Speaker 1Pete Hegseth, he just gave one of the most unhinged speeches I've ever heard. No beardos, no weirdos, no wimps are now allowed in the military. His words, Katty.
Speaker 2And he's on a purge of the military's top generals. No, not because they're weirdos, but for reasons far more sinister.
Speaker 1Meanwhile, the Republicans are in full conspiracy mode, Katty, hurling wild accusations at Special Counsel Jack Smith for doing his job investigating a corrupt authoritarian president. It was embarrassing, Katty, but not as embarrassing as the state of the U.S. democracy. This episode is brought to you by eToro.
Speaker 2A tariff, a spending plan, a regulatory change. It can all start just as the first line of a speech, but it sets in motion things that can reach far beyond Washington and unfold for years to come.
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Speaker 2Welcome to The Rest Is Politics US with me, Katty Kay.
Speaker 1And I'm Anthony Scaramucci. Katty, can't say because of British, we actually can't tell you what the Secretary of Defense, this moron, said.
Speaker 2So we had an editorial meeting on 9 a.m. Washington, D.C. time, editorial meeting on The Rest Is Politics US, something that we don't usually do because we don't usually have meetings on this program. But anyway, we had to discuss, listeners, what we could say and what we could repeat of the American Secretary of Defense's speech that he has just given to, to rank and file members at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia, where he said things that were so offensive that we decided we could not even put them in the introduction. These are not our words. These are the words of the Secretary of Defense of the world's largest military. You have to listen to this. Big breath. Here's the clip of the Secretary of Defense.
Speaker 4We are no longer the woke department or the weak department. Simple translation. Translation of that. No fanny, no fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals, just warriors.
Speaker 2You know, sometimes you have to stop in this administration, Anthony, and remind yourself what would be the outrage if the Secretary of Defense of Barack Obama, if the Secretary of Defense of Joe Biden, if the Secretary of Defense of George W. Bush had used that kind of language in public in this incredibly bombastic way. Oh, and not to mention, all the while, there is an Iran war going on under his watch, which is not going well. But this is what he's choosing to focus on.
Speaker 1Yeah, the commander-in-chief falling asleep in the middle of the day at most meetings. He's right there on a live camera dozing off. If that happened to Joe Biden, it would be a five-alarm fire on Fox News. And I'm not really sure why other media outlets, even left-leaning media outlets in the United States, are not talking. They're not talking about that. In addition to all of that stuff that he said, which would eliminate people like J.D. Vance, because he's a beardo and a weirdo, and it would eliminate all of our founding fathers and obviously Abraham Lincoln, he went full-on religion. He's doing religion maxing at the Pentagon. Okay, and so just so people know, Pete Hegseth has announced a new office of religious affairs. He's been through several marriages. All different types of things with women. Incredible drinking, partying maniac. But now he's citing the Bible in a country that has a First Amendment, which expressly says that there's a separation between the church and state, but not for Pete Hegseth.
Speaker 2There was a lot of God in this speech and a lot of how religion has been squeezed out of the military and that is somehow woke. Not to be religious is somehow woke or not to have enough religion is somehow woke. So he's setting up this department, like you say, where the chaplains will be elevated in status and will have a direct line to him. But what about all the members of the U.S. military who are Jewish or Muslim or atheist? Because he was talking very specifically, he was quoting, as you say, quotes from the Bible. He was talking very specifically about Christian chaplains in the context of elevating religion in the military.
Speaker 1He's talking like a Christian crusader, like the tattoos that are on his chest that are related to the Christian crusades. He said in March, 82% of the troops were religious. He's now saying here in September that it's 95%. Caddy, that's the greatest mass conversion since Emperor Constantine. Okay, I don't know what the guy's talking about, but I would tell you if we could grow our ammunition and our stockpiles that fast, we would have won the Iranian war. Okay, so this guy is out of his mind and I'm gonna call him out on it. But the last thing he said, which is to me, and by the way, I just wanna tell everybody, and you know this guy, I'm a practicing, I go to church, I'm a practicing Catholic, but I keep my faith to myself, okay? So it's not like you wanna have your religion, God bless you. If you don't wanna have a religion, God bless you, that's your right. But he says, and I quote in this speech, the real battle is spiritual, Caddy, okay? I guess the physical battle, the one that we're, running out of ammunition on and the one where we got the Strait of Hormuz closed and the one where we've had all of our supply depots and our bases blown up in the Gulf, I guess that one is not going so well. But now we have a spiritual battle. And last but not least, he's fired 20% of the generals. Okay, so I don't know, you tell me, Caddy. To your point, Barack Obama did that. Joe Biden, Bill Clinton, pick a person, that gave this type of radical speech and eliminated 20% of the Pentagon's brass. How would that be going down?
