Episode 261 | Grift, Graft, and Violence (feat. David Corn)

0:00Hey everybody, welcome to episode 261 of cleanup on aisle 45. It's Wednesday, January 21st. I'm now 52 years old here in 2026. Thank you so much for joining us. I'm Allison Gil. Happy birthday. Happy birthday, A.G. It's Harry Dunne here. How are you doing? I'm good. I'm good. By the time you have heard this, I will have gone out to dinner. I haven't done that yet, but because of the magic of podcast time travel, I will have by the time you hear this episode. And before we get into today's episode, we have a lot to talk about. I would just want to give a shout out to our new patrons and our Hall of Fame patrons, our new patrons, our Malachi Mansfield, Quentin Barnes, and Christie Cider. And thanks to our Hall of Famers, Skintwal at USA.com wants your butt to look great. It is the perfect stocking stuff for two. Greg Robbins Smith, aka Benjamin Franklin Live, Joey Merck, Fran Reichenbach, Karen Sherman, Scott Gregus, Kimberly D. Steven, Maria Toe,

1:15Oliver Corey Hill, Kelly Hagen, and of course Tiffany Trump was adopted. Thank you so much for signing up to be patrons of cleanup on all 45. You make this show work. Thank you for supporting independent media. Remember, if you sign up at patreon.com slash aisle 45 pod, you get to pick the name and we will read it on the air. We have a very, very cool episode for you today. Cool and in that I'm excited about who we're about to talk to, not cool and what we're going to talk about. But you know, I want to welcome, of course, he's the Washington bureau chief at Mother Jones. He's written a ton of books. We've done book clubs on the old Muller She wrote book club podcast that this gentleman has written. And he also produces the our land newsletter, which you can get at David corn.com. Please welcome David corn. Hey, David. Hey, have a birthday. Good to be with you. Harry and Allison. David, thanks for joining us. How's your, how's your year been so far? You know, the first two days were great because we had no constitutional crisis or war. But by day three, we were certainly in the midst of it. And like many other people, I've been overwhelmed. And you know, as Washington bureau chief, I have a bureau of about, you know, 15 people.

2:32Also, and we've had to figure out how to cover the multiple layers of madness and chaos. And also, you know, I think for people who do journalism that there is a, you know, there's a psychological impact to of covering this stuff day in day out. And so it's, you know, it weighs heavy on people who care about the well being in the future of this nation. But we're out there. I mean, my people are out there literally on the front lines, which is what we say to say, have these days, reporting on all the various levels of corruption, and grief, graft and violence that's coming from the White House. And I think like, like many of us, everybody has a sense of unease about not just what is happening at the moment, but where this is all heading.

3:35That's a, so I'm glad you brought that up because with Donald Trump, one of the words that we hear a lot is unprecedented. He's doing things that we've never seen before. And we've always seen that there's this, there's a, all right, this is the line. Okay, this is the moment where people are going to break for memory. This is where he's going to be held accountable. Let's start with what happened in Venezuela. How unprecedented is what's happening there? Is it unprecedented? Or is this by Donald Trump standard unprecedented? Well, the U.S. waving a big stick to take oil or mineral rights or something from another country is not impressive. We've been messing in Latin America, you know, back into the early, you know, late 1800s, early 1900s, you know, whether Tady, Nicaragua, then Guatemala, in the 50s, Chile, in the early 70s. The U.S. intervention in Latin America, you know, specifically driven by commercial financial interests of American corporations is not a president.

4:41John F. Kennedy launched the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba that Eisenhower and the CIA had planned, you know, shortly before Kennedy took office and he went through with us. We've done this stuff before the American has been a colonial power and we have seized territories whether it's, you know, Guam, the Philippines and Polarico and all those other big portions of Mexico. So it's not, it's not unprecedented, you know, history wise. It's unprecedented in modern, in modern history, you know, we, we thought the colonial era was over. We thought that after World War II that we imposed a international order based on rules and even some international laws that, you know, that might is right was not going to be the only guiding force. In global relations and U.S. foreign policy. So, you know, what Trump has done is unprecedented over the last few decades, but it also is attacking some of the foundational beliefs that we've accepted, established, I mean, what's the United States have led the way in creating the United Nations, right?

