Epstein Files: Worse Than You Thought

0:00Today's presenting sponsor is Simply Safe Home Security. As a PodSafe America listener, you know as well as us, the dark chapter we're stepping into. Oh, we're there. We're in it. It's been a long chapter. We're in the chapter. Yeah, the chapter. But no matter what's happening outside your four walls, your home should always provide a safe sanctuary for your family. Simply Safe can help provide peace of mind with proactive protection that helps to stop threats before they even have the chance to break in. What do you love most about having Simply Safe? Simply Safe is very easy to set up and the app really reliable. The customer support really great gives you peace of mind. There you go. Traditional security systems only take action after someone has already broken in. That's Too Late. Simply Safe's active guard outdoor protection can help prevent breakings before they happen. AI-powered cameras backed by live professional monitor and agents monitor your property and detect suspicious activity. If someone's lurking around or acting suspiciously, those agents see and talk to them in real time, activates spotlights and even contact the police all before they have the chance to get inside your home. No long-term contracts or cancellation fees, monitoring plans start affordably at around a dollar a day. 60-day satisfaction guarantee or your money back

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2:02is a rest of Don Lemon and other journalist slash protesters. And some good news, a surprise democratic special election win in a deep-red part of Texas. And then Tommy talks to musician Bobby Polito about why he decided to jump into politics and run for Congress in Texas. Just a ton of news to talk about, as there always is, one reason you should consider becoming a subscriber. Good call. Every week on our subscriber-only pods and our growing number of sub-stack newsletters, we're going deeper on all the biggest stories and cover the big stories. We didn't get a chance to cover here in Pots-Ave America. We just added a new bi-weekly subscriber-only episode of Pots-Ave America called Pots-Ave America Only Friends. Perfect name. We have a, it's for buys weekly. It's for buys weekly. Yeah, only friends. And if you don't like listening to things, if you still like reading things, we also have a new weekly Pots-Ave America newsletter called OpenTabs. You also, as a subscriber, get free-up ad free episodes of all your favorite crooked pods, plus bonus content, like Pots-Ave the World, Q&A with Tommy and Ben.

3:04Wow. We're still talking about that. It's kidding. I don't know if you're fun to do. We get super intense questions. I don't think I know how to listen to the Q&A. But mostly just please subscribe, because it's the most helpful thing you possibly did for us as a company trying to grow up. I think you possibly did for us as a company trying to grow here in the independent progressive media world, so. Yeah, if you, if you like supporting independent pro-democracy media, this is a subscription for you. If you don't, we won't, you know, then go somewhere else, but. Well, keep listening for free. But it would mean a lot to all of us here, crooked, if you considered subscribing at crooked.com slash friends. All right, let's start with the Justice Department's Congressionaly mandated, though very delayed release of another three million pages of Epstein related documents, which were dumped online Friday afternoon in a fairly haphazard manner, so much so that the documents accidentally included dozens of nude photos of victims, and in some cases full names, and other information that could be used to identify them. The biggest takeaway, though, was that a bunch of very rich, famous, and powerful people were close to Epstein. You may even call it a cabal.

4:05And seem to know both who they were dealing with, and in some cases what he was up to. People like Elon Musk, Richard Branson, Peter Teal, Sergei Brinn, Bill Gates, Prince Andrew, and of course, Donald Trump, whose name appears more than 5,000 times in different contexts. Here's what Trump had to say for himself on Monday in the Oval. The problem is that it's turning out to be the Democrats that were with and conspired with Epstein. They were working together to try and help me lose the election. And frankly, the DOJ, I think, should just say, we have other things to do, because that whole thing has turned out, I mean, other than Bill Clinton, and Bill Gates and lots of people that have there are a lot of questions about it, but nothing on me. When Epstein was alive, I can't use a good, nobody cared about it. Yeah. Who ever cared about Epstein before Trump was president anyway? Let's listen. On day one, roll out the black book. And not just that. On day one, roll out all of the text messages

5:06and communications we were told were deleted. We need to release the Epstein list. That is an important thing. There's just a couple of libs there. Yeah, classic. Obviously, three million pages, a lot to get through. But I know you guys have both gotten through about 95% and 97% of them. What jumped out at you in the files? Tommy, you want to go for it? Sure, I mean, look, I just want to start by saying I'm completely red-pilled on this stuff. I thought Jeffrey Epstein was a scummy guy who did bad things and then used connections to avoid accountability. I like the web of connections that this man actually has the clear evidence of trafficking that's in these files is stunning. Like, QAnon was right. They just looked the wrong direction. You know what I mean? It's mind-boggling. So, Cash Patel, there's another clip for him when he was saying he testifies before Congress that there's no evidence at Epstein traffic other women to other individuals. Like, he should be held in contempt just for that. Things that jumped out at me, Steve Bannon is all over the Epstein files. They are really good friends.

6:07Bannon is helping him rehab his image. They're working on projects together. Like, he's helping Epstein's helping Bannon fund his stuff. That's a lot more we should learn there. You mentioned the Trump piece. I mean, he's in 5,300 files. There's 38,000 references to Trump. Some of those are duplicative, but like he is everywhere. And in this clip, it's like we've finally gotten the files and that Trump is saying like, oh, who even cares about this guy? It's been a long time. He's ready to move on. And there's one email where Epstein specifically talks about whether to call Trump about Virginia Dufrey. Yeah, that was really stuck out of it. An Epstein victim wrote a book about her experience who died by suicide recently. We need to learn more about that. Elon Musk is a scumbag. He has a social relationship with Epstein. He clearly knows what's going on. He says like, I want to go to your island for the wildest party. And now we don't know if you ever went there. But he is all over these files. There's multiple NFL owners in these things. Steve Tish, Steve Tish, Giant's owner, Worst Defender. I don't know how he survives this. Jeffery Epstein got permanently banned from Xbox Live.

7:09Did you guys catch this one? Yeah, I've heard about that. Again, it's one of those things where in our kind of postmodern post-truth world is that unbelievable and true or unbelievable and false. It's true. I think a lot of people thought it was because he was like talking shit, the teenagers on Fortnite. And it might be a new thing we learned about him. I think it's because he's registered as a sex offender. I was also like, I was also just stunned by how truly global the scandal is. Like the crown princess of Norway was buddies with Epstein in the UK. They got Peter Mendelssohn, who recently was the UK's ambassador to the US, gave Jeffery Epstein a heads up on the government's response to the EU debt crisis before it happened. I guess he resigned. Market-sensitive information he resigned. A. Who'd Brock is all over these files. There's audio of Jeffery Epstein telling A. Who'd Brock about Palantir over the first time. So it's just... Slovakia's prime ministers, national security advisor just resigned as well. Great. So you could do a whole episode of Palantir Save the World on this. And we're gonna do this tomorrow. But like the scope of it is amazing.

8:09Just lasting, like you said, love it. Like the fake news problem is so exacerbated in a situation like this, because you have three million files dumped onto the internet. There's stuff all over Twitter. You have no idea what's real and what is fake. It's so easy to slip something fake into the kind of social media ecosystem right now. It's just really terrible. Yeah, so... There's, although, kind of like, who's in it? What does it mean? And we don't know, right? There's a reason, traditionally. You don't just release millions and millions of files that work kind of part of different aspects of investigation. Without context and... Without context? And by the way, like, you know, everyone was clamoring for why, you know, for DOJ to release these documents and why they had missed the deadline. And I actually see why they took them this long. And probably should have honestly taken them longer, because there's tons of mistakes throughout this. If you just search, do a keyword search, you will find an email where the names are redacted every place except one. But if you missed one, well, it didn't matter that you redacted the other ones. There's all kinds of other names. If people unrelated to this

9:10that are inside of you with personal information. The other challenge is, by the way, the names, and this is like, you know, why Trump's name is in there so many times. It appears that someone sent Jeff Reppstein, like, news clips, right? Exactly. Yeah. So there are so many names. Yeah. And the OC files that are just part of the news clips that he received, which is tough. But then, like, you do see this. And it's too many people for a cabal, John. I think it's fully fledged to ring. This ring of elites, and it's, why? Like, why around this man? What was the pull that this man had? And I do genuinely believe, like, a lot of the men connected through this were not necessarily directly involved in sex crimes, though he was a registered sex offender who had a terrible and well-known reputation. So these people are all despicable for getting this close to him. But he had these connections. He could get things done. He could get you to a country club. He could connect people from here. And where did that power came from? And that power came from for some subset of these people. He was a vehicle for access to women, girls,

10:10and to a kind of, like, licentiousness that was appealing to them for them to step out of their lives. In 2010, Peggy Seagull, who is a publicist, was helping Epstein regain entry into society. And she was telling him, I have no idea what the reaction will be to your reentry into society, but take it slow and stay quiet. Your friends are there for you. And at least the house is drop dead gorgeous. Every fag decorator with an immediate interest in Israel charming will be begging for a look. This was about him bringing kevlar military people into lectures and scientists to have these dinners. And he did it. And you know what? It fucking worked. So Peter Atiyah, who was a doctor that was recently, like, a longevity guy who was recently brought. Streamly popular boy. Streamly popular boy. Out with, right? Actually, like, you know, I didn't know it was in the fucking Epstein files. Like, I've seen clips from him and I was like, oh, that's interesting. How real is this guy? And then I signed an interview where he was like, proudly referring to the second derivative as if it was a scientific term. And I was like, I'm skeptical. I'm skeptical, you're trying to seem smart in a way that I'm not trusting. He had to put out a statement today,

11:10explaining how he was in these emails with Epstein, even after he was a registered sex offender. And he said, everything about him seemed excessive and exclusive, including the fact that he lived in the largest home in all of Manhattan, owned a Boeing 727 and hosted parties with the most powerful and prominent leaders in business and politics. In retrospect, the presence and credibility of such venerable people in different orbits led me to make assumptions about him that clouded my judgment in ways it shouldn't have. I thought the other thing interesting about that statement too is he basically says, like, so obviously, I knew that he had had a prostitution charge, right? But because it was like, he served a year and it was like, you know, maybe it was a prostitution charge and he didn't know the age of the girl and he was soliciting prostitutes. You know, and then it's what you just said, which is that knowledge combined with, well, he's famous and rich and has all these connections and everyone else who's rich and powerful like some. So if he can't be that bad, it really shines a light on just how fucking corrupt and broken and gross the system is

12:12that like the entire culture around him can make someone think, like, I'm not gonna do my due diligence on this guy because, you know, it must have just been a little mishap. Yeah, if people from the fucking Aspen, if people I met at the Aspen Ideas festival would jump off a bridge, why wouldn't I? Exactly. And so like, he kind of is able to get his reputation back and by the way, it was a strategy to only have that be what was publicly known about the charges and now in this release, you find that Acosta when he was the prosecutor had a whole bevy of other potential charges involving crimes and abuse and rape of girls. Yeah, the draft indictment that's in here of the 32 counts from the Southern District of Florida that also includes three co-conspirators, the draft that was never, you know, because he got the sweetheart deal from Acosta so it never went forward. But that to me is a very fascinating document. That deal remains kind of like the original sin of the second act of Jeffrey Epstein. If that deal is just, is about reality,

13:12about what he really did, the scope of it. I mean, I think there's no way this guy gets back into the world but I do think he did exactly what you say, which big look, yes, I solicited a process to do. One of them was 17 or something like that. And these guys were like, just bought it. Yep. I also just, a lot of how we've been looking at the scandal has been around who's involved with it, right? And like, what did these big name people do and what didn't they do? I think that's important. And I think we still don't have all the answers and we should be finding to get more answers. But when you dig into it, you also just find these little, like, artifacts of how he was actually manipulating his situation, including the girls and women that were involved. And again, there are these little, I don't know, snippets, these sort of disentangled little bits of information you can't fully understand. But you see these sort of vicious back and forth with people whose names you don't know where he's saying things like, you had an apartment, you had money, you had an agreement, many agreement promises, you broke them all.