Speaker 2I think you're getting to the right thing here because the story is not really his offensive language, which is, I found it hard to listen to. But I was speaking to a colleague of mine who covers the Pentagon, Nancy Youssef, she's great at The Atlantic, this morning. And she was saying, look, the thing with what he's done in terms of the generals, it's not just the generals, it's the generals. It's not the purge of the weirdos and the beardos, it is the purge of the generals. It takes 20 years or more to become a general or an admiral. And he has fired or blocked 80 plus generals and admirals. Almost half of them are women or people of color. Now, if you look at the proportion in the generals' ranks, that is massively disproportionate, the number of people of color or women that he's fired from these very top ranks of the US military. So there seems to be some, kind of a purge going on there and Nancy was making the point to me that it took 20 years for General Colin Powell to become the leader of Central Command. It took another 20 years after that to get the next black leader of Central Command, Lloyd Austin. And what you do when you purge people like that is you kill the pipeline. And so he is doing things now with all his crazy speeches and stuff that we get, you know, that's the shiny object. But if you look behind the scenes, he is doing things now, Anthony, that are going to hurt the U.S. military because there is an awful lot of talent in the people he's got rid of. You're going to hurt the U.S. military for decades to come because it's going to take so long to get these people back into the pipeline. And I think that's the real story here. It's not what he says up on a stage, kind of browbeating or running around like doing, what was he doing? Push-ups and stuff that he can't even do, by the way. We've shown the videos. I've seen the videos being shown to generals of his pull-ups. He's doing them all wrong. He's doing what are called half push-ups. He's not even doing a proper push-up. I can't do that. I can't do a proper push-up, Anthony, so I shouldn't complain, but he is the Secretary of
Speaker 1Defense. I am going to demonstrate how much I like and care for you, Katty. Let me explain to you why, because it's now time for role play. Oh, I like this moment.
Speaker 2This is good. I like this.
Speaker 1And I'm going to play Pete Hexeth.
Speaker 2Oh, good. Okay, I'm
Speaker 1going to play Pete Hexeth. Hold on. Let me get down. You're taking one for the team. Let me, no, look at me. I'm doing a half-hearted push-up here. Look at, ho, ho. Okay, I've done the pull-ups and the pull-ups, and I'm channeling Pete Hexeth. But Miss Kay, you are so misguided. Miss Kay, we've woke-ified our military. We have put in these weirdos and beardos and the other things that he said that we have to delete. And we let gays into the military, and so this has weakened us. And we need more testosterone in the military, Miss Kay. And so that's why I changed the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War because I'm sending a message to people that we're no longer woke. And if there are some black and brown people that happened to get there through DEI, they didn't get there on their own. Okay, by the way, I can't even say that out loud because let me just step out because those black and brown people had a way harder time ascending to that level. As you know, as a woman in journalism, you know what I'm saying. But let me get back into my role. But Miss Kay, don't you understand what I'm talking about? I'm tough. And the president with his Liberace oval office and his orange makeup, he's a tough guy, Mrs. Katty Kay. So go ahead, tell me, go ahead, respond to that. You're right.
Speaker 2I mean, the populists love the language. There is a part of MAGA that loves the language. There's the old fight against wokeism. We've heard it constantly in the campaigns. But here's my question to you. Is all of this a to save Pete Hegseth his job? Because I've spoken to people who are close to the White House who have told me who are in and out of the White House all the time who say the one person everybody hates in the White House, particularly Susie Wiles, is Pete Hegseth. They think he is insecure and incompetent and thin skinned. He is the guy apparently who in the meetings with the president, he will always make sure he speaks after Trump so that whatever Trump says, there is Pete who can amplify it and be the sycophant and it's driving everybody crazy. But Trump likes it. Trump likes this kind of anti-woke fight. I tell you who doesn't like it, though, and this could be more of a problem for him, members of Congress. Republican members of Congress are pissed off with Pete Hegseth. He's not doing the job of the Secretary of Defense, which is to have a good relationship with Congress in order to get the money. He can't even get the money for his wars because he sends them seven page requests when normally it's about a hundred page request when you're asking for that kind of money to fight a war. You ask for 67 billion dollars from Congress and you send it in a seven page request. Senators are going to see that as an insult. So I don't know that he's actually going to be able to save his job with all of this stuff. What do you think? Or do you think the style is enough over the substance?