6:03Yeah. So, coming in this way is certainly a break with, with, with recent progress. And at the same time, it also seems to be violations of both American and international law, which, which he's been doing not just in Venezuela or not just with the attacks on the boats of the Caribbean, but which he is doing here domestically, which he's doing with the, in position of tariffs and everything else that we can talk about. So, I mean, I think what's unprecedented in a way is to have a complete, narcissistic, somewhat pathological fellow as president, who is on this unprecedented tear, both globally and at home. And it's also kind of hard to square the circle of what, what he ran on, aside from he's going to bring prices down on day one. I mean, you know, the whole America first stop meddling in foreign affairs, no regime change, then you get somebody like Mark Wayne Mullin, who has to somehow square the circle and you throw him onto the Sunday shows and he's asked, well, isn't this regime change? And he's like, no, it's not. It just so happens that the regime is the one that's doing the right thing.

7:27It's a bad thing. So, it is, but it's not like he's trying to desperately somehow make what Trump ran on, fit this narrative. And we also see it with, for example, the surveillance state when Kristi Nome goes on the Sunday shows and says, no, we don't trust the government. And, and who alkers like you are the government, she's like, well, yeah, but no, it's, it's kind of, it's kind of difficult and painful to watch. Yeah, well, that's because nothing that Trump says matters, except for the moment, you know, you know, the Washington Post recorded 30,000 false statements he made when he was president the first time. I mean, he is exceedingly transactional. He says what needs to be said that particular moment to get what he wants five minutes later, he could say something completely different five minutes earlier, he could have said something completely different. And, you know, he's able to somewhat defy gravity with all this when most other politicians would, you know, be ensnared in all these lies and contradictions. And so what happens is he just sort of blively moves on and doesn't care. I'll just lie and say something different.

8:39You know, the next day or even the same day, and it's people like Mark Wayne Mullins and Mark Rubio or Kristi Nome and others who are left clean up on aisle 45 or an aisle for clean up on aisle 47 to deal with the mess that he leaves behind. He doesn't care. And his base doesn't care. You know, no one's supporting him because of the policy papers he's put out. He makes some people. I mean, nobody's a big, a big word. You know, they support him for him. They've identified him as a champion. They seem as a fighter. They see him as maybe the racist they want to be whatever it is. It's a very much a personal bond. So whatever he says, you know, you could say to a Trump supporter voter. Well, isn't he contradicting himself? I don't think it would matter to many of them, right? Because it's he's turned the party into, you know, it's not my idea to say this, but other people have a cultural personality where everything depends on what he wants to do.

9:45So the party that used to be anti tariffs is now all good on tariffs, you know, the party that used to hate, you know, socialism is fine with the US government buying into companies like, you know, sell, excuse me, chip manufacturers, you know, there are no principles left in the Republican party. The only principle is what does Donald Trump what? Well, and how does that hairy because Harry talk a little bit about the revisionist history? And I'm interested in how that fits into to this particular model of Trumpism. Yeah. So, you know, obviously we saw what happened a few weeks ago with regards to January 6th and Donald Trump in the White House released a website where they are blaming the police officers for what happened on January 6th. And we saw that a year ago today or yesterday, depending on when you're listening, he pardoned 1,500 rioters and not only are those people been pardoned and forgiven, they're being celebrated.

10:48They're being celebrated in mega circles. We see people that are appointed and working in his administration. I've said that Tom Tillis is the reason why Ed Martin, the pardon attorney did not get through because Tom Tillis is so pro capital police and so against what happened on January 6th. But Donald Trump in that circle of his is attempting to rewrite and in some cases they are rewriting history on what happened January 6th. What is the benefit of him doing that? I mean, they are literally rewriting. This is about the most Soviet action I've ever seen. You know, they used to focus so far out of favor in the Soviet Union that you'll back and take all the photos of him on the reviewing stand that trades and Photoshop them out and just wipe them out. This is I mean, you know, we were talking about what was unprecedented.