14:12You're acting like a spoiled child, who thinks the world owes them a living, sleeping all day, not helping, not dancing. There are these little bits of the evil at the very core of it. And you see the emails you wrote to himself, little ideas, little things that came to him. And at the core of this whole enterprise was this disgusting man, it's like vicious monster that had built all these layers around him to seem respectable. And the fact that even now we still don't really totally understand a lot of what actually happened because it's now being released in this haphazard and confusing way where you don't know what's real and you don't know what's not, we are going to, I still think that whether it's the Democrats and Congress, whether it's a democratic presidential candidate calling for some kind of hearing and investigation, we need to have public hearings about this, about how this, to just get the truth about it, including getting the participants in it, force them to speak in front of the country

15:13about what happened because I still think we're going to live in this sort of like semi-true kind of understanding because of the way they release these documents. To that point, the Epstein law that passed says that the DOJ needs to turn over their internal memos, deliberations, notes on who they charged, why, why didn't they make certain charging decisions, they have not done that yet. So they are just in violation of the law still by not doing that. And usually the Department of Justice would never turn over those notes, but that's what the law that John Trump signed into law and Congress just passed said. So I do think that can shine a light on some of this because also to your point about Cash Patel, like I can't tell clearly it was dishonest what he said in front of Congress, but I don't know if you've seen anything in any of the emails I haven't that show that like clearly there were other men who trafficked underage women with Jeffrey Epstein, like I don't think any of the emails say. Cash Patel says there's no evidence none if there were I would bring the case yesterday that he Epstein trafficked to other individuals.

16:14It seems like the Steve Tish case seems like that's exactly what happened there. Now maybe they were of age, but did we investigate that? I don't know. He seems like there's a lot of smoke here, but we'll find out. I mean, it's clear like the FBI like fell down on the job here. They just didn't do it. Well, it seems like there's three levels of Epstein connections here that you see in these emails. The first level is new Epstein was friendly with him and was just in the social circles and thought he was a great guy, you know? Then there was new Epstein friendly with him and was discussing like girls with him and like they were fucking objects in the most grossest sort of manner. And then there were like the Tish stuff, which is like, yes, I have girls for you, basically, which is like helping him find. Yeah. And Trump in here, by the way, is through some uncoroperated allegations, but like including some witness interviews with the FBI and other things is like somewhere in between discussing girls in a gross loot manner and potentially like around him when there were girls being, you know? Trump is safe because he does not use email.

17:15Yes. Like if we had the audio of Donald Trump's conversation with the Jeffrey Epstein, I bet, Jaws would be on the floor and we wouldn't believe it. The other sort of process thing, love it. I'm glad you brought this up that I'm seeing a lot out there. It's like Joe Biden could have released all of this. Why didn't he, you fell down on the job? It's like, actually no, this is not how the Department of Justice is supposed to work. And I think we're seeing that play out. Like it's awful. Like I hope there's accountability for the abused. I hope that people did bad things, go to jail, but like Jesus Christ, like releasing all these victims names, the images, like the random people, like this is actually not good. And like no, you don't want Joe Biden to be digging through DOJ files to try to destroy his political opponents. Guys, like this is, there should be a bigger principle here. Yeah, I also, like the process of the redacting and not redacting, are they being, are they just haphazard and like in judicious, are they being kind of making choices with what names are showing or not showing at times? I have no idea. Also doing this in these giant rare, rare, huge dumps

18:18of information when inside of it, you know it's personal and like information about the victims of crimes. So some of this is just being competence in the way it's being executed, but I do. I actually, one thing I was just, when I was looking through it, I really struck, like I was over the weekend, just the kind of, the wash of comments about it, the way we were learning about it, the random people posting things, you didn't know what it was true and like all of it, kind of some of it sort of silly and then all of it relating to monstrous crimes. Some of it was fake on Twitter. Some of it was fake. I really, the sort of tear, it really gave me this like a sick feeling just about where we're at and how like the, because we're DOJ, you can't rely on them, you can't trust them. The social media has been kind of taken over by Elon and others in a way that makes it impossible to know what's true or not true. And this all feeds, even the fact that we're in this mess is like getting the information this way as a product of our kind of conspiratorial mindset. And yet, I'm glad for the most,

19:19like I do think that this was necessary. I think like that Conrad and Massey were able to get this through was like ultimately the right thing to do, given what we're learning. Like we would never know any of this. And I'm glad that we do for the most part. Good for them that they wrote this law and did it the right way and got every member of Congress but won to vote for it. I just like, the people are saying like Joe Biden should've you know, laterally taken this step through his DOJ. It's like, it's a lot of collateral damage there. They think we don't think true. Yeah, for sure. Pots of America is brought to you by Smalls. Your cat has zero interest in politics, but they absolutely have strong opinions about their food, which is why you need to give them Smalls. It's 2026. Do you still feed your cat like it's 1926? For a limited time, get 60% of your first order plus free shipping when you head to Smalls.com slash crooked. Smalls cat food is protein pack recipes made with preservative free ingredients you'd find in your fridge and it's delivered right to your door. That's why cats.com named Smalls. Their best overall cat food starting with Smalls.

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22:21absolutely shameless corruption. The Wall Street Journal reported that just days before Trump was inaugurated, an Abu Dhabi royal known as the Spy Sheik, who's the United Arab Emirates National Security Advisor and runs the country's sovereign wealth fund. But a 49% stake in world Liberty Financial, the Trump family's crypto venture for $500 million with an upfront payment of $187 million going right to quote Trump family entities. In a complete coincidence, the Trump administration then gave the Spy Sheik what the UAE had long wanted but hadn't been able to get access to when Biden was president, half a million of America's most advanced AI chips. I guess the Emirates just really believed in Eric Trump's business plan and his crypto expertise, huh? Is that what we think? Yeah, for a company that was, I don't think they had a product at the time. And the 49% stake that they purchased actually didn't get you access to the future revenue on the only thing they were selling at that moment. So yeah, no, it definitely that's what happened. First of all, I just want to say, shout out to the Wall Street Journal for getting this scoop.

23:23Like think a liberal billionaire, Rupert Murdoch is using his power for good, right? While all these other right-wing assholes like Jeff Bezos just turdled and buy Melania documentaries. I mean, so by the way, before this story, what we knew about this UAE AI chips deal was that an Emirati backed investment fund called MGX, the last spring, made a $2 billion investment into a crypto company called Binance and they did it using the Trump family's stablecoin, their new cryptocurrency USD1, which is from World Liberty Financial, the same company. So that came out of nowhere. It instantly made USD1 one of the most highly circulated stablecoins in existence and then reportedly makes the Trump family $80 million a year in passive income. Then right after that, the Trump agrees to provide the UAE with these chips. So we already knew that there was like a totally corrupt drug deal, but this report is even crazier. Like they just bought this company outright. There was no disclosure, $177 million goes to the Trump family. Another tranche of the money goes to Steve Whitcoff's son

24:24who, remember, like as this is all happening, Steve Whitcoff has named the kind of like emissary for everything. He's going around the world. He goes to a crypto conference in the UAE and then two weeks later, the contracts to make this purchase just magically appear. And so it just confirms what we know, which is that Trump and Steve Whitcoff, they're running around the globe, they're talking to autocrats and they are steering money into their family's pot. And like Jared Kushner's gotten a bunch of money from the Emirates. We also know that the Emirates were pushing Trump to pardon the Binance CEO, this guy's CZ. That obviously will help your $2 billion investment if that company gets right with regulators in the US. So it's like, what do you fucking do with this? This is, you know, corruption of the president. It's what you do, but it's just to do. It's corruption like nothing we've ever seen in this country and it's like a one-day story. Well, and it is a great example of why impeachment is the only remedy because John Roberts and his court would say that the

25:24literally, yeah, giving them the chips was official business, which it was, right? But obviously we know that there is a personal stake there. And so what Roberts and the court would say in that opinion is, well, impeachment is the remedy. If you think it was, if it was a conflict and the Republicans are just like, no, no, no, it's totally fine for your family to take half a billion dollars and then to literally sell America out by, and one of the reasons, by the way, they didn't want to give the UAE these very advanced AI chips aside from the fact that it's a foreign government. But wasn't there a concern that they were just deals with China? They're super tight. The Sheik's company in particular, it's called G42 was supposed to get one fifth of the 500,000 of these NVIDIA chips. They're super tight with a bunch of Chinese companies, including one called Huawei, which provides telecom infrastructure. And the United States has spent decades telling other countries to get Huawei the fuck out of their countries, places like the UK because there's concern that you could do, create like backdoor infrastructure to spy on them, which is why there was concern in the Biden administration

26:26about selling these chips to the Emirates. And by the way, these are not, these are like the Blackwell series chips, like the best of the best NVIDIA chips that no other countries can really get unless you're like a super close ally and partner of the US. And yeah, or own almost half of world liberty financial. He increased the right guy. Yeah, it's also, there's something struck me that it was the right before the inaugural, right? That before he'd even taken office for a second time, he had already decided that he was going to be the most corrupt president in American history. And even saying that is an understatement really, he was going to be as corrupt as the most corrupt autocrats in the history of the modern world that he was already going to be a Putin level corrupt figure. And like what would happen in a normal time in a functioning civil society? Yes, of course, there'd be impeachment hearings and his removal, but even maybe before that there would be a Department of Justice investigation. There would be congressional hearings, there would be outrage that would continue, that would be bipartisan, there would be Republicans going up to the White House

27:27to say that it's time to step down because the country can't survive having a president this corrupt, like those are the normal things, right? That you could imagine happening, how this would have worked even in the previous and Republican administrations. We've never had anything this bad. And when I was a kid, I would obviously struggle with deadlines and if I would hit a deadline, but if I missed it, I would never, just simply would never do the work. Right, if I had a paper do on a Monday and I missed the Monday, it was like it never happened, weeks, months, it would be a disaster. I would do it too. Because once you're through the, once you're on the other side and what's the point? What's the point? And I do feel like with that sort of wrap with the Republicans, they've sort of, they have their one impeachment is the mechanism or any kind of accountability. And because that is impossible, we are kind of through that and now Trump can do anything. There's nothing they can't look past because they've looked past so much already. And like we talked about this all day, well, so gobsmacking, it's so crazy. He should be impeached and removed, that is obvious. That's what should happen, but it can't. And so we sort of live in this world where there's no accountability yet.

