Trump’s White House Just Got a Major Shakeup

Brian, we got the breaking news, Katie Zachariah, a conservative commentator who briefly worked at DHS, has been chosen as the next White House press secretary, according to the New York Times, she's going to succeed Caroline Levitt, who left the position in August. You know Katie. I do. You have debated a few times on CNN and other places. Yeah. What do we expect? Yeah. Look, Katie, Katie has been a staunch advocate for this White House. For that reason, we've clashed quite a few times on CNN. I think if we have the ability to, we can throw a clip right here and just give a little indication of what kind of flavor it looks like. Yeah. How many Epstein files did Joe Biden release? How many? There was an ongoing investigation. There was an ongoing prosecution in 2022. How many did Obama release? I mean, I acknowledge what I just said. There was an ongoing investigation up to 2022. That was appealed. And that appealed ended in 2025. Because there was an ongoing prosecution. It's a letter of finisher point. So President Trump has been transparent about this. He has also been under the inquisition of the press. And everyone else that asked him a question, he has answered and answered and answered. Oval Office, press room, Air Force One, you name it, he's answering questions. So you can see there. I mean, she has for a long time taken, you know, taken the party line and she got rewarded for it. And that's just kind of a microcosm of how this White House works. If you, if you offer up undying feelty to Donald Trump, then eventually they bring you in the fold. I mean, look, in this case, that's literally the job. You are the spokesman for the, for the White House. It's not about having your own opinion. It's about saying whatever Donald Trump thinks. So, you know, if the shoe fits, I guess, totally, totally. Look, I will say on a, on a personal level, Katie has always been very kind, very kind person. So hopefully, you know, some bring some of that vibe to the White House. Yeah. I mean, we'll see, we'll see what happens. We'll see what the next couple brings the turtle. Not sure that's what Donald Trump wants. He wants to. Yeah. He's going to say bring a knife to the podium. We'll see. But in any case, it is, it is, that is big news here because she's going to be the face of this White House for the foreseeable future. And yeah, we will see what happens in terms of, look, Caroline Levitt has been really successful as far as Trump is concerned at White House press secretary. In very much the same way that Sarah Huckabee Sanders was really successful because both of them were, were kind of attacked dogs for for Donald Trump. Katie doesn't necessarily have that same vibe. She's much kinder and gentler. So we'll see if she's able to keep that up or if she is expected to behave in a different way when she gets into the White House. The time will tell. I think what made Caroline Levitt actually quite successful is she was good at the podium. She was, you know, able to tell lies on behalf of the administration, but also off camera had good relationships with the press corps. And that's another big part of the job. It's actually most of your job is kind of care and feeding for the reporters or the White House every day. But yeah, hope springs eternal that these people will lie less and be nicer. If I'm not mistaken, she was also the spokesperson for two social right before this. And so that's where, again, if I'm not mistaken, that she'll be coming from. Oh, fun. So true social. Where I go for all my truthy news. By the way, if you want us to go deeper on the new press secretary and all kinds of issues about the Trump White House, please subscribe to Potsy of America here on YouTube. Also subscribe to Brian Tyler Cohen's page on YouTube. We're trying to build these progressive counterweights all the right wing crap we are hearing from our new friend over the White House podium. So when you subscribe, you help set a lot. Please do it. This was a big week for candidate debates in the high profile Senate races. And wow, they been pretty brutal, man. Yes. We're going to start with a selection of clips from Georgia Senator John Ossoff's debate against his opponent, Mike Collins. Let's watch that. This is a man who cheered on a group of young men who were mocking a black woman on a college campus with monkey sounds. If John Lewis were marching today from Selma to Montgomery, Mike Collins would be grabbing a billy club. His office has been in cahoots with some of the most notorious white supremacists on the country. He himself has amplified neo-Nazi propaganda. He's never apologized for it and he should tonight. Mike Collins voted to take that money out of your pocket and out of your community and give it instead to data center developers. And that's the problem. Mike, it's not just that you've hired half the third Reich to staff your congressional office and you have promoted neo-Nazi content online. It's that you're robbing your constituents to subsidize your donors. I want to know if you will commit to voting to repeal that data center tax scam that you voted for. Let's hear an answer. So that was called throwing a punch. I mean, damn. I think it's probably it's easy to write hits that hard. It's easy to practice them. But getting on stage in delivering that line like lawlessly you are you hired half the third Reich is crazy. And also like also I said Mike Collins is a bigot in its disqualifying to be a US senator and then Collins's reply was like he wants to raise your taxes. Like