11:48The White House put up this website on January 6th, which is I think the most brazen act of government gaslighting in at least in, you know, in our lifetimes, maybe in the last century, maybe in the course of the entire US history to say that these people were, they called it on the website White House website. They call them patriotic Americans. They say the violence was instigated by Capitol Hill police. It's, you know, they give sort of, you know, not towards all these conspiracy theories. It is completely stunning. And this is a guy one John saying he loves cops, Democrats hate cops. You know, he's awful on order. Again, it doesn't matter. The words don't matter here. This is about as well in as you can get. Don't, you know, you were there. We watched millions, tens of millions watched hundreds of millions of people have seen the video.

12:53They're saying your eyes are lying to you. This did not happen. And it's, you know, and it's the White House is doing this. But the House Republicans are doing it too. There was a hearing last week that I wrote about just cannot, you know, my, the latest issue of my newsletter. The House Republicans now have a subcommittee to investigate January 6th. But they don't investigate anyone happen. They're investigating the investigation and they're trying to make it look like the FBI and Antifa somehow set the saw up. And they bring in these, you know, fellows, these right wing commentators who are putting forward crazy conspiracy theories. But what was even more disheartening was that the House Republicans who showed up for this subcommittee hearing on Wednesday. I think it was Wednesday Thursday. They will crazier than the crazy witnesses. I watched the thing. So I quite about it. And they're out there saying, look, look at that guy. That one guy is instigating all this. We think he's an undercover FBI person, which is working for the deep state.

13:56One guy working for the deep state who is at one barricade somehow set the saw off. It was just, it shows you how bonkers. Magnet can be when they have to follow the lead of dear, dear leader Donald Trump. I got a quick question real quick. Are they doing this? They meaning the Republican leaders, the ones in Congress. Are they doing this because they actually believe it or to appease Donald Trump? Or is it a mixture of both? I think it's coming when I combination of both when you see people get out there and put out these crazy theories that have been debunked. It sounds to me like they actually believe it and they're irrational and like when you're in a cult, you believe things, no matter what anyone tells you. And the more someone tells you you're wrong, often you double down and you dig deeper into that belief. I won't go to all the details, but one guy got up there and said, you could see in the crowd there were people in Antifa uniforms.

15:02First, Antifa doesn't have a uniform. That's a whole point of Antifa. They don't have uniforms. But this guy is saying, if you look, you can see people with the people who came through the doorway first with the proud boys. We've seen that. You saw who they were there. We saw people waving Confederate flags wearing Auschwitz t-shirts, the QAnon shaman. You know, we've, and yet they say these things as if they somehow do believe them, Harry. And that just shows you how deep the maggots psychosis is. And it just, you know, it just, it just pains me so to see them lie about this. I mean, as an American citizen, I was just so angered and aggravated by what happened and so upset about what happened to people like you. And yet, they just blindly act as if it didn't happen. Yeah.

16:04And one of those members got up there. I think it was Clay Higgins and said he thought that the guys, you know, the cops who have testified about what happened to them were being overly dramatic. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Well, I think that, you know, talking about whether they know their full of shit or not, I thought it was very interesting to read about the grand jury testimony that was released from the Fulton County election interference case where, you know, Lindsey Graham was like, you could have told him aliens interfered in the election. And he'd believe it. So they know what they're doing. And I'm hoping that the Jack Smith testimony that happens tomorrow at 10 a.m. on the hill publicly, finally, will help straighten some of this out or at least be a counter to this gaslighting and rewriting of history. And, you know, speaking of gaslighting another big moment is this government trying to tell us that Jonathan Ross did not murder a Renee Nicole good. And we're going to talk about that and the deployment of potentially the military, maybe under the invocation of the insurrection act, but certainly ice in our American cities, but we have to take a quick break.

17:13So everybody stick around will be right back. Delete me makes it easy quick and safe to remove your personal data online at a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everyone vulnerable. The weirdest parts of modern life is how searchable we all are. It's easier than ever to find personal information online and having your address, phone number, family members names hanging out on the internet can have actual consequences in the real world. I have known people who have been harassed and doxed. It's terrifying how fast it moves from online to real life. And someone with an active online presence like me really appreciates privacy. It's very important to me because visibility can attract the wrong kind of attention. More and more online partisans and a various actors dig up personal data to target political rivals, civil servants and even regular citizens who post opinions online. No matter who you are, the impact can be devastating. That's why delete me matters to me with delete me. You can protect your personal privacy or the privacy of your business from doxing attacks and worse before sensitive information can be exploited.

