of Americans, other problems, you would think that there will be little tolerance if this is what they're actually spending their time on.

29:24Ari Melber:Yeah, I would say that you don't really see anything like this in other administrations. I mean, yes, you see some mismanagement, some minor, unfortunate, petty corruption, but this is of a totally different scale. This is, you know, this is, you know, Trump is the reality star president. And this is like the real housewives of Washington, D.C. If that Washington Wall Street Journal article had included an anecdote about a glass of wine being thrown in somebody's face, it would not have been at all surprising. These this whole thing is a soap opera. But I think for Trump and for the people around him, they kind of like the soap opera.

30:04Ari Melber:You might remember with the episode with Elon Musk, you know, having somebody else who draws attention, who can be blamed for things is extremely useful for Trump. Trump's approval ratings did much better when Elon Musk was there and people were blaming him for everything bad that was going on. And I do think that Kristi Noem is serving the same purpose this time. Hmm.

30:28Ty Cobb:Yeah, that sort of a lightning rod thing. She was asked about the deportation programs. And Molly, the substance here, of course, is that whether whatever the reasons Trump didn't like the reaction to the killings in Minnesota. And they have since left, but they've also put other people front of that in front of that. So here was her her response when asked about who's in charge.

30:55Ari Melber:Still in charge of the mass deportation campaigns or is. I'm still in charge of the Department of Homeland Security. That includes all 23 different agencies under our umbrella, including ICE and CBP, but also FEMA, TSA, Secret Service, the Coast Guard, many, many more. Molly. Yeah, I mean, look, Donald Trump has decided he doesn't want to fire anyone. And as for as long as that goes on, this is going to be the situation. But this article and there's a lot of stuff in there that has, you know, that was sort of low key known about is pretty damning. And it is like real banana republic stuff. And if you think about how, you know, what I thought was sort of the through line and it's a through line in a lot of the reporting about Lubendowski and Kristi Noem is that it seems they're very interested in her political future and sort of putting her, you know, you know, her.

31:53Ari Melber:I mean, one of the anecdotes in there is that he texts someone say, you know, text Tony Fabrizio saying he wants to do ads for her. She needs more FaceTime. Yeah. And anytime anyone goes to an airport, you can see that this woman wants to be more than just homeland security. Right. Because she's got this big, you know, there are photos of her when you go through TSA, very done up. So clearly she has a lot of ambition. And it's a really I think I don't I sort of see this as a political. She's got a lot of political moves that she's trying to make. And they're very sort of ham handed and ham fisted.

32:33Ty Cobb:yeah and jay i mean dhs hasn't historically been a a leapfrogged running for president uh i guess i guess the question here with christine noem is uh will that dog hunt

32:45Ari Melber:yeah i can just do a spoiler alert right now christine noem will never be president you can give her a quarter and have her call her parents and let them know she will not be president this country will elect Kim Kardashian before it will ever elect Kristi Noem. I mean, Kim Kardashian is a much better reality star diva, to be honest, than Kristi Noem. I mean, you know, the missing blanket. I mean, the fact that you would fire a pilot over a missing blanket and then have to rehire this pilot because nobody else is going to fly you home is absolutely comical. I mean, if you did an SNL sketch about it, nobody would believe it.

33:25Ari Melber:It's so ridiculous. So I

33:27Ty Cobb:I don't. Right, exactly. Is that, wait, is that a real dog in the background? Am I imagining things? That's you, Molly. I'm just saying it's.

33:38Ari Melber:It's a small dog. Yeah, that's great. It's a small dog, but very vicious. Small dog, but vicious.

33:43Ty Cobb:I just, it might be fitting. It wasn't planned, but it might be fitting. But go ahead, Che, finish your thought.

33:49Ari Melber:Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's another reason, by the way, I think Christine Oan will never be president. They'll never be president. You know, Americans love their dogs. And somebody who has is rather proud of having shot a puppy is not necessarily a qualification that anyone is going to look for as president. But, you know, look, politicians have egos. They're always the last to know what political reality brings. And I think that's certainly the case in this with Christine Elm.

