"Realizing the phrase 'promises kept' was little more than a slogan"

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1:00What are the things he seems like he's doing? He's focusing on trying to make him greater, himself greater, instead of the American people, graders. He ran on Make America Great again, but he's trying to make Donald Trump great again, I think. Does America feel great again? I don't think so now right now. You don't think so not right now. That, importantly, was coming from a three-time Trump voter in a state Donald Trump won three times. Realizing the phrase, promises kept was a little more than a slogan to Donald Trump, despite promising to reduce inflation and to lower gas prices and to elevate economic prosperity for all Americans, especially his voters, on the campaign trails of candidate. Donald Trump has instead enriched himself by billions of dollars while his voters and all Americans are left struggling to get by. All of better than expected jobs report today showed

2:00the U.S. added 162,000 jobs last month. Americans' wage growth remains at a standstill and oil prices due to Donald Trump's war with Iran could boost inflation even further. As of today, that war has already sent diesel to a new high of nearly $6 per gallon. Meanwhile, mortgage rates have climbed to their highest level in more than a year. These struggles aren't on Trump's radar or seemingly on the radar of anyone who works for him. They're not a priority. Instead, he is wholly focused on making the nation's capital some sort of shrine to his ego and an aptitude. The Trump administration says he will soon break ground on that 250-foot triumphant arch, despite not having received approval for its construction. Meanwhile, Republicans fighting for their seats in Congress seem to be feeling anything but triumphant. And Trump's apathy toward the struggles of the American people is becoming so politically toxic. Some candidates are begging him not to show up

3:01on the campaign trail alongside them. A new Politico report that interviewed more than two dozen Republican lawmakers, candidates, and operatives found this, quote, many of these candidates privately admit they're stuck in an uncomfortable spot by running too far from Trump, Republicans risk alienating the Maga Faithful or the President himself. But if they keep Trump close, they could be dragged down by the President as the unpopular war in Iran has increased cause for Americans across the country. That is where we begin the hour of some of our favorite reporters and friends. Author of the sub-stack newsletter to the contrary, Charlie Sykes is back. Also joining us, Democratic strategist and former senior aide for Hillary for America, Joel Payne is back. And back with me at the table, MSNOW Political Analyst, professor of practice at the School of Professional Studies at Columbia University, Basil Smichel. So you're about to start with you. Your thoughts on this moment. You know, I was thinking a lot because I remember about to start teaching my classes. I teach a class in communications and marketing for the public sector.

4:02And I always teach the Reagan Morgan, Morning in America had 1984. It's a brilliant ad for its time. Reagan's not in it, and you don't hear his voice. But you see these images of America where they talk about inflation getting lower, people getting their jobs, people moving into their first time homes. Great images. If you're a Republican at that time, you can draw down from that and talk about how that relates to you in your district. What is a Republican to do today? The arch. You can't relate to that. Well, just on the ad, I'm so glad you mentioned that. I should have had it. It's also about the future. That's very desperate. Right? Whatever the shrines are, they're not about the future. That's right. And it's very sunny, right? It's very, I mean, like the actual shots are all very bright and sunny. And it is literally they show money in America. Right? It is incredibly aspirational. But there's nothing about what Donald Trump is doing now that a Republican could say this is meant for you. The arch does not connect.

5:02The ballroom does not connect. And day after day, what is connecting are the ice raids? It's what's happening to my brothers and sisters, the Haitian brothers and sisters in Ohio, which we will talk about. It's all of those things that are affecting neighbors and neighborhoods. That's why Republicans can't nationalize their election, but Democrats certainly can't nationalize their election. And that's what you're seeing in terms of the incredible mobilization that we've seen thus far. Charlie, sex, what are you seeing in this moment? Well, yeah, nothing says I care about the average American more than building another multi-million dollar monument to your own narcissism. I mean, this really is a screen. The only thing I would quibble with is that Republicans are not stuck in this situation. They put themselves in this situation. You know, they signed up for this. And at the very moment when you would think that they would be trying to have a little bit of daylight, Donald Trump is making this campaign all about himself. And I was really struck by a basil saying that 1984 Reagan had,

6:04because can you even imagine a Trump ad in which Trump does not appear in which you simply have the images that make people feel good about America and where we are going. Everything that Trump puts out is all about himself. And I think that's part of the split screen. As Americans are looking around and going, I'm not actually feeling great about America. I'm not actually feeling great about myself. And when you turn on television, you see a Trump ad where you read about the Republican Party, all you hear about is Donald Trump. And Donald Trump's endless neediness and desire to aggrandize himself. Here's a guy that got elected saying, I will be the voice of a little man. I feel your pain. I will be your spokesman. But all he talks about these days is himself. And that's not lost on voters. Let me just try to deepen this conversation, though that has been the case since day one. So it starts with Elon Musk and the chainsaw with the belly showing.