18:16It's about reducing exposure before someone decides to weaponize it. So take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for delete me now at a special discount for listeners. Get 20% off your delete me plan when you go to join delete me dot com slash cleanup and use promo code cleanup at checkout. Again, the only way to get 20% off is to go to join delete me dot com slash cleanup and enter code cleanup at checkout. That's join delete me dot com slash cleanup code cleanup. You'll be glad you did. Hey, everybody, welcome back. We are talking with David Corn. He writes the our land newsletter at David corn.com and he's a Washington bureau chief at Mother Jones. So before the break, we were talking about the whitewashing of history regarding January 6th and how it's, you know, one of the biggest moments of government gaslighting in our history. And I think another one came just this past week when they tried to convince us that we didn't see what we saw with our own eyes when Renee Nicole good was murdered by Jonathan Ross.

19:18So David, I know you write about this a lot. I know you post about this a lot talk a little bit about the impact in the first term of the deployment of national guard ice, possibly the military 1500 on standby from the Pentagon from the Army's 11th Airborne division. Ready to go to Minneapolis or maybe even Greenland talk a little bit about the deployment against our citizens here in our cities and what that looks like now and how it might change over the next year. It's clear to me that Donald Trump wants to be a strong man. And what do strong men do? They brutalize they brutalize at home and they brutalize overseas if they have the opportunity and the means to do that. And, you know, he's been spoiling for a fight since he got in office. I mean, he gets up there. He's been doing this for years now. And he demonizes his political foes. He says that Democrats liberals are commies and lead with Antifa radical lunatics. He plays footsie with QAnon, which calls them pedophiles. And he says they are literally trying to destroy your country.

20:32They're helping the people who are eating cats and dogs. They're enabling the criminal migrant gangs that are taking over whole cities in America. All this is bullshit. But it's clear. It's clear. Psychologically, he wants the fight. He wants the disruption. And they need to prove how much of a man he is, maybe to compensate for other things. And so here he is, you know, with ice mowing down people in Minneapolis, American citizen, American citizen, and also trying to bully Greenland, a Denmark, that is to the point that it may tear apart the most important alliance the United States has ever had. I'm probably one of the one when the grander alliances in human history. So he just really seems psychologically driven not to find compromise or accommodations or exit ramps, but to you, you know, say, oh, there's a fire there.

21:39Hammy that bucket of oil. And I will then make the fire bigger. And then I will send my stormtroopers in to take control. And see, I mean, this is what they remember when they had sent the troops to Los Angeles, they basically said, we are here to take control from your governor and mayor. I don't want to be hyperbolic, but this is the language that you would use for civil war. This is the language that we've seen used in places like Bosnia and Serbia where there have been internal fights. So, you know, he, you know, when when Renee good was murdered, it wasn't like, oh, let's pause for a moment. Let's take a breath. Let's stand down and figure out how to proceed appropriately with the policy that I that I prefer for Trump. It was no. Let's send in more agents and let's talk about sending in the military.

22:42It's exacerbating the conflict, heightening the tension. That's what he aims to do. You know, what is the what is the ultimate endgame? I mean, other than becoming emperor in some weird fashion. I don't know. I mean, I'm not sure he looks down the road that much except that he wants the power, the control. He doesn't want to be bothered with Congress. He doesn't want to be bothered with laws. He's vitally, you know, his tariffs are a complete violation of the US Constitution and anybody who reads that document can easily see that. So, I assume, you know, right now he's on this path to greater conflict, not less conflict. And, you know, my overarching, my overarching view of what's happening politically now is that you have Trump and his, you know, henchman and henchwoman who are, you know, trying to consolidate power and implement some degree of authoritarianism.

