963 - Distractions feat. Prem Thakker (8/25/25)

All I wanna be is Il Joco.

All I wanna be is Il Joco.

Bring the king down to Brazil.

All I wanna be is Il

Hello, everybody.

It's Monday, August 25th, and we've got some choppo for you.

On today's episode, Felix and I are joined by the journalist Prem Teker from Zetio.

Prem is, we invited him to talk about the ongoing horror show in Palestine and Gaza, but I'd like to begin today with something a little bit closer to home.

And something that we have mentioned in passing on the show, but I think it's really worth opening up the show, talking about it today, and that is the ongoing federal occupation of our nation's capital.

So, Prem, beginning there, watching this from my computer screen or on television from here in New York, like so much in our present political moment, it seems like this is a mix of pure malevolence and absurdity.

But from someone in D.C., like some of the videos I saw you post and some of what you're covering, what does this federal takeover of D.C.

practically entail?

Like, how did it start?

And what does it feel and look like to be out and about in the nation's capital right now?

Yeah, so

being in DC is very, very weird.

It's a mix of, I think, the essence of this is that I think people are kind of oscillating between whether this is a distraction or whether it's, as you say, just malevolent, you know, part and parcel with how Donald Trump operates.

And I think it's a yes and.

Like, it's obviously like very convenient to distract from, you know, him being Jeffrey Epstein's pen pal and every other reason he's incredibly unpopular.

But it's also like

functionally and materially a disaster.

I mean, there are real people being swept off the streets.

There's workers who are just trying to deliver food, who are being shoved off their mopeds, people snatched out of their vehicles.

We have no sense of why they're being targeted, how exactly they're being targeted, the sort of cooperation between the different agencies.

A good example of this is: so, last week, me and my producer, Liam, we were out doing interviews with residents in DC and we were kind of checking out all corners of DC, seeing what it was feeling like.

And we were out in Columbia Heights, where there's a pretty large immigrant population, and we were just getting done talking to a doctor who was describing how a lot of her patients now have to decide between essentially, you know, picking insulin or risking abduction, and how that's kind of just scaring a lot of her patients from even coming out.

So are the DHS, FBI, like ICE, who are the federal agencies who are policing?

And when you spoke of that doctor, is she saying that like her patients don't want to leave their homes because they're afraid of getting scooped up or they don't want to go to a doctor's office because they're being sort of staked out?

It's both, yeah.

I mean, like, it's because like some of these patients, like their family members might be at risk, or even even if not, like, their immigration statuses aren't full citizenship.

they might have visas and so on.

And even then, they're still being targeted.

So anytime they hear of that happening in their neighborhood, they're just afraid to even go outside just at all.

And then there's the fact that, yeah, a lot of these agents, especially DHS and ICE, are sort of staking out

at church parking lots, in front of schools, clinics.

in such a way where it's like they're just always kind of looming.

And so right after this interview, like a minute after, my phone buzzes a bunch of times and I get these texts that you gotta come to the metro station in Columbia Heights.

So we run over and there's this really bizarre scene where there's like three or four agents in their camouflage fatigue is kind of just walking around and the entire city block is full of people screaming at them, telling them to buzz off.

And so me and my producer, Lee and we, we kind of get into the fracas and we follow these agents down the escalators into the metro station and we're trying to ask them questions like what are you doing here?

Why have you been you know brought out here it looks like you're just kind of walking around and it's a mix of homeland security fbi and just other agents in police vests like amorphous police vests there's like four or five of them were these federal law enforcement agents were they masked or did they have identification of any kind they were they were all masked they were masked yeah yeah exactly they were all masked and so we're we're asking like you know what's up what are you doing a lot of the residents are in their face asking them to just you know why are you here get out of here and these agents are it's it was really comical.

They were just kind of aimless.

They didn't really know what to do because they just kept getting yelled at.

So they went up and down the escalators twice, just kind of back and forth because they didn't know where to go.

Finally, they decide to stay down in the metro station.

We follow them into the metro station and we emerge on this really just crazy scene.

There's like 12-ish, 10 to 12 agents scattered around this

man.

in the in the metro center uh metro station entrance and it's it's unclear what's going on there's there's no danger at all.

They're all kind of just holding on to their vests, just twiddling their thumbs.

We go up to one of the agents, we ask them, you know, what are you doing here?

What's up?

He just kind of glares at us.

Then we go up to a police officer, a police sergeant who's kind of, I guess, responding to whatever's happening too.

And we're like, what's good?

What's going on?

And he's like,

traffic stop.

I'm like, what's the traffic stop for?

He says, fair evasion.

He kind of pauses, says fair evasion.

I'm like, okay, so why is the FBI and DHS and HSI responding to fair evasion?

And we we get in this really crazy back and forth where this cop just starts debating me, essentially, about how they're just trying to keep people safe.

I don't know what it's like to be the victim of gun violence.

Like all this very crazy sort of straw man where I'm just asking him, like, why are there massed federal agents responding to a fair evader?

And he keeps kind of deflecting because he doesn't really know what to say.

He eventually just ends up saying, you know, we're all supporting each other here to keep DC safe.

And I think that scene kind of stuck with me because it's this weird

unclear power sharing arrangement where there's National Guard in the streets.

Most of them seemingly don't want to be here.

And now they're being forced to be armed and carry guns.

They all are just kind of walking around, kind of really avoiding much of the

chaos.

They're kind of just in really random locations, posted outside of Union Station, posing with big Humvees.

There's the DHS and ICE agents who are much more active in carrying out these arrests.

And then the police who are kind of, it's unclear where they all stand because they're obviously supporting all of it.

And they're often at the scene of these arrests, if not helping carrying them out.

But sometimes it's just not clear what their directives are, what their jurisdiction is relative to these ICE agents and DHS agents and even Secret Service that seem to be much more active in policing the city than the actual local PD at some points.

Yeah,

it reminded me a lot of, I don't even really think you could call it a test run because that implies that they're they're figuring out do's and don'ts and the uh most efficient way to do whatever it is they're trying to do but we we we saw a um

a prototype of this in uh los angeles earlier this year and it was the same sort of thing where there were marines uh there were national guard uh and then you know, a combination of state troopers and local PD.

And between the Marines and the National Guard, who just really did not seem like they wanted to be there, I mean,

with the National Guard, that is kind of more of what you signed up for, even if it would usually be way less haphazard and

stupidly planned than that.

But

the Marines...

Especially didn't want to be there.

The cops seemed really confused.

This seems...

I mean, I would say they didn't learn anything, but that sort of suggests that there's any type of goal here or anything.

We've talked about this phenomenon before

in reference to the first Trump administration, how, you know, this idea that COVID was probably more advantageous politically for Trump than it was

a disadvantage, because there was this idea that the Trump administration, at least in 2019, by that point, was not about anything.

