Empire State of Mind

[Speaker 2] Today's presenting sponsor is Simply Safe Home Security. We can't fix gerrymandering in this ad break. - For sure can't. - But we can make sure the only people in your backyard are supposed to be there. [Speaker 3] Simply Safe Home Security provides protection that stops crimes before they start. The big thing is, it's proactive, not reactive. [Speaker 2] Simply Safe's active guard outdoor monitoring uses smart AI cameras in real live agents watching for trouble. So Simply Safe stops crimes before they start. If someone's creeping around, they can see it. [Speaker 3] Talk to them and get help on the way before anyone gets inside. You're covered outside an inside proactive live outdoor monitoring plus 24/7 indoor protection for your whole home. [Speaker 2] - I set up a Simply Safe system. It's incredibly easy to do. The app was really great and easy to use. The customer support was really reliable. I highly recommend it. They've been protecting over five million Americans from more than 20 years. They've been named Best Home Security System by US News and World Report, five years running. And there's no long-term contracts. You can cancel anytime. [Speaker 3] Get 50% off any new system at simplysafe.com/cricket. That simplysafe.com/cricket. [Speaker 2] Protect your house like it actually matters because it does. There's no safe like Simply Safe. [Unknown Speaker] (upbeat music) [Speaker 6] - Welcome to PodSafe America. I'm John Favreau. - I'm John Loveett. [Speaker 16] - Tommy Ditor. [Speaker 3] - Welcome back, guys. [Speaker 6] - Happy New Year, guys. [Speaker 3] - Happy New Year. [Speaker 6] - Great to be back. - Welcome to you and welcome to our new compatriots and Southern colonies. - And our pastoral state. - Yeah, who will soon have the honor of pumping crude to fund his majesty's palace renovations. - Vice Roy Miller. - A new majesty's palace renovations. - Yeah, exactly. - So yeah, we get a lot to cover today. We'll get into the latest with Venezuela and all the other countries that Trump now wants to invade. We'll also talk about Tim Walls' decision to end his campaign for a third term as governor because of the fraud scandal. That's become the latest mega crusade. We'll get into what we've learned so far from the DOJ's release of the first batch of the Epstein files and some other news. You may have missed over the holidays. And then Arizona Senator Mark Kelly talks to Loveett about all the latest news, including Pete Higgseth's decision to cut his pension and demote him because of that video he made about following illegal orders. But let's start with the biggest story of the week. Donald Trump's campaign to become emperor of the Western hemisphere, which follows a well-trotten path of authoritarians who respond to economic and political failures at home by pursuing imperialist ambitions abroad. Now we have it right here. Trump has chosen to start with Venezuela where he ordered the military to capture the oil-rich country's tin pot dictator Nicholas Maduro along with his wife in a raid on Caracas last weekend that has killed at least 80 people. The former first couple of Venezuela was brought to the US and arraigned in a lower Manhattan courtroom on Monday where they played it not guilty to various drug trafficking and narco terrorism charges. And in case anyone still thinks the people of Venezuela have been liberated from Maduro's brutal regime, the US government has decided to leave that regime in place, which will now be led by Maduro's vice president Delci Rodriguez, who seems to have cut a deal with the Trump administration where she gets to stay in power as long as she gives American oil companies access to her country's vast but underdeveloped oil reserves. Realizing that the American people may have some questions about the wisdom of this novel arrangement and the motivation behind all this, the Trump administration sent Marco Rubio, one of the masterminds behind this operation out on the Sunday shows to give some answers, and here's Marco given it his best shot. [Speaker 8] Why wasn't congressional authorization necessary? It wasn't necessary because this is not invasion. [Speaker 9] We didn't occupy a country. This was a arrest operation. This is a law enforcement operation that we have a quarantine on their oil. That means their economy will not be able to move forward until the conditions that are in the national interest to the United States and the interest of the Venezuelan people are met. And that's what we intend to do. So that leverage remains, that leverage is ongoing, set the condition so that we no longer have in our hemisphere of Venezuela that's the crossroads for many of our adversaries around the world, including Iran and Hezbollah. And as far as what our legal authority is on the quarantine, I'm very simple, we have court orders. I don't know, is a court not a legal authority? [Speaker 10] So is the United States running Venezuela right now? [Speaker 9] Well, we are running is the direction that this is going to move moving forward. And that is, we have leverage. This leverage we are using and we intend to use. We started using already. [Speaker 6] So that's Marco Rubio, kind of sort of answering. Who looks just comically exhausted. I mean, I feel for him, he's got like four jobs. [Speaker 7] A lot going on. He's got an archivist, he's South American vice-roin. It's a lot of jobs. And then you see him at Mar-a-Lago doing like this [Speaker 3] to like a vanilla ice-concerge want to kill himself. [Speaker 13] And watching a football game on a, [Speaker 6] you see Katie Miller has been, Katie Miller has been just tweeting out a whole bunch of videos that I'm sure that her friends in the administration probably wouldn't like. There was also Christy Nome and Stephen Miller dancing, I guess, to vanilla ice at Mar-a-Lago. Hellless having hang out with that crew. So, Rubio gives these carefully constructed non-answers and then Donald Trump, just hours later, does the thing that he does where he removes the lipstick that one of his advisors just tried to put on some pick. Let's listen. [Speaker 11] Have you spoken with her? We're in charge. What do you need from Kelsey Rodriguez? You, you, you threaten her? We need total access. We need access to the oil and to other things in their country. We were prepared to do a second strike that we needed. We're totally prepared. [Speaker 12] But that was still prepared. That's off the table now. No, it's not. [Speaker 11] If they don't behave, we will do a second strike. Also, as you're watching that video, [Speaker 7] you slow watch the kind of flush slowly come across Lindsey Graham's face. It's just never been more kind of psychosexually aroused by a president. It's just so, I cannot believe how horny I am for what this guy is saying since Iraq, since 2003. [Speaker 3] Yeah, speaking of Iraq. [Speaker 13] Speaking of Iraq. [Speaker 6] They actually went into the bathroom right now. Anyway, we're going to begin. Let's, let's take Rubio's argument, which is clearly the argument the White House wants to make, that this whole thing is just about, as Rubio said, I think I'll meet the press. No more drug trafficking, no more Iran, Hezbollah presence in Venezuela, and no more using the country's oil to enrich America's adversaries like China, JD Vance also took a cut, a diversion of this argument on Twitter, where he writes all his best stuff, claiming that we just can't let communist, nationalize oil facilities that belong to American companies, which Venezuela did about a decade ago. Tell me, what would you say to these arguments? [Speaker 3] Yeah, I mean, Marcos trying to say, it's just a simple law enforcement operation. One backstop by 150 warplanes, 15,000 troops in the Caribbean. I think a couple of aircraft carriers. And his argument seems to be that all you need to invade a country is a simple indictment of its leader, and then you can just invade that, that's his argument. I think, which is easier to get when you control the DOJ. [Speaker 6] When Pam Bondy works for you, it's easier. [Speaker 3] I think, I'll get to the drug stuff in a second. I think what this is about is Trump thinking that he is the king of the Western atmosphere and that he gets to dictate events in Venezuela. And in practice, that means, if you don't like Maduro, you take him out, including the military force, and then you make Rubio and Stephen Miller, the vice-royes. It means that if you want Venezuela's natural resources, not only can you claim them for America, but you can decide that you can deny China access to them. That is explicitly part of their national security strategy that they released last year. And it means that in other situations, Trump has used U.S. diplomatic and economic power to prop up leaders he doesn't like in Latin America. Remember when he gave Javier Miele a $40 billion dollar? Bank bailout in advance of an election there. So the fentanyl argument is bullshit. Fentanyl is made in Mexico with chemicals from China. It is most fentanyl interdictions, according to the CBP, according to the government's website, is that the border crossings cartels pay American citizens usually to smuggle it across the border in their cars, then as well as not a major producer of cocaine, but it's a transit point for like 10% of the world's cocaine. That's not nothing, but if you really cared about cocaine, you could take a big whack at the supply problem through enforcement in Columbia and Ecuador. Trump has said over and over again, and he said it there, that he wants Venezuela's oil. That is what this is about. He doesn't care about democracy. He doesn't care about human rights. He doesn't care about the 2024 election that was stolen by Maduro. He wants to decide who leads the country, what oil companies get access in Venezuela, what banks get to finance those oil fields going forward, in which of his cronies are going to get to play in that sandbox and the kickbacks that he will get along the way. So, you know, like we can do all the throw clear, we want about Maduro being a bad guy. It was admittedly an incredible military operation. The fact that they pulled this thing off without a single casualty, without a single aircraft going down is astounding. But sometimes removing a bad guy can lead to an even worse outcome. And so, we're a long way from knowing like how this is going to go. [Speaker 6] Well, what was your reaction to this shit show? You know, when I saw the photo of Maduro on the plane [Speaker 7] in that sort of Nike-ethleisure sort of shocking-- - Spongebob. - Image, in part-- Well, yeah, in part because like this administration has told us repeatedly how important it is to dress well for flights. Sean Tuffy would be pissed. And it's like another example of the kind of hypocrisy that we've been seeing. Yeah, look, you know. [Speaker 6] Delta couldn't have brought a suit. The team, not the Air Force. We're trying to elevate the flying experience. [Speaker 7] We all have an obligation, including deposed heads of state, woken up in the middle of the night by the Delta Force, unable to get into their safe room. At least fucking, what's happening? [Speaker 15] - Got a lot of lighter door on that safe room. You're going to want it to be user friendly. [Speaker 16] - Yeah, you want it to open and close. Get it going to close quick, you know what I mean? [Speaker 7] Yeah, look, it's all, it's insane. Now, we've had administrations that have lawlessly toppled South American and Latin American regimes in the past. And then claim they did not need congressional approval. That's something the US has done. - Several times. - One of our favorite things to do. The, like, what makes this all so strange is it's done with the kind of mix of, like, neocon, logic kind of layered on top of it. But like, underneath that is Donald Trump whose motivations are in egotistical, personal, kind of capricious based on whoever spoke to him last, right? Like, let's say you take the best version of this that Marco Rubio or JD Vance would lay out. It would involve Donald Trump saying we're not running Venezuela. The leaders are running Venezuela. Why? Because it's in the interest of his policy for that leader to seem strong at home. But he doesn't care about that. So this is, like, old school, old school American imperialism in the hemisphere run by a corrupt group of cloths and buffoons. And it's, it would be dangerous if it was the best in brightest that Republicans had to offer. They have failed when they have done this in the past with their smartest guys. But that's not who, who's running this. It's Pete Hegseth and Stephen Miller and a bunch of fucking jokers. It's a small thing, but Pam Bondy put out this statement after we found out that this was all because it was a law enforcement operation. And she said, Maduro will face the wrath of the US justice system. There is no wrath of the US justice system. It's actually not supposed to have wrath. It's supposed to have justice because it's not a wrath system. It's a fucking justice system. And what happens when you go to the justice system is it's not up to you anymore. It's up to the judge and the jury and the process, right? But like, they're so kind of un-serious and immature and not thoughtful about any of this. [Speaker 6] Yeah, they're just honest about how they feel. For sure. The mask is very much off. That's true. They're not mince and words. Everyone remember the the no blood for oil signs from the first Iraq war and you'd be like, oh, you know, I'm against this war, but those lefty saying it's blood. Now he's just like, oh no, it is blood for oil. But fortunately, we didn't spill any of our blood this time, but, you know, it's definitely for the oil for sure. [Speaker 3] There's a oil and Cuban blood for sure. Yeah, and we were told it was, you know, [Speaker 6] Maduro is this brutal dictator and we should be glad he's gone, but it's like, well, as you said, there was a legitimate winner of the 2024 election there. There's the opposition leader, Maria Mercado, who would just won the Nobel Peace Prize, though, I don't know if you guess on the Washington Post, that two sources close to the White House said that even though she dedicated her Nobel Peace Prize to Donald Trump, the fact that she didn't actually give it to him really stung, and if she had, she'd be the president of Venezuela right now. Just the fact that we live in a world [Speaker 7] where that is a possible thing to say about it, or that by the way that there's somebody betting on the polymarkets to make a couple hundred grand, that's crazy. That's the fact that Maduro is not going to be in power anymore. All of this is so, yeah, it's a brazen and despicable and like all the like intellectual layers on top of Donald Trump just being