Speaker 1Well, I've been dead wrong on this. So I thought he was going to lose his job a few weeks ago, given how badly he's mishandled the war and given how badly this whole munitions track is side and given how badly the complaints are coming from the generals, you know, but Driscoll gave it up. Uh, Driscoll, you know, the secretary of the army gave it up as I pointed out last week, where he went to tell Trump how bad it is. And Trump wanted to focus on his, uh, development projects in and around the white house. So, so, but, but he did something else yesterday, uh, that I need to explain to people. He's inviting governors to bid on the next great American base.
Speaker 2A fortuitous he's calling it, right?
Speaker 1He wants to create this autonomous warfare command. And he's basically telling people, so I guess we're going to run the military installation the way you would do an RFP for a casino. And so we're going to go to, uh, the different governors and say, Hey, it's not national security, but what tax abatements and what rates are you going to give me to put the base in your, your neighborhood? Now he thinks it's cute and he thinks it's entrepreneurial, but it's not cute and it's not entrepreneurial. It's unwise to do that because you have to look at the geographic footprint of the country and what is in the best interest of the country from a national security perspective. And so the entire thing that he's doing is upside down and it's damaging caddy because if he does stay in that job for another two years, which is, you know, you know, I don't know what, uh, take the over and under on that. I thought he would have been gone already. So I've gotten it wrong. Does he stay for two more
Speaker 2years? I thought he would have been gone by now. I thought he was the one that was out. I mean, this is a real demonstration of Trump wanting somebody who projects like Trump in that particular job. I mean, we know Trump doesn't want to fire people because he doesn't want the humiliation of firing people, but this thing of the budget, it's a real problem for the Pentagon. The Pentagon at the moment is stuck on last year's budget. He can't get the money out of the Republicans in the because they say he's being dishonest in the way he deals with the war numbers. He's not giving them a clean accounting of where he's spending this money. So now you've got the Pentagon having to raid the budget for barracks, for training, for weapons, even in order to sustain its 50,000 troops. I mean, just the incompetence level, do your job and schmooze the senators a bit and give them the information they need so you can get the money out of them. Because I don't see how he stays in the job very much longer because the Pentagon is going to be ground down. If you get a Democratic Senate, he is not going to be able to do anything. He's not going to be able to get any money out of them, right? If the Democrats were to win the Senate. So I still think you're right, Antony. I think the timing was a little off. I thought he would go earlier, but I still think he goes before the term is out.
Speaker 1Let me just explain to people how this works in Trump world. So there's a bad set of facts for Hegseth. Foreign Policy Magazine argued yesterday that the most influential senior official in the Trump administration is Pete Hegseth. Okay. And so that put an immediate target on his back. That means every single person, that's what they did to Elon Musk at the beginning of Trump's term. And so now everybody that hates Pete Hegseth is going to be shooting at Pete Hegseth and hoping that he makes some kind of abominable mistake.
Speaker 2Okay. You mean like revealing national security secrets to a reporter on a signal chat while you're calling the media traitors?
Speaker 1Yeah, exactly. And then calling the guys a treason or a treasonous person. But here's something that Hegseth has going for him. Okay. It is loyalty. It's the over-exaggerated overbite that you're saying of the ass kissing. Hopefully I'm allowed to say ass kissing on this show because that's what Pete Hegseth is. Okay. And then it's the TV presence. Trump likes his looks, Caddy. I'm just telling you. He gained a little weight. Not that I should talk because I go up and down like an accordion, but he gained a little weight. He's got a bunch of looks. You may want to go a little lighter on the donuts. Okay. But the last thing is that he brings up the culture war fight every week. So there's the scales. He's the most influential according to foreign policy. And by the way, I know how Washington works. Somebody in the White House may have dropped that at the foreign policy. Susie Wiles. Yeah, right. To put the crosshairs on Pete, right? You know that. You know how
Speaker 2Washington works. Are you saying that it's not a warm, cozy, friendly, supportive city? Oh my God.