yeah, I don't know that you're meeting the moment dude. Like also I've also got a question about like what voting rules should be left up to states versus the federal government. He made the answer about Collins in the 2020 lie on supporting Trump trying to give money to January six insurrectionists. That line about you know mocking a woman that we heard and then the line about how Collins would go after John Lewis with a billy club. He pulled no punches. No, absolutely devastating there. And also, as you said, benefits from the fact that he delivers these lines so cleanly and so devastatingly that like he's able to really pack a punch and he's kind of perfectly built for this moment where you know you're going to have a clip like this and if you can get it out clean and you've got like 30 seconds of just you know diabolical verbiage then look how well it does online. I mean this thing was everywhere in the immediate aftermath of this debate. Yeah and by the way it helps to have a crazy opponent because all of this is factual. I mean the the monkey sounds thing he mentioned there like in 2024 Collins posted a video of these old miss students mocking a black pro-Palestine protestor and you can clearly see a white student like making monkey gestures and he he put the caption old miss taking care of business right that's who this guy is his son-in-law is a white nationalist Andrew Gizinski or CNN is reported on this extensively. Collins and that answer tries to make himself like a whiny victim and he raises like his son Piker and read Hoffman of all people's nonsensical answer. And then Collins's staff like he keeps hiring white nationalists his chief of staff was like in a group chat with Nick Fuentez and Richard Spencer they tried to help intervene at DOJ to help some right wing influencer get out of trouble like it's all clean it's all accurate. Well you know the the crazy thing is like for so long that for so long these Republicans have been able to operate you know for the last few years they've been able to operate with with general impunity and they've watched Trump commit these corrupt acts of criminal acts and nothing happened to him and his cabinet same deal nothing happens to them and so it's I'm sure it's felt for these Republicans like the rules just slowly no longer exist and they will be above accountability forever and now in one fell swoop all the stupid shit and corruption and illegal shit that they've done over the last several years is finally coming back to bite him and they have no they have no recourse for any of this stuff because they leaned into all of it they were so lacks with all of it because they just thought they were going to be in power forever. Yeah. Trump Trump gets away with everything what do they have to worry about and now one by one all of these right right wing candidates have to answer for everything that they've done and said and allowed and all the abject criminality and and the the backroom deals and kickbacks that they've kind of swam in for the last several years and they just don't know how to respond to any of it. Tough to make all that fly in a swing state like Georgia too. And John Ossov is just a very talented communicator. Correct. Good candidate and he's kicking Collins's ass. Okay, over in Michigan Democrat Abdul al-Sayed debated former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers. This one got particularly nasty. Let's watch some excerpts. Let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, he wants us to scan a worms. I'll get him and I'll tell you what my mother did. She was a, a small, you go after my mom. I'm not going after your mom. That's what your mom was working at. I was going off to that organization that was indicted for funneling money to El Qaeda. He does $2.7 million in Florida. Oh my God. Yeah, I'll talk to you. You know what? Did you sell your yachts? I'd never owned a yacht in Florida brother. Oh really? You had two of them. He wanted to make this about him or me. But the question is about you. Can you afford your gas? Can you afford your groceries? Under this guy who's going to rubber stamp everything Donald Trump tells him to rubber stamp. You're going to continue to pay way more out the nose because he works for corporations and Donald Trump. So the answer where Mike Rogers started going after Abdul's mom was in response to a question about flock cameras. And then Rogers like why would you not pivot over to Abdul's mom? He essentially called Abdul a terrorist. He started attacking his mom for affiliations. I mean like, look, what do I know? Go after your opponent's mom seems a little rough to me. But I mean the strategy is clearly call Abdul's extreme. Yeah. Link him to the Muslim Brotherhood or other extremist groups. Like just pure it. It play a pure post 9/11 Islamophobia card. Like that's where they're at. Yeah. And look, this is a recurring theme for the GOP. Like fear porn and othering everybody else is a tune that they've played for every election cycle that I can remember if it's not, you know, migrant caravans or Mexicans are coming to rape your kids and sell drugs rape your wives and sell drugs to your kids. And then it's gay people going into the bathrooms following your children into bathrooms. And there's the attack against the trans community in this past election cycle. So it's always there's always some marginalized group that's responsible for everybody's problems. If the Republicans, look, if if if this like elite tranche of Republicans, the the Epstein class can make sure to train your attention on