23:47As fast as they can, they will allow them to, you know, stay in power, perhaps, but also love for grafting and grifting and helping their, they can enrich themselves and help their buddies become enriched and help keep the Republican party. And some places in power, even if it's minority rule, they're moving as fast as they can in that lane. The other lane is popular revotion. People don't like this. The poll show that Joe Rogan doesn't like what he sees with ice, you know, rounding up people who are just trying to get an honest day's work, waiting to do this type of shit jobs that we don't want to do with Home Depot or grandparents who have kids here. Americans don't like this. You have to be waiting for Joe Rogan's apology. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're not going to see that. Yeah. But, you know, if you're not a racist, who want to just kick out brown people and some black people, if you can, then you tend not to like to see artistic women being yanked out of cars on their way to their traumatic center appointments.

24:58So they can then maybe become more productive citizens and take care of their kids who are here. You know, it's great. So, so this is popular revotion that's building to that, probably to Greenland questions about Jeffrey Epstein and all these other things. But the question is, is it going to come soon enough and be big enough to stop them before they are able to impose, you know, these authoritarian measures that will be hard. To undo and reverse and that will allow them to retain power more easily. I'm glad that you brought that up because that kind of leads to what a lot of people are worried about to be to be very blunt. A lot of people don't think there's going to be an opportunity to stop this because the wheels are already in motion. You mentioned his declining approval ratings and how people are just pissed off, which leads us, how do we stop this and everybody's pointing to November, which the midterms Donald Trump is talking about, you know, it starts out as a joke.

25:59And then he's like, well, let's cancel the elections. How worried should people be that elections are going to happen or are not going to happen or that they will accept the results and certify these elections. I think people should be worried. I don't think they should panic. I think you still, you know, work is hard. Elections are held at the local level. We all know this. It's a crazy, it's a crazy quote system that has its advantages and disadvantages. One advantage is that there's no central lever to control. That you can sort of throw a switch and make, you know, and stop elections everywhere, you know, some swing districts are in states that have democratic governors, some have Republican governors. Because we're only talking about a couple dozen, you know, there are 435 members of the house, but we're only talking about a couple dozen of seats that can go one way or the other. Everything else is going to be baked in.

26:59So you'd have to look at what happens in those districts. And if they're in Pennsylvania, say one or two or New York, there are a couple in New York, right. Those are democratic controlled states that are going to be hard for Trump to and Republicans to mess with. You know, I'm not saying it won't happen. I'm not saying they won't try, but it's not necessarily an easy thing to do. In some places like North Carolina, it will be much easier for them. And they have, they have a record in South Carolina trying to block election results that don't benefit Republicans. So there will be that type of stuff happening. And so the best strategy is, and this is true with any election, if you worry about fraud or rigging or something, is the bigger your margin, the bigger election margin you have, the harder it is for the losing side to undo it, counter it, challenge it, whatever.

28:00I'm not saying it's impossible. They still can do this. But you know, if a close election is easier to steal than election that's not close. So that's why people should just still do what they should normally do, which is work as hard as they can to get you know, on these elections and do other things as well, not just elections, so that the so that the numbers are as big as they can be. You know, worrying about what's going to happen. And as we get closer, we'll see what Trump is trying to do. There may have to be lost lost lawsuits filed and protest mounted. I have no doubt, you know, this guy is not going to go softly easily into the night. And he will complain. And he will, you know, there's never been election that he lost that he has not said was rigged. So they will make these, make these complaints and charges. And we know we people fought back in 2020 and succeeded. And it may have to happen again in a different manner in 2026. But you know, you know, there are democratic lawyers and other lawyers out there who are preparing for this.

29:13And I just, you know, you can't, you know, you can't give up the ghost now, right? You can't say, you know, this is going to happen. It's like, yeah, that he's going to, he's going to make it as hard as possible for Democrats to win. Okay, big deal. Put on your putting your big boy, big girl pants. Let's go do this. Except that you're up against a, a, an authoritarian who's, you know, who is, who's a liar. And it's, it makes it a heart of fight. Right. He's been cheating since he rolled down that golden escalator. So it's not something we aren't used to. I have one more question and I, you know, for you about the media and some, some things that you're doing with mother Jones that the media independent media is fighting back. But I just want to take one last book breaks. Everybody stick around. We'll be right back. All right. Hey, everybody. Welcome back. Let's talk a little bit about the problem with the media. I mean, to get the vote out and do everything that we need to do.