28:27It's also, it's just like you can't write something this outrageously corrupt. Like you can make something like this up. It's like a Middle Eastern autocrat who also maybe does deal with the Chinese government for like an American asset that has like incredible national security implications that you're selling out for half a billion dollars for the president, like what? It's just, yeah, those chips are how we make pictures of women with six boobs. We can't have the Chinese get control of that technology. Next thing you know, it'll be saying things. That's the problem with that, right? That's the terrible mediocre writing. I mean, the thing is the Emirates, like they have a bit of a DC halo because they throw a lot of money around to think tanks. They hire a lot of former generals to come give speeches or consult for their military. They have an ambassador who's been around for a long time. Host a lot of events at Cafe Milano, you know, a bit of a man about town. But this is also a country that has been funding the other side of a absolutely devastating civil war

29:30in Sudan for the better part of two years. They're funding this group called the RSF that is leading to the worst humanitarian catastrophe on the planet right now. So I do think it's just worth thinking about like the foreign policy of the people that Trump did this deal with because it is really gross when you kind of get past the bullshit and the glitterati fucking, you know, appetizer course at Cafe Milano and see what's actually happening. I don't know the foreign policy of any of the governments he's done deals with that he likes that is a good foreign policy. Yeah, see how it goes. Any good vibes? Yeah, who's he doing deals with around the world and for governments that they're not either, you know, repressing their own people or others or causing conflict? Yeah, that's a type, doesn't he? The tensions are with the Canada and NATO and the like. The connection to me between the Epstein story in this is like these people are buying their credibility with their conferences and their and their, you know, and what comedy festivals in Saudi Arabia, all the people that Trump is doing deals with, they're investing in the kind of appearance

30:32of polite society to lend them credibility and it works, people make the trip, they take the money and they have, they use their wealth to kind of hide the monstrousness. I don't know if you guys saw that Trump's also looking to steal another $10 billion from us, the American taxpayers. President is suing the IRS for $10 billion with a B and damages over the leaking of his tax returns in 2019 in 2020. You might remember he's also suing the Justice Department for $230 million in damages. Seems like small potatoes now over the investigations that led to multiple grand juries and dieting Trump on multiple criminal charges. And since the DOJ now does whatever Trump tells him to do, you can imagine that they may settle this case favorably for the president. Trump basically acknowledged the conflict on Saturday night when he was talking to reporters, though he seemed to just find the whole thing rather amusing. Take a listen. I have to work out some kind of a settlement I'm supposed to work out a settlement with myself. What we'll do is do something for charity.

31:34You know, we're thinking about doing something for charity or I'll give money to charity. We can make it a substantial amount. Nobody would care because it's going to go to numerous, very good charities. He's going to steal $10 billion from the federal government and claim he's going to give it to charity. That's what he's saying right now. But do the press comments on it in black tie? Yeah. Because that's fitting, I think. He was just kind of, he was, yeah, he was at the Al Falfa dinner Saturday night, which is a bunch of, you know, elites, just fucking cracking jokes. Yeah. Cracking jokes. Manopoli. How many people in that room are in the fucking fine? Oh, that's crazy. I realize that the corruption isn't quite as, maybe it's not as brazen or as big of a deal, like globally as the UAE thing that we just talked about. But just taking $10 billion from the treasury for yourself. It's just lazy. I mean, I talk about like things about, I think that would piss Americans off. Like more, I mean, 10 billion, you know what? You know how much a one-year extension of the Affordable Care Act subsidies cost? $30 billion, that is a third of the extension that they said that we apparently cannot afford.

32:3420 million people are seeing their premiums go up, and yet he wants to pay $10 billion out of the treasury to himself just so he can promise to give it to many good charities. I could have hired more ice guys with this. That's right. Yeah, many other, many other possibilities. The president of the United States is filing frivolous lawsuits against the United States. Yeah, so he can use his position to settle them favorably. It's, again, he should be impeached and removed from office. It's just what is it watching it unfold? I was watching all this, the Epstein files and all the involvement of all these people inside the Trump administration we need to talk about. Like, a lot of nicks in there, a lot of people are in there. And then you look at the UAE case, this lawsuit, there was a CBS got their hands on a memo and if you saw this, of the Capitol, the insurrection prosecutors wrote a memo to congressional leaders, do you see this? Where they recommended what Congress can do because DOJ will obviously not do anything

33:36to investigate the immigration abuses, to investigate ICE and detention center abuses and other things. They laid out all these things that Congress could do, which would be about preserving records in the case of inevitable prosecutions in the future and the point they made is there are FBI agents and federal prosecutors who have left because they're disgusted with the politicization and the sort of the capture of these bureaus that would be available to do these kinds of investigations. And whether it's as part of the midterms or whether it's a part of a presidential campaign, I do think talking about how Democrats are gonna declare war on corruption and put a real program of like, I think it should be prime time hearings, 9-11 commission like law that kind of says, here's how we're gonna investigate this, abuses of the power power, the capture of the Department of Justice, the theft by the president, the corrupt acts by the president and create like a kind of framework for how we're gonna be treating this like a really big deal in the future, whether it's in 20, whether it's while Trump is an officer after and as part of that, bringing on prosecutors,

34:37bringing on law enforcement to help lead a true kind of credible investigation through Congress, I think it's been- We think about Mueller's up too. Yeah, let's get that guy out of the fucking mob balls. Him and Mueller can, him and Garland can team up and it'll be a won't there, won't they? Yeah, yeah. Like 100 years ago, okay. Yeah, you mentioned Howard Lutnik, we should just mention he said he cut Jeffrey Epstein off in 2005, he told a really detailed story about how he and his wife walked into the house, saw him a side table, thought it was gross, never spoke to him again. Turns out he went to the island in 2012, so good job, Mr. Lutnik. I do enjoy Trump suing the IRS for these documents getting disclosed as he's having his hand-picked goon bill-polty uses authority at the federal housing authority to dig through mortgages and try to prosecute people, the Trump doesn't like that as kind of chef's case. Like in some sense, in the narrow sense, Trump has a case in this instance because you can sue the government for breaches of privacy when it comes to IRS data. Of course, he should have released his taxes

35:38on a $20 rent for office. Of course, $20 billion is an absurd amount. The apparently he's saying, the $10 billion figure is a $1,000 per disclosure level that's specified in the law, multiplied by an estimate of number of times that Trump's tax information was published or broadcast. That's how they did the math that got them to the clean $10 billion. But love it, I was trying to think like, similar to your point about Congress, like doing this just suggests you've given up on political considerations in any way, because nothing could be more popular than suing yourself for $10 billion. Or suing the taxpayers for $10 billion and being on both sides of the transaction. He just clearly is so greedy that he does not care. Yes, I think he doesn't care. And I think, you know, this is like, they feel like they're throwing so much stuff at us every single day. I mean, this was like banning, you know, at the beginning, it was like, oh, you do, you do three horrible things a day. And the first two, you know, people can only pay attention to one and the other two go under the radar, right? And I do think you're right. Like, love it, Democrats should make a huge deal of this.

36:39I think it should be the challenge with the hearings and the investigations is the country, most people want, you know, what's on their mind? Most of all, it's like, what are you gonna do for me? Are you gonna help me? And like, you know, do I want a bunch of, I would just be like, we're getting all your money back. He stole a bunch of money from the country, from you. He's in, he tried to sell out a bunch of the country as well. And we're getting it all back. So we're getting your money back for you. I think that's good. I think that's good. We're going through the couch cushions and all the people who've gotten hurt too. You're gonna be able to, that the government has hurt under Donald Trump because he broke the law. We're gonna make you right as well. Yeah, I think that's right. I think, I think you'd have to tie it back to the ways in which this was ultimately about pursuing his own interests and the expense of the country. I do think any broad investigation into Trump corruption will ultimately lead to tariff decisions and the higher cost people pay. But then I do think you'd have to then, like really make it clear that it's about, not just sort of looking back, but about the reforms you would need, right? Because you would, and you know what? Some of this is not gonna be like top polling message.

37:41I think it'll be popular programs, but no, not everything we're gonna have to do to fix our democracy is gonna be able to tie back to affordability, but like we got to figure out some kind of return to independent council. There were reasons that was allowed to expire, but man, what a different world would be living right now if three judges could appoint an independent council to investigate crimes by the president. Now, I don't know if this Supreme Court, which is now believed that the president was above the law and the unitary executive, like I don't know what happens now, would it be held up by like the vast majority of judges last time it was in front of the Supreme Court? Would that happen again? I don't know, but constitutional amendments around the pardon power stepping up congressional oversight of the administration, like a lot of steps that we should be talking about that are forward looking about preventing this kind of thing from happening again and attacking the ways in which Trump abused his office. One other just, you know, talking about inherent contempt is too late when the person who you're trying to get is already not reporting. I would like to start hearing congressional leaders

38:42start talking about the fact that whatever we do to investigate the Trump administration, that they will use, if necessary, inherent contempt to arrest and to tame people who do not participate. That we need to like, Congress needs to start asserting, it's article one, it's first on the list, they need to start reasserting their authority and make clear that they will, if necessary, enforce subpoenas and hold people in contempt and make them testify. Yeah, and then it'll be the, it'll be Congress's goons versus the federal government's goons facing off. Yeah, look, I don't know what, I just, I feel like we can't play chicken with them and I just, we have to, and by the way, like, do I worry about that power being the hands of Republicans? Of course I do, of course I do, but we have to assume that we can use the power effectively and make a case to American people if we are able to win the Congress. It's time me to your point of Trump, not caring about the politics. We got a, he talked more this weekend about the gigantic new commemorative arch arch. Arch, it would be an arch arch.

39:42Arch, right? I think an arch would be a box. Arch would be a golden arch. I think it would be arched to the goal. Yeah, that's a fresh word. Yeah. So it's a new arch, he's constructing on the Virginia side of the Potomac. The Washington Post reported over the weekend that the latest plan is for the monument to be 250 feet tall. Of course that's for America's 250th anniversary. Of course, happy birthday America. That's tall. It's 150 feet taller than the Lincoln Memorial. Only 40 feet smaller than the Capitol, the U.S. Capitol, the Lincoln Memorial will sit in the shadow of this, of the Trump Arch. Fucking, imagine, imagine what an eye sore. On the, the one in St. Louis is 630 feet tall. That's, this one sounds kind of lame. Is it a good place to say that I also think they fucked out the World War II Memorial? No, it's not, it's not the place for this. I just think like it's, you know what it is? It's two fucking literal. Okay, yeah, you're one of the, yeah, here we are.