a kind of like kind of careening maniac. [Speaker 6] And the hubris that none of this is ever going to come back to bite us in the ass. You know that you could just like we are the strong ones, we are powerful, we have the big military and so we can do whatever the fuck we want and consequences be damned. And if I get the short-term win and the good headlines and this episode of the Trump show ends well, then no problems. Then if there's a huge problem down the road, if there's a terrorist attack or a war or a country that falls into civil war and mass migration crisis on this stuff, yeah, someone else will deal with that. I don't have to deal with that. One more point on the oil. Basically, as soon as we learned about the operation, we saw reporting that American oil companies were getting ready to go back in. And on Monday, their stocks were way up. Also Trump on that flight said that we just watched that someone asked, so did the oil companies, did you tip off the oil companies about the operation? And he said, yeah. [Speaker 3] Yeah, it sounds like they got a better briefing than Congress between the gang of agents. [Speaker 6] They gave a heads up to the oil companies. Maybe that was one of the traders that made that account. Who knows? Smart. But there's been other reporting about how hard it would actually be to rehabilitate Venezuela's oil infrastructure. Venezuela, of course, does have the biggest oil reserves, I believe, in the world. The very underlying. [Unknown Speaker] There's a question about that, right? [Speaker 3] Yeah, well, so this number you always see is 300 billion gallons, 17% of the world's known reserves. But there's some question as to where that number came from, maybe Hugo Shavas' ass is potentially one of the sources, [Speaker 7] and it's literally, there's a great example of just how stupid everything is, because nobody seems to know where that number came from. And they're all kind of basing all this stuff around it, but it may be something that was just sort of inflated decades ago. Yeah, they have a lot of oil. [Speaker 3] We don't know if it's the most, but they seem to have a lot. [Speaker 6] Yeah. And so, but now we're finding out that maybe big oil isn't as enthusiastic about this, or maybe they don't, because it's just going to cost so much money. So I've heard competing views on this, too. [Speaker 3] I think the most honest answer is we just don't know yet, and we won't know for sure until, first of all, oil companies need to get on the ground. They need to see what do the fields look like, what do the wells look like, what equipment needs to be upgraded. They need to fear what contracts have already been negotiated. The Chinese have contracts with Venezuela for a lot of these oil fields. Are we going to negate those? Also, the political situation is going to matter a lot. I mean, so just on the investment side, the estimates you see are, this could take years, it could take tens of billion dollars of your investment to really ramp up oil flows. But to get there, the oil companies are going to want legal certainty. They're going to want licenses or sanctions relief or something to ensure that. I'm sure they'll get that from Donald Trump. Well, yeah, I mean, this is where they'll probably like dole out licenses one by one to companies that, you know, pay the fuel and give them a piece. [Speaker 6] Exactly, but they don't want that rolled back [Speaker 3] by either the Venezuelan government or by Democrats if we take power in Shallah. They want political stability. And power, what is that? I don't know, what is that? I've heard it, I've read about it. So the political stability part will be key to, right? Because that's clearly, I think, why Trump chose Delsey Rodriguez, who is Maduro's VP, is not the acting president. She has seen, first of all, as a competent administrator who has done a better job overseeing the oil industry. And then also installing her isn't necessarily, is not threat to the entire patronage system that Chavez and the Maduro have built up, right? You imagine if you install the opposition leader, that is going to rile, you know, the powerful officials running the military or the interior ministry, who could be displeased. They might be displeased anyway, but we'll find out. Also, by the way, people that have been part of a brutal [Speaker 7] crackdown on civil society, on dissent, there's murder, horrible sexual assaults, like there's an abusive and despicable regime that they are leaving in place. [Speaker 3] Yes, and are also corrupt. I mean, there are people in that government facilitated with drug cartels, etc. But, you know, there's other things that could go wrong. I mean, there are remnants of these guerrilla groups on the border, like the ELAN or the FARC that could stage attacks and scare off oil companies. And the big question I have is like, who's going to defend all this infrastructure? Is it the US military? Is it black water? Is it the Venezuelan troops? Like, we don't know. [Speaker 6] I mean, let's even take it a step further and say that everything goes perfectly well and the oil companies all get there. And then they are just pumping away, right? And Hugo Chavez was right. And that's the most oil in the world. So that's what a very handsome man [Speaker 7] who spurs into Lindsey Graham's ear before hitting him. The whip. Oh my god. Getting all the oil in there. [Speaker 13] Smell it. [Speaker 6] Austin, you should be confused. I know, I know. So-- As soon as you said, pumping away, I knew it was coming. So it's like, there we go again. So it's like $100 billion to get this thing going. You probably don't get oil until, I don't know, like a decade maybe, years. So it's like a increased production, like a year or two. Right. But like to really get the most out of it. You could double it from 1 million barrels a day to two. [Speaker 3] I mean, I think the peak in the '70s was three and a half million barrels a day. For sure. [Speaker 6] But my point is the way that the world oil market works is that there's a lot of oil coming from a lot of places, including the United States. It's global, yes. And so maybe by 2030, your gas prices are a penny or two cheaper because if all goes perfectly in Venezuela. And it is very ironic to me that it's very like old Trump brain that he is obsessed with taking the oil, which of course, he's been obsessed with taking the oil forever. He used to say that about Iraq. They should have taken the oil and Iraq. So he's been obsessed for a while about taking it. He's like, he has a obsession with the most important resource from the last century at the same time and China potentially getting access to it. When we were just talking right before the break of how he just lifted the export ban on the AI chips that we sell to China, that we now are going to sell to China, which is the most important resource of the next century. [Speaker 3] And got nothing for that, by the way. Got nothing for that, that was for free. [Speaker 6] But we're taking the oil, even as the rest of the world is moving away from oil as an energy resource. Good stuff. Just wanted to, we're all like, oh, but the oil is the oil going to be, is that going to help us? Like, no, the oil is not going to help. [Speaker 16] Well, it could help a couple. Well, you know, we have some oil companies. We have a privileged few make a ton of money potentially. [Speaker 7] Of course, that depends on a lot of people going along, including China and Russia and others who will have a lot of, could have a lot of fun, but you can trouble for us down there. Which, by the way, again, up a nice part of our history of countries having little proxy battles to slow us down. But you see a lot of the, the maggot shudds out there being like, [Speaker 6] oh, you guys wanted him to focus on affordability. Affordability, now he's going to bring down gas prices. Like, this is not going to bring down that fucking gas prices. No, it's Donald Trump's president. It's just not. [Speaker 3] This episode of Podsave America is brought to you by Wildgrain. Wildgrain is the first bake from frozen subscription box for sourdough breads, artisanal pastries, and fresh pastas. Plus, all items conveniently bake in 25 minutes or less. Unlike many store-bought options, Wildgrain uses simple ingredients. 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Go to quints.com/crookid for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available on Canada2. That's q-u-i-n-c-e.com/crookid free shipping and 365 day returns quints.com/crookid. So maybe the most ominous news that came after the Maduro raid. [Speaker 6] The Trump seems like maybe he wants to conquer the entire western hemisphere. Who doesn't? Here he is again on Air Force One. Musing about other regimes he'd like to change and territories he'd like to take. [Speaker 11] Colombia is very sick too. Run by a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States and he's not going to be doing it very long. Cuba is ready to fall. You look. By the way, you have to do something with Mexico. Mexico has to get there act together. Greenland is covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place. We need greenland for the Don Roe doctrine. The Don Roe doctrine, guys. [Speaker 6] The Don Roe doctrine. That's where we are now. The Don Roe doctrine. What a dumb fucking so stupid world we live in. It really reminds me of. [Speaker 17] He took it from the New York Post. Did you see that? Well, a year ago in January. [Speaker 6] They had a. I think when he was first amusing about Greenland, they had a Don Roe doctrine front page and he's trying to make it happen ever since. And there here it is. He's got it now. Cool. [Speaker 7] There's a niche reference, but there's a movie called "Ronan" starring Robert Geniro and Sean Bean is in the movie. And he's sort of a gung-ho, but a little too gung-ho. A little too into the fight. And it's because he's not totally prepared for it. And he gets kind of exposed. Then up at this moment when he's like hopped up on the adrenaline of the fun of the action. And he's like, "Oh man, this is going great." And the action slows down. And he has to puke outside the car window. That's what that reminds me of. They're high right now. Which was bouncing. You could see him. This is shock and awe. This is the immediate aftermath. The US military is able to do what it is ordered to do. And they are high on that. And let's see what happens next. [Speaker 6] And so people know because, obviously, Trump has had quite a few guggles on Air Force 1, where he just shoots his mouth off and says something kind of crazy that then the rest of the White House and his advisors try to clean up. Like, you know, the Trump team account tweeted out a picture of Trump astride the Western hemisphere. Take a shit on it. Yes, stepping over one foot in basically Greenland and the other in South America and over it and caught to saying the Don Roe doctrine. And then, I think just on Monday, the State Department has just a picture of him that says like, "This is our hemisphere." So I think there's something happening, [Speaker 7] by the way, where the social media people in each of these departments are the kind of like biggest Trump freaks. And they spin the whole media and left up. That's what happens when they're posting out of DHS. That's what the State Department posts to White House posts and like-- [Speaker 6] These are the people who excitedly read the "I Love Hitler" group chat story in Politica. [Speaker 7] Yeah, the one that wasn't released that they're in. But no, I think they are there to spin everybody up. But they just don't see a cost to acting like this and getting everybody worried because they think they can do their little reassurances to the serious people in the kind of deep within the article, the Suzy Wiles style articles where they can get into the deep of actually, it's a smart, people really running things carefully. [Speaker 6] Yeah, and in case you're not like a mean person, but you like sort of the rhetorical flourish of a C plus Santa Monica fascist. Stephen Miller, who apparently is going to have a big role in governing Venezuela, perhaps. Viceroy Stephen Miller. He's finally got that class presidency he's been going for [Speaker 7] for half a century. He took to Twitter an attempt to expand [Speaker 6] on the thinking behind the Don Road doctrine, where he argued that the era of empires and colonialism "built the modern world." And then when it ended, after World War II, the West engaged in "self-punishment" by sending aid to its former territories and opening its borders to immigrants, thereby betraying our quote "native citizenry." So, do we have to make the argument now that colonialism was actually bad? [Speaker 18] You know Stephen, you know, didn't love colonialism. The founding fathers. Okay, boom. I might point you towards a document [Speaker 3] once stolen by Nicholas Cage, called the Declaration of Independence, that was specifically against it. I mean, the biggest fact check for Steve there is he says, he says, suggests that empires and colonies were dissolved out of the goodness of their hearts. I think there was some armed conflict in there that Stephen seems to be forgetting. And it is shocking that we do have to argue that colonization was bad, but it seems like we do. [Speaker 6] The most prosperity this country has ever seen came immediately after World War II and the decades after when we welcomed immigrants into this country and had sort of like built the greatest economy in the biggest middle class the world had ever known. Just that's just some interesting history as well. [Speaker 7] Yeah, the notable. It's not like everybody was walking around 1945 from things like things are great. We got to keep this going. You know, we'd just been on the other side of the greatest conflict in the history of human civilization and then what follows? Which who knows, maybe not the right side anymore, [Speaker 6] according to the history books that Donald Trump wants to write. There was a, I was, whatever reason this reminded me of, [Speaker 7] it was a, you know, there's a, there's a, people were critical of, of grants because they're like, he's a, he's an alcoholic. You're general there is an alcoholic and like, you know, apocryphalase says, well, whatever he's drinking, send it to my other generals, it's like, okay, you have a problem with the way in which we welcomed immigrants from 1945 to 2025. The greatest period of economic transformation in the history of planet earth, not just for the United States, but for vast numbers of people all around the world. And by the way, not just for the richest people, if you look at the bottom 80%, talking about an incredible improvement of quality. [Speaker 