Speaker 1That was one of the funniest things Trump said to me. He goes, I thought I was working with a bunch of killers. I had these billionaire real estate guys in New York. I thought they were killers. He goes, the assistants here will poke your eyeballs out. They'll stab you in the eye with an ice pick. They'll drop your eyeball in a martini glass while you're bleeding out. Trump is funny. You want a friend in Washington, get a dog. But here's one thing. Tom Tillis, who kicks himself every day. For voting to approve Pete Hegseth, who told people they were threatening my family. They were giving me death threats. I held my nose and voted for Pete Hegseth. And remember, he got one of Pete Hegseth's, I guess, the sister of one of the ex-wives to tell people the story of what happened.
Speaker 2And he told her he would support her. And he told her he would vote against Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense.
Speaker 1And he faded. But Tom Tillis is common for Pete Hegseth. Joni Ernst, Republican Senator from Iowa, on the way out. coming for Pete Hegsett. Okay, so let's see what happens But I'm telling you, that's the game right now. They're coming for him. And last but not least, if I wanted Pete Hegseth out, I would be talking to the president about a scapegoat, and it would be Petey Hegseth. He would be the guy. Push up Pete.
Speaker 2Insecure, incompetent, push up Pete. We're going to take a break, come back and talk about a little bit more incompetence this time in the US Senate. That was quite something to watch. This episode is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. I am a big believer, Anthony, in saving time where I can.
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Speaker 2Politics U.S. with me and Antony. There was a really extraordinary display of incompetence in the U.S. Senate earlier this week. The Judiciary Committee brought in Special Counsel Jack Smith. You're the reporter. Remember that he is the special counsel who brought two indictments against Donald Trump in 2023. One was for attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The other was for the mishandling of classified documents down in Mar-a-Lago. Jack Smith was called before the senators. The Republican senators were clearly out to get him. Donald Trump has repeatedly called for Jack Smith to be charged criminally. This sounded a lot like Republican senators trying to build the case to get some kind of charges against him. The only problem for the senators was that they made a screw up. Enter one Senator, Eric Schmidt of Missouri, who was trying to craft a conspiracy theory, which apparently I'm told is rampant online in the MAGA right, that there was some kind of a deal or a relationship or cooperation between Jack Smith and Fannie Willis, who was the prosecutor down in Georgia. He also brought the case about Donald Trump trying to interfere in the Georgia election results. Eric Schmidt turns up with a whole load of text messages on a board in the Senate, holds them up saying, "These are the text messages that shows you went down to Atlanta to see an Atlanta Hawks basketball game the day after the Fulton prosecutor, Fannie Willis, admitted that she had had an affair." I don't even really know what he was trying to prove there. But anyway, he holds up these text messages. Jack Smith scratches his head, said, "No, I never went down to Atlanta." Eric Schmidt, the senator says, "You perjured yourself. You are a dirtbag who has perjured yourself." Jack Smith says, "Well, you know, I do remember going to a basketball game, but it was the Hawkeyes women's basketball game from Iowa playing at the University of Maryland in Washington, DC." Which is correct. Eric Schmidt had not done his homework. He had been given these text messages from the Department of Justice because he wanted something to tie Jack Smith to the Georgia prosecutor. The Senate committee warned him that the text messages had not been verified, so he shouldn't use them. He decides to use them anyway, and with the help of his fellow senator from Louisiana, they stand up, make a big display of this, and they get it wrong. They have egg on their faces. And you know what, Anthony? Did they apologize? Did they then say, "Sorry, Mr. Prosecutor, I shouldn't have called you a dirtbag. I apologize for putting up a fake text and getting the story totally wrong?" What did they do?
Speaker 1They blew it. But he got the information from people that the text messages were wrong. He decided to use it anyway, and this is a Trumpian thing. So I want to explain that. It's coming down from the top that if you lie with great passion and great enthusiasm, you'll get enough people to believe the lie. And so even though these guys got exposed, if you watched right-wing media- Yeah. It looked like a humiliation ritual was happening to Jack Smith as opposed to the senators. You're explaining exactly what happened and how embarrassing it is for the senators and particularly Schmidt. The guy that really upsets me the most is John Kennedy, because he's a very educated guy. This is the John Kennedy from Louisiana.
Speaker 2Why was he getting involved with this?