40:42Just, just living through this emergency, but let's go back and talk about that. He also announced that he's going to be closing the Kennedy Center who's boarding out controls for two years for a complete renovation. Who knows, maybe it has to do with the fact that no one wants to perform there anymore. So he's like, no one, no one's coming here. You know what, then it's closed. That's it, it's done. We can't, yeah. My birthday party is canceled. Right, exactly. One Kennedy Center event that did still take place last week. The world premiere of Melania, the documentary, great box office numbers. You guys see that? I had fun. Thought I was pretty entertaining. I saw it twice. I gotta say in the arch, it doesn't bother me because next Democrat's going to shut this stupid thing down, right? This is not going to be built by that. And we're going to bulldoze a whole arch. I don't, how fast can you build a fucking giant arch? I have no idea. It's a good point. It would have to go up, especially one that's, I'm sorry, taller than the Lincoln Memorial. We're making it bigger. It's bigger than Lincoln Memorial. Come on. This is crazy. Matches you go. I care less about Trump building arches

41:42that we can perhaps tear down or stop if they don't get finished. Obviously he says he's going to finish everything in a snap of how the East Wing ballroom's going, but it seems to be slower than originally predicted. I am worried about the Kennedy Center, the grand scheme of Trump abuses. If he fucks up the Kennedy Center, it's a building. We'll be OK. But they have this obsession with neoclassical architecture, architecture that evokes the Greeks and the Romans and the classic forms and it's a vaguely fascist mindset. But the Kennedy Center is a beautiful place that I'm sure they don't appreciate. And then he's talked about wanting to build a bigger entertainment complex. Have you seen this? And one of his posts, he said, not only we're going to renovate the Kennedy Center, we're going to build a bigger and more beautiful entertainment complex. And like, that's a beautiful building. Like UFC cage match five. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. And so I worry about them fucking that out because it's harder to fix it. Oh, you worry about it? You don't think they're going to nail it? Well, I just think I don't think they're going to do it. I don't think that when I see the text or that. When I see that colony, it was called the Oco for me.

42:45When I see what they did to the East Wing colony, I can't imagine. You know, because as they said in Beauty and Upper Oak, don't fix it. You know what I'm saying? No, he's going to fuck up the Kennedy Center for sure. I do prefer him focusing on architecture than on the destruction of democracy. He should be, yeah, if he woke up every day for the next three years and just focused on the arch and the ballroom. And the blueprints, hard hats, nothing else. Ribbon cuttings, anything like that is great. I agree. I agree. Melania, biggest grossing documentary in a decade. Highest for the non-music domestic doc. That's because they're very couched. Because Taylor Swift's Aristotle doc, go open up at like 10 times that. But also when you spend 75 million dollars, 40 for the doc, 35 on the marketing, and you make back 8 million in the open. We don't make that no, you net 3.5 because half goes to the theaters. I mean, yeah, all it took was 35 million in marketing and relentless promotion from the most famous person in the world, in current president Donald Trump,

43:46to get, you know, it sounds like a bunch of old people in Trump areas. Women over 55 were like 70% of the audience. And they also, you know, the else people got to say, we're sticking it to like liberal Hollywood because people started making fun of what was expected to be a low open. So we feel stuck. Trump fans parting with their money to please him. No longer a surprise to me. I just, it's a bribe. I've found it's just so like all the, there was a couple of people that all like, they pride themselves in being kind of free speech warriors, sort of like tech bros, finance guys, praising the 8 million saying, gotcha, Libd. And it's like, I get the, like, you didn't like, like, wokeness because you thought it was about the feelings of people that you're not fans of, but your entire operation here seems to be at the feelings of Donald Trump because you seem to be involved in business is 75 million for a movie that makes eight good business. Well, it is a bribe in every fucking theater. It is because none of them are saying like, wow, what a great doc. And like, our first lady is wonderful because they only care about being able to own the lips

44:48with the documentary. I pretty sure Melania had final cut. I mean, she was like an EP on the project. Yeah, she did. It would all apparently look staged. Of course she did. The, the spend coincided with Amazon firing 16,000 people this year, 14,000 more last year. The thing, but for Jeff Bezos, again, like, what is the point of having fuck you money if you never say fuck you? What, what are you doing? I mean, he does say to the Amazon workers all the time. That's true. That's good. He's actually big fuck you to the Washington Post as well. He's saying a lot of fuck you. Yeah, well, I guess it's just not that anyone powerful like us. It's all society when we all got to see the Brett Ratner photos spill out of the Epstein files. The director of Melania was all in the press this weekend for another reason too. It's another one. Another one part of the cabal. It was welcoming, was it Pete Hexat today? When there's sort of a big kind of welcoming, he's sort of saying good, just I think he was getting a visit to, I don't know, wherever he sends up those penis rockets, I think. But I'm not sure, check the facts on that. But yeah, there's sort of a despicable lack

45:49of moral courage in the part of our wealthiest elites. Something that has come up several times during this program. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Any new TV stand, if you need a new dresser, if you need new bedside tables, they have a lot of great options that can fit in with a lot of styles. Articlopper's a curated range of mid-century modern coastal and Scandinavian-spirited pieces that not only shine on their own, but also pair seamlessly with nearly any other article product. This novel design approach makes it incredibly easy to mix and match helping you create a space that feels cohesive and stylish. Article takes great care and curating its collection and focusing solely on high quality, meaningful pieces. They'll stand the test of time. There's no filler. Every item is chosen for its craftsmanship design in lasting value articles suffers fast affordable shipping. across the US and Canada with options for professional assembly, if you prefer a hands-off

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48:53ICE, which had issued guidance earlier last week saying that they'd be returning to targeted enforcement operations, issued a new internal memo on Friday giving agents the green light to arrest people without a warrant. Then on Saturday, Trump was asked about his announcement that federal agents would only respond to protests in democratic led cities if they asked for help. Here's what he said. And I said, you're allowed to, if somebody does that, you can do something back. You're not going to stand there and take it. You know, I think they already know that. That's not how the justice system works. They did merge with people in public. So I think they know that they can do whatever they want. I think you think of the original. Yeah, that's the original eye for it. I think that's like, you know, that's justice classic.

49:58Old Testament justice. Yeah, that's the way. Literally. Another book he has not read. But yes. How are you guys feeling about the de-escalation? Were you de-escalated? I interpret everything through the prism of Donald Trump, his personal reaction to seeing things on cable TV that he does not like to the extent there are changes. It is to discourage that from happening again. Hopefully, there's, it creates improvements on the margins for communities affected. But I have no hope for the underlying policy as long as Trump and Stephen Miller run in the show, unfortunately. Yeah. We have, Holman said there will be a reduction in forces. There's an objective way to know if they are pulling back. And that's getting some of these people out of Minneapolis. And regardless, like, I do think whatever they were planning to do after Minneapolis, I have to think that what has happened there and then Twin Cities has changed what was going to happen next, right? I mean, they did cancel Maine. They canceled Maine, right? They need that Senate seat, even though they all hate Susan Collins. And so Susan Collins got that word from Nome that they were going to pull out of.

50:58Which they called by the way. She was called catch of the day. Yeah. Disgusting. But whether there were rumors about them going to Philly and other places, we don't know. But it does seem like it has at least whatever Trump says in the moment as Tommy said. It's like, they are react. They are at least aware that they need to change the images on screen. Also, Christy Nome just announced body cams by everyone's going to get body cams. It's a good thing. They're trying to get ahead of this now that they negotiated an extra two weeks over DHS funding. And one of the demands was body cams. Look, on the body cams thing, I'm like, great. Fine. But we have a lot of these. We have a lot of this violence killing and all kinds of other lawlessness by ice on video. And it doesn't seem to be working all that well since we barely got an investigation into Alex Prede's death and the federal government has refused to open an investigation into Renée Good's death. So not great.

51:58But yeah, I mean, I think to me, this is like, keep up the pressure. Because they are not going to do any of this on their own. When you do pressure them and you do make a big deal out of this, you do start getting some improvements on the margins. And you can't let up because if you let up, they will just go right back to doing what they do. And all the pressure in the world is still not going to solve the problem. But at least it's going to make some improvement. Yeah, I also would say that body cams are also on when it would be on in places where people no longer have their phones, right? And so there was a report out of the Twin Cities about somebody that was brought to a hospital. He had terrible injuries to his face and injuries to his brain, like multiple fractures. And the federal agents claimed he had run into a wall, the nurses and health providers that denied that didn't think that well, at least felt that seemed not credible,

53:00including someone else. They had not kept their stories straight. And so we just have no idea what's going on behind closed doors. A lot of reports about what's happening, these detention facilities that are awful. And so, you know, body cams. Well, in the body cams, you need like mandatory activation of the body cameras. You need some sort of like clear rules around retention of the footage and access to it. So like there's a lot of ways to kind of just slap a body cam on someone for it to mean nothing. I think that the result term mixed regardless. But at least there's transparency, hopefully, if done right. Well, to your point, no amount of reform, no protections will work if the federal agents know that their bosses will protect them even when they break the law, which is why you have them lying and what you can't trust what's coming out of ice, you can't trust. No, so yeah, like the main problem is that one major problem, regardless of what we get through law, is the fact that their leadership will defend these people, even if they commit terrible crimes against people.

54:01One piece of good news out of Minnesota is that five-year-old Liam Kinneho Ramos and his father Adrian are back home with their mother and brother after a federal judge ordered them to be immediately released from a Texas detention facility in a scathing ruling that accused the government of cruelty, lawlessness, and traumatizing children. Texas Congressman Joaquin Castro, who had visited Liam and Adrian last week, personally accompanied them home. Unfortunately, Liam's case is in no way isolated. The New York Times reports over the weekend that at least 3,800 children under 18, including 20 infants, were arrested and detained by federal agents last year. Since March of last year, more than 1,700 children have been stuck in detention centers. What do you guys make of the judges' ruling and whether all of this might help other children who are being detained under just horrific conditions right now? I mean, I think all of us felt like this is one of the more sickening stories you've seen in a while. The locals say I try to use this kid as a bait. DHS was attacking his father repeatedly.

55:02These are pending asylum claims. It sounds like these people are trying to come to the country the right way. Liam is out, thank God, because of a massive outcry and because of attention to his case, shout out to Congressman Castro, that's incredible what he did. Exactly how you should be using your power in this moment to draw attention to issues and also get change at the margins, but we can't replicate that in all these cases. There's a horror stories of people in detention, ICE or CBP detention in places all across the country. It's so fucked up that they were picked up in Minnesota, they take them to Texas, and they've been releasing people in Texas who have no connection there. How the hell are you supposed to get back home? You're just a migrant, you have no money, you have no connections, you don't know anyone there, maybe you don't know their phone. So I don't know, it's glad to see this little kid is out. God knows what trauma will stick with him for life. I mean, when Congressman Castro visited last week, his report after visiting to everyone was that Liam was depressed, he was sleeping the whole time, he was there, he was sick.

56:03And now we find out that the Dilly Immigration Center in Texas, where Liam was being held, there's now a measles outbreak there. So it's real, HHS and DHS really working together to fuck up the country on this one. When Trump did family separation, they never successfully reunited with hundreds of people. With their families, a lot of the stories we're hearing are from citizens who spouses are non-citizens, and they're safely in the country, they can call lawyers, they can get help, but there are people that have no connections once they're picked up, and they are just in the system silent, we have no idea what's going on with them. And we know that they're making mistakes, that they're losing track of people, that they're not able to keep the records. I mean, they're standing up a mass deportation program as quickly as they can, with a bunch of incompetent doofs on the ones and two. So it's just an absolutely kind of, it's a mix of kind of cruelty, and the malevolence of it combined with just a gross incompetence across the board, knowing that as long as the Republicans are in power, they will never face accountability for it.