I think we're on a kind of accelerated timeline now

with all that.

I mean, can you evince any goal here besides just trying to look busy?

No, I think that's a good point.

It really does

feel just libidinal and how committed it is to just like abject cruelty for the sake of executing it, if nothing else, or just looking busy.

It's hard to determine like where one goal ends and the other begins particularly because it seems like everyone around Trump seems so fired up by it.

Like, of course, there's like all the hoggish memes we see on Twitter from the DHS account and like the different people kind of in the sort of like media sphere that are like close to Trump, you know, your Laura Lumer types and so on that are really, really for it.

And then there's, of course, you know, the mastermind of Stephen Miller and how this, you know, is totally in line with the project we know of his.

It's just hard to examine how much of the motives stick with Trump specifically as a political figure.

And that's not to say, like, it's surprising he would carry this out.

This is the kind of thing he's been talking about for years.

He made no secret that this is the kind of thing he would want to do.

But

I think

you're kind of getting at what's difficult here was that it's just very hard to determine what the purpose is here between ideology versus just this stupid sense that, like, yeah, like this is the best way for us to feed the base, keep them leeched on, and maybe expand the base in some crude and cruel respect.

Yeah, it's this very depressing final form

of whatever this is.

Yeah.

Where

the sole duty of the executive branch, at least, is to sort of like create articles.

That then like, you know,

your Laura Lubers could go, look how upset they are about the stupid thing we're doing.

Isn't it great?

And

you resort to that after you've done your big like, you know, austerity regime tax bill and like, you know, have had Ghillain

finish a coloring book that says that you're not a pedophile.

But it is, it is, it is disheartening just how on the nose it is and that so many people are still like, isn't this great?

Well, I mean, I don't know, like, I guess there is like the stated goal for why this is happening, which is that crime is out of control.

And then like the the stated targets, which are undocumented immigrants who are supposedly committing crimes or, you know, evading fares on the DC Metro.

And that's getting the FBI involved in this.

But when I think about like this in particular in Washington, D.C.,

I can't help but think of like

another motivation here being like a kind of theater of intimidation directed at civil government in this country or local government or just the residents of any major city in this country.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, they did say one of their stated goals is to

disenchant and dishearten and like destroy the will of civil servants.

And obviously that was first accomplished with all the Doge layoffs.

And this just, you know, hammers it home.

It'sn't the inciting incident for this occupation of DC the carjacking of one of the Doge, the Doge teenagers, big balls?

Which seemingly has just continually been undermined as to exactly what happened.

It's actually unclear how much of this was him just sort of innocently being targeted versus him kind of

sort of

instigating or coming up to two teens and it's unclear exactly what he was looking for with two teenagers at that hour at night.

I mean, I can't say much more because I don't know the exact contours, but it seems like that story has changed a lot since the initial report that he was just apparently saving someone from a horde of teens, a horde of violent teens.

I think the story has changed a lot since then, which is perfect.

But yeah, I mean,

what's been tough too is like, I'm like talking to a bunch of DC residents over the past week, you know, some people who are newer here, you know, have moved here in the past couple years, maybe because of a government job, to people who have lived here for their entire lives,

who, you know, are here just because they live in DC, not because they have any connection to the government.

It's just like so

crazy how these people, in a very basic sense, have just never had any sense of equal representation or any sense of like being equal to another person from you know Montana or Wyoming or California or wherever.

They've just always been subject to the whims of someone they can't really appeal to.

And now they're just the testing ground for what will probably go to you know a city near you.

And that's it's bleak.

Well, I mean, yeah, I mean, and Trump has advertised that, you know, this is, you know, if Baltimore, Chicago, New York City, you're next.

But you raise the issue of what makes D.C.

separate from every other American city, which is that it is basically perpetually under a state of federal occupation.

What are some of the reasons that, like, he can do this in D.C.

that might be more difficult in a city like New York or Chicago?

Or is there no reason to believe that there's anything stopping them from sending the National Guard or the FBI to police street crime in New York or Chicago.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, there's the basic, I think, structural difference of DC just not being a state such that even, for instance, like

mechanisms of activating National Guard are different when you're not necessarily appealing to state governors to do that.

Because, you know, for instance, like the Vermont governor kind of, who's a Republican, you know, kind of tapped the brakes on the idea of him mobilizing National Guardsmen to go anywhere.

So there's that aspect.

There's like just the

path of least resistance of DC and being a place where, yeah, like there is no like functional

like legislative or

governor, like governmental safeguard from stopping this in any sort of meaningful sense.

I'd be curious to see like, for example, if he tries to mobilize to, let's say, you know, New York City or Chicago, like what J.B.

Pritzker or Kathy Hooker are going to do.

They both seem like, at least rhetorically, pretty against it and pretty, you know, fired up to stand against it.

I think what's been interesting for me walking through DC and kind of talking to people and just watching every single day these operations happen is that

right now Congress is out of session.

That doesn't mean members of Congress can't be doing something, but I'm curious when Congress is back in session in September.

Let's say Trump keeps this going and renews the sort of 30-day cycle that's happening in DC.

Like, what are members of Congress going to do

when they're here in DC and they could conceivably do something about the fact that ICE agents are just marching around the city that they work in and live in?

That's what I'm kind of watching in the next couple of weeks.

I guess just like for some like historical context here,

obviously like the National Guards are sort of mobilized by governors of states when there is like a disaster that is

beyond the capabilities of local law enforcement, like a flood, hurricane, and then also like riots, which I guess like riot control is a form of law enforcement.

But like to have National Guard troops essentially policing an American city, like what is the historical precedent for that?

Because

I'm trying to come up with an example and I can't think of anything other than the Civil War.

No, I think you're exactly right.

Like I think

the last time someone made a parallel to this was like King George, really.

Like it's just, it's ridiculous.

Like this kind of like, again, what I was getting at earlier is that these agents are seemingly sometimes supplanting or like going

ahead of the local PD in terms of how they're policing these streets.

Like, oftentimes, like, you'll just see the agents alone kind of carrying out these operations.

Or, or if PD are there, it seems like the PD are kind of half-heartedly there or just kind of attached so there as a sort of local presence.

Like, it's very much

like it's, I don't think it's an understatement to say that DC is truly occupied when it comes to like Trump's directive here.

And it's so funny to

see the headlines that it's, you know, Trump's mobilization of the National Guard as the sort of headline of the occupation when it's, again, the National Guard really are not that involved at all in the actual material aspect of this.

which is these massed ICE agents and their camouflage fatigues carrying out these operations and and again arresting these people in such a way that, like, we don't know any justification for why they're being arrested.

We don't know where they're going.

There was one guy just the other day who was taken.

His wife had just given birth.

He was totally legally here.

There was no

evident justification for arresting him.

