How Many Nobel Prizes Can Trump Win?

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Welcome to Pod Save America.

I'm John Favreau.

I'm Dan Pfeiffer.

Packed show today, Dan.

Liberation Day Part 3 is upon us, and we're officially on Taco Watch.

Fuck my life.

We'll also talk about Trump and Republicans getting mad at Josh Hawley over trying to ban stock trading in Congress and in the White House.

Trump volunteering creepy new details about Epstein recruiting girls at Mar-a-Lago.

Stephen Miller's ad campaign for his secret police force, Democrats getting ready to fight back on redistricting, and Kamala Harris's big announcements about the California governor's race in her new book.

Then you'll hear Tommy's conversation with Colorado Congressman Jason Crowe, who happens to be in charge of recruiting House candidates for 2026.

But let's start with some news on the rapidly changing politics around the war in Gaza.

On Wednesday night, for the very first time, a majority of Senate Democrats voted for Bernie Sanders' proposal to block the sale of $675 million worth of U.S.

bombs and guns to Israel.

Among the 27 Democrats voting yes were senior establishment types and longtime supporters of Israel like Gene Shaheen, Jack Reed, Patty Murray, and Dick Durbin, who said, quote, for many of us who have devoted our congressional careers to supporting Israel, it is impossible to really explain or defend what is going on today.

Gaza is starving and dying because of the policies of Bibi Netanyahu.

There's also growing opposition on the right, from Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massey in Congress, to media types like Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, and a lot of the younger MAGA influencers.

New polling from Gallup shows that just 32% of Americans now support Israel's military action in Gaza.

That is an all-time low.

That includes just 8% of Democrats and 25% of Independents.

Netanyahu's favorability is at 29.52, his worst ever.

The Trump administration seems to be getting the message kind of.

Special Envoy Steve Witcoff traveled to Jerusalem Friday to meet with Netanyahu, presumably to press him on a ceasefire and to let in more aid.

The administration also announced new sanctions on Palestinian political leadership.

And Trump did write on Truth Social quote, the fastest way to end the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is for Hamas to surrender and release the hostages.

I'll also note that, according to the Associated Press, in just the last 24 hours before this recording, at least 91 Palestinians have been killed and more than 600 have been injured while trying to get food, which is still just trickling into Gaza.

Dan, what do you make of the shifting politics on Gaza among elected Democrats?

Before I get to that, I just want to say that I thought the conversation that you and Tommy and Lovett had about this on the Tuesday podcast was one of the best ones we've had on this podcast.

It was...

I don't think Twitter agreed, but that's okay.

That proves my point.

I thought it was just powerful, emotionally resonant.

It was smart.

You could feel the anguish that you guys felt about what's happening in Gaza to the people there, and certainly the children there, and your rage against the way the conversation about this was happening.

I just thought it was very powerful.

And I just want to say, I certainly share your anguish that it is impossible to not think about, impossible to imagine

children or anyone dying that way in such a preventable way.

And your rage at what is

how this conversation is happening, that there are people who can look at starving children with trucks of food not that many miles away and not think that the first thing you do is figure out how to save those children.

There is like, you guys went through this, but there's, there's, you can debate and have a conversation about who is, what policies got us here, who is responsible for this, what role Hamas plays, and certainly stipulating that Hamas is a terrorist organization who committed just atrocities on October 7th and many times.

But it is also very clear that Israel can

do more to help people.

Like they have the power to do it.

And just in watching the conversation, the thing I'd say is there's nothing wrong with holding a U.S.

ally like Israel to a higher standard than Hamas.

And that's all that you guys are doing.

That's all that these Senate Democrats are doing.

On the politics, which does feel very pedantic to talk about in this moment, but on this vote, if you think about the

more than a half century of

near bipartisan unanimity on Israel, and particularly military support for Israel, these were must-passed bills that always went through with just rubber stamp through.

So the fact that 20, that half of the Democratic caucus voted against it is shocking.

But then when you think about what's happening in Israel and you look at the polling that you cited that 8% of Democrats prove what Israel is doing there, it's shocking that the other half voted for it, right?

And the politics are moving here in one direction.

And I think

it is because of Netanyahu, it's because of what is happening in Gaza, and that there is a place for people to come back if Netanyahu were to go, or you saw a different approach

from Israel in Gaza or anything else.

But right now,

I think this is the beginning, not the end, of a fundamental shift in politics in the Democratic Party.

Yeah, I mean,

I was personally surprised to see that many Democratic senators vote with Bernie, pleasantly surprised, particularly in light of the conversation we had just had.

And, you know, we got a lot of people, obviously, I sort of made a half joke about Twitter, but

people we know,

we're friends with, have been talking to us since then and people who are very supportive of Israel.

And

one thing I've noticed is it really, it is very hard to

bridge the two realities that I think some people in good faith believe.

And the challenge here is, you know, I remember since the beginning, since right after October 7th, you know, there was, you can't trust the Gaza Health Ministry because that's Hamas.

And so you can't trust the numbers out of there.

But it's like at some point,

We've reached a point now where you've got, you know, Israeli Holocaust scholars calling it a genocide, Israeli human rights organizations, it's at the top organizations calling it a genocide.

You've got like this U.S.

Green Beret Purple Heart who fought ISIS in the Taliban, and he's telling his story.

But every time someone comes out and tries to offer evidence that this is happening, that there's a slaughter, that Israel is not upholding international law,

there's always some...

like ready excuse, right?

Which is like, oh, well, the Green Beret, he was fired and so we shouldn't trust him.

And, well,

that's just the Gaza Health Ministry saying that.

And there's always like some reason that we're not supposed to trust the reporting, what we're seeing with our own eyes on the ground.

And I just like, I, I guess we could all say that we only, we will only believe the Israeli defense forces and the Israeli government.

But I don't know why anyone should be satisfied with only believing that, even though there are plenty of international organizations, Israelis, Israeli press, other reporters, international reporters, humanitarian organizations, the UN.

Like, I just, I don't know how many other sources of information we could have before people who just believe that we should continue the course that we're on and give BB Net and Yahoo a blank check.

I don't know how many more sources of information we could have that are more credible before people can say, oh, maybe,

maybe what I've been thinking the whole time isn't quite right.

Maybe Israel is at fault here, or at least much more at fault than I previously thought.

Like, I just, it's, it's really tough.

And like, yes, Hamas is a terrorist organization.

And, you know, Trump's truth about this, like, you know, Hamas could release the hostage and end this.

I read that.

I'm like, again, do you think Hamas is like reading social media and Hamas is like, who are like trapped in a tunnel somewhere, fucking cowards in a tunnel, don't give a shit about the Palestinian people, don't give a shit about Israel, don't give a shit about human life.

You think they're going to be like, oh, well, people are calling on us to release the hostages, so I guess we'll end the war now because there's been more pressure.