57:04I don't know if you guys caught the star tribune story about the conditions inside the federal attention center in Minneapolis. I think it's whippled, I think you guys said it, right? But there are reports of one meal a day, overflowing toilets, denial of medical care, sell so crowded that people had to take turns lying down, because it was an effort for everyone to sleep. And, you know, the Trump administration continues to try to ban lawmakers from surprise visits to detention centers, a judge, once again, just blocks that policy. Judges keep saying, no, the law says that they can go whenever they want. They're members of Congress and the Trump administration just pretends it's not the law, because for what we were saying earlier, right? Like, there's no cameras inside there, right? No one's filming with their phones, there's no body cam, so we don't know what's happening in the detention centers. They're also buying up new warehouses all across the country, because they want to build more of these detention centers. They're treating people like absolute fucking dog shit in there. I mean, I think 32 people died in ICE custody last year, 17 in Customs and Border Patrol custody,

58:04and in January alone of this year, six people have already died. There was that other case where the administration was claiming it was suicide, but the evidence suggested it might not be a suicide, and... The coroner. The autopsy. Yeah, that it wasn't a suicide. So, like, we're just, we're not getting the truth out of these places. They want the notice, because, you know, it's like, Jesus is coming, look, busy situation. Like, they want to have a chance to be ready for any inspections, and I just wonder if, like, to people that would defend the administration on this, what if, what if cheesecake factory announced that they'd only allow health inspections with a week notice? Do you think that you would want to go eat there? No. Incorporations are making a lot of money. I mean, the Financial Times reported that companies, including Palantir and Deloitte, have collectively made more than $22 billion in contracts at the heart of the ICE crackdown, so. I think, I think... Like you said, Castro going, like, more... More Democrats are visiting these detention centers. I think that's a good, it is a good use of your power right now. So, we haven't had a chance to talk about Trump's DOJ arresting Don Lemon. Along with another independent journalist named Georgia Fort and several activists, all of whom were charged in connection with the January 18th anti-ice protest in Minnesota Church.

59:07You'll remember that both a magistrate judge and a federal judge refused to sign off on the government's initial attempt to get an arrest warrant for Lemon and his producer with a federal judge ruling, quote, there is no evidence that those two engaged in any criminal behavior or conspired to do so. But here we are. How big of a deal is this? When the Department of Justice is arresting people for doing journalism, using a kind of spacious application of a law because the Attorney General is a tool of the President and regardless of whether the case is upheld, just trying to get a good news cycle to stay in his good crisis. Like we are in such a dangerous place. Pambondi is just such an empty vessel. What a complete, like morally vacuous, just an empty shell of a human being. And so you just look at what Pambondi is willing to do. And like I just don't think there's a bottom. I think she's worried about public embarrassment. I think she's worried about what Trump thinks. I think she's worried about bad headlines. But she has no ethical compunctionality. I think she's worried about what Trump thinks.

1:00:07I think she's worried about bad headlines. But she has no ethical compunctionality. Nothing will stop her from coming out of this. It's just like her friend and colleague, Kristi Nome. He takes a lot of things. He takes a lot of things. Steve Miller. That's why you pick a bunch of middleing and competence, fucking mediocrity is to run your agency. I think it's a huge deal. Like Donald Lamon might get out. He, I judge my toss this case. It's an obvious first amendment violation. But the process of the punishment, it's scary, it's expensive, it's intimidating. And it's not happening in a vacuum. The feds raided a Washington Post reporter's house recently. They took her devices. The Pentagon is forcing its press corps to basically try to try to get them to sign rules that said they'd run sort of stories by them before reporting. He's suing half the press corps. He's intimidating people to make better coverage. I mean, now the TikTok US operations are owned by a bunch of Trump lackeys. Like the state of the free press in this country is going in a bad direction. The indictment is ridiculous too, because it's like, you know, basically what they have to prove,

1:01:10because they're charging the face act, which says that it was originally for abortion clinics for purchasing outside abortion clinics, but it's also for churches as well. And it says it makes it a crime to use forced threats or physical obstruction to intentionally interfere with anyone seeking to exercise their right or religious freedom at a house of worship or to intentionally damage the property. And so it's not trespassing. Like, you have a trespassing case. If you say, okay, this is a private church, people came into the church. We told them to leave. They wouldn't leave trespassing. That's not what they're charging here. They're charging the face act, right? And so to make that stick, you can't say that Don Lemon just came into the church with the protesters. You have to say that Don Lemon was threatening and obstructing and all this kind of stuff. And so they have these, the indictment reads like, and then he just starts like, peppering the pastor with questions threateningly with the questions. It just menacingly puts his hand out. And the right, you know, I saw if I can Scott Jennings treated this, but he was like, oh, so Democrats position now is that if you are holding your phone up and filming something that you can break any law because then you just call yourself a journalist.

1:02:12And it's like, no. Oh, come on, man. That is so stupid. But there are like, he shouldn't have just, he shouldn't have charged into the church. And it's like, again, there's like a, there's lesser charges. And there's less of things to do to someone who walk into a church who is clearly interviewing the pastor. The other church is covering the protest. They just say that like he was physically obstructing and threatening them. It says ridiculous defense because if the, if the, if Pambondi had not charged on them with this, it wouldn't be like he was on the outside being like, Pambondi should charge him with this. It would never have occurred to anyone a million years. Well, and the other thing is how many, how many departments of justice, right? When a magistrate judge refused to issue the criminal warrant and then it gets kicked up to a federal judge, first of all, which department of justice would say, oh, the magistrate judge said no criminal, no arrest warrant. We really want to get this person. So we're going to go up and we're going to repeal it. So then they appeal it to a federal judge. And the federal judge is like, no, there's no evidence for this whatsoever. And then the department of justice is like, fuck that federal judge. We're going, we're going to a grand jury where we know we can get an indictment not much easier because the defense doesn't have to offer any kind of evidence whatsoever.

1:03:15You're not there for it. There's no judge there at all. So we'll, we'll go that route. Like that is the authoritarian nature of what they're doing, right? Like that, they're like continuing to look for ways to arrest on lemon, even after multiple judges and federal prosecutors have quit over this too. There's another eight federal prosecutors, by the way, who were, I always just broke before we were recording, who were in the, in the Minnesota office who are quitting as well. It's the core, it's the core distinction. You, you find a crime and then you look for the person who perpetrated it. Yeah. You don't find a person and then look for the crime that they committed. They're doing that is what they do. That is Pambaldi's main role. I think it might have something to do with why the DOJ is having to recruit on Twitter now because they everywhere, every time they try to do one of these things, a bunch of people quit. And they're trying to figure out how to replace career and season professional prosecutors with fucking bozo goons from the fucking law. If you're a blue check who's ever posted Pepe the Frog, come, come join the Department of Justice. We need you. And by the way, explicitly saying, if you support President Trump and our crime agenda, anti-crime agenda, it's a crime agenda. It's a crime agenda.

1:04:15It's a crime agenda. I had to write the first time. But yeah, like just absolutely going. Not to be outdone by Pambaldi, Tulsi Gabbard is also out there trying to score points with Trump in the mega media world. Last week, Dan and I talked about the FBI raid on the Fulton County Elections Office in Georgia or a photo showed Tulsi talking on the phone in a baseball cap. Like a... Real ominous. Yeah. Real ominous seeing the head of the national intelligence. Like you're trying to be kind of, you're trying to hide, but you're not doing a very good job of it. And spy chief, like baseball had just stand at the picture. It's not that hard. So now we know the New York Times reports on Monday that the day after the raid, Tulsi facilitated a call between some of those same FBI agents and Donald Trump himself. They got a direct line right to the president. The call was short, according to US official, who, quote, compared the conversation to a pep rally or a coach giving an encouraging halftime speech to his players. Isn't that wonderful? This is not the only Gabbard story in the news, though. The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that a US intelligence official has filed a whistleblower complaint alleging wrongdoing on Gabbard's part

1:05:16that is supposedly so highly classified that the complaint is kept locked in a safe and it allegedly implicates another federal agency as well. Who would like to take a stab at what the hell Tulsi Gabbard has been up to? Sure. I'd love to. So I think the key to understanding what Tulsi is doing up to in both these cases is if you think back to last year, March of 2025, Tulsi testifies for Congress and she says, Iran is not decided to get a nuclear weapon. A few months later, Trump decides he wants to bomb anyway. He's asked about her comments and he says, I don't care what she thinks. A couple days later, she revises her views so that the intelligence case matches Donald Trump's opinion. It's best practices in the real world. Fast forward to January 1st, 2026, first day of this year, Tulsi posts a photo of herself on the beach in Hawaii doing yoga. And then two days later, the United States invades Venezuela. She was completely cut out of the planning of that operation. I think she's seen that she is like on the outs with Trump, doesn't want to get fired. Not much of a warrior post. Yeah, she's hamming you think about it.

1:06:16She's hemorrhaged her policy principle. She was an anti-regime change person, right? That was her big thing. She served in Iraq, didn't want regime change wars, and supporting Trump. Fine with those now. So now she's like, whatever, I do think there's a deep state I'm fine being like the frauds are. But the IG report thing is crazy. I think like my total speculation, guess is that there's some intelligence that implicates someone close to Trump. Like a hypothetical one is you could imagine a whistleblower talking about Jared Kushner, who doesn't have a clearance, not part of the government getting access to intelligence information or sharing intelligence information with foreign officials or Steve Wickoff for flying around the world and negotiating with Vladimir Putin on WhatsApp or whatever the hell he's doing. And the reason it could be so sensitive is maybe we learned about this through collection on the other countries. And it's so sensitive. I'm making all this up. This is just purely hypothetical. But it's really weird. It's really weird. And she has an obligation when there is a whistleblower complaint like this

1:07:17to brief it to Congress and I think two weeks after receiving it. And they haven't done that. And that's a huge breach. Yeah, it's not an avocado. It's not like they're waiting for it to ripen. It's like the information in that safe is getting lessen convenient for them. And what's strange in the story is you see that they're kind of trying to figure out a way around sharing some of it. They were flirting with talking about executive privilege and other ways of getting out of sharing all of it with Congress. But the sort of the lamentation like, we don't know what to do with this thing. To follow the law. Right. Show it to Congress. You don't have a choice. Also, just not for nothing. But the President of the United States talking through the intelligence director directly to the FBI agents who participated in a raid on a county elections office in which the President himself has been implicated in a crime way back a couple of seasons ago. Right. That he's now trying to cover up or do whatever.

