Trump’s Big Problem Just Got Much Worse...

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Senator, how are you today? I'm great, and it's wonderful to be with you. All right. You're a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Trump is repeatedly citing with Putin over America's own allies. Do you believe the president is a traitor to this country? Always absolutely betraying the principles the United States stands up for, which is freedom, democracy, any citing with Putin, who's a dictator, authoritarian. Somebody, you know, Trump would like to emulate and like to have those powers. And I do think that Donald Trump is betraying the key principles of our country. And how do you think our allies in Europe are perceiving this? This is really shocking the way, and this has been escalating. We saw the way they bullied Zelensky last year in the Oble, and now we're ending with this, where he is lowering all of the sanctions. How is this being perceived by our European allies? Well, they're horrified. They see this as a complete betrayal of the democratic principles that bring the NATO alliance together, and they're absolutely right about that. We just witnessed Steve Whitkoff in Russia calling Putin a humanitarian when this person is responsible for the deaths of thousands and thousands of people in Ukraine, innocent people in Ukraine. And this is what Donald Trump's all about. He and his administration are grifters. They will cut deals with whoever they can in order to advance the interests of their billionaire buddies. And we're seeing that in Russia. We're seeing that in Venezuela. We're seeing that across the world. And this is something that's fascinating about this to me. Russia is not dealing from a position of leverage. Their currency isn't strong. We had sanctions on them. They don't have leverage over us as far as we would be coming from a lot more position of strength. Their military is depleted from this war in Ukraine. And yet here comes the rescue truck, as though Putin does have leverage over somebody. I mean, that's the way the United States is behaving. It's like, why are we bending the knee to a very weekly positioned Russia? And then I go back to when Hillary was running against Trump in 2016. And then you go back to a lot of Trump's business dealings before he was ever in politics. He's been deeply embedded with Russia and Russian oligarchs. And how big of a national security risk is this when the president of the United States? It appears, has the appearances of somehow Putin has leverage over him. Well, that's right, because what the president of the United States is doing is giving Putin a lifeline, right? He, first of all, Donald Trump goes out and starts a war against Iran, along with Prime Minister Netanyahu, which of course drives up gas prices, diesel prices here at home. And then he says, well, I'll take care of that by saying that I'll buy more diesel from Vladimir Putin, which obviously just goes straight into the Putin war machine. But to your point, at the end of this day, this is all about helping his buddies. Let me tell you a story about the first unit conference meeting I went to after Trump was elected. They were essentially trying to hold Zelensky in the Ukrainians, completely hostage to signing a deal to hand over Ukraine's critical minerals to the United States and Donald Trump's buddies. In other words, we're only going to help you fight off Vladimir Putin and help protect the freedom of the Ukrainian people. If you all sign away your national wealth to my billionaire buddies, I witnessed that. It was the beginning of the story of this Trump administration, which is just they'll cut any deals with any dictator in order to help their billionaire friends. That's the trend line that we're seeing from this crew. Everything is a shakedown. They are shaking down everyone. You mentioned Netanyahu in this week, the president of the United States endorsed Benjamin Netanyahu, who is a war criminal, and he's constantly co-zing up to the worst war criminals that are leading countries right now. I found this clip very interesting. Abdul Al-Sayed, I hope, is your future colleague next year at this time, was asked, is Israel our ally? I know that myself and a lot of my listeners and just out in America have thought the same thing. And here is how he answered this. Play the clip. Don't consider Israel to be an American ally. An ally that takes your money to push you into wars. You shouldn't be fighting is not an ally. It's like, I mean, do you have kids? I do. And if you have a, your kid has a friend who keeps bumming off their money and then talks about them behind their back and then gets them into fights with other friends, what would you tell your kid to do with that friend? You probably tell them, maybe it's not actually your friend. I think it's time for us to realize that Israel is not actually our friend. So I like these type of provocative things that candidates and leaders like you are saying, because we should be thinking this. We aren't puppets where the establishment can just say Israel's our ally and that's not negotiable. When we see that Benjamin Netanyahu is always given the United States crazy intelligence that all you have to do is take out the IOTOLA and poo for Ron will