Like, they're a fucking terrorist organization.

That's what they do.

And so, like, I don't know.

I understand that, like, how evil Hamas is.

Like, of course, I understand that.

But we don't fund Hamas.

We don't send checks to Hamas.

We don't do weapon sales with Hamas.

We do it with Israel.

And so we have some leverage over Israeli policy as Americans.

And it's our tax dollars that are going to a government that is causing this death and causing this starvation.

So I don't know.

I don't know.

But I do think like, look, I mean, and you were there for this.

I think back a lot to, just from the political side of it, the Iraq war.

And at the time,

how many Democrats were like, sure, we're going to vote for the authorization in Iraq?

And then everyone regretted their decision later.

And now everyone looks back on it.

And even the people who were very in favor of the Iraq war were like, oh, yeah, obviously it was a catastrophe.

Well, okay, obviously it was a catastrophe.

Did we look back and think about what lessons we've learned and are we going to apply those lessons moving forward?

And obviously, you know, there are a million ways these conflicts are different.

But I just think from the political side, of course it is uncomfortable.

to be called a terrorist sympathizer, to be called weak, to be saying that you don't want to stand up for allies or that you're, you know, and I get that, but like, you know, I'm at least, I'm proud of the 27 Democrats who were willing to take that vote.

And all I'll say about the Democrats who voted no is, you know, I hope they get there.

And I hope Republicans get there too.

And I hope we can keep persuading them.

And this is not, you know, some people are saying like, is this a litmus test you guys are having now?

And are you driving people out of the party?

It's not that at all.

It's like, this is what I believe.

should happen.

And that's my view.

And I also understand that this is a big tent party and it's going to have people with different views.

But I think if our goal is to end the war and our goal is to save lives, then our job is to say what we believe and try to persuade people to think that.

Exactly right.

How do you think Trump sees this?

And

do you have any hope that pressure from his base that is growing leads him to take a tougher stance with Bibi?

I

worry that Trump obviously does not understand what's happening.

He is reacting to, as you guys talked about on Tuesday, he's reacting to the image of CC Some TV.

One day he'll hear from Arjury Taylor Greene and think they should do one thing.

And then he'll hear from the, you know, in that poll, it is 70-some percent, I think, of Republicans who support Israel's actions in Gaza.

And go the other way.

No matter what he believes, what I worry about, even if he were to be convinced that the right thing to do, for whatever reason, political, moral, was to pressure Bibi to do something different here.

I worry that Bibi is both tougher and smarter than Trump and that it'll take one phone call for him to just fold.

And then where Trump will end up is someplace even worse, like just finish it faster and get these things off TV.

Yeah, I worry about that too.

He doesn't have,

he both doesn't understand the situation and he's not a details guy and he has the attention span of his favorite platform.

And so he moves on to the next thing.

And so unless something's in his face, I do, I worry about that as well.

Before we move up this,

you should check out the Pod Save America YouTube channel because Tommy just hosted a debate this week between our friend Mehdi Hassan and Jeremy Bename of J Street about how Democrats should approach Israel going forward.

And it is a great conversation.

It's very much worth a watch.

So check out the Pod Save America YouTube channel for that.

All right.

So this episode is out on Friday, August 1st, also known as Trump's self-imposed, off-delayed deadline to set tariff rates with the rest of the world.

Also known as Liberation Day Part 3, the final reckoning.

Trump said on Wednesday that this time, he really means it.

The deadline will not be extended.

No taco.

And then on Thursday, he announced a 90-day extension for Mexico.

There's only been a handful of other deals, most of them very light on details.

All of them include new permanent taxes of anywhere from 15% to 50%, maybe higher, who knows when we get the final numbers, on the stuff we buy from overseas.

paid for by some combination of American companies and American consumers.

Those new taxes, along with rising inflation that's been ticking back up again, are why the Fed announced this week that they will not be cutting interest rates, earning Jerome Powell another Trump tirade on Truth Social, in which the president called his Fed share stupid, among other things.

Nevertheless, White House trade advisor Peter Navarro believes that starting a global trade war that will lead to higher prices deserves global recognition.

Here he is on Fox.

A lot of people, Maria, talk about Donald Trump for the peace prize, the Nobel Peace Prize.

I'm thinking that since he's basically taught the world trade economics, he might be up for the Nobel on economics.

All right, here's the question.

Can one person win the Nobel Prize for Peace and Economics in the same year?

Well, John, I did a little research today.

I wanted to see if it was possible for Trump to win, not one, not two, but three Nobel Prizes.

Because I thought he might have a chance at a Nobel Prize for art for his

naked girl pubic hair signature.

For the pube drong, yeah.

Yeah, for Jeffrey Edwards's

there is no Nobel Prize for visual art.

So he will have to settle for these two Nobel Prizes.

It is incredible that they think he's the one teaching the world about economics as he has, being the leader of the wealthiest economy in the world, just

dragged the entire rest of the world through this trade war that is just going to hurt everyone.

Us, them, the whole world just gets a little dent in economic growth because of Trump's trade war.

Did you see Caroline Levitt's very desperate plea for Trump to get the Nobel Prize today at the briefing?

No, I missed that.

She basically argued that he has negotiated a trade deal or a peace deal every month since being president.

Where was the peace deal?

Is it in Gaza?

Is it in Ukraine?

He takes a lot of credit for the India-Pakistan situation.

Oh, yeah, no, I'm sure.

Iran, obviously, that's very peaceful.

Very, very peaceful there, yeah.

No, he's really.

It is just so funny that MAGA is turning the Nobel Peace Prize into a participation trophy.

And how many of them know?

It's just a couple of Norwegians just sitting in Asla just trying to figure this out.

Who are not, I bet they're not MAGA, but who knows?

Who knows?

We just don't know these days.

Let's talk about the trade war and Liberation Day or whatever the fuck we're calling this.

Once we are past this August 1st deadline and the trade war news recedes from the headlines, how much do you think Democrats should focus on tariffs in the lead up to the midterms next year?

Okay, I think we need a narrative.

And I'm going to be very clear.

I'm about to offer a stage direction.

These are not words I want people to say.

This is what we have to do.

I think

this is important.

The broader narrative is that Trump, because of Epstein,

his crypto scams, his billion-dollar free jet, the golf courses he's building all over the world, the tax cut for all of his friends is part of the corrupt political system that is raising your costs, making your life harder.

He promised you.

And then a data point underneath that narrative is

costs, right?

There's a poll out on Thursday from the Century Foundation, which found that 83% of people think that believe that the cost of eating dinner has gone up.

And you see that in all the data.

People believe prices have gone up

because they have gone up, partially because of inflation, partially because of Trump.

But Trump promised he was going to reduce your costs.

And he hasn't done it.

He's made them worse.