19] Neolibular, Neolibular, Neolibular. Never before been matched. [Speaker 20] Lefty's clipped this and get 'em. You're right. You're right. [Speaker 7] Like air conditioning, decline in maternal mortality and infant mortality, wealth, cars, just. Nasta. Nasta. Just speaking, for no reason, we agree with you. Yes, I know. We agree with you. And so like, what are you talking about? It's so, it's such a pathological point of view. And it points to something so deeply broken about him in this worldview, which is, you care so much more about preventing people you don't like from having anything that you'd be willing to hurt the people you claim you're advocating for, which are Americans. Because we built this system and benefited from it tremendously. Problems, flaws, of course. But the idea that you're gonna tear it all down, and that's for us, and not just to hurt people that you don't like for reasons that have to do with the color of their skin or where they come from or who is mean to you in high school, it's just, it's also perverse and obvious. [Speaker 3] It is just frightening that you'd have to actually argue with Stephen Miller that it taking away someone's self-determination through colonization is bad. Like treating someone as just a, treating a race or a country as inferior is bad, extracting their resources is bad. I don't know that he would agree with me when I said those things. And like, the rest of the world is taking this very seriously. Like the UN Security Council met Monday about the United States. We are condemned by a bunch of our allies at that meeting. Leaders across Latin America, the Brazilians, the Colombians, Mexicans, especially leftist leaders. They are holding emergency meetings about how to deal with the threat from the United States. The prime minister of Denmark has said she thinks the Greenland threat is a serious one. Like that conversation was kind of tinged with like, oh, he's just, you know, Don being Don, he's trolling whatever. Like you said, like the social media idiots were just like having fun with it. No, I don't think so. I think everyone in Panama is probably thinking, oh, that all that Panama Canal talk, that was pretty serious. We are still in the midst of a diplomatic and economic rupture with Canada, these Trump kept threatening to annex their country. And like everything, what he just did in Venezuela [Speaker 21] is terrifying people around the planet. [Speaker 6] It's also, I think I remember, I can't remember this, the 2016 or 2020 campaign or whatever it was, but there was like, oh, Trump's trying to take us back to the 1950s. Remember that was the thing, you know, like Hillary set it or Biden set it, I can't remember. But this is way beyond, this is way before that. Where this is like, night, this is even like before the 1900s, 1800s, 1800s. I mean, this is like, you know, the strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must. That is the, that is the Trump Miller worldview. And it's not, it's also seeding some power and influence to China and Russia. And this like, China gets to control Asia. Russia can. That's the question. That's the question. Does Russia control Europe? And then we get the Western hemisphere. But it's like, so it is not a world anymore of, it's not a rules based international order anymore. There is no international law. It's just the strongest company to strongest countries with the most nukes get to divide up the world. And hopefully then once the world is divvied up, Trump and Xi and Putin, you know, can get along pretty well. [Speaker 7] Yeah, you're saying that this is our hemisphere and that's your hemisphere is actually a much weaker position for the United States. Yeah, the, you know, Vance says this in one of his various defenses about it. Like, I don't think living in a palace in Caracas should protect you from, from the law. I don't think that lends you any special legitimacy. I actually think there's some truth to that, right? Like, no, like claiming you own a country that you run a country even though you stole the election. Like, I actually don't believe that makes you legitimate. I believe in democracy. I believe in those things. [Speaker 6] But, like, question is what to do about that. [Speaker 7] But the question is what to do about that. [Speaker 3] Just if I killing 80 Venezuelans. Of course. And 30 Cubans on the ground. [Speaker 7] Well, the reason you say that you say, well, what does lend legitimacy? And it's a legal order, a rules-based order that we defend that has certain values and precepts in which people, which individuals with the most power don't get to decide what happens. [Speaker 6] Letting the opposition that was the rightful winners of the election take power, that would be one. [Speaker 7] Or even suggesting that you're doing it on their behalf, which, of course, they don't. And the reason that's important is not just because it's right and just and all the rest. And I actually find people saying, like, oh, this is going to be permission for China to go into one or Russia to do more in Ukraine. Like, they've already taken that permission because they don't believe in these rules. [Speaker 3] Well, I think it's different. I think for the Russians, they have gotten every signal that they ever could have wanted that Ukraine can be theirs. At least 20% of it may be more. The China piece is an open question, I think. Like, I think Trump would trade away Taiwan for an economic deal. We don't know that yet. It gets a little more complicated when we're talking about, like, the Senkaku Islands. Like, some disputed territory between them in Japan, a treaty ally of ours. What happens then? [Speaker 7] But the point I'm making is only, yes, I agree with that. My point is only that these are other places that do believe in a power-based system. And perhaps the only reason they're not going into Taiwan is because they're worried about the consequences. But the deal we made and what made our system attractive-- and by the way, one argument that the Soviets made and that our enemies made in the Cold War was that our ideology wasn't inherently expansionary because freedom is expansionary. And democracy is expansionary because we believe it is something fundamental people deserve. And the deal we offer, right, is you get to become part of this order. And not only will you be protected by our power, you'll be protected by these rules. These rules will be good for you because you will be safe inside of them. And when we attack that, we attack the thing that allowed us to become not only like this hegemon, but also incredibly wealthy because we built a system in which you didn't need as many walls, which meant you could have trade and you could have bridges. And all the rest that came along with the success of America, of half a century, unprecedented in human history. [Speaker 6] And I think that the aging of that system and the failures of that system has now left people who were in favor of that system, making a lot of arguments about the rules, but the international order, but the institutions, right? And this is the need for a renewal of that argument because the arguments that start crazy on their side become like their main open public arguments. Like in the 2028 primary and the public inside, if there is one, like they're gonna be making the case that like what's so bad about a world where Russia and China and the United States split up the world and there's, and the strong countries make sure that the weak countries don't cause any trouble when everyone lives in peace, what's so bad about that? And like we're gonna have to have an argument. [Speaker 7] - Yeah, the other part of this, I was thinking about, I don't know if you remember this, but like, for whatever reason it came to mind, because maybe it was in Los Angeles. I remember there was the summit of the Americas in 2022 and Biden decided not to invite Venezuela and Nicaragua and Cuba and then there was this revolt by Mexico and a few other countries and those leaders refused to come in this summit that was supposed to be about American leadership in the region became a story about conflict and American weakness and Biden's fecklessness and in the story, Kamala's on the phone begging the head of Guatemala to come to the United States and it was just pathetic. It was just pathetic. And like I look at all this and I say, all right, I am against regime change wars. I am against this kind of like empire, but what is the Democrat, what is the policy that Democrats offer? Like what do we say about what it means for us to lead? [Speaker 6] - And not just Democrats as in the Democratic party, but like pro-democracy forces, liberal democracies all over the country. I mean you mentioned the UN too and my mind went to like, oh, is the UN going to write some strongly worded letters because we have like, the UN has become toothless at this point. [Speaker 3] - Well, yeah, were they going to censor us that the security council are going to veto, right? - Right. - It's just silly. - So a bunch of people are saying, illegal. - Yeah, no, but it's bad. I mean, we like, you know, every once in a while you look at a meeting like, am I the baddy and like, we're pretty friendly there. And like before people well actually me, like the Obama administration made a bunch of mistakes and like I'm talking about this from the experience of watching the Libya operation and thinking it was launched with good intentions to prevent Gaddafi's forces from mass occurring everyone in eastern Libya and then watching over the years as how it is unraveled. It is led to a horrible security situation for people in Libya, but also destabilized all of Northern Africa in parts of the Middle East. I mean, like these things, once the toothpaste is out of the tube, you have no idea what is going to happen. And I think all the triumphalism on day one of regime change operation is so shortsighted and stupid and it feels like a rock all over again. The oil was going to pay for itself. Kind of bullshit arguments are just like everywhere and it's hard to watch this happen. [Speaker 6] - And all of that is true and I completely agree with you. I think the, there is a difference too, which is a lot of times the debates over the use of force and whether to get involved are like tough calls. I think Libya was a difficult call and I think you're right. It turned out like a fucking disaster. But you know, Gaddafi was like in the process of mass occurring as people and you know, so it was like, do we stop it? Is that going to get worse if we stop it? Or is it going to be worse if we don't do anything, right? And you can go through all the different interventions like that and summer should have been easier calls than others for sure. But the Sun is like, oh no, no, no, no, we just want the oil. - There's no national security. - We just want the oil. - The rationale changes every other day. Sometimes it's fentanyl, sometimes it's drug, sometimes it's Hezbollah. - Or now, yeah, Hezbollah. - Or now, which I get to hear Steve Bannon was like, I don't fucking know what Rubio was talking about with Hezbollah, he's off message there. We got to bake it about the, 'cause then now the oil on the hemisphere, he was up close to this and now he's like, oh, it was masterful in the case, right. But it is the oil thing and now it's the, we want to control the western hemisphere. Now they're just going for breath. [Speaker 3] - Yeah, and that's the dawn reduction. I mean, that was in the national security strategy. So we all in some sense should have seen this coming. I know we're going to talk about the politics for Trump. [Speaker 6] I think, I know you want to talk about the polling there too. - Let's do that. It's obviously too early to know how all the politics are going to shake out, but early clues in some polls, we love polls. A Reuters poll out Monday found only 33% support for the operation and 72% worried that the US will become, quote, too involved in Venezuela. The Washington Post conducted a poll by text message of 1,000 Americans that was about evenly split on the question of the US sending the military to capture Maduro with 42% opposed and 40% supportive. Though more lopsided on the question of whether Trump should have gotten authorization from Congress, 63% said he should have. And Trump's plan to take control of Venezuela and choose a new government, which only 24%. Support, to me, that's like the key number. You also have your Marjorie Taylor Greens and Candace Owens and Thomas Massey is out there criticizing this, which is driving a new round of, you know, is the MAGA base dividing over this. What do you guys make of the politics on this issue for Trump and for other Republicans when you can take it separately if you want? Is this something that further divides MAGA or brings Republicans together? [Speaker 3] - So I'm very worried about the political lesson that Trump is going to take away from this operation and from the Iran strikes no matter what the polling eventually says, because so far, there has been no cost to him politically, right? From like relatively limited military actions, least terms of time frame, like no US service members were killed, Congress hasn't done shit about it. Most voters probably don't know this is happening, right? Like most people just crazy it is to people listening to the show or just checked out. And so meanwhile, Trump himself is surrounded by hard line anti-Maduro, anti-Cuba forces every time he's in Mar-a-Lago, BB Netanyahu visits him like every other day wherever he is. And I fear that Trump is going to take these military actions, love the wall-to-wall press coverage, love being told how bold and daring he was and historic this action was. And then decide that, you know what? I actually love intervention. I love like helping the Delta Force guys solve our problems. And that could mean like he said earlier like toppling or doing something else to topple the Cuban government, maybe does something to fuck around in Colombia. He's already threatening airstrikes in Iran. If the Iranian regime cracks down on protesters, we've talked about Greenland. [Speaker 7] He did airstrikes in Nigeria over the break. Did airstrikes in Nigeria over the break? [Speaker 3] Like for no reason. And so, you know, like if these incursion, these military actions are limited to like one night of airstrikes and he walks away, I honestly, I don't think there will be an agrival. I think they'll mostly be fine with it. Even though he's basically adopted the Lindsey Graham foreign policy after years of calling him like a bloodthirsty lunatic, Neocon Wormunger. But if this turns into this prolonged occupation of Venezuela, I think that will be a massive political problem. And that's already showing up in the polling. 