fall. Well, that was a bunch of BS. I mean, that was, that didn't happen. So what do you make of us having a national conversation right now? Is Israel our ally and are they behaving as allies? Well, Jennifer, you're absolutely right. I think it's an important question. And beyond that, it's pretty clear to me, as Abdul Al-Said was saying, that certainly the actions that Netanyahu government are completely contrary to the interests of the United States. This is another example, though, where Trump and his buddies that are around him have gone all in for Netanyahu. And Netanyahu is the one who, as Secretary Rubio himself confessed in a moment, I don't think he realized was as revealing as it was, is the one who got the United States into this war. Obviously, Trump decided for the United States to get us in and he should not be absolved of that responsibility. But yes, we are now in this war with Iran, along with Netanyahu. While Netanyahu continues to get blank checks of US taxpayer money, while Netanyahu continues to, you know, bomb in Gaza, despite the so-called ceasefire. And at the same time, that you see Netanyahu and these right-wing settlers terrorizing Palestinians on the West Bank, driving them off their lands, and engaging in what is clearly an attempt at ethnic cleansing. So yes, we should be asking ourselves why is the United States been providing this blank check to the government of Israel? And as it pertains to the West Bank, American citizens have been killed there. And I feel like you're on this lone island waving your arms thing. Hello, we have citizens being killed abroad. Can anybody help me here? But there's this impunity that goes along with all of this blanketed accepted statements that everybody expects for us to accept pertaining to Israel. And if we step outside of that, just if we just dip our toes outside of it a little bit, then everybody gets admonished and accused of bigotry. When really, serious people would say, if we are a serious country, and we protect our citizens abroad, and we have an ally, and our citizens are being killed with impunity, United States Senators, and I would hope it would go all the way up to the executive branch need to deal with this. Well, that's right. I don't think that many Americans realize that over nine of our citizens have been killed either by violent Israeli settlers or Israeli security forces on the West Bank in just over the last four years with absolute impunity. No accountability, no justice, The Biden administration failed to secure any accountability. The Trump administration has failed to do it. And it's especially galling, Jennifer, because the United States says that it's number one. It's number one priority overseas is to protect American citizens. And yet it allows, you know, the government of Israel to cover up these things. In fact, literally, because there was that story within the last couple of weeks of Ambassador Huckabee's point person refusing to send members of Congress, I led a letter with 30 of my colleagues demanding answers about these killings of American citizens. And literally, the ambassador and his point person blocked the professional staff at the embassy from providing us the information, literally covering up for these killings. I mean, and as it pertains to the ambassador, Huckabee, I think it's reasonable to have a national conversation that he is a Christian Zionist that believes that the Jews need to be in Israel in order for Jesus Christ to return to Earth. And this is his north star in guiding the decisions that he makes. Magical thinking is guiding United States intelligence abroad. The same goes with the Speaker of the House of the United States of America. Magical thinking is guiding his, I guess, protection of Jeffrey Epstein and all of that. I mean, it's just some really weird shit, pardon my French, but we have these Christian nationalists who engage in this crazy magical thinking when really truly we have a country of academics and very smart experts that could lead here. And all of those people have been pushed aside, and we are promoting the most unqualified people to these positions. Well, you're absolutely right. I mean, now Speaker Johnson, years ago, actually tried to ship some heifers to Israel because it was part of the end of time story, literally, kind of for checking it out, as you're probably I'm sure you know, and then with Huckabee, you know, Huckabee pretends to be this champion for Christians in the Holy Land. But it's absolutely untrue when it comes to Palestinian Christians, for example, who are under attack as we speak in villages like Taipei. I've been there. I mean, I've seen the evidence of the settler attacks on villagers, Christian villagers in Taipei. So all Huckabee cares about are these tours of evangelical Christians that he brings into Israel, into Jerusalem, while he completely disregards the rights of the Christians who have been in that land for thousands of years. So he needs to be called out on this. I think he needs to go. He needs to be fired. He's clearly not representing the interests of the United States of America. And I recently read an article that, you know, the APAC has been a very powerful lobby in the United States. And he even has, you know, some of your democratic colleagues