And even worse than that is that he is, he raised your costs and he cut taxes for the very corporations that are raising your prices.

Right.

I think that's sort of like it is about cost of living.

It's about that is a data point under a larger argument about Trump as a part of a corrupt political system.

In that same poll, nearly half of Americans are worried about their current ability to pay their rent or mortgage.

Nearly two-thirds, 64%, worry about their ability to pay an unexpected medical expense if one should arrive.

Nearly half of all Americans believe they would have difficulty paying an unexpected $500 bill without borrowing.

And notably, six in 10 believe that after just six months on the job, Trump administration has negatively impacted their cost of living.

I'm doing this off the dome because I don't have my notes in front of me, but I'm pretty sure it's 24% of Americans spend three hours a day worrying about costs and financial security.

And I think it's 47% maybe who spend at least an hour a day on that.

Yeah.

No, it is.

And it was a faculty poll.

Yeah, I think, yeah, you did.

You did.

Good job.

Good job.

You nailed it.

Yeah, this was a YouGov poll that the Century Foundation helps conduct.

I just, I think that almost every day, you know, like there's this whole debate over Trump's economic plan and the Medicaid cuts.

And if they go into effect after the midterm, is that going going to be an issue?

Well, like for bill aside, and I don't, I only want to put it aside for this conversation.

Obviously, we're going to talk about that from now until the midterms.

These cost increases are going to be hitting all the time.

And I think the challenge is to make sure that every time you see a headline about a cost increase, people know.

And we can connect the dots for people.

Like Procter ⁇ Gamble just announced 2.5% price increase on their products.

They have all, you know, Procter ⁇ Gamble, gigantic company that makes a lot of the toiletries we use and cleaner products and everything else.

Walmart, Target have already announced increases on school supplies, clothing, baby items, Adidas, on clothes and shoes.

I mean, it's already happening and people just need to, people just need, we just need to remind people every day from, and look, we're going to have a whole bunch of headlines about this because every time a company decides to jack up prices, we're going to be able to talk about it.

And if there's not a headline about it, then when we notice price increases, people should talk about it.

I mean, this get, like, like, we're going to go through this podcast has like nine different topics we have to hit.

It's been an insane three days of news.

Yeah.

But one of the things to think about, it's why I did that sort of narrative at the top is the way you combat the flood the zone strategy or just the insanity of news in the Trump era is you need an overarching narrative that you can fit all the things in.

You don't have to, you know, not trying to shoehorn in or get to try to fit a square peg in a round hole, but you like, as a party, we need to focus, we need to pick a story first and then a message second.

Yeah.

On On that note, one more piece of notable economic news.

Speaking at a Breitbart event this week, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant said Trump's new Trump accounts enacted in his economic plan, which give every baby born from now until 2028 $1,000 to be invested in index funds, might serve a long-time right-wing goal.

Let's listen.

In a way, it is a back door for privatizing Social Security.

Oh,

what?

backdoor, eh?

What?

Private.

So

the Bush-era Hill staffer in me wants Democrats to jump all over this, but what do you think?

They did.

They tried to clean it up.

Bessett tried to clean it up.

Carolyn Levitt at the briefing tried to clean it up.

And she's like, no, no, when he said, he said, in addition to Social Security, it's like, what?

No, he didn't say that.

That's not what he said.

He said privatization and backdoor.

It was very, very clear.

We should absolutely jump on this.

We remember in 2022, cuts to Social Security and Medicare were a big part of the democratic message that worked.

And we should use them again.

And I think the cuts to Medicaid make these more believable than even they were back in 2022.

Yeah.

And I think what he was, what he actually meant there was, yeah, you're going to have these savings accounts.

Eventually, they could be retirement accounts.

And when we someday cut Social Security, this will be fine.

This will be your new Social Security.

I take him at his word that he wants to private Social Security.

Of course they do.

Of course they do.

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How hard is it to kill a planet?

Maybe all it takes is a little drilling, some mining, and a whole lot of carbon pumped into the atmosphere.

When you see what's left, it starts to look like a crime scene.

Are we really safe?

Is our water safe?

You destroyed our tub.

And crimes like that, they don't just happen.

We call things accidents.

There is no accident.

This was 100%

preventable.

They're the result of choices by people.

Ruthless oil tycoons, corrupt politicians, even organized crime.

These are the stories we need to be telling about our changing planet.

Stories of scams, murders, and cover-ups that are about us and the things we're doing to either protect the Earth or destroy it.

Follow Lawless Planet wherever you get your podcasts.

You can listen to new episodes of Lawless Planet early and ad-free right now in the Wondry app, apple podcasts or spotify

speaking of investments it's time for another corrupt date

corrupt date

i have to say that was better handled than the one on tuesday we're getting better at at the sting there it's really it only it's only taken us

12 opportunities to do it and here's the good news we could probably do a corrupt date every episode until 2029.

So this one comes courtesy of Senator Josh Hawley, whose bill to ban stock trading by members of Congress, the president, and the vice president advanced in the Senate thanks to all the Democrats on the committee voting yes.

All of the Republicans, except for Hawley, voted no.

Then one very important Republican voiced his displeasure.

Trump raged on Truth Social that the bill would be bad for the country, a win for Democrats, and he called Hawley a, quote, second-tier senator.

True.

Holly then chatted with Trump.

It's so funny that Trump just does this on Tree Social, by the way.

It doesn't like call Holly and be like, hey, what the fuck, man?

You know, he just like, he just puts him on blast.

Can't even call him first.

So anyway, then Holly talks to Trump on the phone.

And then he told reporters about his conversation with Trump.

And he said that the president said that he's for the stock trading ban, but he was angry because people had told him the bill would force him to sell Mar-a-Lago and divest of all his assets, which isn't true only because of a carve-out in the bill that exempts Trump from this requirement.

But even that part's not true, right?

Like, he would not have to sell

no, no, but you do have to, I think, I think the, uh, after, after the Trump administration, the next administration, and then future senators and representatives would have to divest of, I think, any kind of equity holdings.

Interesting.

I think that's what I think, so you, you know, which is why Ron Johnson, Rick Scott were very upset.

They're like,

they were saying, you know, this is punishing success and this is going to discourage wealthy people from running for office.

What a shame that would be.

Oh, no.

What do you think about this?

Did Trump just need to make sure nothing would interfere with how hard he's working to profit from the presidency?

Yeah, I think so.

I think he believed, apparently incorrectly, that the spigot was about to be turned off.

for his many, many schemes to profit off the presidency, to make money at taxpayer expense.

And he, because he is both corrupt and a moron, he reacted without knowing what was actually in the bill.

And originally, the bill, originally, the bill included the president and vice president.

And then they had to do some compromise where they said, okay, we can include the vice president and president, but only if it's not this president and vice president.

Because these Republicans in Congress,

they're not even protecting themselves in this bill.