34:18Ty Cobb:Yeah. And Jay, we've been having these conversations long enough. We're old enough to remember when there was all of this hand-wringing about the Democrats' problem with the podcast bros. Well, the party that has a podcast bro problem increasingly right now is the Republican Party. We're going to show the new Rogan and talk about this sort of contagion that Trump is facing when we come back with both of you.

34:49Ty Cobb:we're back with molly and chay and uh there is a there is a problem chay that trump has oh

34:56Ari Melber:there's our dog what's the name molly who's cephalus i just thought she should come in and

35:03Ty Cobb:say hi who's that for us well we could hear yeah if we could hear why not why not see a lovely Friday, I guess. You book Molly Che, you get an extra guess. I mentioned Rogan. Here's what he's saying. Absolutely shredding the kind of talking points that the Trump folks are still pushing out about Epstein and putting it on Fox and other places. And yet it's a new environment. Live by the sword, die by the sword. Here's what Rogan's saying. Why would your name be redacted if you're not a victim. Like, this is what's crazy about all this. Like, how come you redact some people

35:39Ari Melber:and you don't redact other people? Like, what is this? This is not good. None of this is good for this administration. It looks terrible. It looks terrible. It looks terrible for Trump when he was saying that none of this was real. This is all a hoax. This is not a hoax.

35:56Ty Cobb:Like, did you not know? Jay?

36:02Ari Melber:Yeah, I mean, you don't become Joe Rogan without knowing your audience. I mean, this was a point that I think James Carwell made a few weeks ago that I will piggyback on. Joe Rogan became the top podcaster in the country because he knows his audience. Last week or maybe two weeks ago, Rogan on ice towed the Trump line saying, oh, you know, this is terrible. What's going on in Minnesota? But there are some nuance. And then Trump let slip during the Super Bowl interview that he actually had called Rogan and discuss these things, something that Rogan did not reveal. And now Rogan sees that his audience doesn't much care for Trump anymore.

36:42Ari Melber:They don't like what they've seen in Minnesota. They don't like what they're seeing with this with the Epstein cover up. And he knows quite adroitly he has to go where his young male audience is, which is against Trump. Molly. Yeah, I think that's a really smart point. I also think, look, Epstein has always been an issue that the base cares about. And that has been why it's so interesting and also why it's so important. And remember, Trump has radicalized his base on Epstein, on the idea of Epstein. QAnon was in the first Trump administration. And remember, he would make nods towards QAnon. QAnon, a conspiracy which basically has its is basically the same sort of conspiracy as what we're seeing with the Epstein files, right?

37:33Ari Melber:A cabal of wealthy people abusing children. It's harder to get closer, you know, to those two things. And so I do think you really see in the base, and a great example of this was Marjorie Taylor Greene, who said it's all, you know, she came into politics because she wanted to find justice for QAnon and for a lot of these things. And then she got there and she was like, it was all a lie. So you're definitely seeing a real schism. And I think that Rogan is speaking to that. Yeah.

38:04Ty Cobb:And Che, it's I'm almost struggling for the words, even though we talk about all this stuff all the time. Like you don't pick which thing is going to be the thing in politics. You could make a list of all sorts of important things. You could rank them by what affects the most people. there are others who say you judge a society by how it treats the least powerful not the most we could have those moral philosophy debates this is important for all the reasons we've covered including the victims but it wasn't the thing that everyone would have thought would actually expose rogan's 30 million listeners to find out that oh my god jay trump lies and he lies even about big things and he's not doing what he said he would do so can you speak about how epstein seems to be also a gateway to other Trump failures that the right is reconsidering as we saw his polling among young men crash.

38:57Ari Melber:Yeah, I mean, what the Epstein files debacle, if you can call it that, has shown is it's created a permission structure by which people can walk away from Donald Trump. Donald Trump advertised himself as a man of the people. Yeah, I'm a billionaire, but I'm a billionaire who eats McDonald's and KFC and watches football and ultimate fighting. And I, you know, I am not one of these elites who look down on you. I'm one of you. And now with this debacle, it reminds everybody that Donald Trump isn't like any of them. He is a rich guy who, like a lot of rich guys, has gotten away with a lot of bad behavior over the years.