30:17You know, and of course, voting in the midterms is different than the continuing resolution that we're going to see here at the end of this month and what we think needs to be done there. But a lot of the problem about problems that we, I think are facing or that we have low information voters. And I think a lot of that has to do with corporate media. And I know you've written about Barry Weiss taking over over at CBS. They finally just aired the inside sea coat piece that they yanked several weeks ago. But has I think two million views alone on my sub stack from the bootleg version that we got from Canada. We're bootlegging the news now. David, talk a little bit about the media and your place in it because I'm really interested to get your position on that. Oh, great. Well, I'm much for you all the time necessary to cover this. I mean, the media is a very complicated subject to be in the right because there is no such thing as the media. There are lots of different media organizations that we've heard of mainstream media, but even the mainstream media isn't really one entity.

31:17And all these different layers of journalism and reporting are aiming at different audiences, aiming at different subjects, aiming at different ways of reaching people. And you can have a place like the New York Times that does some great investigative reporting on all the graft in the Trump White House in crypto and handing out partens to people who are giving money to his political action committee. And at the same time, they also engage in a lot of normalization of Trump's behavior. You know, one story earlier last year was Trump, you know, Trump moves towards a muscular presidency. You know, that's kind of like, you know, they may think that's a neutral term, but that seems like a positive term for me. And it's not what I would describe an autocrat. You know, they're such an impulse at the New York Times to use what they believe is neutral language. But I think that often gives an advantage to people who are lying, who are trying to take advantage of democratic laws and norms to impose a authoritarianism.

32:21You know, so the times is great stuff. Sometimes it's not such a great stuff. And what I think is hard for, and I'll use the phrase mainstream media very loosely, is that it's sometimes hard to give the overall context of what's going on. You know, Trump is out there, you know, basically calling for political jihad against, you know, liberals, whether Harvard University or the Democratic Party or in the media, whatever. The times, you know, in other places, they feel like they just have to be, you know, given his say he's the president and act like stenographers and some of this stuff. And I think that's, I think that's wrong. I think that's in a way, you know, gives him the tools to basically undermine democracy and freedom of the press. And they just have done a bad job of conveying how extreme he is.

33:22And also times how idiotic he sounds by saying washing him and all that. They still seem to be playing, and this is true at the point for some within the Democratic Party by the old rules, you know, the old conventions. And we're in a whole new world here with a threat to democracy from inside the house that we haven't seen before. And that's why I think places like Mother Jones and in podcasts like yours that there are some big holes to fill. We don't have to beat around the bush. We don't have to worry about beat sweeteners. And we don't use neutral sounding language that doesn't really capture the essence of the moments that we cover. And that's, you know, you know, Renee good as an example that we mentioned earlier. You know, to me, you know, all you have to do is look at the wheels of the car.

34:25The wheels of the car show whatever she was trying to do. She was trying to get away. They were not turned towards an agent. They were turned away from the agent. She made contact with the agent as she was trying to get away. Well, that's not good, but you know, but to put to say, and even to like, you know, you know, we report that, you know, straight and a straight man and the Trump says she ran them over. Without noting she did not run them over. You know, you know, again, we get caught in this both sides of this two sides is him. You know, different, you know, so the times, you know, does the big feature different views of the same incident, which makes it sound like it's even like what they, you know, they used to, they don't do this as much with these to do this with climate change. You know, there are two sides, you know, two sides and climate change battle it out. On one side, there are 5,000 scientists on the other side. You know, but if you say there are two sides, make it sound to people, again, to your point, low engage voters.

35:32They are not, you know, reading the news and parsing this. Decisions, voting decisions and other decisions, developing opinions on the basis of opinions and impressions. Impressions are guiding their opinions. So they may hear something, a snippet here, they read a little snatch or something there. And so headlines, how you, how you characterize things are matters for people like that. So if they are hearing, you know, oh, there are two sides to this issue, it automatically tells them. Well, one side might be right, the other side might be right, there are two sides to generate six. Some say cops got beaten up, some say the cops, you know, made the poor the problem, you know, okay, I don't know. You know, if you don't look at something beyond that. So that's where I think, you know, some of the problems we have here is this inclination of some big media outlets to. Equalize and make things, present things what they think is objectively.