1:08:17Imagine Everill Haynes, Joe Biden's DNI, being at the Mar-a-Lago raid, tossing her phone on speaker and Joey gives an out of boy to the troops there, you know, raiding Melania's underwear drawer or whatever the fact kind of like. Not even like, not even going through questions. Right. They're just going right over the whole chain of command and the FBI just, right? It's just the agents on the ground Trump wants to, because he's like, it's like a coach during half time. Yeah. It's wishful thinking to think this is part of a cover-up. I think this is sort of a drumming up of something new and fake. Yeah. This is about, I think this is about future election theft, not past election theft. Well, it's both, because for him, he wants to, we got to set the record straight about 2020, and we got to make some arrests. So then we go, then we can go to the future. Yeah, he said something today to Dan Bungino, who was, until recently, the deputy director of the FBI about federalizing elections and 15 of the crooked states or something like that. So yeah, he's got it on the mind. Well, yeah, he's been on that beat. He's been on that beat. So yeah, they will take whatever they find. They will use it to claim that this is the reason they, there's some pretext for some,

1:09:18some takeover. He said we should take over the voting in at least 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting because we have states that are so crooked. Well, yeah. The worst the polling gets, I think the more animated is the project. They have good reason to worry, because on Saturday, Democrats flipped a Trump plus 17 state Senate seat in Texas, winning it by roughly 14 points. That is a 31-point swing. The Democratic candidate, Taylor Remitt, a union president and Air Force veteran, defeated the Trump-backed candidate. Lee Wombsgans? I know. I saw... Any relation? I saw the name Wombsgans, and I was like, how is that even possible? That was a made-up comedy name. Yeah. The Dutch? It was a runoff. Yeah, it was a runoff for the 9th District, around Fort Worth, against the state Senate District, but about a million people in that district, so the big district. The day before and the day of the election, Trump had posted to Truth Social in support of Wombsgans, giving her his cherished endorsement, and calling her phenomenal, and a quote, true Maga Warrior. But here's how Trump reacted

1:10:18to her loss on Sunday. A Democrat wanting a special election in an area that you had won by 17 points. What is your reaction to that? I don't know. I didn't hear about it. Somebody ran where? In Texas, a special election for the 9th state Senate. I'm not involved in that. That's a local Texas race. You're... You mean I won by 17? Yeah. And this person lost. Things like that happen. It's true. They do have things to happen. Things do happen a lot more. What do you guys think about the... A lot of hype around this? Overhyped? Underhyped? What do you think? I think... Well, I saw people making a Senate map where if we see... Have we got... Did they? Yeah, a Senate map where there's a swing of 31 points, or roughly 31 points. It would mean Democrats would be able to get to 59 or more, get to 60 Senate seats. So... I mean... Straight forward from here. Fun to think about. Look, whatever the implications of a specific special election at a moment of just absolute kind of Trump-told Trumps and sort of dissatisfaction in the country

1:11:18and like... The question I had about it was though, like, is there really something happening with like... Between Alex Prety, the anti-second amendment stuff, the turn against ice, the lack of focus on affordability, the endless headlines about Trump taking over the Kennedy Center and building arches. Like, is there something deeper happening? Like, is there an actual sort of weakness in his... Not base of support, but whatever. The two columns over. Like, is that real and could it be lasting? Is this a low-water mark or is it the beginning of like a real unraveling? I just don't think we know. Yeah. I was thrilled to see Tom Wabscans in Death by Lightning, which I watched one episode of. Oh, it's an upgrade. It's about the president getting involved. Quite good, yeah. It got filled. It really was that the doctor's digging around in there. The doctor's... The doctor's... Doctor's done around there. Yeah. I think... I talked to Bobby Polito about this race in the interview today. First of all, everyone check it out. He's really cool. He was in town to go to the Grammys, because he was Grammy-nominated. That's where the traffic started. Careful, that's where they get you. It's our moment.

1:12:18That's kind of a moment about that. Very interesting guy. Not your traditional congressional candidate. But like, you know, I was talking to him about his district and, you know, the gerrymandor that's happened in Texas and whether he thinks that Republican's may have overtorked it and he feels pretty optimistic that they have overassumed their ongoing support with Latino voters in particular. And, you know, this, you know, state's entity is one little indication of that, there might be a broader set of numbers in our way. At least three of the five seats that they squeezed out of there and their gerrymandor, I think, could be at risk now. I was... Listen, I wanted to say that they've overgerrymandered, then I was told that that was wishful thinking and now it's back to not being just wishful thinking. There was a... No, there was a consensus. There was a Peter Clinton. There was a... There was a Nimby Twitter. This is weeks, it's not Nimby Twitter. Don't get me started on Nimby Twitter. When I was... Unbelievable what's happening in Nimby Twitter here in Los Angeles. But the point I was making is only that, I think, are we back into saying that they may have overgerrymandered.

1:13:19There's back to being possible, because it was... It was... It was seen as Polyanish for a while. That's all I'm saying. It was. You were so right, so early. I didn't know. I'm not saying I knew. To your point about something deeper happening. So, this was a runoff this election. The first election was in November. So, the same district. And all the Republican candidates combined versus the Democratic candidates combined. It was GOP plus five. So, that was good enough for Democrats. That was plus five in a Trump 17, plus 17 district. And this was then 14 points. So, there was another 20 points swing just between November. And what is it? February? And there were probably going to weigh more money. We owe more money. So, now turnout was low. Turnout was about probably a third of what... Seven people. So, it was about a hundred thousand voters. It's about a third of what you'll get. Maybe people in Texas who know this kind of stuff would estimate for the midterms,

1:14:20but a third of what you'll get. And, you know, lower for a special. But, it wasn't low and then, like... Highly concentrated Democrat. It was because about 50% plus of the voters were Republican primary voters. So, that means that the Democrat won by a lot of Republicans or a lot of independents, especially, and some Republicans deciding to change their votes, which is huge. Luckily, today in the Texas Senate race, everything seems copacetic. Everyone involved in that program. It's getting a lot greater. No one is posting videos. I think it's important to take random TikToks and decide that they're gospel. For those who don't know, we're talking about... There seems to be some sort of beef between James Tyler Rico, the former candidate in the race. I don't know. And Colin Arred. And... Colin, who we really like, he's been on the show, cool guy. He's just happening down there. I wish they would just pick up the phone, talk on the phone. Yeah, one thing we should do is win the Texas Senate race. And so, that's just something everyone should be thinking about. I'd love to. Or at least try. We should not... Maybe not throw the race before it happens.

1:15:22That's one thing that we should think about. I don't know. I don't know. It's just a thought. We do need it. We do like to win that one. Oh my God. It was just a... We need Texas. We need to get those electoral votes someday, too. Also... One day, one day, those Texas electoral votes are gonna come along. Yeah. Everyone's losing with a football, that's it. And if they don't, there won't be a Democratic president. Hey, hey, hey. There won't be even either way. So, you're saying those are down. Don't blame Texas. It's been a Democratic president. As we were recording Bill and Hillary Clinton agreed to testify in the House over psych communities investigation into Jeffrey Epstein. I heard that... They rejected them. No, they don't want them. Yeah, I heard they still want to... They want to go forward with context. It's like... What? It's like... Hey, guys... Pick a win. Can't you see your belongs together? Yeah. It's like... Also, by the way, James Comer. Listen, I know it sounds like I'm a partisan Democrat, and I am. But like, how would some fucking inherent contempt feel right now, huh? Put a little pep in your stuff, huh, James Comer? Sure, I'm sure that's where they were headed. A couple sergeants aren't lying. I'm sure that's what they... Maybe that's why they're rejecting it. Honestly? I don't know.

1:16:22They're gonna show up at the schedule time, and the schedule room, and they're still gonna arrest them. I don't like the cut of your jib, arrest them. And then Trump's gonna do a conference call with... With the whole room. Yeah, until... Don't call us. Anyway, when we come back, we will have Tommy's interview with Congressional candidate, Bobby Bolido. This podcast is sponsored by strawberry.me. Let me ask you something. You think LeBron, Patrick Mahomes, or Serena got to the goat status by guessing? No. No. Coaching. They had coaching. And some talent. And a lot of talent. You know what I'm saying? There's an interesting paradox. I don't know if you call it a paradox, but there's a statistical thing that emerges that's confused as people about the interplay between training and talent. When you look at high performance athletes, because when you pull out the high performance athletes, and you do the comparison between training and talent, it looks as though the training is not helpful, but it's only a kind of statistical anomaly that naturally emerges

1:17:25from when you look at high-talented people in a way that I'm not gonna spend any more time on because this is an ad for coaching. Strawberry.me. Strawberry.me. Who does Patrick Mahomes play for quick? Keep it in. I don't know. Chiefs. Chiefs. Yeah. Chiefs. His teammate dates Taylor Swift. Oh, I know about that. I know about Travis and the brother. They have a good relationship. Mm-hmm. But strawberry.me. My favorite coach is Coach Kerr, because he was on Paz de America. Dan interviewed him once. Remember? No. That was Steve Kerr. I say. I thought you meant Coach K. Oh, no. The Duke guy. Is it Coach Kerr? Is it Coach Kerr? Yeah. Is it Coach Kerr? I'm gonna talk to you. Sorry. Okay, sure. I thought you meant Coach K. Who's Coach K? Yeah, Duke K. It's Coach Kerr's a huge lip. Yeah. He's a huge lip. Sorry. You know what? I wrongly fact-checked to you. Strawberry.me. This ad's going great. Matches you with a professional career coach who breaks down your game film. They help you negotiate that race, navigate the politics, and execute a game plan that actually

1:18:27works. And the cause, think about it. One raise, one promotion, and this coaching pays for itself 10 times over. That's the best ROI in the game. Stop riding the bench in your own life. Go to strawberry.me slash crooked today and get 50% off your first coaching session. Strawberry.me because pros don't guess they get coach to win. He's a Latin Grammy winner and a Tejano music icon currently running for Congress in Texas' 15th District. Welcome to Paz de America. Bobby Polito. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, in person. Yes, we were. Most people don't know what Tejano is, so if you're white or black and not Hispanic, you are like, what is that? Well. Yeah, it's kind of like Selena. So I tell everybody, it's what Selena did. I want to hear a lot more about the music piece of this because you're in town because you went to the Grammy's last night in person in Los Angeles, right? Correct. I was nominated. How'd it go? I lost. I'm sorry. It happens. It's real to be nominated. I've lost more than I've won.

1:19:29And I think most have. I mean, you saw most of these people, you see, you see like Lady Gaga going against Justin Bieber and other Titans. Yeah. Only one wins. Right. Right. And so it's a very hard award to win. Did the competitive juices flow when you're up there? You know what? I won two Latin Grammys, Latin Grammys, which is not the American Grammy, and it's really more pressure when they expect you to win than when you're not expecting to win. Right. Right. Because like, if you're not expected to win, who cares? Who cares? I wasn't supposed to win anyway, right? Right. But if you're supposed to win and you don't. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, there's no expectations. Like, you know, don't write a speech. You have a couple of too many drinks. Then you have a good time when you get up there and you know, kind of, it's work. It's work. See, okay. It's work. We were chatting on the way in. Yeah. You were telling me that no matter what the event is, it's work. So I didn't watch last night because I was dealing with the three-year-old and the one-year-old. Okay. I'm like a sporadic award show watcher, the ones where it's lots of long speeches.

1:20:34Yeah. That seems very boring to me. But the Grammys, it's like a really cool, interesting concert every time. It was a good show. I liked it. I'm an old-school guy, so I like the older artists. I don't really know the younger artists. So I really like to see Lady Gaga. I thought she was great. Bruno Mars, I thought that was great. Post Malone singing with Slash. That's cool. That is cool. Yeah, that's cool. They do a good job mixing, matching. Yeah. Yeah. I hate that feeling, though, when all of a sudden you don't know what the kids are listening to. I feel like my brain, the older I get, is kind of like hardening. It's like getting new music in there until stick. I guess if you see someone in concert, that's when you create an experience. That's true. It's that memory that's it. But you know, there's so much talent. They're all talented. There's no slouches there. Everybody's good. Yeah, and they work their asses off. That also, too. Yeah, a lot of bloody fingertips on the guitar. Yeah, lots of hours of practice and stuff.