70% of people are like, what do you mean run Venezuela? We don't want that. [Speaker 6] You're right though. He's very, because he's a TV president. I mean, he said, he's like, oh, I was watching the whole operation on TV. He does think he's playing video games. And so these interventions, because everyone's like, oh, the hypocrisy of, you know, he said, he was going to be a peace president, but he's doing all this war. Well, in his mind, probably, what he doesn't like is cragmyers, right? Where we're spending a lot of money and we lose a whole bunch of American lives. [Speaker 3] - Or lose period. - Or lose period. - Or Americans land on wars. We don't like losing. We don't like looking humiliated. [Speaker 6] - And Donald Trump, the TV president, who just watched politics on TV, that is where he is. And so he thinks to himself, now that he's got all his toys, because he's in the White House. Well, I can bomb this one and that one and fire this. And, you know, air strike here, and I look strong. And it gets me some good headlines. - Yeah. - And then, that's it. I mean, I don't want to-- When people say, oh, is he going to send an American troops to Venezuela? Like, I can't see him. Who knows? Who knows what will happen? I hope this doesn't happen. But like, I can't see him sending in a huge ground force in Venezuela. If things go bad there, I can see him just being like, yeah, let it-- [Speaker 7] - Why is he leaving? I mean, he's leaving-- - Who cares? - Let them deal with it. I'm in place, in part, because he doesn't want to put troops on the ground. I think he draws a hard line in between-- I think military interventions that include troops are very different to him than just bombing or raids like this. I think he views the raids. This is exciting and daring. And luckily, nobody was killed on the American side. So, it looks like a perfect success to him. And air, you know, he saw him on the most recent strikes and around, like, he'll keep doing that. Yeah, I think the question is, what happens if this doesn't go as planned? And also, there's chaos in the streets. In the only way, you can get what you claimed you were getting is with troops. What happens there? And I agree with you. I think he is extremely reluctant to deploy American troops. [Speaker 3] - That is a big question. Like, what happens if Delcy Rodriguez, the acting president, says, fuck you, and doesn't let Exxon get access to the oil field Donald Trump wants? He said, like, the stakes for her could be even worse than Maduro. Was he threatening to kill her? 'Cause that's true, and what it sounded like to me. What if there is some rogue general in the Venezuelan military who stages a coup, you know, like, both the Chavez? Are we gonna reintervene then to disrupt that? What if the FARC, or the ELN, or one of these groups, like, just does a bunch of things to make political instability. So there's just, you know, it's chaos down there. There's more migration. Like, things get worse. There's just so many ways they could break badly. [Speaker 6] - If I'm Trump and that happens, I send in another round of airstrikes and then say, pfff, let them deal with it, screw it. And then the migration problem that you're talking about is real, but it happens. You know, then he closes the borders and he gets tough on migrants, right? I even think, like, God fucking forbid that there is some kind of a terrorist attack, either here or abroad against Americans and American interests. Even then, he's gonna be like, well, that's not my fault. That's the fault of these foreigners. That's why we got to bomb them more. - Right. - I'm sure. - And this is what happens. [Speaker 3] - But like, most of them, like, something like, eight million Venezuelans have left the country. I mean, Hugo Chavez and Maduro ran the country into the ground. I think their GDP was cut by like 75% people were impoverished. It went from the richest country to impoverished. Most of the people who left Venezuela, though, went to Colombia or Ecuador or Panama or Brazil or other countries in the region, like, if more people flow out of Venezuela, it's gonna further destabilize the entire all of South America and reverberate in ways that we just can't see right now. In the same way, like, we didn't see in the early days of the Syrian Civil War, the way it would lead to like, the rise of right-wing neo-Nazi parties in Germany, you know, a decade later, so. [Speaker 6] - Yeah, that happens and suddenly the Don Roe doctor ends at the southern border. - I'm not so glad I didn't tell you about this. - I meant the quadrant, though, though. So Democrats, unsurprisingly, have been roundly critical of this, but obviously because it's Democratic Party, there's some drama. Axios had a story about some Democrats having misgivings about this whole thing. They quoted three centrist and or vulnerable house members, anonymously, of course. [Speaker 3] - Emotionally vulnerable, yeah. [Speaker 6] - Yeah, motionally vulnerable and they courageously went on background here. One of them said to Axios, quote, I think it looks weak. If you don't acknowledge when there is a win for our country, then you lose all credibility. Another said, quote, as Democrats, we can't just condemn what happened. And then another, the third one said, Maduro is bad, glad he has gone. You can't have it both ways. Anyone want to respond to the, to the centrist house Democrats? [Speaker 22] - Not really. - I mean, I just think like, [Speaker 21] there's no doubt the Maduro is a bad guy. [Speaker 3] He's corrupt, he's still elections, he locked up the opposition, right? There's no doubt the US military is the most dominant fighting force in the world. They will win every battle we put them up against. But what I'd say to this House Democrat is like, you have no idea if this was a win for our country. No one does. We can't tell the future. It felt like a win when Saddam Hussein was found in a spider hull, how'd that turn out? It felt like a win when Gaddafi was toppled. How did that turn out, right? Like, again, Trump has said, we want to run the country of Venezuela going forward. - To take their oil and left the regime in place [Speaker 6] of the guy he just replaced. If you can't look at that and say what Seth Molten said, which was this is, this is crazy. - This is crazy. - This is insane. What the hell are we doing? - Yes. - That's to me, that should be everyone's right. Ruben Geiger was out there, he was excellent. - Cory Booker had a good statement. - Cory Booker, what did you guys think of the other Democrats were out there from the statements you've seen? [Speaker 7] - I thought the Cory Booker statement, I think stood out if only because it put it in the broader context of what got us to this moment, which is a completely, slopingly empathetic Republican Congress that has not been willing to assert its constitutional authority in any way at any time, right? Donald Trump couldn't even do the courtesy of the briefing the leaders of the intelligence committee and the leaders of Congress, the way you would about a covert operation. They're claiming because those people would leak me while he's telling us he told the oil companies advance release they may have known it was coming. Although I think that's probably him just, I'm not, who knows what he fucking means, but regardless, like the reason we're in a situation where Donald Trump feels so emboldened is because he knows that he will face no accountability from Republicans in Congress. And so I do think when people go out there and say, like this was illegal, this was illegal, it sounds pretty feckless in silly because to who? And to what end and so what? And at least pointing out like there is a world in which we have a Congress that's going to hold an administration accountable as a world in which doing illegal things could have consequences. [Speaker 3] - You know, laterally launching a regime change war is a bad idea. We know this from a lot of pretty recent history and I don't think we should be scared to make that case. I also think like the key on these statements is to make it bigger. Like Seth Molta was great, like this is insane. Mark Warner made strong points about China and Russia. He talked about the hypocrisy of pardoning Juan Orlando Hernandez, the actual NARCO kingpin from Honduras that Trump just gave a pardon to. Tim Cain was good, Thomas Massey was strong, like again, go big, like this is not about whether Maduro was a good guy or a bad guy. There are a lot of bad leaders in the world. We are not going to depose them all. I thought we'd agreed that we don't want to be America's policeman and then you start to wonder, okay, how are we picking and choosing? Why aren't you deposing Kim Jong Un? Well, it's because of Trump getting love letters from him but also because he has nukes, right? So if you want every country that is scared of us to suddenly race to get a nuclear weapon, like this is a great way to do it. [Speaker 7] - Yeah, and by the way also just pardoning the Honduran leader who was a drug trafficker, right? Like just the lack of any standard, any kind of ideology behind any of this, it's just, it's also capricious and dangerous. [Speaker 6] - I totally understand focusing, if you're a Democrat in Congress, focusing your eye on Trump not going to Congress, you are in Congress, it's your job, it's your prerogative, I think that is important. I do think that when something like this happens, the focus, the focus of the statement at the beginning is just, what do you think of this? - Exactly. - Because I did see a lot of like, you know, throat clearing about the congressional authorization but then you can tell they're too scared to say that this was just a bad fucking idea. And it's like, you know what, Donald Trump's never going to Congress. It's not happening and we don't control Congress, Democrats don't control Congress anyway, and Republicans are shameless. So the most important thing you can do right now is to help shape the public debate by telling people exactly why this is such a fucking horrible idea. That to me is like number one. [Speaker 7] - Yeah, but this is where I do, like, I know it sounds, I was like, actually, before we even record, I was like, am I just, is this a bias that I have to just like think about the ways in which Joe Biden felt? But I do think that like one of the reasons you see Democrats kind of like unmoored a little bit, I do think for the most part, people have been critical and this is a few random people speaking on the background. But I do think there is a kind of, well, when they say it's weak, what they're really getting at is, well, Maduro was bad and it would be a better world if Maduro wasn't in power and that election had been allowed to carry through to the right full winner. What did Democrats do to make that happen? There was Democratic backsliding in South America, while Joe Biden was president, while claiming all these values, claiming to speak for all of these values. So what is a full-throated moral righteous policy that Democrats would embrace that doesn't seem kind of feckless in weak in the face of authoritarian rule of China's expansion, of Russia's expansion? Because I don't know the answer, I'm not an expert, but that does seem missing. [Speaker 3] Yeah, I think the challenge is military action, things getting blown up, but it looks strong. It looks decisive and Democrats of all these scars from the Iraq war in 2003 and thinking that the military actions automatically coded as strong and diplomacy is weak, but I just think voters are actually smarter than that. And so it's like you know where they should have scars [Speaker 6] for all the ones who cast the vote in favor of Bush's war, which is a vote that haunted most of them for their political grids. [Speaker 3] Exactly, and like you know to your point about the kind of melee mouth process focused statements, like a lot of Democrats made those kind of statements about the Iraq war and they're like, well actually what I voted for was for him to go back to the UN with firmer footing and it's like, guys, history is not gonna remember it that way. Are you for this or are you against it? Are you for the Don Roe doctrine and the next phase of toppling the Cubans and the Colombians and taking Greenland and Panama and whatever else? [Speaker 6] And I would also say like this to me is an easier one and a Dan wrote about this in his message box. This is an easier one than the bombing of the Iran nuclear sites for Democrats, which some Democrats were like, you know, it's good that he did that because that was about like, okay, they're these nuclear sites, we bomb them, do we get them all, do we not, that's the question. But the Trump administration told us after the Maduro raid that it wasn't really about Maduro. Well, it's about the oil. So the whole-- - The whole-- [Speaker 3] - The whole-- - Threatened us. People can die if Iran is a new, there's no threat to the United States from Maduro. They're trying to call it fentanyl, WMD. [Speaker 6] But, yeah, there's a whole thing that's like Maduro's a bad guy, but they're not saying that it's 'cause Maduro was a bad guy. That's not what they're saying, 'cause Maduro didn't give them the fucking oil. [Speaker 23] - They still, they're in some place. Just saying group of people, they're down one guy. - I will say too, not, I haven't seen a lot of 28 contenders [Speaker 6] that have put out statements. Pritzker, I saw, tweeted, Gallego, all the ones in Congress said something 'cause it's Congress, a little quiet out there from the rest of them. - All right, I'll comment. - I'll comment. - I will comment. - Yeah, that's right, I'll comment it. [Speaker 7] - And we think of her as a 2028 candidate. [Speaker 6] - We for now, for now we do, yeah. [Speaker 7] - Yeah, the other part of it, I just, what would we have, what would have this, like as you both were going back and forth about how quickly we were able to exploit the oil reserves of Venezuela. I was saying, what would this show have been about otherwise? Right, and what would we have been talking about today? - Our next talk. - Our next bucket, but it just like, like he has decided that he wanted us all, like he did, he chose this. He chose the timing of this. We're all now talking about this rather than the failure on to get any kind of Obamacare extension through the failure to attack any of the problems. He claimed he was going to attack. And like that doesn't go away. Yeah, he gets a couple days of tough guy, bomb guy news stories. But like the, the, apparently he wanted it. [Speaker 6] He wanted it to happen on Christmas day 'cause he likes the dates. But then there was some weather stuff and they had to, they basically like to, the weather sort of in the conditions and the clinical realities also kind of like, to start with. [Speaker 3] - Yeah, it was windy and you can't fly helicopters and that kind of weather. But what a dickhead. There's a lot of service members in government, if you know who have to work. [Speaker 6] - I know. - When you invade a country and do it on Christmas, it's just good to do. - You're a huge situation. - I guess this is my fucking consolation prize. Album Nigeria instead because I couldn't get the Venezuelan thing done on Christmas. [Speaker 3] - Incredible. [Unknown Speaker] (upbeat music) [Speaker 3] - Positive America is brought to you by article. We love article here at Crooked Media. We got a bunch of stuff in the office. We've got chairs, got couches, some desks, like all kinds of things. They look great. They were affordable. They showed up really fast. And that's because article offers a curated range of mid-century modern coastal and scandy inspired pieces that not only shine on their own, but also pair seamlessly with nearly any other article product. This thoughtful design approach makes it easy to mix and match helping you create a space that feels cohesive and stylish. Article takes great care in curating its collection, focusing solely on high quality, meaningful pieces that will stand the test of time. There's no filler. Every item is chosen for its craftmanship design and lasting value. 