take big amounts of money from them. But there are, the government of Israel now is running ads in the state of Iowa, not even through APAC. And so can you think of any other country that would have this level of meddling and co-mingling and enmeshment with our sovereign nation is Israel and not get called out? Well, I think it's a big problem. I actually saw a photo of a piece of literature being circulated in Iowa that says paid for by the Israeli government and trying to clearly influence the debate as we go into these elections. I'm glad you talked about the dangers of undermining our sovereignty by becoming more enmeshed because one of the first things that we will have to deal with when we come back after the elections in Congress is this provision that was included in the House Defense Authorization Bill that passed the House and the Authorization Bill that came out of a Senate committee that mandates and mandates increased co-production, defense co-production with the government of Israel, which of course we can always decide to do on a case-by-case basis. But this mandates it across all sorts of technologies. And in the intelligence authorization bill, it requires the United States to provide intelligence information and not restrict any information to the government of Israel. Both of these provisions are absolutely insane because they're an effort by Netanyahu himself. I mean, he's taken credit for the co-production provision of Prime Minister Netanyahu. It just ties us even more directly into the Israeli government operations. And again, this is something that Netanyahu has been seeking for some time. Okay. Now let's discuss this notion that both our government, the United States and the Israeli government, claim that they are these beacons and shining examples of democracy. You know, we are so, look at us. We are these beautiful examples of democracy, says the United States with all of our arrogance and Israel says we are the only democracy over here. And when I think of democracies, I think of the free press, I think that's very important. And when I look at the United States, I see my friend Don Lemon get arrested. I see free press getting kicked out of the White House. I see the FCC meddling with comedians because Trump got his feelings hurt and trying to put Jimmy Kimmel in time out. Well, that's child's play compared to what the democracy in Israel is doing. They have killed at least 241 journalists in Gaza in recent years. At least 9 Americans, as you mentioned, have been killed in the West Bank. Is this democracy or is it a jet stream of BS that they're feeding us to make us feel good about these things that both of these very problematic criminal leaders that we have. And it's objectively true that Donald Trump is a convicted felon. It's objectively true that there is an arrest warrant out for Benjamin Netanyahu for being a war criminal. Should we be listening to these people lecture us about democracy when their actions are the antithesis of this? No, we shouldn't be listening to them. And one of the things that both Donald Trump and BB Netanyahu have in common is that they lie all the time and they're both determined to undermine the freedom of the press and undermine dissent. And of course, in the case of Netanyahu and the Israeli government, you're also dealing with the occupation of the West Bank. And U.S. taxpayer support has gone to help deepen that occupation. And that means taking away freedom and rights from the Palestinians who live there. So when people talk about Israel as a democracy, they tend to ignore the occupation of the West Bank entirely. And as you know, there are many in this right wing Israeli government who essentially want to take over the entire West Bank, push the Palestinians out. In fact, going back to Ambassador Huckabee, when he was asked about whether he'd be okay with Israel taking over the whole region, he said, yeah, be fine with that. In other words, this vision of a greater Israel where everybody else gets pushed out of that land. Yeah. It's really, it's so criminal and it's so shocking to hear because as a person who was just fed the propaganda about Israel my whole life, I bought into it even because I was hearing it on MSNBC in places. And then you start really reading into this and you figure out that somebody from Long Island says, well, I'm going to go over to the West Bank and I'm going to take this house. And that's what they're doing it. So you could imagine how that's not going to go over well. I'm from Oklahoma originally. And if some people that live out on a farm in Oklahoma, if some Native American Indians came and said, hey, you need to move. We're not going to let you live here anymore. Not care if it's been your family for 300 years, a couple of thousand years ago was in somebody in my family. That's not going to go over very well. That's going to be a recipe for disaster. And that's what's happening. And I just think that there is so much manufactured consent for these things that happen both from our government and from our media. And so it's really important that spaces like mine and other people in the pro-democracy spaces have leaders like you and then we get your messages out. So let's get switched to a little hopium because all of that's very