1:21:34But people don't realize how hard it is to walk and to be in an award ceremony with your wife. Why is that? Because she's got to work high heels because that's what they say that looks good. But she's got to walk like 10,000 miles right that day. Yeah. And she's complaining. And she's in pain. I would be. I mean, it's, it's work. Do you wear boots? I wore boots in a hat and all leather. Okay. Like the SNM version of the cowboy. Yeah. Which, that is exactly what we need. I think to win a congressional seat in Texas. All right, let's talk some politics. So a Democrat just won a major special election victory in Texas over the weekend. They flipped a Texas Senate district that Trump won by 17 points in 2024. And I think this was against like a much better funded opponent, right, on the Republican side. Yes, correct. What do you think happened in like, is it irresponsible to read T. Lee's and try to divine what this says about 2026? I think a little bit of both. Okay. There is, it's good news.

1:22:35Yeah, it really is. Because I mean, Trump won my district by 17 point nine points. Oh, interesting. Wow. Right. So don't think for a minute. I wasn't looking at this and going like, okay, I want to see how this goes. You're like, here's that point nine. I did not expect him to win by 14 points. I thought he may eat it out. This is a big deal. And then if you look in the Hispanic districts, he overperformed Kamala by 40 to 50 points. What? 40 to 50? Yes. Wow. Yes. So in the Fort Worth areas. Oh. So this is, it was very surprising. I was very shocked and very encouraged. And I'm not surprised to be honest with you from what I'm seeing on the ground, even where I am. Well, so let's talk about that. So you're running for the 15th district. Yes. For those who don't have a map ready in their brain, it's like, it's as far south as you can get in Texas, right? The Texas. Right on the border. Yeah. And then it goes shoots up and then kind of east of San Antonio.

1:23:35Is that the new map? That's correct. Okay. And Jerrymandered it. Yeah. We'll talk about that as well. Right. So Wikipedia tells me the district is 80% Latinos. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. It is. It is. Yeah. You got parts of the Rio Grande Valley where Democrats got crushed in 24, right? No. No. You're touching. Yeah. There's a caveat, right? Okay. Tell me the caveat. I'm sure you've heard it to make it seem like South Texas was red, but in our elected representative right now, Monica, the La Cruz has never won the valley. Okay. She's never won South Texas. Even with the Trump wave, she lost. Oh, right. Okay. Right. So where she did is she picks up the margins up in the northern and just blows it out like 80, 20 and that gave her the win. Okay. Well, so on the South Texas piece, there was that big swing, right? There was to Trump. There was a huge swing. Why do you think that was? Like what happened? I think the candidate didn't resonate with him. And I think I hate to play into our own stereotypes as Hispanics, but I think since I'm a Hispanic, I'm Latino.

1:24:37I can do it. Say whatever you want. If there's a stereotype that fits us is we're very aspirational people, right? The reason why a lot of Latinos come to the United States is for a chance to work and actually make it. Right? I think if you think most about Hispanics is hard working, very family oriented. And they come from normally from countries that if you work really hard, you get nowhere. Nobody wants to come over here and work really hard and get nowhere. And that's where we are right now. So a lot of people in the Hispanic community were saying like, we voted for Trump because we thought I could work hard and actually do something. So it's economic. It's a big thing. And then you tack on this, the cruelty that's going on right now, the fear with the raids and things like that. That it was also affecting the economy. Then there's a huge, huge backlash against it. Yeah. I think you're making important points here, which is like, I think for someone who's a political obsessive like me, I think of Trump the candidate. But a lot of people still think of the businessman.

1:25:38That's right. That's right. All of these show, like the billionaire. The billionaire. You want to be rich, right? You want to be rich? Give me some of that. Yeah. Like, what are you hearing about? And then secondarily, like, what's the conversation about border security and immigration policy like today as compared to maybe a year ago? I think it depends. I've already visited all 11 counties. I'm not even in my primary yet. So you're working. You're out there. I'm fusting my blood, man. My wife is the best person in the world because when you retail campaign, it's the most time consuming type of campaigning. And you're actually grassroots on the ground meeting voters. That's what we're doing, taking their questions. And look, it depends because in the real-ground Valley immigration is a big deal. Because we're in a community where 35 or 40% of the people speak Spanish. And when you see that the administration is racial profiling also based on language, that's a problem.

1:26:38Yeah. In a community with a lot of people speak Spanish. Yeah. You know, so it affects our businesses. We get a lot of, we've always historically dependent a lot of tourism for Mexico. And right now, tourists don't feel welcome. And so they're not coming and spending their money like they should. You know, especially the dollar keeps declining. It's bad. The peso should be really good. They should be coming in droves. Right. And so the economy's not doing well. And there's going to be a big backlash about it. Well, the good news is we also pissed off the Canadians. So they're also not visiting. Not just again, we pissed off every ally we've ever had. We're working on pissing off most of NATO. Right. They're European Union. I'm not a lot of flights from Greenland these days. I'm guessing. No, I don't think so. Yeah. Well, I do want to ask you about like the economics of these, this ice crackdown. Because I mean, you know, I'm reading articles about kids who haven't gone to school in a month. Correct. That's right. Families who can't go to a job site. I know someone here in LA whose husband was picked up and detained for hours when he was trying to work.

1:27:39Right. Construction jobs. That's right. And then, you know, he just like didn't have his papers on him. But then he didn't go to work that day, right? And it flipped out everyone around him. That's right. So it's like, what are you seeing in terms of the economic impact? Oh, that's a huge deal. I mean, look, the builder community right now is struggling. Big time. Think about it like this, right? We've talked about the aspirational nature who we are. We're always trying to work. So a lot of these construction owners of these construction companies. This is the first generation where they're actually making money. Because before them. Right. They were busy trying to do the work. Right. Right. And, or their parents were. And they wanted them to now get out of that. And so, now when they're very starting to get there, they don't have a workforce. Yeah. And what do you do about that? I mean. Well, that's the problem, right? And they get really angry because people say, just hire American labor. It's like, I'm putting ads out. Nobody wants to work those jobs. Or they don't know how to work those jobs. Right. But once business slows and construction slows, construction houses get more expensive.

1:28:42Right. And then realtors get mad because they don't have enough things to sell. And so, it's just a domino effect business-wise, which historically, the Chamber of Commerce vote tends to lean Republican. And right now, they're very angry about this because it hasn't. And us as Democrats, Tommy, haven't been. We haven't been really good salesmen of ourselves on economics. When you go just look at our economic history, Democrats have always been better on the economy. Right. Historically, I mean, we've always been better. And we just don't sell ourselves that way. And people think Republicans owe successful businessmen, and they're better for the economy. And that's just not true. Yeah, I wonder where that is. It's just sort of a cut taxes, you know, equals good business and people's minds. I'm wondering, like, where this disconnect comes from. You know what that equals deficits? Yeah. That's what we're in debt. Right. Yeah, our kids' kids will be. That's exactly right. And it's because of Republicans, to be honest with you. Well, I'd look, I agree with you on the Joe Biden.

1:29:42He handled inflation, I think, better than a lot of countries did. Correct. But it wasn't good enough. Correct. Correct. Well, we printed a lot of money. Yeah. Yeah, we printed a lot of money. But also, you know, I think immigration was also a big driver of votes against Biden. Absolutely. Cycle. And, you know, look, I'm not a fan of Governor Abbott, as you might guess. I knew he had me neither. I agree. He seems like not the nicest guy, but I think politically speaking, he did have an enormous impact on the national debate about immigration through the sort of sustained busing of individuals. And so, like, early on, I think people probably remember, Ron DeSantis flies a bunch of people to Martha's Vineyard. It was so obviously a stunt and so obviously a shitty that there was a backlash. But the busing was just relentless. And again, like, treating someone like a political prop or pond, I think, is like morally wrong. Agreed. But there's another piece of this that's like, well, okay, why do just border communities need to shoulder the economic and kind of social burden of having a bunch of people in their communities?

1:30:46I'm just wondering if you could like talk about how people you knew felt at the end of the Biden days. And that conversation has changed today. What it was is there was a disappointment that for three years, he didn't go there and didn't address the problem. In year four, James Langford had a deal negotiated, right, that Trump eventually killed because he wanted to win. And so, we didn't really do a good enough job educating people on how they themselves also had a hand in this, but it took too long. So, you know, you got to understand in South Texas, there's a lot of border patrol agents and they vote and so do their families. And they felt, I mean, I have friends and family in border patrol. And they felt that they had been, they didn't sign up for necessarily for processing people because that's what it was becoming with the asylum seekers. And they're like, I signed up to patrol the border not to be processing people, right?

1:31:49That's all they were doing was just processing. And then the people would fly to wherever they wanted to fly. And that created a lot of resentment. It really did. And I don't want to ever sound like inhumane about that because that's people's spirit. They're always want to look for a better life. That's natural. That's a part of what our ancestors would have done for us. So, but it took four years for him to sign an executive order, which in year four, that immigration slowed down considerably because of he addressed it, which just took too long. Yeah, it took way too long. No, but I think you're making an important point, which is like, I think it's important to hear from people like you who like live in these communities and no friends and just understand how complicated things are, right? Yes. You have a bunch of friends in border patrol. I do. They're good people. They are. They're not trying to harm anyone. And also like, look, we're all horrified by what's happening with ice. The video of the murder of Alex Prety by two. Terrible. You guys horrifying, right? Horrifying. And then pro-publica just published their names. Seems like the two men are Latino.

1:32:54And they end up killing a white protester, which I think is the perfect example of like the scrambled racial politics of all of this, right? Because these guys are like at an organization that is recruiting people with white nationalist imagery run by Stephen Miller who is an out and out racist. And it's just like nothing is what you'd expect. And I think we all need to get comfortable with the complexity, you know? I agree, Tommy. But I also don't feel like I feel like we're putting a lot of emphasis on ice and not emphasis on this administration. Right? People like right now, ice is the boogeyman. Last night at the Grammys, everybody was out ice out and F ice. And it's ice was always existed, right? And whatever you want to call it, we need a force to get rid of bad actors in our country that are criminals and bad people. That you need that. You can't not have that. But I think when we just make a focus about ice, we take off the focus on this administration that's actually using them in that correct.

1:33:58And that matter, right? The political decisions driving. That's the problem, right? It's when they tell them and they go berate them in the White House to say, get me 3000 people, right? Now you're forcing them to be overly aggressive to meet quota numbers. Yeah. That's very different than saying how they campaign. We're going to go get out the bad people. Right. That's is not what they're doing. That's absolutely right. And so those are two separate things where you say, hey, go get out the bad people. Nobody's going to tell you, you can't do that. But when you're deporting gardeners and grandmas, right? And then you go in and you're violating constitutional rights. You know, fourth amendment, just like crazy. This is not who we are. We can't be that. Yeah. And we have to call the administration out on it because it's easy. They're going to just go, well, it's ice is full. Yeah, that's the boogie, man. Yeah. No, it's you. Yeah. It's it's Steven Miller. It's Donald Trump. It's it's it's the people that are enabling them that who that's who has to be called out.