7:06And they proudly, in their own words, quote, traumatize the federal workforce. Voters turn out at Republican town halls immediately. They see what's happening immediately. They have never had a Steve Bannon voice in the ear of this Westpink. They have never acted in a way that is politically beneficial to Trump or any of the Republicans. What does that say to you, Charlie? Well, it says to me that Trump 2.0 is different from 1.0 in many ways, which you have covered extensively. But one of the ways that it has changed is the incredible tone deafness. Has been the fact that he has surrounded himself with a group of totes and loyalists who tell him what he wants to hear and never tell him no. And as a result of that, I think he's become increasingly disconnected, not just from reality, because we see that every day. But from his own base, I mean, you think about the coalition he put together in 2024.

8:07Almost everything that has happened to him since then has been self-inflicted as he has squandered that message and that coalition, which increasingly looks at him and says, this is not what you said you were going to do. This is not what you promised. And here we are. Yeah, I mean, Joel, I wonder sometimes if the... I mean, no one knows where Mitch McConnell is right now. Donald Trump is so crazy on social media that if he were at the top of any industry other than politics, if he were a star athlete, if he were a famous actor, if he were a famous singer, if he were a famous artist, the press around those institutions, ESPN, or sort of the Broey podcast around sports, would be talking about it incessantly. If any athlete posted the kinds of things Trump posts and the way he posts, so insanely and all caps and weird things. And the speech he's giving three times, he has now talked about how he spelled dumb

9:08when said people don't know there's a B. I mean, I think like everyone older than five knows there's a B. Like he says things that are so crazy that there's this gaslighty upside down. I think this is like a WTF election. I don't actually know the answer to the question I just asked Charlie Sykes. Maybe they don't care about the politics of Doge or the politics of, you know, a lot of the jobs they killed were veterans. I mean, I have never been alive when Republicans didn't even pretend to give you you know what about veterans. I don't know what that is. I don't know what that ideology is. I don't know what that principle is. I've never been alive when Republicans haven't cared about corruption. Even if they didn't care morally, it's a political loser. And so I wonder how you sort of, as someone with a finger on the pulse and an idea of what Democrats are doing. How do you message in a sort of WTF moment? Yeah, and I'm fighting the urge to nerd out here because both Basil and Charlie went to ads and so did you. And I'd love to spend the next couple of minutes talking about that, but I'll resist. Take a time.

10:08Yes, I'll just say this. Come back. You get to. The coalition that Trump put together now, this 2024 coalition, is fundamentally different than the one in 2016. And I think that that's a part of the story here as well because there are different voters with different interests that have different expectations of this president. The first Trump coalition was frankly a little bit closer to what I would call like Republican classic. And I think maybe some of the things that Trump feels like he has licensed to get away with. I actually think he was maybe given the space to get away with, combine with the fact that the build off of Charlie's point, he had people around him. I mean, he had the bumpers like when you go to do bowling and little three year olds are bowling, he had bumpers on the bowling alley to make sure they didn't crack down. He goes to put those down after three. So he had people around him that would fight back on the worst impulses and prevent the worst possible thing from happening every single time.