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Make it easy to find the best name for your business at one fair, all inclusive price, no hidden fees or add-ons required. Every Squarespace domain comes with advanced privacy and security tools included to ensure your domain remains online and protected. Head to squarespace.com for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, go to squarespace.com/cricket to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's squarespace.com/cricket. [Speaker 6] (upbeat music) - Speaking to Democrats, Tim Walls made a surprise announcement on Monday that he will be ending his campaign to seek a third term as governor of Minnesota, while it said that he decided to step aside because of the political attacks he's been facing over a massive social services fraud scandal in his state that's become a mega obsession and spawned all kinds of right-wing conspiracies. We covered the fraud scandal briefly in a previous episode. I honestly can't even remember when, but we did. But basically, a nonprofit stole tens of millions of dollars in pandemic relief funding from the government by saying the money was going to meals for kids. It was called feed our futures, the nonprofit. [Speaker 7] - And some features were pretty handsomely fed. [Speaker 6] - Yeah, not the correct ones, but yeah. Biden's DOJ investigated dozens of people were indicted in 2022, so this is an old one, many were convicted and Walls announced new oversight policies. Then, right after Walls announced his reelection bid in September, this September, Trump's DOJ announced investigations into other Minnesota Social Services programs and they are currently arguing that as much as nine billion may have been stolen and so far, 90 people have been charged altogether, both in the feed our future, original case, but then there have been a couple other cases, all these investigations are kind of blurring together, but they are separate cases. But what made this an even bigger deal in MAGA world is that most of the people who've been charged are Somali Americans. And then the day after Christmas, a right-wing influencer named Nick Shirley released a video that's since gone viral where he made a bunch of unsubstantiated claims about alleged fraud, its Somali run daycare centers in Minnesota that he visited. That led to the Trump administration announcing a freeze in childcare funding nationwide while they investigate, as well as just a general freak out on the right among everyone from Donald Trump and Elon Musk to nearly every Republican and conservative influencer. It was just like, the couple days on Twitter and online and on YouTube before Venezuela were just, this is all they were talking about. Including by Elon Musk who has jumped back into posting about politics, calls for all Somali American citizens to be denaturalized and deported, including Ilhan Omar and for Tim Walls to go to jail. And be tried for treason. That was one that Elon Musk also promoted. Trump continued the attack in response to the Walls news on Monday and accused the governor and Ilhan Omar of, quote, stealing tens of billions of taxpayer dollars, which of course isn't true at all. Now that Walls is out, Amy Klobuchar may jump into the race where she may have the honor of facing my pillow guy, Mike Lindell, if they both win their respective primaries. [Speaker 7] Amy Klobuchar, holding a hairbrush, tapping against her hand is a bunch of fraudsters come and bring cash back to the governor's mansion, just put it in front. That's awesome. I think that's cool. [Speaker 6] That is cool. I should clean it up. Yeah, she should do that. What do you guys make of the fraud story and the in the mega obsession over it? [Speaker 7] So there was fraud. It was very serious. The people that committed the fraud should go to jail. Many of them have not only that. They've recovered tens of millions of dollars. Well, not all of it. Can't recover all of it. But they've tried to recover a lot of the money. That's what you do. You find people who committed crimes and you prosecute them. You don't punish communities because we don't believe in collective punishment. It's just because somebody that committed crime is the same ethnicity as you doesn't make you in any way whatsoever responsible. That was sort of a, to me, a kind of status quo anti that I came to the table with. But apparently others no longer have it. Also, there was so much pandemic fraud. There was so much. This is one example. Is it the top of the list now? Sure. I get maybe. [Speaker 6] Maybe. The PPP fraud was very huge. That's like way up there as well too. [Speaker 7] Tons of other small business administration fraud. Remember, there are all kinds of reports about people taking millions of dollars from the government. Really wealthy people taking millions upon millions of dollars from the government. But this is what they care about. This is what they're focused on. Why? Because it affects a community of immigrants. They don't like. And so they are making this the issue. Does that mean that it wasn't a situation in which given the scale of the theft, it shouldn't have been caught earlier, or I guess more to the point. Once it was seemingly exposed, stopped earlier. What were the reasons it was allowed to continue? Some of that is legal and judicial, but some of it clearly is administrative. These are all really important to gas them. We don't support fraud. But the idea that now this pain needs to be visited on everyday care in the country or every Somali immigrant is just, it's just racist. [Speaker 6] Yeah, it really is combining the two passions right now of like the, because Elon and like the all-in boys were all over this. And it's like their thing is doge 2.0. They want this to be doge 2.0 even though, when they were running doge 1.0, they didn't seem to find any of this fraud. [Speaker 3] We're so good at doging. [Speaker 6] No, they were so good at doging, but now they're back. And they are saying things now like, most of your tax dollars now go to fraud. The government is just one big, so 30% of all your tax dollars go to fraud now. This is the greatest scandal in the history that if we just cut out the fraud in the government, we would balance the budget and no one under $500,000 would have to pay any taxes anymore. This is the shit that they're all pushing, and then you've got Stephen Miller pushing the like, oh, this is a great way to show that any immigrant in this country, even those who become citizens are bad and should be deported. [Speaker 3] Yeah, I think it's sort of like a three-part mag up session. And yes, like the fraud is horrendous, right? It's a ton of money, like billions of dollars at all. So it's like you're pretending to feed hungry kids, you're pretending to provide services to kids with autism, like fuck these people, lock them up, throw them away forever, make sure it can never happen again. The mag up session though, I think it's like one, it happened in a blue state, right? So you can blame Democrats and you can blame, and you could use it to attack the social safety net and the welfare state generally, right? And that is part of their project, to attack the value of government in service of slashing taxes for the richest people in the country. That's like Republican 101. Second, because a bunch of small people, small dissent have been arrested. That gets right, the Stephen Miller, like nativist going, it also gets the racist going. And then third, like social media algorithms are designed to explode stories like this, especially on Twitter. Like if you, if a right-wing anti-micrant, anti-liberal video appears on Twitter, Elon Musk is going to find it and retweet it and respond to it and juice the fuck out of its reach. And then I think journalists scroll past that video and they see like 170 million views, a totally made up number by the way. I do not believe a single metric that man puts out on about view counts on social media or businesses or whatever. But then they decide like, oh, this has been under discussed. This has been ignored by the mainstream media. Meanwhile like Google, three weeks earlier, a month earlier, the New York Times had a bunch of really great reporting about this fraud, Minnesota news outlets have been covering the story. [Speaker 7] Often they say, why won't the media cover this story I learned about from the media, the other part of it too. [Speaker 6] The Justice Department, which has been on the case since 2022? Exactly. [Speaker 7] The other part of this too is I do think like, one of the reasons there should have been more enforcement and checking is because it was a pandemic emergency and they were trying to agate money out the door and be they were worried about sending, they were worried about people interacting. Like that was part of a lot of the decisions that were being made in the early days that the pandemic to try to kind of help people in the crisis and part of what we're seeing is just a desire to rewrite the history of COVID, which is all of this was unnecessary. All of it was fake, the social distancing, the protection, the need for people to stay home, which is why people couldn't work. All of it was manufactured, right? Like that is part of this too. You're racing what was happening during COVID. [Speaker 6] The other thing that feeds into this is, you know, I saw that Tim Walls gave an interview back when this happened in like 2022 and someone in his, I believe it was Department of Education or Health and Human Services, whatever it was there in the state like flagged the irregularities and they were like, we're gonna have to stop this and then feeding our future, sued them and then in court and said it's because they were racist but they were trying to do this, which is even more disgusting. So that's feeding into, now the right takes that is like, Tim Walls fucked up because he, no, no, no, the Walls administration actually tried to stop it earlier and then there was a corridor. It's like a hole. [Speaker 7] - But this feeds, I do think this feeds into a, like what is the kind of deeper critique from the right that they want Americans to absorb which is Democrats are afraid of being called racist and they'd rather money go out here. - Hold it. - Legently than deal with racism. And by the way, like I don't think that that is a totally unfair allegation in some cases, right? Like there is absolutely Democrats who are afraid to attack a problem like this because they were afraid of being called racist. [Speaker 3] - Certainly this auditor who reached out to these communities was like, look, if you don't wanna see headlines all over the place calling you racist for targeting our, you know, non-profit, then you'll let us go. I do think it's really important for Democrats. There's, you're seeing a lot of like, - What about is 'em? - What about is 'em? Well, actually look at Trump, look at the crypto corruption and that is 100% right. And it is totally valid. This is the most corrupt White House we've ever seen. I do think Democrats, we need to take this really seriously first, lean into prosecuting the hell out of the perpetrators, like fix the oversight problems, fix the social safety net challenges because like this is like when healthcare.gov went down. Right, like if you want to sell people on the role of government in your lives being good and helpful and being worth your tax dollars, like we have to go that extra mile, whereas Republicans have a much easier task which is they just attack, attack, attack. And then say I see a government's worth list, let's drown in the bathtub, cut your tax. [Speaker 7] - Wouldn't it be more, it's not? - The Kathleen Subilius opened up that computer and there was just an exhausted Tera Dacto trying to connect the liars. [Speaker 6] That was such a bummer. - Yeah, you don't, you know, as a Democrat, like you don't care about fraud because it's an issue that Republicans are gonna attack you with. You care about it because if you want to propose policies like this that change people's lives, like you have to make sure that people trust you with their tax dollars, right? Like when the better example of that is the Recovery Act. Remember we made a big show of appointing Joe Biden as the, remember he was like the Inspector General, he was gonna make sure that none of the money was wasted on the Recovery Act and, you know, they found like, there's a million, how much money they found Selendra, right, and that was like the big thing. But we took that seriously because we're like, if this much money is going out the door, you better fucking believe we're gonna make sure that it's not wasted and that there's not fraud. And I do think that's an important, like, you know, think lessons for Democrats to learn as they're proposing policies. [Speaker 3] - Yeah, the Energy Department loan program that Selendra was a part of ultimately turned a profit, but what about that? - I can't, yeah, yeah, wait. [Speaker 7] - The idea that if you're gonna bet on a whole point of betting on companies that some of them are gonna go down, but on the whole, it's gonna work. That whole, like Selendra was not, I don't want to do a Selendra thing. [Speaker 6] - A guy with a cool car startup ended up benefiting from this. - Yeah, what was that guy's name? - Yeah, I don't know where he went. - Okay, yeah, that's. - What do you guys think about Walser's decision and Klobuchar jumping in