And they had to release him the next day because they found out, oh, yeah, like there's no reason to arrest him.

He broke his hand.

He now has a GoFundMe because of the fact that his wife just delivered a baby He just broke his hand because he was arrested for no reason.

There's just no accountability mechanism for any of this.

There's no sort of

place to go to get more answers that like any person on the street could It's really just a matter of what information they want to share what information they won't and what information gets leaked like it's it's truly unbelievable and I want to like communicate that that to people who are not in DC because it is kind of hard to really communicate because on one hand, when you're walking in DC, like you can walk around, it's not that there's an agent on every street corner.

I mean, as far as you can tell, because so many of these vehicles are unmarked, I guess you don't know for sure.

But at the same time, like, there's just this crazy atmosphere.

Where I remember

about three or four days ago, I was at a restaurant in Mount Pleasant, which is another immigrant-heavy community near Columbia Heights.

I was at a restaurant, and all of a sudden, this individual cop car puts its sirens on and starts to pull someone over for who knows what reason.

Every single person in like a three block radius immediately pulls their phone out and starts recording.

And for like the next 10 minutes, everyone's just kind of on edge.

What's going on?

Turns out it was just a routine traffic stop.

But that's kind of what it's like to be in DC right now, where the second you see any whisper of a police presence, everyone is completely on edge recording.

And that's terrible.

It's also terrible because a lot of these immigrants are now afraid to go to the police if there is an emergency because they don't want to get screwed over.

Considering the sort of hand-in-glove collaboration between DC police and the feds, is this making it more or less likely that any DC resident, documented or not, will call the police to report a crime?

Way, way, way less likely.

Way less likely.

This takes me back to that episode in the metro station with that cop who I was sort of having a discussion with about what's going on here.

He was kind of airing his grievances to me, really, if nothing else.

It seems like he just was looking for a place to complain.

That, you know, all these people are yelling at us about ICE this, ICE that.

Like, we're just trying to keep people safe, like from gun violence, again, which was just kind of a very crazy deflection.

But I was telling him, like, look, like, you are, are you working with DHS and ICE or not?

If you are, these are massed agents sweeping people off the streets.

And he just couldn't reconcile or accept that while we were discussing it.

And he kept sort of deflecting.

Because I think he and most officers who maybe do have maybe good intentions in some respect understand

that that is the case.

And I mean, also, it's been no secret before that this police department, like many others, has definitely done its own hand in brutalizing its citizens.

But nonetheless, like

it makes every aspect of this city less safe.

Like it's, it's, there is no sense in which this makes anyone safer.

Well, yeah, I mean, speaking of safety, we did get a little advertisement of the publicly stated reasons for this occupation from White House Obergruppenführer Stephen Miller, who in a White House press conference today said of D.C.

and of DC residents, quote, for the first time in their lives, they can use the parks.

They can walk on the streets.

You have people who can walk freely at night without having to worry about being robbed or mugged.

They are wearing their watches again.

So you heard that, DC.

You can feel safe to bring out the Breitling again.

But like, I mean, like, obviously, this is absurd.

Like, D.C., like every American city, has crime.

It has homicides.

But if you compare what the crime rate in D.C.

is now, or in the year leading up to this occupation, to like, for instance, where it was in the 90s, when it really was like the murder capital of the United States, like, what are we to make of like the highlighting?

Trump said something ridiculous the other day that like last week in D.C., there was not a single crime committed.

Like,

obviously, crime and policing is a problem in every American city, but like, to what extent, like, could anyone possibly believe that crime is at a level in D.C.

that warrants a federal invasion of the city?

I mean, we'll get to this with Israel, obviously, but it just feels like dressing for the sake of dressing.

Like, it's so obviously not true in BS.

Like, like you said, crime has gone down significantly in D.C.

It was much lower this year than previous years as well, or it's on a continual sort of decline, I should say.

But it's also like,

it's also like the specific dressing that they're saying like oh people can go to restaurants again people can go to parks again is hilarious because the other day when trump was saying he's gonna you know patrol dc to show you know presence with with the beautiful soldiers he like delivered some food to like one police base in anacostia and then just went back to the white house and like did nothing else And I remember I was staking out a location with my producer to try and try to get a glimpse of him in DC.

And when he didn't come, it's like, obviously, he's not.

He's not going to come because wherever he goes, he's going to have thousands of people who live in DC telling him to fuck off.

So it's like, I mean, that happened to JD at the

train station in DC, Union Station.

Yeah.

Exactly.

It's like

it's just funny for him specifically to say, oh, you can go to parks and restaurants again because it's like, well, you sure can't.

No one in the city wants you anywhere near there.

So it's ridiculous.

It's also just, it feels so, yeah, like, who is this for really?

And anyone in DC doesn't believe it.

There was a poll the other week, the other day, that showed like

80-something percent of people in DC feel less safe or just don't support this occupation.

It's funny, I mean, you guys live in New York, so it's like, you know, the classic sort of, you know, like when you're saying goodbye to someone, text me when you get home, whatever.

Let me know when you get home safe.

Like that's a, you know, normal thing you do in a city.

I feel like people are doing that much more now in the past two weeks than before.

People feel way more or less safe by these agents than anything else.

Like the amount of times that like I've been with a friend and they're like, hey, like, you know, just maybe you want to take a car.

Like it's nine o'clock.

The agents might be out.

It's like ridiculous how asymmetrical it is.

Well, I mean, that gets me like as far as DC residents go, I mean, D.C.

does have a city government.

How do DC residents feel?

And how would you rate how DC Mayor Muriel Bowser has responded to this occupation?

I think just it like they just don't feel anything.

They don't feel any sort of support from any lawmakers from the top on down.

And I feel like it's tough because for a lot of DC residents, it's like because of how disenfranchised they feel, it's like

the mayor is just a formality in some respects to them.

Like they feel like, like, what to what end does it even help in the first place?

It sure would help to have a mayor who's really, really, really fired up about it and sort of like constantly

sort of making this an issue to the public who can't really see what's going on in DC.

They don't really have that in Bowser, but I think a lot of them have felt that way for years, which is really depressing.

Sort of like expanding the amateur out from DC city government.

What do you make of the response of the Democratic Party nationally to these efforts by Trump?

Because

you mentioned it briefly at the beginning of the program, but like the sort of buzzword that they've just decided on with help from

the David Shore's polling outfit,

was it Blue Rose?

Like they've decided that the most salient and successful line of attack on this is that

the federal occupation of D.C.

and the ongoing just ICE presence on the streets of every American town and city is, quote, a distraction.

What do you make of that?

And like, I mean, like, what should, I mean,

I I always never want to ask journalists, like, what do we do about something like this?

Because it seems so big and daunting.

But, like, what should we expect of leaders and politicians who are asking for our vote when it comes to something like this?