11:11And it distorted what the American people experienced in Trump won. So that when they got an opportunity to have another shot at voting for Trump, they forgot about it. And there's a lot of cultural reasons why that might be the case. But the coalition being different, I think, is central to this conversation and central to the failure to meet people's expectations when you have a more broad working class coalition of people of color. They expect different things than that coalition. That's a little bit closer to a Republican classic coalition. So you can't spend people out of transferring a trillion dollars of wealth in the big beautiful bill. Like you may have been able to do the first time around with that TCJA act he passed back in, I believe it was 2017. So the coalition is being different. I think it's central here as well. What was the ad you were going to, I promised you to since you went third. Well, well, so you know, I've actually made some ads myself. I worked on the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016. And I remember one of the things we were trying to counteract was this feeling of people

12:12saying, well, what do I have to lose? In fact, I remember Trump on the campaign trail what talk about, what do I have to lose? And we actually made an ad that took that sound of him saying, what do you have to lose? And then we pointed out all the things that people could lose. I think, you know, it's not funny. It's more ironic that every single day, I mean, with each passing headline, we are seeing what was at stake for people in that election and obviously in 2024 and the price that people are paying for buying into the Charlotteson that is Donald Trump. You know, his first inaugural speech was about carnage. He has ushered in actual carnage. I mean, Americans killed on the streets of American cities by federal agents. And detained at the Delay detention center. People who have been tightly knitted into the fabric of communities, deported to countries they've never heard of or been to. The seeming attempt to normalize and launder cruelty as a state policy.

13:14An enemic economy for the vast majority of Americans, soaring prices as the gas pump, the grocery store, the box store. But do you think the country is going to do in November? Well, I think the country is going to push back on this. And you're already seeing that though, when he talks about corruption at the polls and he's demanding these voter files and has already redistricted a lot of districts, you had a manual cleaver potentially being redistricted out where it not for this decision in Missouri. Those are already responding with their feet, but I would also add that they see the hypocrisy. He has fomented so much anger and division on the ground and raised the amount of Islamophobia that we're seeing, but you take it a jet from a Muslim country. Your son-in-law is taking money from sovereign funds in Muslim countries. Like how do you bring those two things together? How do you resolve those that contract?

14:17You can't accept to say that what is for thee is not for me, that he is very clear that he wants to enrich himself, but that enrichment does not fall at the feet of the American voter. Voters are a week to that. They know that. So, look, they're mobilized. You see them come out in town halls against AI centers, right? Because they're like, hey, my energy costs are going up. And who is this actually going to benefit? And the end-water? And who is this actually going to benefit? The jobs are temporary because the construction is one thing, but only a handful of people actually end up staffing these centers. So, they're seeing tech have this kind of outsized role in their communities, but they're all standing next to him and is inaugural. They see the expansion of flat cameras and the increase of the surveillance state and saying, well, who's writing the algorithms versus who's getting arrested and detained? And so, all of these things are kind of coming together for the American voter in this one moment. And the hope, if you care about this, is that they ride that to the election.

15:18I mean, there is such an in-your-face treating of his own base like chumps. Can't vote by mail. I'm going to go all the way to the Supreme Court, not once, but twice, but three times. But, oh, how do I vote? Me? I vote by mail. Like, how much being made into a chump can his coalition handle, Charlie? Well, we've seen a lot right over the last ten years, but you really don't eat. He doesn't seem to be testing. The judge will answer us a lot. Yeah, a lot, but to your point, he's asking them to ignore the evidence of their own eyes, right? Ignore what, in fact, he promised. You know, I'm going to go back to, you know, Basil Siting, that 1984 ad when Ronald Reagan wanted to make people feel good about America. One of the problem is that Americans, and I'm talking about Republican Americans and talking about people who had voted for Donald Trump. They look at the future now with a great deal of anxiety. I mean, this is somebody who has spent his time.

16:20He has flooded the zone, but as a result of it, Americans are anxious. They're fearful. They're divided and they're exhausted. And how much more can they take? He promised that he was going to lower prices from day one. He promised no endless wars. He promised that he was going to look out for them. He promised that he was going to take on competition from China. What is he doing? He's appeasing China and going to war with Canada. So people are scratching their heads and going, you know, what exactly are you doing? How far can we take all of this? And it does keep coming back to, it is the corruption stupid. How much, you know, will his supporters be willing to take? He believes, and he's he's bragged about it that he could shoot anybody on the middle of Fifth Avenue and not lose a vote. Well, he's living that right now, right? I can steal anything. I can engage in any sort of an outrage. I can shut down elections. I can have, you know, armed agents showing up at polling booth and my conservative supporters

17:22will just shrug because I'm Donald Trump and I can grab anybody I want, any place that I want. And so this election is in many ways a test of your question. How far are they willing to go? Because we're already seeing a lot of buyers remorse, which frankly we did not see over the last few years, but we're seeing now. Yeah, I have to say again, a break from the other side. We'll deal with what you've just teed up for us. The triple betrayal on the Epstein on the economy and on no more forever wars. We'll pick that up on the other side. Also ahead, a fight over the independence of the military newspaper, Stars and Strikes, stands in federal court. The journalists at the center of this first amendment battle will join us. Plus, Maria Bartoroma is out at Fox News. Oliver Darcy of Status has brand new reporting on how that happened. Do they might house continues after quick break? Don't go anywhere. Do you have a work injury?