They just wanted to protect Donald Trump because I guess

that's their most important thing.

And then they voted against it anyway.

so what was the point

so like Mike Johnson has said that he's for this so we'll see I mean like it advanced out of committee I guess you could imagine a situation where Thune puts it up for a vote if Holly's for it and you get a few other Republicans and then it would pass with Democratic and Republican votes maybe I don't know what do you think the prospects are of this passing you know it's a tough no vote but it really depends on it now if how much it depends on how much Trump cares now that he knows he's exempted from it if he does not care, then I think it really could pass.

Because if you are a Republican senator who's up this cycle or just someone who has the ambition for something in the future, voting to allow yourself to keep doing insider trading, not a great vote.

Hasn't stopped them before from the bottom.

Well, they've benefited from it not coming up before.

That's the thing.

They've kept it off the floor, I think, for years now.

It is wild, though.

You just mentioned some of this.

It's like we also learned today Trump is building a ballroom on the White House, $200 million,

because he's always wanted a ballroom.

He's good at ballrooms, he said.

So he wants to build one in the White House.

$200 million for that.

And it's going to be privately funded

from donors who can have yet another way to buy access with Trump.

What do you think?

Middle Eastern autocrats or tech oligarchs?

Or some combo of both?

Why do you have to choose?

Or oil tycoons.

Crypto guys facing indictment.

There's a whole list of arms dealers.

What else?

It's basically a pardoned silent auction.

Also, while the Holly thing was going on, Chris Murphy offered an amendment in the Senate that just said Trump can have his plane, his billion-dollar plane that we all have to pay for from Qatar, but he can't take it with him.

when he leaves office because if we're going to pay the taxpayers are going to we're all going to pay a billion dollars to retrofit this fucking plane from the Qataris, then guess what?

The next future presidents, we should use it for a little while instead of giving it to Donald Trump as a fucking keepsake.

All the Republicans voted no.

Didn't get a single Republican vote.

Amazing.

For what?

What reason?

What's the reason?

Party favor when he leaves?

What?

It's unfucking believable.

You know what?

We can't win this midterm.

We actually need a whole separate podcast called Corruptive Date.

Corrupt Date.

Corrupt Date.

Corrupt Date.

So one thing Donald Trump inexplicably can't stop talking about, Jeffrey Epstein, who he just keeps offering new details about every time he's asked.

Trump got a few questions on Air Force One this week about his claim that he kicked Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago for poaching some of Trump's employees, not because he was a, quote, creep, which is what the White House had originally said.

Here's Trump trying to clear all that up.

Mr.

President, Epstein has a certain reputation, obviously.

Just curious, were some of the workers that were taken from you, were some of them young women?

Were some Were some of them young women?

Well, I don't want to say, but

everyone knows the people that were taken.

And

it was the concept of taking people that work for me is bad.

But that sure has been pretty well out there.

And the answer is yes.

Yes, they were young.

Yeah.

What do they do?

In the spa.

In the spa.

Yeah, people that work in the spa.

I have a great spa, one of the best spas in the world at Mar-a-Laca.

And people were taken out of the spa.

Hired by him.

In other words, gone.

And

other people would come and complain: this guy is taking people from the spa.

I didn't know that.

And then when I heard about it, I told him, I said, listen, we don't want you taking our people, whether it was spa or not spa.

I don't want him taking people.

And he was fine.

And then, not too long after that, he did it again.

And I said, out of here.

Mr.

President, did one of those stolen,

you know, persons, does that include Virginia Effrie?

I don't know.

I think she worked at the spa.

I think so.

I think that was one of the people.

He stole her.

And by the way, she had no complaints about us, as you know.

None whatsoever.

Unbelievable.

We originally had just a short clip of that, but I really wanted everyone to just hear the whole thing because his answers evolved.

First of all, he's like, I shouldn't say,

did he hire hire young girls?

I shouldn't say, I shouldn't say, but

yes.

The answer is yes.

The answer is yes, I should say.

And, you know, from this, yes, from the spa, by the way, one of the best spas in the world.

Everyone should know.

But then, yeah, he stole her.

Spa, no spa, don't take it.

It's like unbelievable.

Then he confirms it was, it was Virginia Jufrey.

So just a reminder of the timeline here.

Virginia Jufrey got a summer job working at the Mar-a-Lago Spa when she was 16.

In 2000, Ghelene Maxwell approached her at the spa and offered her a job with Epstein, who then sexually abused and trafficked her until 2002.

The same year, by the way, that Trump was quoted in New York magazine saying that his, quote, good friend, Jeffrey Epstein, quote, likes women on the younger side, no doubt about it.

It wasn't until at least 2004 and maybe later that Trump kicked Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago and ended their friendship.

Juffrey died by suicide in April, but her family responded to Trump's latest comments with a statement to The Atlantic asking if Trump was aware of Epstein and Maxwell's criminal actions.

He was asked that today, Thursday, at an event at the White House, and he sort of said, no, I don't, I don't know, I don't know.

Just kind of brushed it off.

Feels pretty serious, doesn't it?

Yeah, this is a, he admitted.

that he knew about a 16-year-old girl being quote-unquote stolen from his spa.

After that happened, he remained friends with the guy, praising him in a magazine, talking about how he loves young women

for another couple years.

And it's just, given how close they were in the 90s, the parties they went to, the creepy event with the calendar girls where they brought all these people to Mar-a-Lago for a party and the only two party attendees were Trump and Epstein.

It's just impossible to imagine that he did not have some sense that something sketchy was going on.

It did not bother him.

He stayed friends with a guy for another four years, and that the falling out eventually is not over the.

There's no evidence to suggest it's over Epstein taking girls from the spa or anywhere else, the world-class spa, obviously.

It is believed to be the reason they stopped being friends is a dispute over a Palm Beach real estate transaction.

I have a few questions.

Maybe I can answer them.

One is:

how did Donald Trump come to know about the employment status of a young girl who worked as a locker room attendant in his spa at Mar-a-Lago?

Is he deep in the HR records?

Details, okay.

He knows that.

So, first of all, very bizarre that he knew this.

Second of all, did he think that

was he under the false impression that Jeffrey Epstein owned a competing spa?

That Jeffrey Epstein was a business owner.

She was hired to be his personal masseuse.

Personal masseuse, yeah.

And so he he didn't, he, so he knew that

he knew that a 16-year-old was hired from Ari-a-Lago to be Jeffrey Epstein's personal masseuse, and then he just kind of sat on that and then called Jeffrey Epstein a great guy who likes young women, and then and then next time he quote-unquote stole, we're saying stole now, like it's like a personality.

Those are Trump's words, yes.

Right.

Next time he did it,

that was too far.

What is critical here is that Trump is admitting to contemporaneous knowledge of her being stolen by Epstein.