Like, is it like testing to see how well something polls?

Or like, I mean, like, it just doesn't seem like there's

things are adding up here.

Because, like, whether it's a distraction or not, it's happening and it warrants a response.

And, like, maybe your response to that is politically unpopular, but like,

you gotta say and do something, right?

Yeah, I'll preface this first by thinking about how often people in our space especially think about ways in which the Democratic Party or the ostensible opposition party behaves and how it often falls short.

And how often these conversations devolve into, ah, if only Hakeem Jeffries did this or Chuck Schumer did this.

I'm just prefacing this by saying that it seems like some of the things that you or I might think an opposition party should be doing is just fundamentally not something

these figures might be doing.

So I'm just going to start with that.

I think a capable opposition party would remember what happened just weeks and months ago when a few Democrats decided to make the abductions of people like Kilmar Obrego-Garcia and Seacott a concern, which was that Trump's approval on immigration tanked by 20 points.

When Chris Van Hollen visited the facility and he kept making it an issue, polls started shifting.

And I think it's not a coincidence that some of the most prominent, well-respected, popular politicians in America, you got Bernie Sanders, AOC, Zoran, Rashida Tlaib,

Graham Plattner, who's just made a splash running in Maine, all these people who a lot of people just kind of have this sense of, oh, this person feels straight up to me in some respect.

The reason they feel that way is because they, like I think you guys too, too,

treat people like adults.

Like they treat people as individuals whose minds can change.

And I think any opposition party would adopt that.

That this, as you say, this is something that's happening, whether you like it or not, whether you think it's convenient to your current poll-tested political message or not.

It's happening.

It's either you can call it a distraction, someone else who's maybe a bit more sharp would call it an opportunity.

An opportunity to not only expose this administration for as bad as you pretend it is, but also to convince people that they could look at things another way.

That

this is not only horrific because it's sending massed agents in the street, but because it's the output of a specific way of looking at immigrants and immigration as this invasion.

Like this is an entrance for Democrats to undercut what they assume is a Republican strong point, which is that Americans believe there's too much immigration or that there's an immigration problem.

This is an entrance for you to actually say, you know what, maybe that's not true.

And this is the output of us thinking that.

I hate that fucking thing where just like anything that happens is a distraction.

It reminds me of backpack rappers who just they do the same thing.

Just like any event that happens.

Kendrick versus Drake, it's a distraction.

I'm in the studio getting traction.

But yeah, no,

that is a huge thing.

I mean, that we've talked about.

This idea of people condescending to voters.

We will be the first to say that the average voter, whatever that fucking man's, the average person, is usually not a fucking genius.

People, however smart or however stupid or however ill or well-informed they are,

usually know when they're being being condescended to.

I always think about that Ruben, that Ruben Gallago thing where he said, oh, we should, we should do an ad where we say the Democrats are the party that's going to get you a big-ass truck.

That's like two inches removed from Terry Cruz and idiocracy.

Even if someone, like, I mean, you know, from what I've seen, Americans love big, stupid trucks, but putting it in such terms, they are aware that you're getting down on your your hands and knees and giving them a propeller hat and a lollipop.

I do think,

I think that's a giant thing behind Sanders's continued appeal to

independents and just

people in j just voters in general.

That

you know,

he has a lot of faults,

especially on Israel over the last two years,

especially.

But he really doesn't condescend to people.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Like,

these people just don't,

as you're saying, like, whether someone is

a rube or not, in whatever way you define that, if you treat them like one, they'll hate you.

Like, why would you like to be spoken to like that?

And I think, like,

it's not just this idea that, like, whatever the public currently believes is set in stone and we should follow that rather than

leading or attempting to bring people along or seeing

troubling events as an opportunity to articulate a different political vision for the country.

But like going off what Felix says, well-informed or ill-informed,

contradictory beliefs or not, I think most people understand have a well-defined sense of morality and right and wrong.

And like particularly like, for instance, like on this deportation thing, it was very popular when people believed that, yeah, of course we want to deport dangerous criminals who are in the country illegally and hurting people who would be against that.

But it's become unpopular now that it's become clear that most of the people being deported by a large margin have no criminal record in this country.

And I think like that, and to return to Stephen Miller here and like why I think what is like the

you know subtly stated reasons behind all of this, this sort of theater of cruelty and intimidation and the show of force of the federal government overriding local law enforcement, is that like

An immigrant who is in this country undocumented and has not committed a crime or any crimes for like decades and has a kid here and has a family who are natural born citizens and work a job and pay taxes.

That is the crime that they are most concerned about.

Like it may not be a crime legally, but for them it is a crime against their worldview and ideology and a threat to their safety.

And this is what I talk about, this Fortress America ideology.

And like going off of that, you mentioned Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

Could you just give us an update of what's going on with his case?

Because he has just been detained again, and now they are threatening to deport him to Uganda.

What is going on with that case is like as another very prominent case in which they got a lot of media attention the Trump administration was very embarrassed over because multiple judges said that they deported this guy in error.

They're obviously not backing down on this and like they want to, I don't know, rectify the error as they see it and send this guy to Uganda.

Like why Uganda?

How did they come up with that country?

Yeah, so you kind of laid it out perfectly.

He was released

as the Trump administration continues to lose on pretty much all of these cases that they're challenged on

when they proceed through the legal system.

He was released and he was notified that he had a routine check-in just days afterwards.

He and his advocates kind of knew what was coming, which was, I mean, especially because ICE just kind of advertised that they were seeking to redetain him.

And as you say, send him out to Uganda, which is a country that's sort of among the few that have agreed with the U.S.

to be a sort of location of deportation.

I assume they must be getting some sort of incentive from the United States government, like in terms of money or some sort of consideration for volunteering to take in people we're deporting.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

There's like a handful of these countries that are getting sort of strategic benefits.

And obviously as Trump's kind of going on this tariff rampage, a lot of these like smaller countries are interested in whatever sort of smidgen of diplomatic benefits they can get out of these countries.

You know, some of these are also just temporary or momentary well, but

they're getting whatever they can out of Trump.

And

I mean, also, some of these countries, just a side note, just kind of see this as a moment to kind of cozy up to someone that they view, at least for the moment, as a strong leader that's kind of getting whatever he wants.

So, you know, these countries have varying motives for why they're doing it.

But obviously, it's no coincidence that many of them are small

or at least have like relatively less diplomatic power.

And they see this as like a way to hop onto the U.S.

But yeah, so they agreed to be a location for people like Kilmar.

For now, he is

in this limbo of where the government is, you know, setting in motion these proceedings to deport him to Uganda.

His legal team has filed an emergency challenge, a habeas case challenging the deportation at all.

And so it's kind of this repeat formula that we're seeing with all these high-profile cases, including people like Mahmoud Khalil, where

the government throws everything they can at these particularly high-profile cases as much as they can,

because, like, their whole argument kind of relies on these high-profile names.