the race possibly? [Speaker 3] - I mean, look, I respect anyone to, like, decides that for the good of, you know, the team to step back when there's time. - Yeah, I do too. - Not referencing anything specific here, but, you know. [Speaker 7] - Yeah, for sure. Well, why not? I think it's better than, yeah, other people hanging on. But the, yeah, look, I do think it's a little bit of an admission against interest here, right? Because he's saying it's because of right-wing attacks and that it's important to continue fighting right-wing attacks but you're also conceding to them by stepping aside. And I'd, like, I've seen some people say, some version of, like, I can't believe Tim Waltz is giving into this kind of right-wing attack. And I think two things can be true. One is there's a lot of unfair shit being circulated, a lot of ways in which is being exploited completely unfairly. But also, he's the governor of the state and there's a massive fraud. And the scale of it compared to what they expected to the program to be is just so gobsmacking that I understand why he would step aside. [Speaker 6] But it's clear he cares about the seat, cares about the state and he wants the Democrat to win that and he thought it would be harder to do for reasons that are fair or unfair. And then on Klobuchar, just so people know, so there, if she runs in 26 and she wins, there's also a Minnesota Senate race. Right now, there's a primary with Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan and Representative Angie Craig. And so that's for Senate. And then if Klobuchar runs in she wins, as governor, she would be able to appoint her replacement in the Senate that would then be up in 28, I believe. And she also wouldn't have to get rid of, she wouldn't have to step down from her Senate seat. So it's a freebie if she wants to run and then if she loses, then she'd go back to the Senate. [Speaker 7] Yeah, I wonder how that affects the primary, if you let that primary play out or you should have, right now there's an extra slot. [Speaker 6] There's an extra slot, yeah. Oh, I guess you play that a play out and then maybe potentially the loser of that primary could be appointed by a potential governor, Klobuchar. So we'll see, getting ahead of ourselves there. [Speaker 3] Strong candidate, I mean, I also think wall stepping deck probably speaks to how miserable politics is if you get in like Trump's glare, like the I of Sauron. I mean, do you guys see like over the weekend, Trump re-truth some video that it basically alleged that Tim Walls had had some role in the murder of Melissa Hortman. Oh my God. And then so to say, it legislator who was killed along with her husband last year, I mean, six, six stuff because she spoke out about immigration [Speaker 6] or something, I think about this scant. I think she spoke out about the fraud, and was like one of the few Democrats. And so this has been, I remember this was going around when she was first murdered, that like maybe this was a left-wing person because she took this unpopular stance among Democrats. It's fucking nice. [Speaker 3] I mean, her kids were like begging Trump to remove the video and as far as I can tell he's not. I mean, it's just the coolest person to plan it. [Speaker 6] All right, so we knew this was gonna happen because of where the deadline fell, but the Department of Justice released the first big batch of Epstein documents on the Friday afternoon before Christmas week. And we haven't had a chance to talk about it 'cause we were like, "Peace out, see you later." The new law gave the Department of Justice until December 19th to release what they have on Epstein. That day, they posted a searchable database containing hundreds of thousands of files, including redacted documents, emails, photos, and more, most of which lack context or order. Some of the quote unquote highlights from the trove, photos of Epstein with celebrities like Michael Jackson and former President Bill Clinton, investigations into 10 co-conspirators of Epstein's and revelations that Trump, despite claiming otherwise, flew on Epstein's plane at least eight times in the '90s. However, DOJ admitted that it hadn't been able to get through all the files by the deadline and there were reports just before New Year's that they're trying to borrow at least 400 government lawyers to help process over five million more Epstein documents. - It could bum a lawyer off you. It's such a weird way to phrase it. Clearly they're not doing a lot of work in the rest of the government. [Speaker 7] - They're lawyers, right? - They're not a lot of legal. - Yeah, I don't think so. - They don't say they were doing a terrible job redacting because apparently they could just highlight the black test and get the actual information. [Speaker 6] - Any takeaways from the documents that we've seen from you guys? [Speaker 3] - I mean, you highlighted the three big ones I took away. It's pretty notable that this federal prosecutor was flagging in January of 2020. The Trump was on Epstein's jet many, many more times. Why was he sending that email? What was he doing on that plane? The 10 co-conspirators point seems to completely contradict cash batels claim that there was no client list or other group of people that he could have charged. And then I think you just come away thinking like the FBI screwed up this case so unbelievably badly over the course of decades because there's all these credible tips and witness testimony, even including from like the sister of one of the victims that could have been used to arrest Jeffrey Epstein so much earlier and they just completely screwed up. [Speaker 7] - The fact that this all begins with Palm Beach police basically having this guy on sexual abuse of minors from the jump, from the beginning, multiple victims and that it never moves forward. It gets pledged down from the beginning and never leads to anything else. The other thing that jumped out to me, first of all, the fact that he was on the plane that many times was news to me, maybe, I don't know if I had a real view of it before, but I suppose I had internalized that he hadn't been on the plane because there just hadn't been evidence of it. He hadn't seen it, right? He denied it outright. [Speaker 6] - The first we heard of it was Susie Wiles saying it. - Yeah, he's on that, I bet. - He's on that interview, yeah. [Speaker 7] - And the fact that he was one of the people that was just on the plane over the time, there were people that had just a rationale of like, of course he wasn't on the Epstein plane. That's not his style, he would fly himself, he wouldn't go to a place like that. He would do you think, like there was just a whole story about how Donald Trump wasn't on the plane. That's a lie many, many times. [Speaker 3] - The Wall Street Journal article that Jeffrey Epstein wasn't just a frequent visitor at the Mar-a-Lago spa. The spa would send young women to his house on house calls for massages. [Speaker 6] - I mean, it is, if you're wondering like, why is Trump trying so hard to cover this up? Why has he tried so hard to cover this up for so long that does not, where the explanation is not, that he was in on it, that he was participating in this. It's that there's so much bad behavior from him around it, being on the plane. Marjorie Taylor Green said over the break too that Trump told her his friends would get in trouble, friends of his would get in trouble if the files came out. This whole thing about the Mar-a-Lago, right? There's enough behavior that's maybe not chargeable criminal, but pretty fucking embarrassing. - He's got the problem. - The cover up has always had to be [Speaker 7] the second worst outcome for Donald Trump. I will say also one other part of it is, just as a sort of a silver lining to the Epstein cloud, is only that Donald Trump does not believe he has the power to cover this up. They don't believe they can delete the stuff, erase the stuff that there's too many people that are not loyal to Donald Trump that have the information, which is why they feel so stuck. They would obviously love to shred this. They would obviously love to make this disappear. They have no compunction about, they're not into records retention, but they are trapped because inside of DOJ, it is not MAGA, one inch down. It is a bunch of people that are not gonna go along with the cover up, which is like, I do think a little bit heartening. [Speaker 6] - Yeah. - All right, there's plenty of other news from the last two weeks. We haven't had a chance to cover way too much, but we did just wanna mention a few items that probably flew under your radar unless you're one of the real sickos out there, which is why we asked Cricket's biggest sicko, Elijah Cohen to help us out. One of Elijah's many rules here is host of Terminally Online, which is our most hilariously unhinged pod for subscribers only, which is yet another reason you should all become subscribers at Cricket.com/friends, come a friend of the pod. I'm gonna have a lot of new awesome stuff behind the paywall this year, so you're gonna wanna sign up for that. [Speaker 3] - The number one way you could help independent media to be a subscriber. So if you like the show, please subscribe. If you really, really love the show, go to Cricket.com/friends, consider becoming a friend of the pod member. [Speaker 6] - Yeah. - And so because Elijah spends his days never taking his eyes off the internet, he gave me a list of stories, takes, and tweets. None of them had flown under my radar because I'm just as much of a sicko, but I'm curious how familiar you guys are with some of these. [Speaker 7] - I was pretty offline by the way, and every once in a while I would like go into my phone and I would see that like, that like basically, it's all just, it also just sort of like, like, [Speaker 6] - Sicking your head up at Normandy, and probably on a private Ryan, the opening scene. I always think about that with Twitter. It's like they're under the water and they go, (imitates farting) I don't know, back under the water. [Speaker 7] - Well, it's sort of like, it's almost like, I like, you guys just been in the casino the whole time. I went to bed. (laughing) [Speaker 6] - There are definitely days where it's like, you know, it's been off for like two weeks. [Speaker 3] I have a great time with my kids, like spending great family time, so my mom, so I hand his parents, and then you just like, log it to Twitter, and you're like, it is designed to enrage me, and I'm like, ignoring my daughter, like, fire off. Who's that, the Hedge Fund asshole? Who's, Bill Axley? - Bill Axley. - Stop drafting, stop drafting. - I know, I was, I wait, Tom. [Speaker 6] - I was good until Elon and, and Chimath and fucking the all-in people in Bill Axeman, they all got, they started doing it with the fraud stuff. I was like, ah, I had like a good week and a half. [Speaker 7] - I'm proud of you, I'm proud of you. - I was out, I was out. [Speaker 6] - All right, first one. Did anyone catch the marble arm rest story? Does that mean anything to you guys? [Speaker 3] - I actually missed this. - I missed it. - I didn't really care about the Kennedy Center stuff. [Speaker 6] - Okay, so, Donald Trump, can we put up the, for people who are watching on YouTube? You should all watch on YouTube. Donald Trump decided to post, right before Christmas, what's next for the Trump Kennedy Center, which is marble arm rests. He said, nothing's ever been done like this. - Sounds really comfortable. - That sounds like, yeah, no shit. [Speaker 24] - Unbel, what, that is the crazy marble arm rests? [Speaker 7] - Hey, you want a wood, a nice soft wood there. [Speaker 18] - Or, yeah, or something padded. [Speaker 6] This is what the Venezuelans are gonna have to be pumping oil for, right there. [Speaker 7] - I can't believe people don't think he's focused on their problem. - I know, I know. [Speaker 6] - Okay, here's a tougher one. If someone asked you, what you thought about, Gen Z looks maxing influencer clavicular's take on Gavin Newsom, Mogging JD Vance in 2028 because Newsom's a Chad and Vance is subhuman, what would you say? [Speaker 7] - I've tell you something, I don't know that that interview, I didn't know about that interview, but I sadly do know all those terms. I do, I do. [Speaker 3] I'm a little too deep in this one, unfortunately. So, looks maxing, as I believe, when you, it is what it sounds, you just do all the things to make yourself look better, including testosterone injections, plastic surgery, you know, remember the dude who got calf implants on that MTV series? [Speaker 7] - Oh, yeah. - Do you remember that? Remember the end of that? He and his calf lymphaments are still long. He never got that girlfriend in that time. [Speaker 6] - Vinnie's older brother, who is that? [Speaker 3] - Apparently the looks maxing is kind of an ideology that is adjacent to kind of white nationalism or the right way, because you always see clavicular talking just like Nick Fuentes and their buddies, and then clavicular, like rain over a guy, [Speaker 7] hit a guy with his car. - Yeah. - Hopefully, allegedly. - I didn't get prosecuted. - It's a cyber truck, yeah, he took a cyber truck. [Speaker 3] - So anyway, so he thinks JD Vance is ugly. [Speaker 6] - We have a clip, we should see. - Oh great, yeah, let's play the clip. [Speaker 25] - I mean like this next election cycle, who's gonna win? It's gonna be Gavin Newsom against JD Vance, because JD Vance is subhuman and Gavin Newsom mocks. [Speaker 26] - JD Vance is subhuman? - Yeah. What would make sure you say that? [Speaker 25] - He's got a very short, total facial width to height ratio. He's obese, very recessed side profile, whereas Newsom is like six to three chat. [Speaker 7] - So I just wanna say-- - That's manly, by the way. - Six weeks ahead, that was Michael Knowles of The Daily Wire. - I wanna just-- [Speaker 6] - Duck in that interview. [Speaker 7] - Look, all you people out there with your horoscopes, I just want you to know that you and Phrenology are coming into the light together. But yes, the return of Phrenology was inevitable in our kind of demon haunted world. But yes, JD Vance has a recessed chin. Therefore, he does not have what it takes to be a leader. [Speaker 3] - I also saw that guy saying that he takes so much testosterone that he no longer produces it. So I'm not sure that he is able to have sex. Like look, we've all lived in a world where obviously, optics and looks of a candidate is like seen as part of how they get elected, right? Like Barack Obama's a good looking guy. Like there was all this thing about the taller candidate, always wins. But this guy seems to have turned, looks maxing into a political ideology. And I think that was new to me in the last couple weeks. [Speaker 