Speaker 1He could have been a lion in the Senate. He could have been a leader in the Senate to help heal the country, but he's become a jackass. And now he's sitting there beating the drum and all these false media tropes to try to humiliate Jack Smith. But what I thought was the dam has now broken for the Republicans. And so this is, again, the problem with the Democrats. Hello, guys. The dam is broken. These imbeciles are now running in Trump's direction, and Trump is no longer going to be their leader. So they're not going to have all of the Trump smoke and mirror show. They're not going to have all of the Trump smoke and mirror show. Why don't you go harder at them? Now, one guy that goes hard at them is Senator Cory Booker. So a few weeks ago, Senator Cory Booker ripped up our Kash Patel, our FBI director, and embarrassed and humiliated him and literally displayed to everybody how incompetent he is. But you guys have to go after these Senate Republicans. But thus far, they haven't done it.
Speaker 2Well, Cory Booker went after him hard yesterday in the hearing as well. He was one of the ones. I mean, it takes quite a lot to get Cory Booker to kind of lose his temper, but he did yesterday in the hearing.
Speaker 1He's the only one, Katty. Guys, it's time for a team meeting. Imagine if you were a British football team and you were getting your ass kicked by Donald Trump. Could we have a team meeting and everybody get in the locker room and let's talk about what our positions are? And can we sit around and figure out who's going to be the faithful advocate? Yeah. Who's going to be the faithful advocate for America and the democracy and the rules and the processes? Or are we going to let these people do this and have. Katty, you know this, Katty, and if you don't know this, push back on me. You know that there are 30% to 40% of the Americans that were exposed to that repartee that actually think Jack Smith got embarrassed in that situation. Am I wrong in saying that? If I am, please push back and tell me that I'm wrong. No, I think- That's why they went at him, even though they knew that the text messages were wrong.
Speaker 2I don't know that Eric Schmidt knew the text message was wrong, but I think he didn't care. I mean, I do think we are in a weird world of post-facts.
Speaker 1It's a better way of saying it. He got some information that they may not be right.
Speaker 2And he didn't bother to check it.
Speaker 1He went for it anyway.
Speaker 2It's post-facts. You say stuff, you hope that it goes viral, you never check it. And most of all, you are shameless and you don't apologize. So he went on Charlie Kirk's show, you're right, right afterwards. There was no mention either from the host or from Eric Schmidt about what had happened. Eric Schmidt, who has made his whole career in trying to prove that Donald Trump won the 2020 election. TMZ, the entertainment channel who, I love TMZ for this, they have now opened a bureau on Capitol Hill because they can see all of the scandals and the craziness, and they chased down Eric Schmidt. And you know what his response was? Ha! It's just my job to ask questions. And that is such a disingenuous line. And we keep hearing, we've heard it from Elon Musk about the situation in Europe around the far right. I'm not saying this is true. I'm just asking the questions. He's a US senator up in a public hearing. He knows exactly what he's doing. There is no shame and there is no apology. And you're right. Maybe the Democrats actually are missing an opportunity. And this is going to be, I think, the challenge for the next two years. Because Adam Schiff came out of those hearings and says, they're one of the first to do this. And they're one of the first to do this. We are going to subpoena the Mar-a-Lago documents case, which has been closed up by the Trump judge down in Florida. We are going to have that all opened up so that people can see what was actually in that Mar-a-Lago case, which is what all the lawyers say is the strongest case about against Trump. It doesn't lead to any prosecution of Trump. Supreme Court has seen to that. This is what we're going to have for the next two years. Do they spend the next two years with all of their time on these investigations? Because there is so much to investigate. Because I don't think this was really about Jack Smith. This wasn't really about trying to find out what happened on January the 6th. They didn't even mention what happened on January the 6th. This was all about trying to give the DOJ material to say, Jack Smith perjured himself so we can do what Trump wants. We can add him to the long list of people who have been investigated or pressured by the Department of Justice. That's what this was about.
Speaker 1I agree with that. So you set that perjury trap, and you walk into it yourself. You blow yourself up. But you don't care because you've now gained Trump's shameless gene. And so you're calling the guy a dirtbag, even though he just proved to you that he didn't do what you said.
Speaker 2And your friend, Senator Kennedy, said that Jack Smith made him, I want to throw up in my mouth. I mean, these are meant to be adults, Anthony. I mean, part of this is all this show, the language from the Secretary of Defense, the language from Schmidt, the language from Kennedy, Ted Cruz calling this the most egregious abuse of power in the history of the Department of Justice. Ted Cruz, by the way, who hid in a storage closet on January the 6th because he was afraid for his life. These are meant to be grownups.