And if they can't even do that with Kilmar or Mahmoud, then it kind of invalidates every other one who's downstream of that.

And so, you see these sort of repeated legal motions in response to these repeated attempts to deport them.

And if nothing else, you know, as we discuss these high-profile cases, I always just want to return to how

insane it is to imagine being Mahmoud or Kilmar, being this.

You didn't ask to be sort of the

cardinal name of this mass deportation regime, but now you are.

Now, not only are you under more scrutiny than almost anyone in America, you're also subject to repeated attempts to dehumanize you, to send you who knows where to it in this incredible Kafka-squee kind of scenario, not to just overuse the term, but it's ridiculous.

I think it's always important to just kind of imagine how truly insanity-inducing it must be to be in the center of something for which you're constantly and repeatedly targeted, no matter how many times you might get a legal win.

Yeah, and like that's something I've been trying to do myself as well, is like try to imagine myself in a similar situation.

And it's something I've struggled to even talk about on the show, which is ostensibly supposed to be funny and entertaining because it is so horrifying.

It's unimaginable.

So, I guess, like, we've, I'm sure our listeners have, and I know, I know, I have, we've all seen videos about like how an ICE deportation begins, right?

Which is evil enough, right?

You see people hassled on the street, they're asked for their papers, and they're disappeared into a van or something.

But what can you tell us about what happens to someone after they're taken?

Like, like, what can you tell us of that process and like what it actually looks like now?

Yes, so

as you see, they're arrested often violently and brutally in the streets.

Any witnesses have no answers as to what's going on, why they're being taken, where they're going.

They're placed into detention centers, checked in fully, processed fully, often have

often these detention centers are in completely different states from the ones they've been arrested in.

So it's like a process of like, I think a lot of hotels are being used as well, where particularly minors are being kept in hotels and unallowed to contact family members or legal representation as well, as they're sort of ferried from these, like, you know, different, I don't know, like deportation zones.

Yes, yeah, exactly.

They're shipped off like cattle to who knows where.

They sure don't know where.

Any lawyer who might be attached to the family,

if they're lucky that they already have someone sort of attached to them or aware, sometimes they don't even know where their clients are taken.

It can take days to get any clarity.

And in the meantime, ICE, DHS, are slow to respond, if at all, to these sorts of inquiries.

It takes sometimes a whole lot of legal pressure to get any answers.

Finally, you get some sense of where they are.

Then, you know,

you'll maybe get some sense from the lawyer as to what the conditions are in these facilities, which are almost always horrific.

There's bug infestations everywhere.

The amount of daylight some of these kidnapped people get is maybe a couple hours a day, if that.

I often hear accounts that the air conditioning is turned up so it's like 50 degrees all time and that the lights are on 24-7.

Exactly.

It's either like you're freezing cold

and like light, you know, halogen light, fluorescent lights are just sort of like bearing down on you.

Like

you're hungry, you're cold, and you can't sleep.

And there's like 60 people in like a cage.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's either way too freezing or if it's really hot, they'll have no AC.

Either way, it's extreme temperatures.

You're made to feel as uncomfortable as possible.

You're barely fed.

And if you're fed, you know, the food is disgusting, garbage often the time.

It's just like horrific in every aspect of it.

And I think the thing to like, to underline about this is that like, if these are people who are arrested for murder, home invasion, rape, arson, arson, you know, like violent, despicable crimes.

That sort of treatment of them would be an outrage regardless.

But these are people who are being arrested for like not even having committed any crime, period.

Exactly.

Besides, I don't know, being

a misdemeanor, civil violation of being undocumented.

100%.

100%.

And that's what really

is so jarring is the fact that it seems like these agents are using whatever possible way they can, any sort of justification, to detain these people.

Whether it's traffic infractions,

broken taillights, whether it's fair evasion, any sort of entrance to detain someone,

up to things that were dismissed or were old cases that were addressed, anything at all to get someone off the streets, again, ship them to who knows where, stuff them into these devastating, dreadful facilities,

and then

they'll be placed into removal proceedings in an immigration court.

And again, immigration courts are not like regular courts.

These are overseen by the government.

So, for example, there's just much less chances for you to get actual justice in immigration court versus a judicial court.

Yeah, like don't immigration judges essentially work directly for the federal government?

Like they're not

independent of, they're not like the judiciary as an independent branch.

Yeah, exactly.

It's it's and of course that's a slight simplification, but functionally speaking, yes, they work within

sort of jurisdiction of the government in terms of

who they're subject to.

And so, yeah, they're, in some respects, a stamp for what the Attorney General might already want.

We mentioned this at the beginning of the episode, but one of the most disturbing aspects of all of this is that the federal agents doing this are masked and provide no identification, let alone a warrant.

And what's sort of stirring about that to me is that, like, this is justified by this idea that they're being doxxed.

That, like, and you know, and you know what?

A lot of them are being doxed, and rightly so.

And the thing is, when it comes to law enforcement, I felt like one of the most fundamental ideas is that if you are empowered by society to use lethal force to protect the public or prevent crime or intercede in a violent situation, you have to have a badge with your name and number on it.

And And certainly,

like your identity is a matter of the public record because you are a public employee.

And it's just specifically law enforcement, the idea that we can allow

arrests to be happening, like forget having a warrant for an arrest, but arrests being carried out by men who are essentially anonymous gang members that arrest people and put them into a process of which there is no oversight.

And of which the end of which, at least in some circumstances that we know about, is the Seacot Prison in El Salvador, which of what we know of the people caught up in this dragnet, I'm thinking particularly the experience of the hairstylist who was sent there.

Seacott Prison is a horror show of torture, rape, and murder.

And then like when you begin to put all of those elements together and ask yourself, what does this look like?

What does this feel like?

I like it you end up in a very uncomfortable place.

It is not, I mean, like, we, but it's one that requires serious consideration on anyone who is willing to let their imagination go there.

It's so dark.

It's, it's

this expectation, as you're getting at, of, of insularity and comfort for people who are allowed by our taxes to carry guns around is remarkable.

And I think,

I just think to

so many people in this country, whether they think of themselves as libertarians, as

liberals,

or just as people who

feel truly American in whatever they think that means.

Have some self-respect.

Have some respect.

How do you find yourself comfortable with the money that you work every day for to go towards massed agents who get to just do whatever they want, to people who are your neighbors, to people who, by sheer lottery of existence, you are not them?

And I think that lack of self-respect that either is banged into us or just inculcated or we adopt for whatever reason, it's really sad.

I think every person in this country should be empowered to ask themselves if this is something they want to be a part of.

And I think to your point, a lot of people, if they really had the opportunity given to them to really digest that question, would be like, yeah, probably not.