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19:30Pre-newvos whole body scans screens for hundreds of conditions, including many solid tumors as early as stage one, all in under an hour. And now you can go beyond imaging with 80 plus blood biomarkers that help complete the picture. This Labor Day, save $300 off your scan when you book at pre-newvo.com. That's PRE and you VO.com. Save $300 now through September 8th at pre-newvo.com. Terms and conditions apply. From your lip sister to spirited words from another American who feels Donald Trump acts like a two year old and is left the American people behind.

20:30We're back with Charlie, Joel, and Basil. Joel are you feeling like what you're seeing in terms of the response from Democratic candidates is sort of capturing this visceral emotional rage from voters of all political persuasions? Yes and no. I think there are some Democrats who are better at meeting the moment. And I think there are others that are just willing to ride the wave of Trump discontent. And my sense is that discontent will probably be enough for Democrats to certainly take back power in the House, potentially take back power in the Senate, at least draw back some votes and make that a closer Senate, and set the stage for 2028, which I think a lot of base grassroots Democrats are excited to have a fight within the coalition about the future of the coalition, about what the future of the Democratic Party would be. So I think some folks are meeting the moment. You look at someone like John Assoff who's been excellent at prosecuting this case of tying corruption to how it is negatively impacting people's lives.

21:32But there are some Democrats who I think, you know, people say they read the stage directions. I think that they are a little bit too on the nose sometimes. And they treat these things as if they are siloed and isolated. Like a conversation about the war in Iran, a conversation about gas prices, a conversation about Donald Trump and, you know, kind of focusing on some of these trivial matters like changing the gold in the Oval Office and the Triumph for Arch. That's all the same conversation. Correct. It's a priority conversation. Right. He has chosen to spend time and capital and energy of the executive, the most important person in America, instead of focusing on making your life better on these trivial, important matters and the things he is focusing on, they're directly harming you. You have to tie that together and I don't know if every Democrat is good at that, but enough of them are good at it to where I think Democrats don't have a good night, this November and Election Day. And even Republicans, I think, would agree with what Joel just laid out. I mean, it's why they don't want to go to his bizarre conference and Reuters is reporting

22:38that. I know that Trump's going to speak on both nights of the Republican midterm convention. This is a reporting. The change comes as some party and setters of to Reuters. They're concerned. The Republican National Committee may struggle to attract members and activists to the event Trump's grappling with weak approval ratings amid voter dissatisfaction over the Iran War and persistent inflation, raising the stakes for Republican candidates, fighting to preserve their party's narrow congressional majorities in November. You know, one of the things that just a bill off a Joel's point, one of the things that I think about is that you do see some defection from independent voters and some Republicans, because people are realizing they too could be a target of Donald Trump. Oh, yeah. That doesn't matter if you were with him yesterday. If you're not with him today or he chooses not to be with you today, it's, that's the end of it. We're seeing Cubans getting deported to Africa, right? We're seeing members of Congress and Senate who were supportive of him and who were really like right up under his armpit.

23:41He turned against them and now they're fending for themselves and they're, you know, they've got a spine of what little is left to try to push back. But I remind people, and I say this especially on people, but I'm reminding people everywhere that I go, that if you ever thought about what you would do in the civil rights moment, this is the time. It's right now. You've got, we've got to step up to Joe's point on multiple fronts. You know, there's reporting today that the president's going after college, universities and other programs that are targeting black people in particular, but folks of color, just to be, just to matriculate comfortably and not have to worry about paying bills, right? That there are, everybody is being targeted. And I go back to the point about my Haitian brothers and sisters who were, who have ankle bracelets right now, because it was two years ago on a debate stage. That Donald Trump talked about Haitians eating their pets in the very city in which they're being targeted right now. So he, this was his plan two years ago to target these individuals, right?