heavy. And we have the midterms that are coming up in two or three weeks. And polling is showing that the Democrats have big chances of taking back the Senate. Let's pop this up, Kylie. Nate Silver has upgraded Democrats' chances of winning Senate to likely D with his forecast putting their odds at 75%. Senator Van Holland, how much of a game changer is this going to be if you come back to the Senate with the majority? First I want to make sure everybody works really, really hard to get over the finish line first in all the traces around the country and I've been going around the country trying to help many of our candidates. Look, we're dealing with the lawless and corrupt Trump administration. But nevertheless, obviously if the Democrats have a majority in the House and the Senate, we can use that majority to shine a spotlight on the corruption and do more to hold this administration accountable. And I strongly believe we should use the opportunity to show the American people not only what we're against, not just our complete opposition to all the lawless things that Trump is doing, but what we stand up for, what we're fighting for. And we should be making it very clear we're standing up for working people against these powerful special interests that are trying to rig our economy and our politics. Yeah, I completely agree. In an episode I filmed earlier today, I think the depravity is so bad on the right that the Democrats could even just go out and say, we oppose pedophilia. And that is actually an opposition stance to what Donald Trump and it seems like this type of sexual depravity just trickles down. Every time I open up my phone, it's some other Republican that's engaged or involved and some sort of cover up and engaged into it themselves. Let me ask you a question. I know this is awkward to answer, but in my space, Senator Schumer is not very popular. We feel like he has not been the opposition of the moment, that this is a massive moment. We are watching the president of the United States vacillate between committing crimes and sundowning with dementia, taking taxpayer naps in the Oval. And it just rinse and repeat all over and over and over again. And we have not everybody's like, where are the Democrats? Why are they not fighting this? If you get the majority, do you feel like Schumer will be sad or are you all ready to turn the page and get some real fighters in there? So I'm going to get right to that Jennifer to minute, but on your pedophilia point, you want to emphasize that the Trump administration to this day has refused to release the Epstein files. I know. I mean, this goes to the heart of the big Trump lies from the very beginning. We've been trying to get those Epstein files. They continue to cover it up. And everybody who voted for Donald Trump should be screaming about this. So look, when it comes to the Democratic majorities in the House or the Senate, it's my view that whoever ends up being the Democratic leader needs to be committed, absolutely committed to taking on these powerful economic special interests and fight for working people. And I think everybody should insist that any candidate for leader take on some commitments as to what specific actions the Democrats will take on a whole range of issues. Our healthcare system is completely broken. I think we need a Medicare for all system. We have a tax system that's completely rigged in favor of people who make money off of money. And against people who earn a paycheck through hard work, we need to take on a billionaire wealth tax. There are lots of things that we need to do going forward. And I think these issues also, Jennifer, need to be dealt with in terms of the Democratic presidential debates. And this is why, as I've said, I'm testing the waters on 2028 because I am kind of tired. And I think you are too of the finger in the wind politics we've seen from too many Democrats. And on the issues you're asking about, when it comes to U.S. blank checks for the government of Israel, there have been just some very lonely voices among us on these issues for too long. Things are beginning to change, but not fast enough. So I think all these issues need to be addressed. Yes, in the United States Congress, but they're going to be essential as part of the debate going forward for the White House. Yeah. And I do think that there has been a disconnect between the governing establishment consultant class and then my millions of listeners as well as other of my peers listener bases where people are far way, way much further along than the Democratic Party of 2024. I mean, that defeat was brutal. And people really have started to educate themselves and wean off corporate messaging, which brings me to how important I believe it's going to be for in the midterms. And then I agree with you for 28. And I'm so excited that somebody with such moral clarity will run somebody that will fight for everybody that's so important to me and what I look for in a candidate. But we have these billionaires in this country that we simply cannot afford number one. And number two, when you look at somebody like Elon Musk who has all of this power, you know, Donald Trump at some point, biology or term limits are going to catch up with him. Elon Musk is a lot younger and there's no