Probably not.

And I mean, one other aspect of this that's just like horrific that gets to what you're talking about, how dark of a place this is, is how many instances already we've seen of people impersonating ICE agents or cops

and proceeding as is, you know, trying to rob people, trying to, you know, violate people,

try to even take people away.

Like,

it's crazy.

that

because of the wide morass of how just depressing and scary this is, stuff like that, which is on its own crazy, is like barely a ripple.

Well, this gets into my next question.

And I'm like talking about like where I'm trying to like, where I'm willing to let my imagination go.

Is it like I, like I assume a lot of people who listen to the show, or a lot of people when they think about this,

sort of protect their own sanity or sense of security by saying, well, you know, at the end of the day, I was born in America.

I am a full natural American citizen.

I have a U.S.

passport.

And, you know, I have some profile or credibility.

But

there does seem to be a movement.

I mean, like you said, like a lot, most people, if they take this into their imagination, would say, no, I don't want to be a part of this.

But a significant portion of this country does, in fact, want to be a part of this.

And, you know, they think it's great.

And to that end, it does seem like there is a movement towards the end of birthright citizenship and even outright denaturalization.

And so, like, how plausible would you rate like the, I mean, it's like certainly an openly stated goal of Stephen Miller, but like how secure should people who are born in the United States be that they won't find themselves the subject of this Kafka-esque ordeal?

Yeah, yeah.

It's

it's interesting because there's obviously this would impact millions and millions and millions of people in a way that

maybe previous incursions into immigration policy haven't.

But at the same time,

almost no one at this point can feel fully safe when, as you say, these masked agents are going around, they're getting to take whoever they want and ship them off to a gulag somewhere else and we can't really even ask questions.

There's even people who are in the streets right now in DC who are just recording, who are now being threatened, if not actually being arrested, who are, for all intents and purposes, as far as we know, citizens.

And so, as you say earlier, with regards to the aspect of people for whom, even if these terrible conditions of ICE detentions, even if violent criminals, let's say, were subject to them, that is still immoral.

That is still a breach on our collective freedom.

This is the same kind of thing.

The second one person is allowed collectively by us to be targeted for whatever reason, outside of due process by government agents for whatever reason.

That fundamentally breaks any full confidence we can have in anything.

And I don't think that's like over dramatic because over the course of days and weeks, like it has patently gotten worse every single day with regards to who is being targeted, how they're being targeted, how much we're allowed to ask about this targeting.

Like it has certainly undeniably gotten worse every single day.

And so I kind kind of oscillate between the idea that, well, you know, birthright citizenship impacts so many people.

It's so like deeply codified.

It would impact, I think, a good deal of conservative people, even if it's just, we're thinking about this cynically.

But at the same time, some of that has been true up to this point too.

And so we're kind of reaching that

threshold point where it's like it's really hard to tell, like, what is and is not sacred.

I mean, you know, a few years ago, you would say that abortion rights in a certain respect are like, at least in some aspect, sacred or protected.

And even that's not true.

And so when you have like an entire governmental apparatus seemingly fixated only on immigration more than really anything else at this point, kind of to what Felix was saying as like maybe their best bet to show that they're doing something.

I don't know if you can consider anything like surely protected.

Yeah.

And like, you know, I mean, just to bring it back to like to Stephen Miller and like who are the really like ideological apparatchiks of the Trump administration, you say like when Felix said like the sort of the problem of like, well, what is this administration about?

Like,

what's its guiding light?

What's its North Star?

And you're right, like now that has become immigration.

But I don't think that we should like settle for that euphemism because like whether it's 2016 to now, the guiding light of this administration and the political movement that they have fomented is the ethnic cleansing of America.

It is the return of American, what we think of as American culture or American government to like the white man's country.

And like, I don't know how else to put it.

I mean, like, do you think that that's like

anywhere close to the mark here?

I mean, I don't think that's an exaggeration.

No, I think this is like the first time that I think

Twitter is real life is like 1,000% true insofar as like everyone who seems to be a decision maker or person of influence from like a prominent right-wing influencer down to like a random poster is on twitter saying the exact things you're saying and like on one hand twitter feels so out of out of touch i think not just optimistically but really with a lot of america it isn't out of touch with like the people in the white house like it doesn't feel like that there's much of a distinction between the two when it comes to policy at the end of the day um

and that's

horrifying because I mean as you guys know as as active Twitter inhabitants it's it's it's just a bunch of Nazis there.

And, you know, in the past, it's like, even in just a few years past, it'd be like, all right, you know, like, maybe one random White House staffer follows some of these guys, but like, whatever.

But now it's like, no, like, this is just like daily reading, it feels like, insofar as, like,

everything

that comes out of the relevant agencies isn't really like dog whistling.

Like, it's just like telling you what is what they want, which is what you're saying.

It's like, at the end of the day, they want an America that looks different than the America we've built.

You know, now to segue to an even more horrific topic, and I'm going to apologize both to you, Prem, and our listeners for the content of today's episode, but I suppose we should turn from the attempted ethnic cleansing of America to the actual ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

Prem, I woke up this morning and like, I'm sure you and everyone else listening to this right now, the first thing I saw was this absolute atrocity that took place at Nasser Nasser Hospital in the south of Gaza this morning.

That I found out about this morning.

Essentially, a double-tap strike on a hospital that killed 20 people, five of them journalists.

And this was captured on camera as the second strike hit the civil defense rescue crews that were attempting to remove the bodies or save anyone

still alive after the first strike.

Just like,

what can you tell us about what happened there this morning?

Yes.

So the Israeli military bombed a a hospital,

killing several people, including a journalist.

And after about 10 to 15 minutes, there were some rescue workers, some civilians, some journalists that were all responding to the attack,

trying to, you know, they were on the scene.

And then Israel bombed it again.

And

over the course of a few hours, first they said, you know, oh my goodness, like we're looking into this, we're investigating what happened.

The Israeli prime minister's office issued a statement about an hour or two ago saying that they deeply regret what they call the tragic mishap that occurred today at the nasser hospital in gaza israel values the work of journalists medical staff and all civilians and

again i i kind of just get back to this question of self-respect where it's like to what end do people in any country complicit in this, no less the United States, feel comfortable with the idea that their taxes fund not only the bombing of a hospital, which was so unheard of, you know, in 2023, it was a blood libel back then.

Not only do your taxes fund that, but then it funds a double-tap strike that only happens after there are journalists and rescues that are clearly, evidently there to respond to the scene.

They're bombed again.

And then, Your taxes, just cherry on top, funds the people who bombed them, telling you straight to your face that, no, it was just, oops, sorry, just a mistake.

Well,

it's just such an obvious pattern that the only time that any Hasbarists, specifically for the English-speaking world or Israeli military spokesman, ever apologize for something

where they ever, ever admit fault is when they are caught this red-handed from so many different angles, you know, live.