Speaker 1They don't care about any of that. But again, I want to explain to our viewers and listeners. There's a clip. It'll be a 10-second clip. And it'll be a moneymaker. And it'll be Senator destroys Jack Smith. MAGA, MAGA, MAGA. And the MAGA media ran with that the other day. And they're going to run with that in the fundraising. And of course, Jack Smith is part of the deep state category. And so we're up against the deep state. We're up against these people who are following process, following procedure. Marsha Blackburn, as we both know, filed a lawsuit against Smith. She said that he secretly obtained her phone records and it violated the constitution. Of course, Smith is sitting there saying, well, that didn't happen. I received approval from the Justice Department's public integrity section before I did that. And I complied with all the department's regulations. But again, she doesn't care. She's going to take the information. I filed the lawsuit against Jack Smith. He violated the constitution. Okay. Send $5 here. Click on this link. You see what they're doing? That's what they're doing.
Speaker 2Okay. Role play time. You are now the communications consultant for the Democratic National Committee or for all of the Democratic senators. Okay. You're saying they're not fighting back hard enough. What would you have them be doing specifically in relation to the Jack Smith
Speaker 1hearing? Well, I mean, it's broader than that, but I think with the Jack Smith hearing, I would be taking to the airwaves like the Republicans are. I'd be going very hard at those two senators. I would be putting out media communication to every single person in the room, exposing the hypocrisy and the shamelessness of these people, which I don't think that they're doing. And then the third thing that I would do is I would have a locker room conversation. I would want to get every senator in the room and the members of the House of Representatives that really care about the upcoming midterms. And I would say, we've got to pick roles here. And we've got, you know, it sounds like Corey's going to be our attack dog and Ossoff is going to be our spiritual philosopher. And we've got to pick roles here and we've got to go out and do it. And I think that's what we're going to do. after these people in a 360 degree angle, the way they're coming after us. Guys, we are flat footed and they have us on our heels and we got to get on the front part of our feet.
Speaker 2Would you have them going on Fox News on the Charlie Kirk show on Joe Rogan? 100%. All day. I think that's where Cory Booker should be. And he is their best person probably for this.
Speaker 1All day. And that's the other thing. They're afraid to go there.
Speaker 2Pete Buttigieg does go there actually.
Speaker 1I went on this news, Max show to promote the book. And the guy played a clip of me saying that Natalie Harp was Trump's girlfriend. And he was like, is this breaking news? Do you know that Natalie Harp? And I looked at the guy and I said, Finnerty, I know what you're trying to do. You're trying to play gotcha. And you've got a group of people in MAGA that are going to cheer you on. And then when I started calling him out on it, he was like backing up and trying to get out of it, trying to get it going reverse. Okay. So you, there's a way to handle these people. And I said, you know, let me put the question back to you. Do I think Natalie Harp is actually Trump's romantic girlfriend? Or was I saying that sarcastically and derisively, uh, and flippantly on a podcast, Mr. Finnerty? Oh, no, no, you probably didn't mean it. I said, then why are you bringing it up? My point is there's a way to handle these guys when they're playing gotcha. Something that vice president Harris did not want to do. She didn't want to go into the lion's den. And face them, but, you know, unfortunately, guys, there's a lot of independents that watch Fox news, show up on Fox news, the way Barack Obama did in 2008, face the music.
Speaker 2Pete Buttigieg does regularly, actually, and does it well.
Speaker 1Pete Buttigieg does gain the support, gain the support of the independents. What are you guys doing?
Speaker 2And I think the way they should frame this is that this is not just about Jack Smith. This is about the department of justice. It's being weaponized against a whole host of people. I think Reuters is saying that as of late November of 2025, there are at least 470 targets of Trump's retribution, including 247 people have been singled out in government members as John Bolton, James Comey, Letitia James, Mark Kelly, Jerome Powell, you know, all of them. There's a whole long list of them. And I think that is the case they make. This is, this is about your department of justice. This is about your access as an American. This is about your access as an American to equal right to due process under the law without political interference from the white house. And they can keep making that case.
Speaker 1Trump campaigned on weaponization of the department of justice. He said that he had the department of justice of Joe Biden and president Obama were weaponized against him. If you were a Democrat, how would you respond to that?