24:43Folks who have been contributing to society, contributing to those communities. And that's why, you know, it's interesting that that voter says, I wish he would man up when I'm curious how to manifest your fields about that because that notion of this, of this masculinity and this toxic masculinity is driving against the fact that all of the work that, all, all of what he's done is tearing communities apart. And nobody is trusting him. And they're putting more trust in their neighbor, which is what I always said, don't look to Washington. Look to your neighbors. Stay in community. Because that's for the election. That is where the pushback is going to happen. I mean, this is the box that Republicans are in. I think nine years too late, Charlie Sykes, but I'm glad they're in it now. I hope they stay there. The policies are so unpopular, the fear, and it can't be both, right? They're mutually exclusive. The fear that if they run away from Trump as voters will be mad. The Trump is, in a lot of instances, more unpopular than they are, but they look like,

25:45let me think of a TV friendly word, whimps, for not standing up to him, for the things that their voters hate. So they stay with him and he's more unpopular than they are in most instances. I think Kempakston might be the only person more unpopular than Trump, or they follow him and his unpopular policies. They look weak either way. Well, this is the trick box they put themselves in. You're absolutely right. I mean, this is the situation they are in. And again, to Basil's point, with all of this Trump's image that he is the striker, strong man, that he is making America great. He's actually making America weak. He is the president of appeasement. He said he was going to solve all these problems. And on the question of the Haitians, if you asked many of his voters, what do you think about mass deportation, they would say, well, we ought to get rid of the violent criminals, the worst of the worst. That's what they said. They were going to go after the worst of the worst. What you're seeing in every community is they're not.

26:48The other point is that, and you have dealt with this and wrestled with this for the last 10 years, Nicole, there have been so many voices that have come from wind side, the inside the house, inside the White House, inside the administration warning us about Donald Trump. The Donald Trump was not who you thought he was or that he would betray you. What I think you're seeing now is that more and more people, those warnings are not just coming from inside the house. They are. But the warnings are coming from inside their communities within the Hispanic community, realizing that he's not talking about other people, he's talking about my cousins, he's talking about my friends, he's talking about my neighbors, whether you're in the Cuban community or within the Haitian community, or whether or not you're in a community that actually cares about America as an exceptional place. I mean, one of the things that Americans have always prided themselves on has been that we are exceptional, that we are the good guys in the world. Do America still think they are the good guys in the world? There may be that base that loves the fact that we're going after Canada and we're still in Venezuela and oil.

27:49But is this what we grew up thinking America was about and what Americans would do on the world stage? So I think all of those warnings are coming from all around us all the time. Now in the past, we've ignored and voted, Trump voters have ignored the warnings from the inside, but those are getting harder and harder and not to recognize now. Right. It's like a chorus, is it supposed to that one voice? Yes. Um, basil, Charlie, Joel, thank you all so much for joining me in having this conversation today. Coming up next for us, there was just a big update in the Pentagon's crusade against the price and specifically the military newspaper, Stars and Stripes. Two journalists who say they were punished for defending the paper's independence will join us to discuss what just happened in court. Don't go anywhere. E-T-L-A Law Group California's injury law firm has taken on many types of cases from

28:49slips and falls, accidents, dog bites and other negligence injury cases. We don't back down. We take the fight to court if needed. Have an accident or injury? Contact us now. Text injury help to 402-22. That's injury help to 402-22. Go to call downtown.com now. It reads and usage me. Apply. Check out the link to the channel. N-L-L-L-L-A-G-E-S-B 2-824-76540 South Santa Fe Los Angeles prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Hey what's up guys, it's Hayley Bailey. OK, I need to tell you about something. I just got YouTube Premium. It's got tons of awesome features like offline downloads so I can download my favorite videos before I travel and watch them whenever I don't have Wi-Fi. Because we all know airplane Wi-Fi is the worst. I get ad free, I get back room play and there's like a ton more in there. You should try it. If you like YouTube, you'll love YouTube Premium. Try it now for two months free at youtube.com slash premium. Try out eligibility varies, terms apply, cancel anytime. That's a mouthful. What if you can see what's happening inside your body? Pre-novos whole body scans screens for hundreds of conditions, including many solid tumors