What would have been believable is he just found out years later because she eventually sued Epstein and Maxwell, and her case got a lot of attention in the news.

So he could have learned that, and his name comes up in the court filings in that case.

So he could have learned, if he were to say, and I learned about this years later, that would be very believable.

Just the fact that he's saying in the year 2000, I knew that Jeffrey Epstein quote unquote stole a 16-year-old from my spa and I told him not to do it again.

He says that he knew at the time that he was going after these young girls.

Right, because how could he tell him not to do it again if he found out much later?

Exactly.

Exactly.

That is just a huge critical admission on his part because he is a dummy and he can't figure out how to get out of this because

he can't stop lying about it is the thing.

Because he clearly is so afraid that about whatever is in the Epstein files, about something that is out there.

Whatever it is, I don't know what his fear is.

I don't know if it's rational or not, but his behavior is

of a man deeply paranoid of the truth getting out.

It's wild.

And

I don't know where it goes from here.

You know, Maxwell's lawyer said she wouldn't testify to Congress now unless she gets full immunity, which the people in Congress were saying they're not going to give her full immunity for that.

So now we're not getting testimony.

We're probably not getting testimony from her in Congress, which is public.

But, you know, we still got Todd Blanche, Deputy Attorney General, sat down with her.

No one knows what that conversation was like.

She's asking for a pardon.

I don't know.

I don't know what else, where this goes from here.

Well, I mean, Trump is going to keep it in the news for sure.

That's right.

All you have to do is ask him.

He'll give you new information.

I mean, there is, as you guys talked about on Tuesday,

there is now documents running around which have all of the, or at least some of the Trump mentions in the Epstein files out there.

Will those leak out at some point?

Will the infamous birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein leak out?

We actually see the potentially Nobel Prize winning drawing.

There's just a lot more here.

There's a lot of threads to pull.

And

Trump will, and when the Congress comes back, Democrats will once again push for a vote to compel the release of the Epstein files.

Yeah.

So Trump has had most of his administration working overtime to distract from the Epstein scandal by cooking up a laughably dumb conspiracy about Russia involving Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, all his favorite deep staters.

Only problem is the whole thing is so convoluted and confusing that even Trump can't keep up with it now.

Here he is answering a question about Cash Patel allegedly finding a trove of documents in a burn bag somewhere in the FBI.

He said what?

Burn bags of Russia gave materials

I don't know that.

I don't know what you mean by that statement.

Bags full of Russian gate.

Burnbag.

I thought you said appointed a man named Burnbag.

Go ahead.

The whole thing is a scam.

It's a scam set up by the Democrats and they love talking about it.

But I would like to see

people exposed that might be bad.

And we'll see how that all works out.

But it's getting to be very old news.

You know, if they had anything, they would have done it the week before the election because they were losing by a lot.

If they had anything, they would have done it.

They control the file.

The Democrats controlled it, Comey, and all this, you know, Sleazebegs, every one of them that you read about all the time.

And I guess they've got some problems now having to do with yet a different scandal, a very big one.

He gets a softball served up to him, undoubtedly, by some MAGA influencer hack at the White House about Cash Patel, his new deputy, now that Dan Bongino has his mental health days, like a deputy burnback.

So he gets the question to him.

And what does he do?

Write to Epstein.

Cannot help himself.

I was saying this to Lovett.

It's like the opposite of the communication strategy advice, like the central advice, like always go back to home base here when you get the question.

Home base is Epstein files.

Yes.

It's like, we're cooking up this Russia gate conspiracy for you.

Barack Obama's committing treason.

You got to go to that.

You got to go.

No, no, no, no.

He's got to go right to Epstein.

He cannot help himself because he can't stop thinking about it.

Once again, a man deathly afraid of transparency here.

Also, I'm not even going to get, I will not get too deep, I promise, into the burn bag.

The burn bag thing.

Yeah, please don't.

But basically, to believe this, right, which is that there's a whole bunch of documents that were in a burn bag somewhere in the FBI that John Durham, after he conducted an investigation into the origins of the Russia investigation, who John Durham, appointed by Bill Barr, worked for Donald Trump in the first Trump administration, that John Durham left these incriminating documents that would incriminate Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and all the rest of them in a burn bag in the FBI.

would not burn the documents, just wanted to leave them there, thinking that after the Biden administration, Trump would return.

And then someone from the Trump administration would find the documents and expose the lie.

Yeah, seems credible.

This is what we're supposed to believe.

We're supposed to believe.

By the way, if you don't know, a burn bag is what you have in the White House and other agencies when you want to, when there's classified material, secret material, and you need to get rid of it, you don't want to throw it in the trash because that's not very safe because anyone could go picking through the trash.

A shredder's not good enough.

You put it in a burn bag and they actually go burn it.

Nope.

Right?

So

I don't know what John Durham was doing.

I don't know what Cash Patel is talking about, but I don't really think it's revealing anything new.

Well, I think if it was, they would put those documents out.

Yeah, well,

they have something out today.

There's some fucking email that John Durham was like, I think it's a fake email because I think the Russians did something with it.

But anyway, it's this email that's cooked up that says someone's like, I know that Hillary Clinton's going to work with the FBI to cook up Russia Gate with Trump and Russia.

Once again, a scandal not announced.

An FBI investigation not announced before the election.

When it would have been very impactful to announce it.

Instead, Hillary Clinton worked.

The FBI director announced the investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails three weeks before the election.

Yeah,

that was part of their deal.

Let's work together to get Trump, but also

I'm going to turn on you right before the election and help elect Trump.

So I guess the FBI is filled with a bunch of double, triple agents.

I don't know.

It's hard to follow.

I know that Fox and MAGA media are all over this story.

It doesn't seem to be getting a lot of traction.

Barack Obama is still roaming free,

has not been arrested yet.

What's going on, Dan?

It's really interesting.

Like theoretically, MAGA media and Fox are all over this, but they really aren't in a real way.

Their hearts aren't in it.

Their hearts aren't in it.

It is not getting attention.

It's one of the first times Trump has decided he's in, like he has brought to bear all the forces.

He literally had the intelligence community cook up a fake document and sent the to accuse his predecessor of treason, treason, punishable by death.

He sent Tulsi Gabbard to the White House briefing, all these places, and he can't get tracks.

And so resonate with him.

He posted a picture of Obama as OJ

driving the white Bronco with all the police following him, including the bald J.D.

Vance meme in one of the cars.

I mean, that's bonus there.

I mean, there's the AI video of Obama getting arrested in the Oval Office with Trump.

A classic.

A classic, who can forget?

There's the people in prison jumpsuits, right, of all of our former co-workers.

Shady bunch,

shady bunch, yeah.

But so if Trump really wants to make something a thing, like he can't always break, get the media, the traditional media to cover it.

He can't always make it like really breakthrough, but he has in the past been able to get MAGA right-wing media to do his bidding.