36:36But if you quit, give the same weight to a liar and so on telling the truth. You're not really being objective, you're helping the liar. And you're acting like the truth teller is on the same level as the liar. Now, it's not always black and white, but often it is. And when you do that, that's that that objective reporting is not servicing the readers by giving them a realistic view of what's happening. I could go on. Well, let's let's end this by the question that I wanted to bring up. I noticed you filed a freedom of information act request about communications and information about. Gaelin Maxwell's prison transfer and, you know, this past summer, I'd reported I'd gotten the point screen for Gaelin showing her sex of understatus waived. It's only the head of bureau prisons that can waive that sex of understatus. But you're dig and deeper here to find out who gave that order and why and all the communications surrounding it.

37:43And I think that that's interesting. In July, you know, it was bizarre that Todd Blanche, the number two at the Justice Department, Deputy Attorney General, who had been Trump's personal criminal defense lawyer in the Stormy Daniels case. He lost that case on a good lawyer he is. But nevertheless, he was Trump's personal lawyer went down to Tallahassee, Florida, where Gaelin Maxwell was in a prison, a co-ed prison and to spend two days chatting with her. I mean, this was, Eric, back to you. This is unprecedented. Yeah, unprecedented. Atop Justice Department going to talk to a convicted sex offender whom the government, his government, had said in filings, was a liar and couldn't be trusted to tell the truth. And he didn't really explain why he was going to talk to her. And then months later, he said, well, you know, no one ever given her a chance to speak.

38:43Well, I'm sure there are thousands of sex offenders in prisons across America who would love a chance to speak to the Deputy Attorney General. And so I'm surprised he hasn't been going nonstop to all these facilities to meet with them. I mean, so that made, none of this made any sense. And then what was even more bizarre, as you mentioned, Alison, was a week later, after this meeting, she was transferred from this prison in Tallahassee to a prison camp. In Texas, I think a prison camp camp sounds kind of fun, right? Maybe there's a wake to swim in. Maybe capture the flags, the other flag. Who knows what happens at camp, but she got transferred there. And then as you noted with your scoop and as whistleblowers told Jamie Raskin's committee in Congress, she was given preferential treatment. She had catered meals brought to her bunk. She was given access to email services in the warden's office.

39:49So again, who decided all this? So I, you know, when people went, when we always went to the bureau of prisons to ask about this, they didn't give an explanation. So last summer, I filed a freedom of information act for all emails, memos, documents, whatever on, you know, regarding the transfer from Tallahassee prison to the prison camp. And they, the bureau prisons dragged, dragged its feet. And this past week, with the help of the reporters committee for the freedom of, for freedom of the press, we filed a lawsuit. So it's not just a FOIA request now. Now it's a lawsuit front of a judge asking, I got to, I got two of them out there. Yeah, asking the judge to compel the bureau prisons to respond and release material that is relevant. So, you know, we'll see how this goes. I don't expect anything to happen right away, but it's, you know, there are many, many, many questions in the Jeff, Jeffrey Epstein case.

40:57This is one, and it seemed to me, the answer here is knowable. I mean, this is what I like as journalists. Somebody ordered this. Somebody approved this. This didn't just happen. And it didn't happen. And the people who did it are not dead and long gone. They're around. And they likely was some sort of paper trail. So I'm not sure we'll get the answer, but it's a getable answer. Well, I appreciate your time and thank you so much for this, this wealth of knowledge that you are dropping on us. But I'm going to ask you to predict the future one time. Like, you know, Donald Trump, right? It's safe. Donald Trump never has to face the American voters again. Now like, will he would try to do the third term? That's a whole different topic. And, you know, we've seen crazy members of Congress float that idea for a third term and everything. So Donald Trump doesn't have to face the voters. However, the people enabling him to do the senators, the congressman.