29:53as early as stage one, all in under an hour. And now you can go beyond imaging with 80 plus blood biomarkers that help complete the picture. This Labor Day, save $300 off your scan when you book at pre-novo.com. That's P-R-E-N-U-V-O.com. Save $300 now through September 8th at pre-novo.com. Terms and conditions apply. Breaking quite literally while we were having that last conversation in the last segment, a judge in the case involving the military newspaper stars and stripes has ruled that the Pentagon can fire journalists there. You'll recall a Pentagon official asked publisher Max Leterer to fire his editor-in-chief Eric Slavin and reporter Lara Cordy over participating in a CBS News interview. Leterer declined and offered to retire all three were then fired. They sued Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other Pentagon officials, saying their firings were illegal and violated their free speech protections under the first amendment.

30:56This is the third first amendment case that has been brought against Donald Trump's Pentagon by stars and stripes this year. In June, the paper's ombudsman sued over her firing, alleging retaliation for an April column in which she called new Pentagon restrictions, including eliminating comics and banning wire services like the Associated Press, quote, censorship and infringement on stripes editorial independence. Also in June, two stars and stripes board members sued over those restrictions, calling them, quote, an act of illegal censorship. I want to bring in two of the journalists central to this story. Stars and stripes publisher Max Leterer and reporter Lara Cordy, also joining me at the tables, the founder and writer of the status newsletter, breaking tons of news all the time, Oliver Darcy's here. Max, take me through what happened today and then work backward to what this is all about. Great. Thank you very much. Today was a hearing on a request for a preliminary injunction.

31:57The injunction was an extraordinary emergency measure to prohibit the Pentagon from completing the process to terminate Lara, Eric and I. We have received notices, but we haven't actually been terminated at this point. What is not the full case, it is just an assessment and a judgment as to whether the Pentagon can proceed forward with their planned measure as they notified us a few days ago, a week and a half ago. So now at this point, the judge ruled that the Pentagon can go forward and issued termination notices, but that's not the end of the case. This is just whether or not they have the authority to proceed. Now we'll have the opportunity to conduct discovery, provide other measures and really talk about the substance of the case, whether or not we are speaking in our First Amendment capacity and whether government employees have a right to speak in their First Amendment capacity or whether they're prohibited from doing so.

32:59I mean, Max, it also seems to be about whether or not speaking the truth is protected by the First Amendment. Are the truth got out? Is that a fair assessment? Can you take us into the substance? Yeah, it's really interesting. The Pentagon continues to say, Starr's rightful operate in an independent manner, consistent with the First Amendment in the United States Constitution, but then they ordered me and then they fired all of us for exercising those exact rights, our First Amendment rights on the free to press. Additionally, the timing of this was all very strange. The interviews that Lara and Eric did, aired July 5th on CBS and it was until August 12th that I received a direction to fire them. That's an extremely long time. In the day before that, we published our story about the USS Lincoln troubles with food and health care and other troubles on that particular carrier.

34:04And that resulted in dissatisfaction from the Secretary of Defense Pete Heikstaff and from the President, but also eventually resulted in that carrier being sent home and a carrier replacing it. So, I think that validates the coverage and the validates the importance of stripes independent coverage. Max, the Pentagon is unique in that it is particularly opaque outside the military community. What are the stakes of stars and stripes being taken off the field of play? So, Starter Stripes has a unique access. That's part of what Lara does every day as a reporter. We're able to tell stories that other journalist organizations do not have access to or are not aware of because we live and work within their communities. We are part of that community. The people trust us. And they trust us because our content is accurate. It's credible. And, for instance, it's impartial and we are just telling the story for the military community about the military community. That also then makes the department more transparent for other media organizations and for our

35:07citizens who spend an extraordinary amount of money to support our military community. Lara, the Pentagon memo ordered you to quote or suggested you to quote republish content from Pentagon public affairs. What if any is the distinction between quote, republishing content from Pentagon public affairs in propaganda? You know, I think that a lot of people saw that item in the memo and took issue with it because we don't publish public affairs content. We publish independently reported facts from our reporters. That's the definition of a newspaper. I think asking to put anything besides independently reported unbiased news in a newspaper undermines its mission and undermines the credibility that we have with service members. What happens if you're not able to accurately report on what's happening in places like