And

it's

that seems like an incredibly obvious pattern to me.

Just you only apologize when you get caught beyond the spin zone.

But that would only really matter if they were capable of doing anything that would shame any of their Western sponsors.

I mean,

the New York Times news alert about this was it was unclear what their target was.

What did he say?

What was it?

I mean, yeah,

I mean, like,

this is not to say that, like,

American public opinion has absolutely no effect for, you know, the future of Israel's standing, for,

you know, what this means 20 years from now.

But I don't think there's anything they could actually do that could cause

people at the New York Times or the White House or people who used to be at the Biden White House to

actually publicly admit that they were part of this horrific crime,

to have any shame at all.

Well, actually, Matthew Miller this week did come out and say, Yeah, it was Israel that was fucking up the ceasefire every time.

Sorry I didn't say anything like that when I was working with the State Department, but I can tell you that now.

So, I mean, I think there is some positioning for, like, you know,

like I said,

but that's like not because of anything Israel did.

I mean, that's like the BTK killer sending letters to the police.

You know what I mean?

No, that's just, I don't know, him trying, like, him, him trying, like, not to get protested when going to that shitty chili dog restaurant thing.

Yeah.

But no, like, Prem, going off what Felix said, like, and I'm thinking, of course, like, of the, you know, the assassination of the very prominent journalist, Anas al-Sharif, last week, probably the most prominent journalist who was in Gaza City.

And then now these five journalists who were assassinated today at Nasser Hospital.

I mean,

you hear that it's like the logic behind this is that, like, of course, Israel is assassinating journalists because they don't want witnesses to their crime.

But, like, this has happened so many times, and they have never been held accountable that it really does make me wonder why would they even bother to do that?

Just out of spite.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I think at this point, every action that we see from the Israeli government, when you're puzzled by it, when you're wondering, oh, what's the motive?

Like, there's always the common denominator that they just can, that any bloodlust or bloodthirsty nature within the Israeli government can just be satiated.

We have had 240, 250 maybe colleagues at this point, press colleagues, that have been killed with truly no consequence at all.

I think back so often to this big State Department report that was released last year that relates to weapons policy with regards to giving weapons to allies and whether they're in compliance with U.S.

law and international law.

That State Department report under the Blinken

State Department said that they found that the Israeli government committed some potential violations of international law with U.S.

weapons, but at the same time, they really try not to.

And yes,

there are instances of them blocking aid, but it seems like they're trying to do better.

And so I think we're just going to err on the side of caution and make sure we keep arming them.

Which is like an insane formula to any layperson who knows the word caution.

It's crazy.

And I mean, going back to the justification, Israel, I think this actually underscores

how much they're kind of just laughing at us, at anyone who thinks this is horrific.

They said their justification was that they were trying to hit a camera

owned by Hamas that tracks Israeli forces.

But they accidentally bombed the hospital twice.

They accidentally bombed the same location twice?

What did they not get the camera the first time?

Which again,

I thought the Israeli military was one of the most sophisticated, professional, impressive militaries in the world.

Well, yeah, some oopsies are bound to happen.

Either they're like the most impressive military in the world,

and they're committing war crimes because they can see everything that they're targeting, or they're just a bunch of bumbling idiots who are getting billions of dollars of American weapons with no caution at all.

And I'm not sure which conclusion is better, but

that's kind of their equation here.

Well, to like, again,

this is reflected back to earlier in the show when we were talking about what are the Democrats' response to these ICE deportations and occupations of American cities.

One of the things we've talked about over the last couple weeks is that the issue of Gaza has gotten so, like, public opinion has shifted so much on this conflict.

And I think the vast weight of American voters and certainly Democratic voters are absolutely appalled by what they see and are furious at the government for allowing it to continue and mad at Democratic politicians like Pete Budigej when he went on the pod save the world the other day.

He had to walk back his mealy mouth comments that seem to imply it's a very complicated situation and we just need to like embrace our friend and tell them that, hey, maybe you've gone too far.

But like there has been seemingly a rhetorical turn among the Democratic politicians and media outlets.

But like, not too much of a turn.

And I want to talk about the example of House Minority Whip Catherine Clark, who the other week used the word genocide to describe, she says, there is genocide and destruction happening in Gaza right now.

And

people thought that, oh, hey, like, that's new.

But within less than a week, she walked it back.

So, like, what does this tell us about the fact that like what's happening in Gaza cannot be,

you can't come up with a poll that says talking about this is a distraction anymore.

So, like, are democratic politicians attempting to use the correct words like genocide in the hopes that that will shut people up?

Or are they like doing that and now realizing that that's not enough and people actually want to change in policy?

And they're like, well, fuck, we're not going to do that.

Let's just go back to what we were saying before.

Like, how do you regard this, like, this seeming rhetorical shift and then reshift again as it relates to genocide and war crimes being carried out by one of our allies with our tax dollars paying for it.

So I'm of a few minds.

On one hand, I think it is patently true that in the past few weeks, especially, it's been very clear that a lot of Democrats feel a huge amount of pressure to totally evolve how they think about

Israel-Palestine.

You've had a lot of politicians, even just in passing comments on cable TV, kind of

put much more culpability on Israel and its starvation of Palestine

without, you know, also saying, and this wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for Hamas and so on and so forth.

Like, they've kind of been dropping these sort of previously presupposed, sort of necessary caveats about Hamas and so on.

Now, I think a lot of them are much more comfortable blaming the Israel government and not always just putting it on Netanyahu, but that is still a crutch for so many of them, as our friend Adam Johnson has often reminded us of the one-man theory.

Right.

At the same time, there's 15 members of Congress who have used the word genocide, which in some respects, man, like that's great.

You know, they're saying the word.

At the same time, that's nothing

when you think of the fact that it's so obviously clear that it's a genocide when you think of how many people over and over and over again in every single poll, pluralities, majorities say

either they're sick of this war, they're sick of funding it, or that they themselves see it's a genocide.

It, like with so many other parts of American politics and democratic politics, is very out of touch.

There's that aspect.

There's also, I mean, I will say just one thing that is worth noting: is that there have been a few members of Congress that were specifically backed by AIPAC, who in the past few weeks have said that they support stopping the transfer of weapons to Israel, which is not nothing.

But when it comes to

not public opinion,

but elected officials and their reticence to use the G word,

like, obviously, I don't think that has anything to do with domestic political considerations.

But like, can it be divorced from the very clear legal obligations that when a politician or representing the United States government says a genocide is taking place, that immediately locks in, at least according to various treaties and U.S.

and international laws,

like, not just like, once you say it, you can't put it back in the bottle, right?

Like, because it requires the United States to take action in a meaningful way to intercede or at least not be complicit in it, right?

Yeah.