some marginalized group, then nobody's going to be training their attention where it belongs, which is on those very people who are allowing crimes to be committed with, committed with impunity, who are redirecting money to themselves and their families. Again, the whole strategy here by these Republicans is to make sure that if we can be good and mad, and if we, everybody can have their fingers pointed at everybody else, like on the bottom, nobody faces what's happening on the top. Exactly. And look, Abdul was, you know, punching back heart itself. He called Rogers cowardly, weak, and bought off. That was just one of his responses. It was an interesting debate. And that was, that was before they even gotten the real stage. That was just backstage. And like Rogers in the tough spot. I mean, look, I think this race is tied. Rogers is trying to backpedal for, he's trying to backpedal away from much of Trump's positions. He's trying to be anti-war now. He's saying it's like time for the, the Iran War to end. I don't know, anyone believes that he really wants that. He is talking up, he's, all of a sudden he's opposed to certain tariffs on Canada, despite being a full-throwed supporter of Trump and the trade war. Yeah. We'll try to pivot and most of the answers and attacks on him to like kind of directly turn into Cameron saying, he's attacking me because he doesn't want this to be about you. You know, your gas price is, you know, your cost of living, et cetera. This guy's going to rubber stamp the Trump agenda. I think that's the right message. I do wonder that when debates are this nasty, whether everybody just turns it off and tunes out, I do worry that, you know, the kind of Islamophobia that they're really hitting on here can, has been effective. We'll find out, Abdul is a very good debater, it was, you know, they're very skilled, but it was, it was, it was ugly, I mean, it's another word. For sure. But I think that's where the Republicans want it to be and also I think it was really smart of Abdul to face the camera and just say like, look, this, the ugliness that you're seeing here is, is where they want, like, is where they want to be, is where they want to live and, and it's not about that. I mean, looks, or Mamdani had an effective campaign doing exactly what Abdul is trying to pivot to doing right now, which is to make this about not, you know, red versus blue, not, not these politicians doing their own infighting or culture wars or whatever it may be. It's about the people that these politicians are being elected to serve. Zoran in a really hot environment was able to overcome that to be the mayor of New York and I think that, you know, if Abdul follows that same track, that hopefully he can be successful in Michigan. Yeah, I think, I think the similar strategy, I think Zoran is better than Abdul at putting on that thousand-watt smile and keeping it positive is even like, Abdul can come off a little scathing, a little cocky at times, you know, it's like a question of where this, how that wears. Again, if I was up on stage debating someone, literally started attacking my mother, are you ripship his too and I started punching back and calling them names? I just saying, like, I don't know how the electorates going to take this. Swing voters tend to just sort of hate politics. So we'll see. Yeah. So, like, you know, Michigan featured these two very, like, skilled experienced debaters delivering lines effectively on stage as to Georgia. The main Senate debates were quite different. It was like, you know, a little less polished, a little clunkier. You got Susan Collins and Troy Jackson fighting over rock salts. We're not going to play you a clip of that one, because- He did have that beautiful line where he was like, you know, she was bragging about the fact that she was able to deliver rock salt and he was like, can he rock salt? I think to me, if I were working on the Troy Jackson campaign, I thought the worst moment for Susan Collins is when she was like, Troy said, I've always had health care, but one, for one year in 1994, I was uninsured. Well, then. Oh, you got me. She understands us. So, what you're saying is, in 1994, you understood what it was like to be a normal working person in this country, and since then, you do not. You don't. Got it. Yeah. I mean, you know, look, talk about unforced errors. I think, I think, but I think Susan Collins is leaning on this idea that she is, you know, that she's still a moderate, and I think that kind of myth is slowly dissipating, given the fact that she's rubber stamped all of the policies, all of the people, the Supreme Court justices, who then ushered through the very policies that people, that are hurting people right now. I mean, Brett Kavanaugh being on the Supreme Court is bow to Susan Collins, either naivety or unwillingness to care about what her consideration is. Yeah, it really felt like a throwback debate because Troy Jackson sort of led with going after her on Brett Kavanaugh, which unfortunately did not work against her the last time. We'll see if it's more salient this time. She led with like all the pork she had brought to Maine, which again, just felt like politics from a different era. Yeah. Who the hell knows? It's a tight state. Liberal tiers is brought to you by PDS debt. 