36:10the USSA, Abraham Lincoln? Ultimately, I think that service members in the American people suffer from that. There's no population of people that I think are more deserving of truth and transparency from their leaders than the Americans who are willing to put their lives on the line for this country. I mean, it is to me the clearest example that has happened all of our since Trump has been back in their efforts to suppress the truth. Yeah, this is a White House that claims to be more transparent than any other White House before it. And they're not. And they're waging a war on the press, particularly over at the Pentagon. P. Hexath has repeatedly targeted journalists. The exile journalists from the Pentagon, obviously, that's totally unprecedented. Republicans and Democrats have worked with the press for a long, long time. You know this. And then now they're trying to turn stars and stripes into a propaganda organ of the Pentagon. It's never meant to be a propaganda organ. It's meant to publish independent facts for the military community.

37:11And this is part of a much broader thing happening across the administration. You know, they barred reporters from the New York Times, Bloomberg, the journal from going to the G20. This is funny. They have waged this wide war on the free speech and used every arm of the government to target critics, whether it's the FCC going after Jimmy Kimmel, even ICE going after a former Trump supporter, Milo Yannopoulos, and deporting him. They're doing everything they can to silence critics. And this is just another example of it. It's a remarkable one. Max and Laura, please keep us posted. As this case proceeds to the courts. Thank you very much for being here today. Oliver sticks around because he has new, frankly, wild reporting on what led to Fox News parting ways with Trump's most favorite host, Maria Barterromo. That story's next. We have amazing new details about the abrupt departure of one of Donald Trump's most favorite

38:14Fox News personalities, longtime host Maria Barterromo. Our friend Oliver Darcy writes in a big new piece in status that Barterromo divulged to the White House. That Fox limited its coverage of Donald Trump's conspiracy-ridden prime time speech about the 2020 election because, quote, her network bosses had ordered it so. And she apparently shared Fox News's internal guidance on that story. Darcy writes, quote, Barterromo not only effectively betrayed her employer, but also disclosed confidential company information violating the terms of her employment agreement. Barterromo's attorneys denied her firing today, writing in a statement, quote, those reporting her firing or the incredulous facts supporting that fiction have exhibited a complete and utter reckless disregard for the truth for backwards. Oliver Darcy. Okay, we'll put that aside for a moment. She doesn't work at Fox Business anymore. She's forcefully removed. Okay. Don't call that a firing. Tomato tomato. I mean, this was amazing to me from the outside knowing none of this, that he gives this insane

39:15speech, John Solomon, who sort of like eats the same bread and drinks the same water of like lies in BS as Maria Barterromo goes to the White House lawn and tells Juan Hillier, I think you're wrong with me that thanks day, but the intel showed that no votes were flipped and that the election was essentially secure. Fox News who paid a billion dollars tells our anchors not to buy in none of them do. Hannity's on, he doesn't follow Trump down the rabbit hole and neither does Fox Morning. So what does Barterromo do? Well, Barterromo wanted to cover this on the air. She's one of Donald Trump's true believers. Like, I think you have to separate at Fox News, the true believers versus the propagandist. For who's who? Yeah, and I think some people on Fox are smart enough to know that Donald Trump should not be going down this 2020 election rabbit hole or in 2026. Like he should be talking about the economy, but so some people are smart enough to understand this. And then you have Maria Barterromo, who's a true believer, a close ally and personal friend of the president who wanted to cover this. And so she attempted to, they told her no. And instead of just saying, okay, I understand, we're not going to cover this, she shares that guidance with the White House, which you know,

40:19basically she went in Tettle Tell to Donald Trump that Fox News isn't covering your big speech because they don't want to get involved in this. And you can imagine that probably wouldn't sit well at the White House, but also with her employers when they got word back that she had done this, you know, it seems to them like, look, like this was confidential company information. You shared it with an external entity. You're not a lot of do that as an employee. And this was kind of a last draw. She keep in mind, the Dominion voting systems lost her that you referenced that they paid $787.5 million to settle record defamation settlement. She was at the center. She was a key player in that lawsuit. You can read it. Her name is Oliver. The smartmatic lawsuit that's also still making its way through the court system. She's a central figure there. Then she got them sued over the summer because she had Kevin O'Leary come on and talk about another conspiracy theory about China and data centers. And so I think for Fox News, they were like, okay, we've had enough this was the last draw and you're done. Is it your sense that Fox News do what it did because