6] - Just see that Newsom got in on this, Newsom press office account, just like-- - Did he model? - They posted a picture of JD Vance's face, a little fatter than it is today. And not the fake one, the meme, that like an older picture of him when he was a little heavier, got it. So that's something that happened. [Speaker 27] - That's what they do. [Speaker 7] - Total chat. - Total chat. - Totally chat. - Let me get that mouth tape. [Speaker 3] - Mogging is, I mean, someone looking significantly better or outshining others and attractive in this style or confidence. [Speaker 18] - That's good. - I didn't really know that. [Speaker 6] - Mogging the competition. - How about the phrase, "Globo Homo"? - Oh, all of a sudden. - I give you a hint. It's related to the Maduro rate. [Speaker 7] - I do know, is this about the Homo nationalists? [Speaker 28] - Maybe. - Labyrinth. - So there was a report about increasingly right-wing gays, [Speaker 7] not the right-wing gays, where you, which somebody had higher cheekbones and filler lips, but right-wing homosexuals who are embracing anti-immigrant rhetoric because they are Homo nationalists who want to be free to be gay, but also don't want to be surrounded by immigrants. - Fascinating. - That's what I thought this was related to. [Speaker 6] - Did know about that. - Did know about that. - Our friend Tucker Carlson has the effort. [Speaker 16] - You're not gonna believe with this one. - Yeah, I know. [Speaker 29] - I'm gonna go kill Nicholas Maduro because we don't like the way he's treating his people. It's possible we're mad that he doesn't allow gay marriage. That is a distinct possibility. But no one will say that out loud. Not defending the regime, just saying. And by the way, the US-backed opposition leader who would take Maduro's place if he were taken out is, of course, pretty eager to get gay marriage in Venezuela. So to those of you who thought this whole project was Globo Homo, how crazy, actually. [Speaker 15] - What, what's Globo Homo? - Nope, definitely crazy. - What's Globo Homo? [Speaker 3] - Globo Homo is him thinking there's an international conspiracy to take out Nicholas Maduro because it's a conservative country that didn't allow gay marriage. That's his theory, that I guess a super gay deep state forced Donald Trump to launch this military operation to take on Maduro. [Speaker 30] - Wow. - Sadly, wasn't the gays with the Jews in this case. [Speaker 3] - Why not, why not both? - Why not both? - Why not both? - Right there, why not both? - Remember the kind of like the Megan Kelly Ben Shapiro moment when he was like, "I don't give a fuck about Maduro being a conservative." That he was sort of referencing that in the-- [Speaker 31] - Right, the idea that that doesn't actually conservative. [Speaker 3] - That's right, it's crazy. [Speaker 6] - Finally, 'cause his point, by the way, [Speaker 3] was we should remove dictatorships. That's what Ben's point was there. - Ben's point was like, he's a terrible guy. We shouldn't like him 'cause he's super conservative [Speaker 6] of social stuff. - Right, right, right. - All right, finally. Zora Mamdani was sworn in as mayor of New York City just after midnight on New Year's Eve and has already increased discourse supply to record levels. Which one of these mayor Mamdani takes aren't real? One, the buses aren't free at Mamdani Lied. Two, Mamdani needs to free Maduro. Three, Mamdani defeated abundance by implementing Yimbi policies. [Speaker 7] - Wait, one of those is not real? Are the two of those are real? - I got a guess. - What? - I think the bus one is fake. [Speaker 3] - I think that one's fake too. - They're all real. - Oh, that's true. - That's true. - I saw in the wild a couple versions of the free Maduro tweets. [Speaker 6] Okay, amazing, yeah. - The defeated abundance by Impr-- 'cause he said the word abundance in his speech and his inaugural speech. - The nod. - And so then the left he's like, yeah, he's basically, he's taking it, he's co-opting it because he's now, he's using the word, but it's like the socialist version of it. [Speaker 7] - He's getting, he's getting democratic. He's, hey, you're getting socialism all over my abundance. (laughing) - I wasn't done with that abundance yet, and now you've got your socialism all over it. That's gross. [Speaker 3] - There was another big abundance dust up right before Christmas, and I didn't know any of the people involved, but it's-- - I kept thinking, Tommy's, [Speaker 6] what did you say on the pundits as he saw? He was so right. - The fever pitch of it, [Speaker 7] like the rage compared to the stakes. - We got Bill Moore, how much rage? - So much rage. - We got to build more houses. [Speaker 6] - Yeah, however we get it done, it's great. [Speaker 7] - I'll just be mad about a new book in 2026. [Speaker 6] - I just, you know-- - Bill Moore has this. Sometimes it's gonna be zoning in regulations. Sometimes there's rich people doing some bad shit. I don't know, it's both. I just, I heard what the fuck. [Speaker 32] - I just built, yeah, it's just fucking problem. - I don't need to care about the underlying policy. Just find another book. - Cut, I just can't find another book. [Speaker 13] - Oh boy. - I heard The Candy House [Speaker 7] by Jennifer Egan. - You did? - Right. [Speaker 6] - I love that book. - It's a good book. - It's like, that's one of my favorite books. - I've been reading it. - It's one of the books you've read. - That's it, yeah. So all five. [Speaker 3] - I've been reading Fort Bragg cartel. I'll give you a very different window into the Delta Force community. [Speaker 7] - Oh great, great. - Really great, really great. God damn it. [Speaker 6] - I'm halfway through George Packer's novel, the emergency, I interviewed him on offline and told him I was gonna read the book and I started. [Speaker 7] - You know a book I read that I read, I read "Why Nothing Works." - Oh yeah. - Is it Dunkelman? [Speaker 6] - You got through that? - Yeah, that is the Rachelist abundance. - But that's the supercharged abundance. That's the longer abundance. - I wanna, that's an abundant abundance. [Speaker 7] - I wanna have a conversation with that author about how many times you're gonna say the phrase, is it Hamiltonian or is it Jeffersonian? I got it. I fucking got it, man. I'm reading your book, I'm here, you've got me. Stop saying it. It's very niche. It's worth reading, I'm learning a lot, but how many fucking times do you get to reintroduce the thesis? [Speaker 27] - Abundance of Thesai. [Speaker 7] - Yeah, there's a Thesai abundance. How stupid do you think I am? I'm following your logic, man. Trust me. It's a genuinely getting annoyed at that professor. [Speaker 3] - I'm also reading the interesting history of the intelligence war between East and West. [Speaker 6] - Wow, you're really. [Speaker 3] - Spies. - Let's just not kindle you, flip around. [Speaker 30] - Let's keep the escalation on. [Speaker 7] I'm also reading the Stephen Pinker book when everybody knows that everybody knows. - Oh, I'm Steve List. - Good for you. (laughing) - Who else are you celebrating on Epstein's list? - Everybody did not know that. (laughing) [Speaker 16] - Did not know that? - Well, it does not come up. You might find it hard to believe is not in the book. (laughing) And also, by the way, before I even knew that, which was at this moment, I wasn't gonna recommend it. [Unknown Speaker] (laughing) [Speaker 6] - Oh, so good. - Good shit, so good. - Okay, when we get back in the break, you'll hear Love It's Conversation with Senator Mark Kelly, but one reminder before we get to that, we're headed to New Zealand on Australia in February. - I think it's like five weeks away. - It's crazy. - What? [Speaker 7] - I gotta guess what we gotta do is go to the visas. [Speaker 6] - Yeah, yeah, go ahead and go again. We might be staying. [Speaker 13] - Yeah. [Speaker 6] - Which sphere of influence is Australia gonna be? [Speaker 7] - I don't think Australia is gonna like it. [Speaker 6] - Is that gonna be the she? - The she sphere of influence? [Speaker 7] - I depends on how much money they're gonna put in crypto in the next two years. [Speaker 6] - How far west is the Western hemisphere? [Speaker 7] - Yeah, we crossed in the day line. [Speaker 6] - We crossed in the day line, are we moving the day line? I could see Trump moving the day line. Anyway, we're gonna be there. The Pots of America hopefully just visiting tour comes to Auckland on February 11th, and then three cities in Australia after that. Melbourne on the 13th, Brisbane on the 14th, and Sydney on the 16th. If you're a listener in one of those cities, or if you wanna fly there, we'd love to see you. Tickets are on sale right now, head to Cricket.com/events to grab yours. When we come back, Mark Kelly. [Unknown Speaker] (upbeat music) [Speaker 3] Pots of America is brought to you by BUILT. It's 2026, and if you're still paying rent without BUILT, it's time for a change. BUILT is the loyalty program for renters that rewards you for your biggest monthly expense. Rent. With BUILT, every rent payment earns you points that can be used towards flights, hotels, lift rides, Amazon.com purchases, and much more. 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Make sure to use our URL so they know we sent you. [Speaker 33] Join me now as Arizona Senator Mark Kelly. Senator Kelly, welcome back to the pod. Thank you for having me back. [Speaker 34] All right, so Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth hosted today. Thank you very much for joining us. [Speaker 35] Thank you very much. [Unknown Speaker] Thank you very much for joining us. [Speaker 7] Thank you very much for joining us. [Speaker 36] Thank you very much for joining us. [Speaker 36] I was stifling the First Amendment rights of all Americans, especially retired people like me. I said something that the president didn't like. He said I should be hanged. I should be executed. I should be prosecuted. And then his minion, Pete Higgsat, the most unqualified secretary defense we've ever had, he makes a decision that he's going to court marshal me under the uniform code of military justice for saying what is in the UCMJ. Saying something that is lawful, telling service members, they need to follow the law. They didn't like that. In that censure letter, by the way, they also put all these other things that I said that they didn't like. Now think about this for a second. What message has that sent to other retired service members or people who have left the military, people on active duty, or just any U.S. citizen? Don't cross this president. He might try to get you hanged, but if that doesn't work, he's going to demote you. In the military, if you're a service member, or take away your pay, you know, this is, I got to say, I mean, I spent 25 years in the United States Navy, and I've been retired now for another, well, 15, I've never seen anything like this. I mean, this is what we've become as a country where people can't speak out against the government, can't disagree. [Speaker 7] So, did you find out via the tweet? Is that how you found out? Did you get notified in any other way? [Speaker 36] Well, so I found out initially today via the tweet, they did send a letter to my attorney. This is the first time they've actually corresponded with my legal folks at all. But I think this says shows the unseriousness of these clowns here. But they're more concerned about getting, you know, likes on Twitter and views than they are running, seriously, running the Department of Defense. [Speaker 7] Were you surprised that this was the attack that they took? Obviously, you know, Trump has threatened all kinds of things, they've threatened you with court martial. This is an administrative action. Yeah. Well, they're making all these claims about how what you've done is so dangerous, and now they're going to kind of come after your pay. It seems ridiculous. [Speaker 36] In this, in the central letter, sedition, right? Well, I think they realize if they put me in front of a jury, they would have been laughed out of court, even by a military, you know, whatever military case here. So I think they reverted, you know, to this option where they don't think I had a lot of recourse. But I'm going to, you know, I've got to stand up for the American people here. This is not just about me at this point. You're trying to shut everybody up. If you're a retired guy like me in the military or your former service member or you're just somebody speaking out against this president, Donald Trump wants you to shut up. That's not acceptable. [Speaker 7] So you made the, what set this off was the video you and several of your colleagues made basically saying that members of the military have to refuse unlawful orders. So you knew this was going to spur this kind of a fight or fight of some kind, right? No. [Speaker 36] I thought that even this guy, even Donald Trump would say, if he said anything in a response to what we said, he would say, of course, of course, members of the military shouldn't follow illegal orders. That's what I expected. I actually expected to ignore it. [Speaker 7] So I guess part of this is that look like we've watched over the last several decades as presidential authority has expanded Congress's role, has been minimized and presidents operate in this kind of a gray area about what is the lawful use of military power. Some of this, right? There is a genuine philosophical problem here of when presidents aren't going to Congress at all. What is in them? [Speaker 36] These are different things, though, that you're talking about constitutional authority of a president. And you're right over decades, we've seen an erosion of Congress's role and an amplification of the presidents. There are some exceptions to that. The first Gulf War, 1991, I flew 39 combat missions over Rack and Kuwait. That had an authorization for the use of military force by Congress. That's the way this is supposed to be done. That you're right presidents often just kind of go at a loan. And this Congress especially, my Republican colleagues in the House and the Senate have advocated to the White House, basically carte blanche, do whatever you want. We're not going to get in your way. That's not what the founding fathers intended. We are the article one branch of government. We come first for a reason. And most of the power was put there. They're given this up. [Speaker 7] But that's not what you're referring to. [Speaker 36] No, no. But what I was referring to are those things that are so obvious to a reasonable person that hey, I'm being ordered to do something specific and that's got to be against the law. That's what we're getting at. We're not talking about big constitutional responsibilities and roles that the president