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Normally, I don't think much about the U.S. Normally, you don't know who that person is, but there has been this steady stream of just like terrible crazy stories about Gilfoil, including a wild Wall Street Journal story sourced to this dude, Eric Dieters, let's watch Kimberly Gilfoil is a grifter. Kimberly Gilfoil, I have no doubt has done this to more than me. She's doing it right now in Greece. I knew Corey Lewandowski did this stuff. I knew Christie known did this stuff. I have no personal knowledge of anybody else in the Trump administration being involved with this stuff. I cannot stand President Trump personally, okay? I cannot stand Kimberly Gilfoil. Kimberly Gilfoil is a wicked evil person. She thought I was going to be a sucker, and I'm not a sucker. He is not a sucker. So this dude is a former congressional candidate in Kentucky. He was seeking help from Gilfoil to get favors from the government, like tax stuff legal issues. He wanted someone extra-dited so that they could put forward a lawsuit against him. There's an exchange, so he handed over all of his texts with Gilfoil to the journal. Includes her asking him to secretly pay off a $100,000 MX bill. She put that in writing. This quote, "Honey, please, I need you to get this done for me today." She texted with a prayer emoji and then a PDF with payment instructions. You could just send it here. She wrote days before confirmation hearing. So, Kimberly, she thought this was going to be a problem for her adhering. Their financial relationship started in 2020. He paid her over 300 grand and speaking fees. He also paid 200 grand to Don Jr., 100 grand to Eric Trump. He gave 125 to a Trump Align Super PAC in 2022. So this dude is like thickest thieves with a Trump family. It's given them a lot of money. He wanted some favors, didn't get them, and now it's just burned in the bridge. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, I saw it was a great joke on the Daily Show about how it was pretty appropriate that Kimberly Gilfoil would be the ambassador to Greece and then be embroiled in all of these debt problems. [laughter] That's true. I mean, if she's going to be the ambassador to country, that's just like-- And you got a greaser to get these favors done. It works all over the place. I like that. Did you see the part about Tucker Carlson in the story? No. Okay. So, he told this guy, Eric Dieter's told Gilfoil, "He would pay her a million bucks if she got him on Tucker Carlson's podcast." Who knew that? A million bucks for a book. That's pretty great. She sends a bunch of texts. She says, "We should hear something by the end of the week." And then Carlson gets comment, like, a call for comment about all this going down. And he told the journal, "He'd never heard Deeders." And he doesn't keep up with Gilfoil, who does not have a role in influencing, which Guest he selects. And he says, "A million dollars for a podcast appearance isn't she the ambassador to Greece? This is completely nuts." Yes, Tucker. Yes, it is. Welcome to the crazy. Somebody just introduced Tucker Carlson to the grift of the Trump family. It's so good, man. It's so good. This guy Deeders, he's a local guitarist. He wrote a song called Kentucky Outlaw. He wanted Kim Gilfoil to get the lyrics to Kid Rock. I guess that didn't work out either. But she is on the record brine, bragging about access. She says, "Every secretary, you know, defense, transportation, treasury, commerce, IRS commissioner. Everyone gets right back to me. Oh, yeah. I'm forgetting Cash Patel, FBI director, but she spells his name wrong." Yeah. I mean, look. Delicious. It is just like par for the course in the Trump administration. They have Kimberley Gilfoil, who is like, you know, who just operates on this level. I mean, this is actually like a Trump family member, right? Yeah, totally. But the fact is, like, this is not disqualifying. This is a prerequisite. Like, what are you going to, what are you going to disqualify her? Because she doesn't have integrity among anybody else in the administration who acts exactly the same way. Well, it's funny, right? Because the Trump does this. His kids do it. They all take bribes, right? They're still company. They're getting money for the ballroom. People are buying the meme coin. But when other people make money off of Trump, sometimes he gets mad and like punishes them. And I'm curious to see if that'll happen here. and she clearly knew what she was doing. She kept writing things like Eric, I really wish you would stop papering all these things. (laughing) - The only paper that should exist is the PDF I sent you to get you the directions on how to pay off my amends. - She's putting in writing, don't put it in writing. - Yeah. - How stupid do you have to be? What a nightmare she wrote. You'll literally cost me my ambassadorship. Then she said also very privately. If you write an email or text about, I'm gonna kill you 'cause I love you, but you're so out of control. Man, you're telling this man to just call me on signal. Call him on signal. Take your own fucking advice. - Man, she wasn't kidding when she said, the best is yet to come. (laughing) - Her boss, Marco Rubio, was asked about this conduct. - Let's see how it goes. - Ladies and gentlemen, I am, guys, I'm not playing this game with you, okay? You guys write a story, and then your editors tell you, make sure you get a comment from him on something we haven't seen. Okay, you guys are not gonna be our only source of information in the world. I'm sorry to tell you that. And so I want you to understand, no, that's not the way the process is gonna work. - First of all, the process doesn't work like this. We don't conduct these things on a press conference, on a tarmac and a foreign country, because you wrote a story, or somebody else