And that's what makes Catherine Clark's backtrack so incredible.

I remember when we were reporting on it the day of, I was

talking to a colleague, and it's like, well, this is crazy because, you know, you can't imagine her backtracking on this because as you said, like, you can't put it back.

And then three days later, she says,

I want to be clear that I'm not accusing Israel of genocide.

And so then it's kind of like, so are you saying a genocide is happening?

And it just like fell from the sky.

But in any case, you can't just say something that dramatic and then backtrack it.

And again, expect people to take you seriously.

Like that is not a term you just throw around as a member of Congress specifically.

I think another aspect that kind of gets to what Felix was saying was that

one, I think, hesitation for so many members of Congress to say it,

even in Trump's America when it's supposed to be easier because a Democrat isn't in power anymore, is that if you haven't said that much before and you say it now, as you're saying, that means you are complicit.

Because, again, Joe Biden was president for a vast majority of this up to this point.

And a genocide, ethnic cleansing was happening then, and most of these politicians were funding it.

And so to come out now, even in Trump's America, when it's not Joe Biden anymore, you can be more open, you can't really be that much more open, which I think is something that a lot of people weren't anticipating when Trump was elected.

There was, you know, the classic, oh, you know, look at all these Democrats.

They're going to be much more outspoken now.

No, because they're still implicated.

And I think, I'm not quite sure what the calculus was with Catherine Clark.

I'm not sure if she just said it because she was just in a setting where it wasn't that public and she really does feel that way as probably most members do.

But then she realized, oh, I can't say that.

Or if she did want to make that the big place to say it, but then she got a few phone calls.

It's not quite clear.

But in any case, it really shows how

there's so little expectation from the people in power, even now, even as it gets worse, because so many of them are complicit to where we got to in the first place.

Trevor Burrus What do you make of speculation

from PodSave and other outlets that

the nominee in 2028 for the Democratic Party is going to be someone who has bucked AIPAC?

Do you think that that's overly optimistic or is that a realistic,

you know, realistic prognostication given how much public opinion on this issue has shifted?

I think it's great that

they're saying that.

I think that alone, if not being an indicator, at least is pressure on members who might be closer to them.

I think that's good.

I think

if we're going only on public opinion alone and nothing else, I'd say, yeah, for sure.

Like, again, over and over again, the public has a very clear general view.

on this war, on the idea of how many ways American society has been impacted by the suppression and McCarthyism to make sure that support continues.

I think a lot of people would agree with that.

I think the question really is with regards to other aspects of what might happen in the primary, which is that right now it seems like there's a lot of liberal progressive groups that really do seem to suggest that they want a different kind of politician, that they want a different kind of politics when it comes to the democratic side of things.

And that includes how they might view outside money, outside influence, including on AIPAC.

And so if those groups are really with it, then yeah,

I think for sure, because of how much influence those

prominent progressive organizing groups can have on the rest of the sort of media atmosphere on who is deemed as reasonable and popular and who is not.

So I think it's a coin flip.

It's up in the air.

I think in terms of public opinion alone, for sure, in terms of the forces that be, I think they're going to fight tooth and nail for that not to happen.

Well, I mean, you mentioned a friend of the show, Adam Johnson.

I'd like to give him a hat tip today because I think he made the very very astute point that, like,

while sort of cleaving oneself from APAC as far as the Democratic Party goes, at least public gestures to that end, are certainly encouraging.

I think the real test will be: are you willing to cut off J Street and Democratic Majority for Israel, specifically if you are a Democratic politician?

Because APAC is just the largest and certainly most effective node, but there are specific Democratic lobbying institutions as well, like J Street and DMFI, that are deeply entwined with the Democratic Party and just as complicit in this slaughterhouse.

Yeah, yeah, I think that's right.

I think it's also like, even if AIPAC in name

divests itself from a certain campaign, that does not mean the individuals associated with AIPAC can't just go ahead and donate as well.

Yeah, absolutely.

It really, I think it's a nice litmus test.

I think the real test, obviously, is just on policy.

What do you say specifically clearly on weapons to Israel?

What do you say about funding them?

What do you say about this like agreement the U.S.

has to just continually pump three billion dollars to them every single year with no conditions at all?

And even Pete Budigej himself in his sort of like walk back had to say I'd take a look at that.

I don't think that that's necessarily something we should be doing.

So that's the kind of thing that people ought to be specifically looking for and not just whether they reject a PAC, especially because

how easy really it is for Democrats to say this is a Trump-aligned super PAC.

I reject them, and then move on.

And as you say, and as Adam says, just collect pro-Israel money elsewhere.

Prem Tucker, I think we should leave it there for today.

I really want to thank you for coming on and for your time.

If our listeners would like to continue to follow you and your journalism or anything that you write, where would you direct them?

Yeah, so you can find me on Twitter, Blue Sky, TikTok.

Just look up Prem Tucker, T-H-A-K-K-E-R.

I know it sounds kind of silly.

You can find me there.

And then support us at Zatayo, Zatayo News.

There's, as we all know, a very big gap in how the mainstream media, the lanstream media is covering this,

both immigration, Trump's takeover, and of course, Palestine.

So we're trying to fill that gap in as much as we can and we appreciate all your support to help us do that.

All right.

Well, before we sign off for today on what was an exceedingly bleak episode,

And I do have to say, and I'm very thrilled to share with all of our listeners, some genuinely joyful and good news that I hopefully will be a palate cleanser for all of the darkness over the last hour or so.

And that is that as of Saturday night, I am overjoyed to tell you that Chris and Molly successfully delivered their first child, a daughter, on Saturday night.

Chris has passed along that both baby and Molly are doing great, and they will be heading home from the hospital any minute.

So I would just like to say on behalf of the whole Chapo family, welcome to this new person and that we are extending all of our love to Chris and Molly and their new family.

Chris, of course, will not be producing the show as he is on paternity leave.

So if you notice a dramatic drop in the quality and professionalism over the show, of the show over the next three to four months, you will know that it is because he is now a proud and happy father.

So once again, all our love to Chris, Molly, and their new daughter from us here at the Chapo Trap House family.

And for all of our listeners,

just, yeah, Chris is,

don't bother Chris for the next couple months because he is going to be, he is on paternity leave.

And like I said, all our love and congratulations to Chris and Molly.

That does it for today's show, everybody.

Till next time, bye-bye.

The butcher, yes, that was my tray.

But the king's shilling is now my feet.

The butcher, I may as well have stayed for for the slaughter that I see.

And the preacher in his pulpit,

sermon go and fight

what is right.

But he don't have to hear these guns, and I bet he sleeps at night.

I

and I

can't stop shaking

my My hands won't stop shaking.

My arm won't stop shaking.

My mind won't stop shaking.

I want to go home.

Please let me go home.

Go home.