has over Congress, no. [Speaker 7] And do you think that there are specific orders that members of the military should have already refused? [Speaker 36] Well, I mean, sometimes you don't know, right? So what we did was a friendly reminder. We repeated the uniform code of military justice. It is the law. There is one a service member gets in a situation. You know, they can go to their chain of command and say, hey, I've got questions about this. Can we talk about this issue? That never happened with me in the early 90s, desert shield, desert storm, every order I ever got, even sinking two ships, very obvious. We were well within our rights to do this. But it has happened historically where members of the military have been ordered to do things that people should know that's against the law. And when the law and orders are in conflict, it says this right outside of West Point and a plaque, you go with the law. That's all we were trying to do is remind members of the military because we have a president who has talked about killing the family members of terrorists, family members. That means women and children. He has talked about shooting US citizens, protesters in the legs. He's talked about sending troops into US cities to use those US cities as training grounds, which means you're going to use US citizens for training for the US military. So that's why we did the video. Now, afterwards, at the same time, those had strikes that already started in the Caribbean. And I do, and continue to have a lot of questions about the big picture legality of that. But our goal here was just to remind, you know, service members, because I don't want to see some young, you know, Navy, Marine, Air Force guy, Guardian, I don't want to see these people finding themselves in a really bad situation. [Speaker 7] Well, aren't people already in that situation? I get like, the reason I'm pushing on this is only because we don't need to be hypothetical. We have reports in the Washington Post that the administration ordered people to be killed who were clinging to the wreckage of a ship. And there are people that had to execute that order. Should they have gone to their superiors and say, I worry this is unlawful? [Speaker 36] Well, I've been briefed, you know, on that in the skiff, in a secure facility about that strike. I've seen the videos. I have more questions coming out of that than I had going in. And I think the American public needs to see that video and needs to, we need to have an open hearing on this and people need to answer some, you know, hard questions about why we are taking those kind of actions. But that is the, that's kind of an example. We didn't know about that when we made the video, but that could be pointed to as the kind of an example of one of the things where we're getting at. [Speaker 7] We talked about the broader issue of Congress not being involved in military action by the White House. Obviously, this is a, a, a, a, where days after the intervention in Venezuela, Axios got a couple of Democrats to say on background, of course, that criticizing Trump looks weak on this. You've been very critical of the administration for what they've done here. What's your response to that? [Speaker 36] You know, I, I think when it's appropriate, it is our job to be critical of this president, any president. I was critical of Joe Biden on banks. It's, it's, it's, you know, our constitutional responsibility. And when it comes to the military, I sit on the armed services committee, on the ranking member of the airline subcommittee, I'm on the Strat forces subcommittee as well. And others, I sit on the intelligence committee, you know, one of the reasons I actually enjoy, you know, this job is the, the military stuff, the intel stuff. It's in it. It's consistent with my background. I understand, you know, stuff about this, but it's also my job when this administration is doing stuff that makes us less safe, less prosperous, putting service members at risk, it's my job to say something. Um, I mean, does this make us look weak, strong? Where, where in the beginning of whatever this thing is going to turn out to be, right? He extracted Maduro, Maduro is a bad guy. He needs to be prosecuted. It would have been better if maybe he was overthrown, you know, we're extracting a foreign leader out of his country. What president does that set? But Donald Trump has a habit of breaking shit and he has no plan here. He says he runs the country. We're running the country, these guys bought, and he's pointing out like Hexath and Virbio, these, we're running the country. They're not running the country. [Speaker 7] What would you like to see? So there was also a report, by the way, in the Washington Post that the White House is potentially planning a larger role for Stephen Miller in quote running, uh, Venezuela, uh, what, I, I didn't see that. So what, what should have, I mean, look, we're in this now. What should happen? What should happen? [Speaker 36] What should happen? We're in this election in Venezuela, we, you know, pretty, pretty much know who's going to win. I think at this point, the opposition party, 170% of the vote in the last election, Venezuela was a democracy for decades until Chavez, and then now, you know, this, this, this joker showed up. So, um, you know, we need at this point to try to help them get back to that. Us running, Venezuela, how does that help Americans with the cost of their rent and their groceries and their healthcare? This president has destroyed the prospects for Americans to have affordable healthcare millions of Americans are going to lose their health insurance because of this president and Republicans in Congress because they wanted to give a big tax cut to billionaires. And now his whole plan is, well, we're going to, we're going to take over the, the, the oil operation here, more profit for more rich people. What are the consequences to US service members? If they have to go in there and try to really take control of Venezuela when, when this happened in Iraq, and we toppled Saddam Hussein, remember the jubilation in the streets, the statue coming down, the Iraqis are all happy. How long did that last country winds up in civil war, and we're in the middle of it, and there's a lot of dead Americans. I do not want to see that happen here. [Speaker 7] So I remember in 2022, uh, President Biden held, uh, uh, summit of the Americas in Los Angeles. And there was this debate about excluding Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua, then a bunch of leaders from other countries refused to intend in protest because those leaders have been excluded. And it became, you know, it was supposed to be an assertion of American leadership in the hemisphere. And it became a story about conflict and, and weakness. And obviously there's just one, one summit. But to me, it does speak to some kind of a vacuum of American leadership that's existed. And I wonder if like in seeing what Trump is done and how dangerous it is, uh, have we offered an alternative of what it looks like to really stand up for American values, democratic values in the region. [Speaker 36] Well, this isn't standing up for values. [Speaker 7] I agree. I'm saying, uh, what is our alternative? Do we have an alternative principles when they're convenient? [Speaker 36] And if they're inconvenient, screw it. That's what we've seen from this administration. And in Canada, do we have a closer ally than, than Canada? Who is the moral authority in the Western hemisphere at this point? Uh, you're, I don't know. [Speaker 7] I mean, what? No, I, I agree with you. What I'm saying is this, look, Trump is doing a regime change. He's, uh, pardoning, uh, drug trafficking leaders. He's, uh, he's obviously entering into all kind of corrupt bargains here. He's, he's, uh, playing footsie with bouquets. He's terrible. There's no moral leadership and no kind of ideological leadership whatsoever. I'm saying. What is our alternative? What's the alternative now? I mean, what's an alternative vision for what American leadership in this region should look like? The alternative vision. [Speaker 36] I get it. Yeah. So the alternative vision is what is in the best interest of the United States of America and our allies and our partners across the globe today. And into the future, we need to be thinking, the Chinese think out a hundred years. We can't be about like what is in the best interest of us right now this second. We've got to be thinking decades into the future, evaluating all the time. What are the threats to our national security? What are the threats to our economy? What are the threats to our future? How does this thing that Donald Trump just did in Venezuela? How does this affect us five or ten years from now? And I can tell you this, it's going to have an effect. Is this justification that she needs to go and take Taiwan, kick out the leader? They'll say, hey, you kicked out Maduro. We've got interest here. This is this is 90 miles from our shoreline. A lot closer than Venezuela is. So is that the justification or is this the justification that Putin needs to go beyond Ukraine and say, hey, you know, Kazakhstan used to be part of the Soviet Union and they've got a lot of oil that they're not exploiting the way they should. We're going to work on that. And by the way, Donald Trump, it's kind of the same thing you just did in Venezuela. So what should we, we need to have a government that can, that is playing chess and not checkers. I mean, Stephen Miller running Venezuela, that guy's a moron. I mean, you talk about you want to ruin that country? You want to, you know, set this up for a situation that is not going to be in our best interest, put him in charge. So I mean, we have to be thinking ahead. We've got to have serious people in these jobs. We can't have a bunch of sycophants and yes men, Pete Hegseth. Is he ever under any circumstance going to speak truth to power? I don't think so. [Speaker 7] So there's something so obviously, uh, uh, uh, uh, ugly about somebody like Pete Hegseth going after you use something like Donald Trump going after you've served your country for decades. You've sacrificed a lot. [Speaker 36] And Donald Trump's a draft Dodger, right? Five times. [Speaker 7] We see a lot of stories about the ways in which Trump is politicizing the military, deploying national guard into into American cities, doing these, uh, uh, uh, uh, kind of lawless raids in the, in the Caribbean, uh, they're coming after you and other service members who have spoken out, uh, what are you hearing from people in the military who are maybe not hardcore Democrats, but are certainly not MAGA about what they, about their response to this about what it's like seeing the military being, uh, uh, used and abused in this way. [Speaker 36] Well, it's, it's quiet, right? They're not doing a lot of this stuff publicly and I've been told by a more than one occasion there are folks inside the Pentagon. There's the Donald Trump people, the MAGA people and they're the quiet people. And when they see them go after a US Senator for something I said, that shuts them up. I mean, are they going to speak out when they see some defense contractor that's a buddy with Donald Trump, you know, fleecing the US taxpayer? Or are they going to be afraid and they're going to think, wow, man, they, they went after that US Senator over something he said, I can't speak out to get about, about this. So they're stifling, you know, free thought and speech. And what I hear from people, I mean, I was, uh, you know, out of military base, uh, not too long ago, I'm not going to say where, um, and as I got into the car, uh, one of the very senior people thanked me, you know, thank you for, for speaking out. Thank you for what you're doing. We need it. So yeah, there are people that, you know, that, that they get it and they understand the, you know, situation we are, you know, currently in and we have a president that doesn't, obviously, doesn't listen to anybody and he's got a bunch of yes people around him and that's dangerous. [Speaker 7] So last question, there's also now a move in Congress to try to reassert some kind of congressional authority over, uh, military, uh, involvement in Venezuela and beyond, there's going to be a war powers vote by that Senator Schumer is going to force. Is there any hope that you'll be able to get, uh, Republicans on board to pass it, uh, behind the scenes are Republicans, uh, questioning, uh, the administrations, uh, uh, refusal to even let members of the, the, the gang of whatever it is, like eight, no, the gang of eight, no, that this was coming. Like, is there any hope that Congress is going to reassert its authority here? [Speaker 36] There's a serious lack of spine on, uh, the Republican side of the aisle right now. There will be some people, obviously, that will speak out against this. I mean, Rand Paul being a, uh, an example, there will be others, Lisa Murkowski, and I think you'll see a few other people's people, but is that enough, uh, to really put pressure on the administration, probably not, um, but I do show up, you know, every day for work being optimistic and hopeful things will turn around. That's what we need. I mean, if we're gonna, if we're going to keep this, you know, you know, keep this administration in check and possibly keep them from a bit, a few days ago, I would not have said this, but keep them from invading Greenland. I mean, it sounds crazy, but in the last couple days, you know, after we just saw what happened here and then he's talking about Greenland again and Stephen Miller's wife saying soon Greenland is going to be part of the United States. If we're gonna prevent things like that happening or maybe even going after Canada, I mean, how crazy does that sound? But who knows at this point, we're gonna need the Republicans in the Senate and the House to stand up and say something. [Speaker 7] I, I was once at a, uh, some sort of, you know, uh, fancy conference that I had no business being at and somebody was talking about what would happen if someone tried to invade Greenland. And this, I think Danish academic was describing the mile high sheets of ice and the temperature and the, and the conditions on the ground. And he said in his Danish accent, if someone were to invade Greenland, we'd be, begin immediately an effort to rescue them. Senator Mark Kelly, thank you so much for your time, really appreciate it and a good luck in the fight. [Speaker 36] Thank you. That's our show for today. [Speaker 6] Thanks to Mark Kelly for coming on. Dan and I will be back with a new show on Friday. Talk to everybody then. 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[Speaker 33] Mora, what are you doing? Maximum Pihassa Valtava Lumivore. Welcome to the show.