So Resonate, which is an organization that tracks which stories are trending online, they have a sub-sec newsletter called What's Resonating.

And so they looked at this for Wednesday of this week.

And so they track what neutral accounts are doing, left-leaning accounts, and right-leaning accounts are doing.

This is across all the platforms.

And more right-leaning accounts on Wednesday were posting about Sidney Sweeney and Barack Obama.

Like it's just not, it's not working.

This is a true fail from the Trump messaging machine.

What did she do to commit treason?

Was she part of the Durham investigation as well?

We don't have the time.

Oh, did she kill Jeffrey Epstein?

You know, we can't prove she didn't.

Yeah.

Someone should ask her where she was on that night.

And was she the orange blob spotted in the CBS video?

No, because we know she's wearing jeans.

Good jeans, too.

Good jeans.

Good jeans.

I did turn on, I did open up Twitter, and it was like trending.

American Eagle, Sidney Sweeney, Nazis.

I was like, look, clothes.

We talked about it on offline this week.

I can't wait to listen.

And I'm pretty happy about it.

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Lest you think all this conspiracy mongering is causing the White House to take its eye off the ball, fear not.

The Trump administration announced this week that they'll pay off your student loans and give you a $50,000 signing bonus if you're willing to mask up and join Stephen Miller's secret police force.

ICE has launched a major recruitment campaign called Defend the Homeland to hire the 10,000 additional agents they'll need to hit Miller's goal of 3,000 arrests per day and a million deportations this year.

One of the ads features the famous picture of Uncle Sam pointing with the tagline, America has been invaded by criminals and predators.

We need you to get them out.

So

question for you.

What kind of qualified rule of law lovers do you think are going to sign up for this one?

You think we're going to get a great, a great force of just highly qualified Americans who are interested in law enforcement and doing everything by the book to help protect the homeland?

Do you think that's what we're going to get?

Well, I would say that over the last six months, Trump, Elon Musk, Stephen Miller have really shown the world the benefits, the stability of government employment.

It seems like a very attractive place to work where once you get started, you can build a career there without having someone come in and just fire you for no reason.

So I think I imagine this will be the best and the brightest.

I mean, this is really,

as we can joke about, but it's fucking dark.

And

it's one of the things I worry about the most of everything, because ICE has been bad enough in these last six months.

ICE, which doesn't have anywhere near the standards, hiring standards of local police departments, let alone the FBI, and they don't have the same kind of training, rigorous training that you go through.

So So you can be pretty unqualified.

And who knows what kind of political views you might have?

You might have been at the Capitol on January 6th.

You might have.

That's a plus.

You might have been part of a military.

We don't know.

Who's doing the background checks, right?

Is it where this administration is going to do a rigorous background check on these people who are now being told that there's an army of

illegal migrants that have invaded the country and they're all the worst of the worst and they're criminals and child molesters and all this kind of and uh you know what you just come to ice we'll give you fifty thousand dollars signing bonus right off the bat we'll pay off your student loans here's a gun here's a mask go for it yeah i mean the the

authoritarian leading president of the united states building a massive unaccountable police force loyal to him that has some uh some historical echoes that we don't really like it's really bad and i don't even like i

i don't know what what democrats even do about this.

I do think that's one area where, you know, we make it to the midterms and you launch a lot of investigations into what the Department of Homeland Security is doing and ICE is doing and who they're hiring.

And to the extent that we can learn that, you know, between now and the midterms, I think that's important too, because I think they're going to hire some really bad people.

And I think that everything we have been seeing on social media, all the videos we've been seeing of ICE becoming violent, and especially with not just undocumented immigrants, not just people with criminal records, but legal residents, American citizens, protesters.

I think it's going to get much worse.

I think Democrats should not be afraid, when we have power again, to use cutting ICE funding as a point of leverage in negotiations.

Yes, 100%.

Meanwhile, one of Miller's comrades in the war on immigrants and the rule of law, Trump lawyer-turned DOG hatchet man Emil Bovay, got his lifetime appointment.

to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.

He was confirmed by the Senate this week after lying to Congress, telling DOJ officials that if judges wouldn't let them disappear people to a foreign gulag without due process, they might have to tell the courts to fuck off.

Not one, not two, three whistleblowers came forward about this guy.

Not libs, not deep staters, not just regular conservatives, like Trump people, Trump administration people in DOJ came forward to say that this guy doesn't want to follow the law.

He didn't want to follow the law when the judge ordered the plane to be turned around around that was going to El Salvador.

He also was instrumental in dropping the charges for Eric Adams in exchange for Eric Adams just doing the bidding of the Trump administration.

He was instrumental in firing all of the prosecutors who prosecuted the January 6th defendants.

He did all these things.

He has had numerous complaints about him even before he was working for Trump, as far back as 2018.

People saying he was abusive to staff, that he was corrupt, all this kind of shit.

And fucking only Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins voted against him.

Tom Tillis, Mitch McConnell, all the rest of them, thumbs up for this guy, lifetime appointment.

In general, over the course of time, presidents get their judicial nominees through.

But periodically, there are people who are so unqualified, so corrupt, so unfit that members of the president's party will reject them.

Just some of them, right?

Or the person will not get out of committee and they'll be forced to drop out.

This is evidence that the entire confirmation system is a joke in this Republican Party.

They do not care about anything other than Trump put the person's name for.

They have no respect for themselves.

They have no respect for the institution.

They have no respect for the judiciary.

They have no respect for their constituents.

It is just Donald Trump said jump, so we just said how high.

I mean, it's truly embarrassing.

This one I really don't understand for people like McConnell and Tillis who have nothing to lose.

They're retiring.

They're not even running for office again.

And Emil Bove is not, like, even if it was a Brett Kavanaugh, an Amy Coney Barrett, a Neil Gorsuch, right?

You could say, okay,

these are nominations where these people are genuinely right-wing conservatives and like what they stand for and like their judicial philosophy.

And it happens to align with what Trump wants.

So that's why they're voting for them, right?

Emil Bove, he's just a Trump hatchet man.

Nothing else.

He doesn't have judicial philosophy.

He doesn't have opinions that he's written.

Nothing.

And it's not like, oh, you're starting off as a federal judge right to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.

He could go right from there to the Supreme Court.

Just

a loyalist to Trump, no judicial philosophy whatsoever.

And they're like, thumbs up.

It's fucking crazy.

Well, it's actually, I think for the two of them, it actually fits with their behavior.

Tom Tillis had one moment of courage on Medicaid.

He also is the person who introduced Cash Patel at his confirmation hearing.

No one has done more to corrupt the judiciary in American history than Mitch McConnell.

Man.

So this is very much, I know Mitch McConnell is anti-Trump, and we have, some people have some hopes that maybe he'll do the right thing periodically.