replacing that. And he's been able to act per the Wall Street Journal unilaterally and metal in Ukraine's systems because he owns it, star shield. He owns it. And so he intentionally starts slowing it down. And we have these billionaires that are in a constant state of victimhood, you know, they feel like, oh, God, I can't believe everybody's against this. They're spending $400 million in California saying don't tax us. And I know that a lot of Democrats will champion for these billionaires to have more rights. But that's not where the people are. The people are like tax these MFers by God, they're dangerous. And it is felt like a lot of the Democratic fighters that we have don't feel that with the exception of course, Bernie, you know, he's been, you know, he's been going after them for a good decade. How important is it that we check this run a month capitalism and these monsters that we've created who are creating a technology that they're like, oh, FYI, it could take everyone out, but now we deal them right about it. It's absolutely essential because this is the complete corruption of our political process. What you have is folks who have rigged the economic system to benefit themselves at the expense of everybody else. And then they're using their billions of dollars to try to buy more elected officials in Congress to continue to do their bidding and protect the status quo. So this is why it's absolutely essential that we have a well tax on billionaires and very wealthy people and use those resources to invest an opportunity for others. Our public schools are completely under invested. We have a completely broken health care system that is now run by hedge funds. I mean, it's a money making operation, not a health care system. So all of these issues need to be addressed that we need to of course work towards getting rid of citizens united. But in the meantime, we could pass a law with 50 senators and 50 house members to end secret money in politics. We could do something that I'm going to be pushing a lot for, which is to say you can't get hundreds of, you can't get billions of dollars in government contracts while you're also funding elections to get the folks in office who are going to have a direct vote on those contracts. In fact, that is an area where the courts have previously found, for example, Jennifer, if you were a defense contractor and providing advice to the Pentagon on a sole proprietorship contract, you're not allowed to contribute to federal campaigns or to super PACs. But Elon Musk, who's the biggest shareholder in some of these companies that have billion dollar contracts with the US government, he can't. It's a huge loophole. It's an area we're going to, you know, I'm going to be introducing legislation. We need to deal with this right away. But we do need to rein in these billionaires because they are using their power for their own narrow purposes and not for the public good. And of course, we're seeing a lot of these special interests spending all sorts of money in me. We're talking about Abdul Al-Sahed's race. We had 30 million from APAC, but then there was a huge amount of crypto money being spent. I mean, it's as if my constituents are not calling me every day to say, hey, we got to deal with the crypto guys. We need to give them a better deal. And yet you would think from the Washington bubble that that was the most pressing issue around the country. You know, this is, it's so important that we talk about this because Elon Musk, he has spent $150 million with Ken Paxton, who was just a horrible candidate, a horrible person, even his own wife said I'm divorcing me because he's a big hypocrite for biblical reasons back to the magical thinking governance. But of course, we know what will happen when a politician is bought and paid for by a tech oligarch, because we can look no further than the vice president of the United States, JD Bans, who was purchased by Peter Till. You know, not that long ago, JD Bans had clarity that Trump is a fascist. Trump is America's Hitler. And then he got purchased by a wealthy, you know, really wealthy, evil person who gives, has a side hustle. of talking about the Annie Christ which is weird and we can do another podcast about that later. But and then JD Vance just completely bends for him. And so I hope that until we can make changes like you're talking about with this conflict of interest and all this many in politics, we have to make it so toxic for Ken Paxton that he is getting purchased by Elon Musk. Because how on earth is is that ever going to help rural Texans or working class urban Texans with when Ken Paxton, when he gets a phone call from Elon Musk, he's going to have to take it and do whatever he wants him to do. And that's so many politicians are, I call them prostitutes. They have just hoared themselves out and they have these owners and they're so easily corruptible. And I'm really interested in having politicians that aren't corruptible. I'm sure you like this gal that's running in Florida, Angie Nixon. Every time I hear her speak, I just have joy in my heart. I'm like, these are the leaders that we need that really understand what the struggle is for so many Americans. Well, that's right. Angie Nixon, unbought and unbossed. And that's what we need to