Speaker 2I think that's the way the Democrats handle this. You take the Jack Smith case and you make the broader point that this is not about Jack Smith, who you may love or who you may hate. This is about you as an American citizen and about the country in which you live, in which the president is not allowed to capture the justice department to go after his political enemies. And then you run through the list of those 470 cases and you explain how this is something that is broader than just one person. And I think that would be the way I do it. Now, the question is for the Democrats, if they do take back the Senate, there are so many things they are going to have to investigate. Including all of the corruption, that they are going to be tied down and this is a risk for them. They're going to be tied down in investigations, they're going to be tied down in going with a fine comb, going through everything that's happened over the course of the last two years, and I think there do have to be investigations. If we do not have investigations, then the system gets weaker because there is shown to be no comeuppance if you act in this way and you undermine American democracy. But the risk for the Democrats is you spend your whole time investigating. You don't pass any bills, you don't improve the lives of American people, and then Trump, who is running to inherit the mantle of Trump, gets to turn around and say, "That's all they do, these Democrats. All they do is investigate." But I think there was one other thing that I wanted to say about the Jack Smith hearing that I thought was kind of interesting. And I don't know if you read it, Antony, which was Smith's opening statement, because in a way, the Republicans held this hearing to try to get the dirt and show that they had dirt on Jack Smith. But 35 days before the election, he ordered also got an opportunity to make his case to the Senate publicly. And it's the third time he's been before the Senate, the second time publicly, which he's insisted on making public. And you can hear why. He wanted to make the case for his investigation to the American people. It was an amazing opening statement. Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engraged in criminal activity. If asked whether to prosecute a former president based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether that president was a Republican or a Democrat. The charges against President Trump were the result of the evidence. He said it calmly, soberly. And that message then goes out to the American public 35 days before the election. I'm not sure actually for the Republicans, that was the best way to play this, to give him that opportunity.
Speaker 1But they got something out of it, right? And this is the thing that you know, you started in Washington 30 years ago, where shame was actually something
Speaker 7that- It was a thing.
Speaker 1Created a reaction. Now there's no shame. In fact, I would tell you that there is a cost to shame. Okay. So an apology from Schmidt gets him absolutely nothing. Calling Jack Smith a dirt bag gets him a Charlie Kirk show booking. It gets him a donation link and it gets him a on-air presence. And as you know, which will be a very scary thing for the American people, if Mr. Vance gets the nomination, this guy is one of the front runners, Eric Schmidt, to be the vice presidential candidate on the ticket with J.D.
Speaker 2Vance. Well, he may have just lost that opportunity, but-
Speaker 1Maybe, or maybe not. Because you know, there's no shame now. And shame used to be a bug caddy in Washington, but now it's a feature. Schmidt has figured this out, okay? And what would Trump tell Schmidt? Good boy. Never admit that you're wrong. Never admit to it. Don't do anything. Don't apologize for everything or anything. Okay? I did exactly what you told me, Mr. President. I'm one of your lemmings. I'm one of your minions. You know, there's an expression, caddy. You know the expression, the fish stinks from the head down. The behavior that Donald Trump has lived on successfully for 50 years, and it's now been transmuted over to these politicians that want to be like Trump. But when Trump goes, that sort of smoke show is going to go away. And that's what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the fish stinks from the head down. With Trump. And these people are going to be roundly embarrassed.
Speaker 2Well, where does that come from? That comes from all his time with Roy Cohn back in New York in the 1980s when he was starting out in real estate. And he took that message from Roy Cohn. Disregard the facts. Never admit you're wrong. And above all, never apologize. You know, caddy, it worked, caddy.
Speaker 1It worked. He won the presidency twice. Greatest comeback in U.S. history, particularly after the second time. And it worked for him. And so he's there now. And these guys are trying to do what Trump did. But I don't think it's going to work for them long term is the point that I'm making.
Speaker 2They are not Donald Trump.
Speaker 1That's the point.
Speaker 2That is the problem. J.D. Vance is not Donald Trump. Eric Schmidt is not Donald Trump.
Speaker 1He's a beardo, caddy. J.D. Vance is a beardo and a weirdo, caddy.
Speaker 2He's a beardo. He's a beardo. Okay, guys, we're going to leave it there. Thank you very much for listening. We'll be back on Monday.
Speaker 1Have a great weekend, guys. See you next week.
Speaker 8Have a great weekend.
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