41:19the dollars had added up to too many or wish you too crazy even for them editorially? I think maybe a little bit of both. I mean, when you have to pay nearly a billion dollars in legal fees, like, you're going to cover that topic a little differently. And you've seen Fox News be a lot more careful about election conspiracy theories. Not to say that they're doing great editorial over there. They're still pumping up plenty of propaganda on behalf of the president. But in this particular area, they have certainly made it clear that they're not going to follow him down that rabbit hole. And then separately, like, I do think there's some of what of a limit there. And Maria just did not know where that line was. She was just happy to run with Trump on anything. And I say the final point to Nicole, it's really sad that Trump has gone so far out there that his favorite network, which has done everything it can to prop them up, is like, this is too much for us. We're just not going to do it. And they have to issue a warning. I mean, this is like the warning on tobacco, right? Like, and I'm not sure it's more than just financial interest. They don't want to pay another nearly billion dollar settlement, but that they had to issue guidance at all is remarkable.

42:24Talk about though this standard that the dominion had going for it. I mean, a lot of what I understand and practice about defamation is this known falsity. I mean, she's also an outlier in that a lot of the Fox hosts knew it was false. And Tucker Carlson, for his part, just kept talking about the stock price and the viewers. Yeah, most of the people at Fox knew it was false. And that's why they ended paying a billion dollars. Yeah, I mean, and it was there were damning text messages and we covered them at the time and real time. Like, you remember the damning text messages from a whole host of people, the top hosts there, the executives, the reporters covering the election. Yeah, yeah. And there was so they knew it was a lie. They platformed it. That's what they ended up having to settle that case. That's why I saw Maddox is suing. But there were people internally. And I think Maria is again, one of them who they're just true believers. I think, like, you know, to say, but she's like, she got brainwarms at some point and just believes Elvis Maga nonsense that's out there. I mean, I don't even know if Trump believes half the stuff, but she was happy to serve as his mouthpiece. And maybe she'll find a place in the White House.

43:27I was going to ask you where any sense of where she goes next. No idea, but there is that open spot to be press secretary. She's very close ally with Donald Trump. And she's again, she's a personal friend of his. She's known him for a long time outside his 10 years in public office. She's known him from back in his New York days. And so maybe he'll come in, swoop in, save her. We'll see. But she's an expensive employee. If you know, she needs a job. I mean, like, yes. It's another huge scoop. Congratulations. Incredible reporting. Thank you so much. Quick break for us. We'll be right back. We are back with more breaking news on this Friday of federal judge just extended her block of a U.S. Postal Service rule that would limit mail-in voting. Judge Indira Talao Juani granted more permanent relief for states and nonprofits seeking to block the Trump rule effectuating a key portion of Trump's effort to restrict mail-in ballots. This more permanently

44:29blocks the U.S. Postal Services attempt to implement their rule. We'll stand top of that for you. One more break will be right back. My guest on the newest episode of the Best People Podcast is former CIA Intelligence Officer Julia Curley who served on the National Security Council until she was fired from the Trump White House last year after her transgender identity was publicized by Laura Loomer. I asked her to assess the United States today as an intelligence officer. Would take a listen. If you were assessing the United States of America on behalf of an ally or an adversary, what would your PDB look like? I've thought about that many times. So first, I would be very concerned, let's just say I was an ally of the United States and I meant America well. I would be very concerned that what we are witnessing is a consolidating authoritarian government that has no intention of ever losing power and that is willing to do whatever it takes,

45:33even if it means sacrificing the true strength of the United States in order to ensure its success and durability and in the next election. And it is behaving in a way that's very similar to two other consolidating autocracies. The ruling family is enriching itself overseas and in shady means. The episode is remarkable because she is remarkable. It's out tonight for our premium subscribers. You scan the QR code on your screen to become one of them and you get to listen to episodes of the best people early every week. The episode will be available to everyone starting on Monday. That's it for me. Thank you so much for letting us into your homes today. We are grateful. Snoring, gasping for air during sleep, daytime sleepiness, I'm Shikiloneo and this shouldn't be anybody's experience. Asha, Dr. about Zepbound, turns up a time. The first and only FDA approved prescription medicine for moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea and adults with obesity. Zepbound is a prescription medicine

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