1:35:02We can't give them a pass. So it doesn't sound like you're in the kind of abolish ice camp of the solution to this problem. Look, it's been branded really poorly now. I don't know. It's a bad. It's got, you know, you give love a bad name. You give ice a bad name. Well, they did. But but you got to have some type of of administrative arm to get rid of the bad people. That I'm I'm for that. I don't think anybody's going to disagree with that, right? Because there are bad people in every in every walk of life. But the way they're doing it, I think that's where it's where it's bad. And and I'll tell you, look, last night was a room of of people in the industry. Right. And artists, we're emotional, man. We put we pour our heart out in the music. Right. And so we are probably more emotional than most. But most Americans, especially in I live, I live in a rural district. People aren't exactly that emotional. They're more, okay, make make let's reason with this. Let's find some common sense solutions to this.

1:36:03Yeah. And and I I want to caution, you know, because I kind of I'm I come from both worlds. I live in a rural area. And I I'm in an industry that's very, very much emotional. And and we kind of have a blend of it and say like, yeah, I I don't think abolish. I don't think abolishing is is the right word. I know that's the the emotional response to it. Because of what we're seeing in its tragic. And I hate it. I hate it as much. It believed me with every five or my soul. But we have to be smart on how to point them out and let people know why we got here. And we got here because we were sold to build the goods. And we voted for the wrong person. Yeah. Not we I did not vote for that. What I'm saying is a as a community as a country as a country. I think I obviously Trump and Stephen Miller that the drivers of this. I think where I've kind of personally land is blaming ice is almost too simplistic. Like I do like CBP obviously. There's been a huge problem here. The needs reforms there. You reforms of ice. I also think the Department of Homeland Security is a complete total fucking disaster.

1:37:03It is created after 9-11 in this like climate of fear. And we made securitized all these functions that maybe we better in the Department of Justice or other places. So there's a broader rethinking that needs to happen. But it's probably bigger than just ice in my view. I agree. I mean, you see the Secretary of Homeland Defense. It looks like it's Halloween every time she comes out. You've got a different outfit. She loves. You know, cosplay and his different things. I just don't see like that's not it's ridiculous. Yeah. It's not serious. It's not a great run organization. Let me ask you about Texas doing this mid decade redistricting. The conversation of Washington is often like how does this impact the balance of power? Right? The number of seats or Democrats or Republicans? How do human beings in Texas feel about having this forced on them? Do they know? Do they care? A lot of people don't even know. It's amazing how many people have no idea. I still to this day ask people in the Rio Grande Valley tell me, hey, am I in your district? Now, they know there was a change.

1:38:04But they didn't really know like a lot of people didn't know what was going on. I sure as hell did. Yeah. When I was keeping an eye on it when they were doing this. And I'll tell you, Tommy, like from my perspective, I looked at this and went, they're assuming they're going to win those five seats. And they're also assuming that they're going to keep everything that they have. And from my perspective, I'm like, no, you're not. Not if I have something to say about it. You think there's a mistake. There's like the dummy manor, right? Oh, absolutely. Oh, oh, yeah. Look, I was a political science major in college. And so I, the nerd in me comes out sometimes. OK, please try to keep it suppressed. You're in the right place, man. I try to keep it suppressed, right? But you look at it and you say, OK, everybody went on 2024 Trump numbers, which is what they did. But we went on, we went in research 2022 numbers, which is a Biden mint term, which favors Republicans. And the opposite party is in power.

1:39:04And there was a candidate named Rochelle Garza from Brownsville, Texas, that ran against Ken Paxton for attorney general. She lost my district by less than one point. That's not that red. No, no. That's a little red. Yeah. Right? Now, I looked at that and I went, oh, so on one hand, I was really mad if they were doing. But if I could be honest, like from my personal perspective, I went, well, I don't hate it. Because 65% of the district now is new to her, to the incumbent. So she doesn't have the name ID in that district. If that makes any sense. No, it's a whole sense. So, like, I'm a South Texas musician. Right? Our music is very cultural to our people, you know, in our kinsignitas and barbecues. My music and music of my father too has been historically present. We've been there forever. So we've toured those areas. We have friends.

1:40:04We have, we have, we have friends. Right? We know the people. And when I saw this and I went, oh, you're giving me B.ville, Texas, eight to Hanotown. Well, you're, they're looking at it going, well, they voted 75% Republican and I'm going, yeah, but there are people. Yeah, they see numbers. You see human beings. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. Okay. So your staff, how often are they trying to get you to sing at events, play music? How many events turn into concerts? Man, you know what? When we go do a ranch hall, we sing them with a couple of songs. Okay. I go take their questions. We feed them. You got a guitar in hand? What do we do? No, I take a band. Okay. The whole band? Not a whole band. It's kind of like an acoustic set, right? It's an acoustic set. So while they're eating food, they're hearing our music. Yeah. They're hearing music, but our type of music. And then I go speak. I take their questions. I answer all their questions, which I might add my, the person that we want to take down

1:41:06and defeat Monica Delacruz has never done a town hall. That's how you never answered her constituents questions. How do you do that? I don't know. Like, you hear that sometimes about members of Congress and it's like, did she just move the DC and she never comes back? How is that possible? She goes and they hide her. And they protect her because they don't want her to expose herself. So they're trying to play her safe. They're hiding her. So what I'm saying is I'm going to be the opposite. I'm going to go everywhere. Take some questions. And take questions from you. You bring them on. Play some bangers. Yeah, play some bangers. We finish. We close with that and then they went. Everybody's happy now. Do you do covers ever? Just your stuff. Do my stuff. That's fun. Yeah. Sometimes we get to do live podcasts. And it's really cool. And we've gone out in front of big audiences. Yeah. It's exciting. And I love doing it. And I get to be with my friends. But every single time I walk out on a stage, I think to myself, God, I wish I was doing something cooler for the next hour and a half. Like I had a real talent. And I was playing music. Or I was funny. I was doing a stand-up set. No. But you know what? It's the perspective is everything, right?

1:42:07It's true. I always took my approach to music. It's work. It's a job. How? So you mentioned your father was a... Yeah. My father's a legend in music. Legendary musician. It's like Hank Williams. Hank Williams, Jr., but... Yeah. But not racist. Not just getting like... Do you know what I mean? Like in the cultural thing. Look, I get it. There's a lot of legends in Texas. I get some Willie Nelson, THC Drinks in the office right now. So when you're growing up, your father's being as big as he was in the business. Did that make you want to play music to... No. What make you walk away? No. I was a Texas boy stater in high school. I went to boy state. That's like a whole government. Like I was a history buff. I loved government. I loved politics. And that's why I became a political science major. I got an academic scholarship to go to St. Mary's University in San Antonio. And so I did not want to be a singer. That was not in the plans. Like God, so you're walking out of that stage thinking, God, I wish I could do a podcast right now. This is like... That was my first love.

1:43:08Like I was... But I was... Not... Like once I had success in music, I recorded a song with my dad. That's what did it. Right? I got two labels. It really went really high and it hit. And I had two labels in a bidding war. I ended up negotiating my contract and renegotiating my father's contract in that same negotiation. Wow. I got him a hundred percent raise. Hell yeah. Yeah. And so I ended up trying music. I said, Dad, I'm going to try it out and see what happens. And that ended up turned into a platinum record. And then I've been at it 30 years. That's incredible. And so my music's kind of gone... My life has gone full circle. And I'm like... You know what? I'm tired of what I'm seeing. Right now I'm just a guy with an opinion. I want to be somebody with my opinion matters. And I want to be a voice for my people. And yes, it would be a take it a huge fake up for what I'm doing right now. But it's worth it. My life has to mean more than just music in my opinion. And I haven't seen...

1:44:10I've been really frustrated with the way things have been going with our political discourse. And I do think that I have a different perspective of where I come from and I got nothing to lose. I really want to represent my people. That's exciting. Well, if folks want to help out, contribute where they want to go. Yeah. They can go for Bobby Polito for Texas. My district is 11 counties and we're not a very poor actually. My district's very poor. So we kind of have to go fundraise out of the district. I'm not going to say poor. I'm just spoke. My district is broke. And I say that because our spirit down there is we don't consider ourselves poor. We consider ourselves broke because tomorrow we're going to make it right. And so we're very aspirational, but we've been... She has like two million dollars in her war chest and I have a primary and so we need to fundraise aggressively, but I feel very confident that we're going to win.

1:45:15And we're going to flip this district. I think it's exciting. I think it's inspiring when people come from nontraditional walks of life and run for office. Why do we... Not everyone needs to be a lawyer. You know what I mean? It's great when people from the entertainment industry run with a different kind of cultural connection. There's not many interchangers though. Have you seen this guy Bobby Wein running in Uganda? I have not. He's like incredible massive music star running against an absolute high record in the countryside. I know. That's like not normal. No it's not. It's like completely... Well because I think people are turned off because people are worried that the minute you jump into politics you're going to polarize half your audience and maybe they won't listen to you anymore. Right. That's true. And it scares people. But I'm not that. Yeah. You don't seem polarizing. I'm not a polarizing guy. But I'll fight. Don't, don't, don't, don't, don't confuse the niceties for a fight. I'm not. I haven't gotten to fight for 20 years. So don't worry. Yeah. I mean I had a giant swollen ear and it sucked. Yeah. I've been, I've had my fair share of hard fights. But I'm a Texas boy. I know. Of course.

1:46:15You can expect that. But look, I'll fight for the people. And that's the bottom line. It's, this is, there, our healthcare down there is, is a mess man. She voted to cut Medicaid Medicare snap. Like all the things that are district that ours really depends on. She voted to cut. And so you have to fight for which right? Our healthcare system is, is in shambles. I go get my healthcare in Mexico. Really? Yes. Cheaper, easier. Why? Listen, musicians, all the musicians in community. We don't work for school districts or other things like that where you can pull it. Right. Right. Health insurance is through the roof. It's a, it got more expensive now with this A.C.A. subsidies that expired. So we're on the border. But how many people that are not on the border are struggling right now? It's just ridiculous. I mean, we really have to get in there. And the biggest problem we're going to face is corruption because they have their claws in these politicians. Yes.

1:47:16Good. And, you know, somebody has to go over there and just call them out for it. I love it. I love it. Well, the website again is bobbypolitofortexas.com. Great to meet you. Thank you for running. Thanks for coming in. And, you know, next Grammy's, you're going to win one and then, but also you're going to never. Elected officials. So no new music, no Grammys, no new music. What if you just get inspired one day or sit in your office and you're like, you write like a, a diss track. Songwriting is. Songwriting is. Songwriting is therapy. It is. It is. Yes, it is. Well, thank you for coming. Thank you, Tommy. Appreciate it. That's our show for today. Thanks to bobbypolito for coming on. Also, quick reminder, some tickets left, not many, but some tickets left for our upcoming shows in New Zealand and Australia. Wow. Next week guys. Next week we're going to be in Australia. New Zealand. We're in Auckland on February 11th, Melbourne on February 13th. Brisbane on February 14th and Sydney on February 16th, grab your tickets at Cricket.com slash events. Hope to see some of you out there and in the meantime, Dan and I will be back with a new

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