wrote a story, 'cause some source gave it to you. So get that out of your head, 'cause that's never the way it's gonna work with me. It's a game that's been played for a long time, but it's not a game we're gonna play. We're conducting serious business here, and we'll handle things appropriately. I don't even know what you're reporting is true. You guys somehow walk around thinking that, because some source told you something, and you reported it, it's a gospel. It's not the gospel. It's not the gospel for me. That's not the way we do it. - I'm not sure if that was a Fox reporter, but he's on Fox right there, and this is a Wall Street Journal story. - Story. - Story. - With texts. - And he's in Greece. Like, everything about this is germane to the country. I mean, like, out of bounds. - It's like some random ambassador, oh. - Also, you're in Greece. - The Trump administration, getting it like, saying, oh, you know what, we leave domestic problems back in the United States. - Yeah, the water is out there. - This is not the gospel for me. All right, Dickhead. Also, there's hilarious reports. We'll go into all of it about her conduct as ambassador. Apparently, there's now a State Department IG report. My favorite is that she demoted her lead security agent, because he didn't answer her call at 4 a.m. when she was getting hammered in mecanos. She wanted more ice, and this guy didn't wake up at the call. It was a grandfather, and then she demoted him. She also apparently fired two drivers for making left turn wrong. - Yeah. - I wonder what that means. - There's all these reports that she gave special access. - She's like, in the Trump administration, we only make right turn. - We go in seconds like Zoolander. - She give all this access to Greek lobbyists, and then help them get business. The subtext of that story was there might be some romantic relationship there. I mean, the whole, like, she sounds like a fucking ethics disaster. So nightmare. - Yeah, and yet, - However the course is. - Yeah, perfect ambassador. - Final thing, Brian. Just when you thought maybe the Secretary of Defense Pete Hexf could not be more like clownishly macho and try hard, today we learned that he wants to livestream a military execution by firing squad. Here he is talking about all this with Pizzagate, Weirdo, Jack Busobic, because who else? - And what led to that decision process? - No brainer. Execution by firing squad. Army major betrays his country, radical Islamist, kills a bunch of Americans at Fort Hood. Of course, we're gonna do it at Fort Hood. We're gonna do it on a Thursday. We're gonna do it at one o'clock, which is when he did it. And it's gonna be soldiers with rifles executing the firing squad. He hadn't been since World War II, since we've done that. Well, I kind of like the mentality we had in World War II, which was when, which was, I understand when the enemy attacks you, you need to stand your ground. So it was radical Islamist terror attack. Remember what, remember what Obama called it? Workplace violence? I mean, that's what we're up against. That's the world viewer up against. It's workplace violence, CVE. We know what it is. It was a radical Islamist attack in uniform inside the ranks. And so he's gonna get a firing squad of soldiers as it should be. And we'll make sure that people are able to watch it. That it's public because people need to understand that this is a serious consequence for these types of things. - Who was the watch in execution? Like, your family member was killed. I can understand that, like, live stream? - No, it's, it's, I mean, turning, turning like killing somebody into a public spectacle. - If you are on one hand complaining about what was done, but then replicating the exact, down to the time of day, like replicating the exact condition so that you can do it too. How does that distinguish you from exactly the thing that you're trying to condemn? - It seems like a great way to turn like a high-profile terror attack or terrorist into a martyr. - Yeah. - Yeah, he's talking about, just for case folks down, we're talking about the case of Nadal Hassan, the Fort Hood shooter. This was back in 2009, I was in the White House at the time. That piece of shit, he shot up this processing center at Fort Hood. 13 people were killed, 30 were wounded. He'd been in touch with this al-Qaeda leader, name Anwar Al Al-Alaqqi beforehand. He was convicted in 2013, but the appeals process just drags on for years and years. So like, it's like, he absolutely, capital punishment seems appropriated. But like, live streaming with the-- - What the fuck are you doing? - And, and, and that's exactly it. Like, I don't even take issue with the fact that, that, you know, everybody knows it was him. There's no ambiguity as to whether he's guilty of committing this crime. It was heinous, in my opinion, and this might, you know, not fall into the, you know, the orthodoxy of the democratic left. But like, I do think the capital punishment is, is appropriate here. But the notion that it's going to be like broadcast, like some big, big like, creating like a big circus out of this. Yeah, it's just, is just kind of like wild. And also, like, this is what happens in the exact fascist authoritarian regimes that the Trump administration is trying to emulate. - Yeah, I think that, over time, like, celebrating, like, murder porn like this, is like, it's bad for the entire society and Pete has us, the terrible person. All right, that's all we got for today. Thank you for watching Steps at a Liberal Tears. Talk to you soon. [ Silence ]