And he theoretically does not have the political pressure of people like Susan Collins or other Republicans who may be up.

But this is very much on brand for Mitch McConnell.

Let's check in on the Republican attempts to steal the midterm elections.

This week, Texas legislators dropped their new gerrymander of the state's congressional map, a proposal that would create five new House districts that Trump won by 10 points or more in 2024.

This would potentially hand Republicans the five extra house seats Trump asked for by packing Democratic voters into urban districts and creating a bunch of new seats that wouldn't have an incumbent but be in very red districts that Trump won.

Hakeem Jeffries flew to Texas to huddle with state Democrats to see what they can do to fight back.

Gavin Newsom said he's ready to push forward with a redraw in California if Texas goes through with it.

J.B.

Pritzker and Kathy Hochul have threatened to do the same in Illinois and New York.

Ron DeSantis says he may do the same in Florida, saying the 2020 census was quote flawed.

Lots of contingencies.

Can you walk us through what you think is most likely to happen here?

Well, Texas is moving forward.

I mean, I think Democrats can and should do everything they possibly can to stop them.

When I talked to Congressman Kassar a couple weeks ago, he talked about the importance of it.

I've heard Betto talk about the importance of delay.

Maybe the members flee the legislators, Democratic legislators flee the state so they can't get a quorum.

We should try to make this as politically painful for them as possible, but they have the votes to do it, and

Trump very much wants them to do do it.

California, it's complicated, but Gavin Newsom has a plan.

I fully expect him to proceed.

Illinois, somewhat complicated.

New York, very complicated.

And New York is limited in what they can do.

And it seems based on some analyses I've seen that absent something, everything working the right way, it's unlikely that New York would have new maps in place by 2026.

Florida, I imagine, will do whatever.

Theirs is also somewhat complicated because of the role the Florida Supreme Court plays.

So that may be a little bit of bluster because they were limited in how much they could gerrymander in this last time around.

But

Democrats are doing the right things, right?

Like we need a strategy of mutually assured destruction.

They do this, we'll do it.

Republicans just have more opportunities because they have more states where they control the legislature and the governorship.

And there has not been a ballot initiative, constitutional amendment, or something else passed that limits the ability of Democrats to do, to do a partisan, do a mid-decade redistricting or do something that a partisan redistricting.

Yeah,

it's very challenging.

This is what worries me in the end because it's like, you're right.

For California, you know, we've talked about this with Newsome.

We have to get a ballot initiative and hold like a special election, or he can try to just do it and see what the courts say.

Illinois, I think he can do it.

Pritzker can do it, but it's going to be hard to draw, I guess, to squeeze a few more seats out of Illinois.

I think that's a good thing.

They went through this

two years ago or whatever.

Two years ago, 2021, they went through this.

Yeah.

And the reason you're not hearing about a lot more states is because there just aren't as many states where Democrats have full control over the state legislature and there's more seats to squeeze out

and are able to do it because of

that there's not some constitutional amendment or law or whatever else or nonpartisan district commission set up that prevents them from doing it.

So

I am glad Democrats are fighting back too.

People should be aware that it's a very hard fight

to pick, and I'm glad they're doing it.

But like, I don't, you know, unclear if it's going to work.

Can I just make one point here that I think is, this is, I'm going to say it's optimistic, but Republicans in Texas are making a very big bet

that

Trump's numbers with Latinos in 2024 is the new norm.

Yeah.

And there is really no evidence to support that.

Just, I'm going to give you two examples.

So nationally, in 2024, Democrats won 54% of the Latino vote.

In the midterms, in 2022, we won 62%.

Now, here's a stunning number for you.

According to exit polls, so take that for what it was, but these are exit polls in Texas.

In 2024, Trump won the Latino vote by 11 points in Texas.

In 2022, when Betto O'Rourke was losing by 11 points to Greg Abbott, he won the Latino vote by 17 points.

Oh, wow.

And Abbott won because he won the white vote by 33 points.

But so there is like Republican, they've obviously thought about this, but if the Latino vote shifts back to where it was before 2020,

Republicans are about to create a bunch of really competitive seats and put themselves in great risk.

Yeah, I think there's of the five new seats, a couple, Trump won by 15 or more, but then a couple, he only won by 10 or more, only 10.

But if you're talking about numbers like you just did, and they're heavily Latino districts, then who knows?

Yeah.

And

given demographics, the percentage of the district that is Latino is going to grow over time.

Right.

And so they could have real troubles in midterms when the midterm Latino electorate, at least in the limited sample size we have where Trump is president, looks very different than when Trump's on the ballot.

Okay.

Last thing before we get to Tommy's interview with Jason Crow.

Kamala Harris announced this week that she will not be running for governor of California after all.

We don't know whether that means she'll be running for president in 2028.

Her aides have told reporters that people should not read into her decision on the California governor's race anything about her plans for 2028.

But then she also came out with

an announcement after that saying that she's going to be devoting her attention to this.

Just over a year ago, I launched my campaign for President of the United States.

107 days, traveling the country, fighting for our future, the shortest presidential campaign in modern history.

Since leaving office, I've spent a lot of time reflecting on those days, talking with my team, my family, my friends, and pulling my thoughts together.

In essence, writing a journal that is this book, 107 Days.

107 Days?

She's got a book.

What's your guess on the book?

Is this going to be an interesting book, or is it going to be a typical politician book

well it was reported that she worked with i don't know this has been confirmed but i read this online a place where nothing's ever wrong that she worked with polter prize money novelist geraldine brooks on it i read that i think this is very interesting um as opposed to your typical

and i do not mean this pejorative sense john your typical political speechwriter ghostwriter which is how these things usually happen yeah so i think that's very interesting and guess what those books Boring.

I don't know, like, obviously don't know what she's going to do next.

I would just say, you know, this is a take a lot of people have had online.

It's like, it was so stupid of her not to run for governor.

It's like, I'm just going to guess that maybe she doesn't want to be governor.

I was like, good for her.

It was my first reaction because

she has seemed from afar that ever since the election that she does not want to be governor of California.

There were like plenty of moments where, you know, obviously we've been in the mix of national news cycles.

It's been a big year for us.

We've been in Trump's sites over the last six months.

And, you know, there was times where, you know, she would put out statements and stuff like that.

But I would think, okay,

if she wants to be governor, you would imagine that she'd be out there speaking up about this.

And I think, you know, if she, if she has decided, I don't want to be governor of California right now and I want to write this book and I want to do other things for a while and I want to think about my future, then like, you know, go for it.

I think that's right.

Do you think that she'll, what do you think she's thinking about 2028?

Do you think she's genuinely just like, I'll wait and see?

Because that could be too.

People always think everything's calculated, but she could just be like, all right, I don't know yet.

I would say, like governor, she has done almost nothing.

And maybe this, maybe the book will kick it off, but she is not, the people who want to be president, right?