39:38Ari Melber:And more than that, I think the Epstein storyline, it personifies a growing chasm in America that's been going on since Occupy Wall Street. The rich are not like us, as F. Scott Fitzgerald said. They are different. They play by different rules. And they are ruining this country. They are screwing you, the average man. And look at the gross, indecent, disgusting behavior they are engaging in. Yeah.

40:09Ty Cobb:And you're and you're kind of reminding people why it does touch those other issues. And some people look at criminal justice system and complain about women's voices not being believed. That's an issue in this case or the treatment of poor people or people of color. This case blows it up in another way. Right. Because all the financial chicanery and people say, hey, it's not on the level. Meanwhile, they're being told, you know, A.I. is going to take their jobs. And so it's become this touchpoint, as you say. Che and Molly, thanks to both of you. Have a great weekend. We're going to finna break.

40:41Ty Cobb:And when we come back, Bad Bunny, the week that he won and why MAGA still can't get over it.

40:55Ty Cobb:As we end the week, are we still talking about Bad Bunny? Or in politics, are we still talking about the way people are talking about Bad Bunny? I have what you might call good news, not just that the show was great and diverse and inclusive. I discussed some of that earlier in the week and not just that we can still share nice things in this country and not have them all subsumed by politics. but that the whole failed MAGA meltdown over Bad Bunny performing for a part of the Super Bowl, right, for those 12 minutes in the halftime show, actually illustrates their failure to try to control culture in this current era.

41:34Ty Cobb:Now, MAGA voices were offended by many things that they don't like in the culture, whether it's Spanish or their long-running complaints about all kinds of other things that use the same playbook they tried to use here. The halftime show spiked Bad Bunny's listeners. He was already the number one artist in the world on streaming last year, and the Super Bowl brought him even more listeners and big ratings. Then Republicans said they're even more outraged. And some, following again the Trump playbook, said the FCC should get involved Because again, nothing better than a big government anti-free speech agenda brought to you by the Republican Party.

42:16Ty Cobb:But if this all sounds familiar, even as they lost, there was such a great point made by Jon Stewart where he connected this more broadly to the Republican Party's problems. Take a look.

42:32Ari Melber:When did the right become such...

42:40Ari Melber:These people who control every branch of government are so triggered by someone singing in Spanish for 20 minutes, they need to create their own safe space alternative halftime show, where Trad Bunny over here is singing songs about how he can't even enjoy sitting in a truck and drinking beer because he knows that somewhere out there there's a transperson.

43:04Ty Cobb:trad bunny is of course a little turn on traditional and a echo of bad bunny and so what you look at here is not just what they want you to focus on which is debating this genre or that and by definition you're gonna have different musicians play the halftime show and the different fans are gonna like the music it's really almost beneath discussing, but that the wider problem is this MAGA mood wants everyone to get as upset and outraged as they are about things not going their way, which is the exact snowflake type critique that they have hurled at so many other people. Stuart noting that this type of political fragility comes while they represent a president who has all of these problems, posted these racist memes, won't apologize for it, and these policies that we're living through still affect everyone's real lives.

44:04Ari Melber:It's actually pathetic. The gap between the power you all wield. I'm not done! The gap between the power you all wield and the victimhood you all claim is the real offense. If you didn't actually have the power to do so much damage in our country, I think we all dismiss it as a weak and pathetic pity party.

44:32Ty Cobb:A pity party. John Stewart does not hold back. He stitches it all together and reminds us that people who are literally exercising the power over how you live and how you're policed and who gets shot and killed also want to have an entire meltdown when they don't get their way because maybe their music or their ideas aren't actually popular. in the free market of ideas. We'll be right back.

45:08Ty Cobb:Have a great weekend and a great Valentine's Day.

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