42:01Do you predict? Do you think that a blue wave, so to speak, is coming? And what do we have to look forward to in November as voters and people that are anxiously awaiting Donald Trump to just be stopped in some capacity? Yeah, you know, I really hate making any predictions. That's how that's how I'm putting it on you. Nobody does. No, it does. I mean, it seems pretty clear that as of this moment, you know, Trump is losing tremendous support. And if you look at the last few, you know, special elections off your elections, Democrats are just doing tremendously well. The Mike, Michael Cheryl raised in New Jersey, the governor's race there. I mean, people thought she might lose. He ended up winning by a tremendous amount that seems obviously connected to, you know, two main things, something affordability issue and the Donald Trump issue. So he and everything he's doing is designed to increase support in his base, but not persuade anybody else to join him.

43:11He's alienating people again and again and doesn't seem to care about that. So, so I mean, if you just stand and look at all these basic numbers, you would say things are looking good for the Democrats and maybe even though it's hard, a hard to map for them, maybe even possibly in the Senate as well. That would be the other conventional view, but we also know that look at everything that's happened in the last year. And we have 10 months now between between now and in the election, all the other chaos and crises that could happen, but you now and then I think most of that probably would not help Trump and the Republicans, but, but you never know. I mean, Venezuela is unsustainable. Trump says he's running it. They're running out of food. They're going to be food riots in Venezuela. There are paramilitary groups running around. There are also drug cartels there with lots of firepower.

44:15All these groups are going to be vying for power control, for money, for food, and then as well, let alone control of the oil there. What's the plan for controlling that or responding to all that? And then now we're cutting off oil to Cuba. We're going to send Cuba into a humanitarian crisis. What happens when you know already they don't have enough electricity to get through the day. But what happens when they when they can't pump water because they don't electricity hospital shut down and they have a food crisis. Well, we know in the past what's happened in Cuba when there is crisis, people get on boats. People get on boats. They risk their lives crossing the 90 miles between Cuba and Florida. And we're going to have this influx of refugees. Okay. This is an interesting question for Maga. Here are people coming in from Cuba. What do we do with them in the past.

45:20We've always given preferential treatment to Cuban refugees because they're, you know, turn out to be Republican voters because they hate cash for so much. Now, these people are, you know, who knows what their politics are, but does Maga want to see tens of thousands of Cubans coming in? I don't know what is Trump and Stephen Miller going to do about that. So there are all these and we don't, you know, we haven't mentioned Ukraine and Russia. What's happening there? And of course, the breakup of a possible breakup of NATO. So I think we are going to see. I'm confident of predicting at least seven more crises between seven, seven more. I said, at least, at least at least. Now, in the midterms and that will set the context for the election. And I do think Trump will act more and more like a mad king as we get closer. And that's just a tremendous wild card for American democracy.

46:25Yeah, we always did tends to get worse before it gets better. But thank you so much for joining us. But you can, you know, Washington bureau chief over at Mother Jones, check out all those work at Mother Jones, got a bunch of great books that need to be on your bookshelf. And of course, you can sign up for the our land newsletter at David corn.com. David, it's been great to talk to you here. Thank you so much for joining us. Well, thank you. Thank you for the good work that you guys do. No, no problem at all. Thank you. And Harry, we got a bonus episode coming up this weekend. And I know I think maybe some sort of a patron happy hour coming up. Everybody make sure to check your email for that. And, you know, I just hope everybody stays safe, especially our good friends in Minneapolis right now. Yeah. Do you have anything else you want to say? Make sure everybody if you're able to definitely tune in for that because I plan on attending with Daniel Hodges and Michael for known the Jack Smith hearing.

47:25I will be there. I'll be in the building and hopefully I'll be able to give you all my experiences. First, first hand account during that little happy hour. So make sure you're there and tune in. Alright, awesome. Thanks so much everybody for listening. We'll see you next week on clean up on our 45. Clean up on our 45 is written, researched and produced by Allison Gill with editing by Molly Hockey. Our art and logo designer by Joelle Reader and Moxie design studios and our music is composed and performed by Adam Moore. Clean up on our 45 is a proud member of the MSW Media Network, a collection of creator-owned podcasts dedicated to news, politics and justice. For more information, visit MSW Media.com. MSW Media.