see in all of these candidates. And as you say, in Paxton's case, he is going to be so indebted to Elon Musk if he gets elected, which is why we have to make sure Tolerico wins that race. But that is, it's endemic of the corruption in our political system. And as you know, it's the complete fiction. This is why that Supreme Court decisions Citizens United was such BS. I mean, these are people who can't possibly have been that stupid to think that when you've got someone like Elon Musk spending hundreds of millions of dollars in a race, even though it's quote, independent of Paxton, that Paxton is not indebted to him. No, but that was the theory of the case. And it's just absurd, which is why we obviously have to work toward getting rid of it. By the way, I mentioned passing the Disclosed Act and getting rid of secret money and politics. To do that, we're going to need to get rid of this supermajority requirement on the filibuster. This is an essential reform that the Senate needs to take. It's insane that you need, you know, a supermajority to pass some of these important pieces of legislation. I was the author of the Disclosed Act years ago. We got it out of the house. It got 59 votes in the United States Senate, but it failed because it didn't get 60. So it's an insane proposal. It's a Senate manufactured proposal. We need to get rid of that as well. Okay. In closing here, I just want to say thank you because when I saw a Brego Garcia kidnapped by his government and sent to a torture camp in El Salvador, I thought who is fighting for him? Who's going to help him? And it meant a lot that you did it. And it means even more knowing that some of your colleagues were like, why are you even doing that? That you thought, because it's the right thing to do. And when I hear about these Americans getting killed in the West Bank, I'm like, where's the outrage at this? And somebody doing it. And I believe that obviously as we can see with MAGA, bad behavior can be contagious. But I hope that we can usher in with the midterms. And again, in 2028, that we can have goodness trickle back down again. I mean, we know wealth doesn't do it, but I do believe goodness can because I've seen the rot do it. So my final question for you is, do you think the Democrats, one thing that Trump has shown everybody on one end and one thing Zora and Mom Donnie in New York is showing everybody is that you don't have to govern incrementally. You can go all gas no breaks to tear it up or to do good things. Do you think the Democratic Party has what it takes because we didn't during the Biden administration when Merrick Garland let Trump and all of the planners of January 6th off the hook. It was a huge mistake and we're all paying for that. Do you think that we can, the Democrats can pull together and go all gas no breaks govern while at the same time there has to be justice and accountability for all of this fascist takeover that has taken place? Well, I agree with everything you just said about what needs to be done. And the honest answer to your question is this is going to be a big battle I think within the Democratic Party. I think we will all unite and there'll be consensus on making sure that we have oversight and shine is spotlight on Trump's accountability. I think we'll have consensus on using the power of the purse at least. I hope we will to end this illegal census war in Iran and nobody should fund it now or retroactively. But on some of these big questions, this is going to be the debate within the Democratic Party for the next two years. And I do think we need to go big because I think I think as you do that the Trump was a symptom of a larger problem, right? He recognized that people were in economic pain. He just distracted everybody by saying your economic pain is due to the other people, right? The immigrants or the people of different faiths. When in fact people took their eye off the ball and it's because of the billionaire class and people who have been rigging the rules. And we need to take it on directly. And I think there are those who think, well, we should just return to the pre-Trump normalcy. Business is usual. But that was a broken system for the American people. And so we need to go big to address those fundamental threats to fairness in our economy and to the threats to our political system and the integrity of our political system. So I think your question goes to the heart of what's going to be the debate within the Democratic Party for the next couple years. I agree. And I think that one thing that centrist liberals and progressives we all want fighters. And so thank you so much for your moral clarity on so many issues where so many people are silent. And I'm very interested in your evolution on the 28 questions. So anytime you're in New York and you'd like to discuss further. I would love to have you in the hot seat. And thank you for all of your work. And I echo exactly what you say. We cannot take these polls for granted. We've been here before where we think, oh, this is we've got this. And so everybody please go vote so that we can give the people like Senator Van Holland a big voice and a Senate full of Democrats. Senator thanks for being a fighter. Congrats on your book. Look forward to seeing you in New York. Thank you.