Or at least we believe are going to want to run for president are out there doing things.

They make it very clear they want to be president.

Yeah.

They're going on the podcasts.

They're, you know, we've got people traveling to New Hampshire already.

We've got people traveling to Iowa, New Hampshire.

And we don't even know what the map is going to be.

And she has been very, very quiet, which is her right.

Yeah.

Right.

She gets to choose what she wants to do.

But if she knew she wanted to run for president, there are a lot of moments that have happened over the last six months that she could have used as a big word.

She is the biggest voice in the party other than President Obama right now, right?

If she went out, maybe even actually would probably get more attention if she went out and did something right now than Obama because she has been so quiet since the election.

And so I think I get the sense that she's probably genuinely undecided, which is probably good.

Yeah.

Right.

It was less than a year ago that she

was basically a year ago now that she got thrown into this thing that she did not expect to do and then lost and is like probably still processing that, which there's plenty of time to do that if she wants to run for president in 2028.

Yeah, I mean, we're recording this before we got any news about her appearance on Colbert Thursday night.

Maybe she announces and this is going to look stupid.

I know.

Who knows?

But so she, you know, kicking off her public appearance with Colbert.

And then I think the book comes out in September.

So it'll be interesting to see, like, is the book tour, is she talking a lot about what happened in the campaign and the book?

Is she talking about what's happening right now?

Some of that will be, of course, dictated by the question she gets.

How interesting is the book?

Yeah, how interesting is the book?

How much she says?

What she has to say.

You know, we'll be able, I think we'll be able to read her intentions about the future pretty quickly when she starts talking.

That's fair enough.

Okay, when we get back from the break, you'll hear Tommy's conversation with Congressman Jason Crowe.

Two things before we get to that.

In case you missed it, we're hosting our first ever Crooked Con this November.

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Tickets are on sale now.

Head to crookedcon.com for tickets, lineup announcements, and more.

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In the meantime, we got a new episode of Polar Coaster with our own Dan Pfeiffer that just dropped.

Dan, what'd you guys talk about this week?

This is going to shock you, John.

So we'll add your sitting down for this.

Sidney Sweeney.

No, no, we recorded, I think, before this really blew up on the the internet.

We were talking about Jeffrey Epstein, the latest polling,

why it's staying in the news.

We got to talk a little bit about the politics around Trump pardoning a convicted sex trafficker's co-conspirator in exchange for favorable testimony.

And we talked a lot about Roy Cooper announcing he's running for Senate in North Carolina and a little bit about what the Senate maps are going to look like for 2026.

Sweet.

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Joining me now in studio, Congressman Jason Crowe from Colorado.

You're a decorated Army veteran, one of the Democrats in charge of recruiting candidates for the midterms.

Good luck with that.

Great to have you.

Thanks.

Good to be here in the land of the cardboard straw.

Thanks for having me.

Thanks for having me.

How's that true?

Well, I mean, they don't taste good,

but I appreciate the sentiment.

John Love is pretty radicalized against those things.

Yeah, I'm, you know, I'm on the path to radicalization against the,

you know, the wooden fork and the plastic and the cardboard straw.

It's not awesome.

There's a corn-based one that I think is a little better than the paper.

But don't those like dissolve and melt with hot liquor?

You got to drink it fast, man.

We can't get the thing down.

That's a lot of pressure.

I want to sip it with leisure.

I can't, I want to

force it to drink it fast.

I want like a ticking clock, like a 24-style get it done.

I just saw that the White House announced plans to construct a $200 million 90,000 square foot ballroom as part of the east wing of the White House.

I guess so we can hold bigger parties.

Would you say that's a good use of money or a great use of money?

Yeah, just the best use of money, probably, right?

After kicking 12 million people off their health care, tripling the budget of ICE,

opening up camps throughout the country, and now we're going to do this and we'll just add it onto the pile of the $400 million Qatari jet, which of course Donald Trump would be likely likely, yeah.

Well, that's after we have to actually retrofit this thing and make it workable for Air Force One so that Donald Trump can then keep it when he leaves the presidency.

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: What did you make of the story that

the Pentagon might be shifting money from a program to, I believe, refurbish our nuclear missiles or nuclear stockpile to go towards retrofit or making this plane fit for being Air Force One.

It might cost a billion dollars?

Yeah, I mean, they're trying to shift money from a lot of different pots right now.

You know, Pete Hagseth has no idea what's going on.

You ask this man, and he's too busy in his vanity mirror and in the new gym that he's built in the Pentagon to really give a crap about what's happening with all this money.

But

the whole thing is just,

you know, it's really beyond the pale, right?

They are shifting money around for their culture war agendas, for their political grievances, and we're all the ones that suffer.

Yeah.

I'm completely derailing my own list of questions, but it was, I mean, I'm sure you as

someone who served in the military, you had access to war plans, classified information.

Hegseth's suggestion early on that sending like the strike package, the coordinates for like where the military was going to hit in Yemen to take out the Houthi rebels via signal that that was not classified information was really remarkable.

It's like, I just can't imagine him walking around that building and looking at his coworkers with a straight face when they all just know he's lying.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, he knows he's lying too.

That's the biggest thing.

And he does so without remorse, with a completely straight face.

You know,

the man lies with complete ease, sits in front of Congress and does it, sits in front of the cameras and does it.

And there's no accountability.

That's the larger issue here, is that he knows he can do it because there will be no accountability for it.

And what's worse is,

you know, Pete Hagseth and I actually come from similar backgrounds, right?

We were both infantry officers, infantry lieutenants.

We led infantry platoons overseas.

So, you know, presumably we were exposed to the same leadership challenges and the same, you know, leadership development.

And what I learned when I was in the military is

servant leadership is the basis of your leadership.

It doesn't matter really what you say.

It matters more what you do, the example that you set.

When I was a paratrooper, you jump out of the plane first, right?

The commander jumps out first and then the other soldiers follow.

When food comes, the other soldiers eat first.

The junior folks eat first.

And then if there's any left over, then you eat.

You suffer the most and you give the benefits to the people underneath you.

That's completely put on its head with this administration.

No accountability at the top.

Do as I say, not as I do.

And it's corrosive to the culture of the entire organization.

Aaron Powell, Jr.: And look, these organizations, they're made up of people, right?

We're all fallible.

We all make mistakes and lie sometimes and people get in trouble.

But the values that are seen as most important within the military are honesty,

candor, accountability, like you just said.

And I just wonder

what you think the impact is to

the rank and file, but also the senior leadership that he works with day-to-day at the Pentagon, for them to have to look this man in the eye that they just know is completely full of shit.

Well, there's a leadership impact, and that's that corrosive message to the culture.

You can't be the leader of organization and act like this and not have it impact the ethos of the people that are serving under you.

It just does.

It has an impact, right?

So that's one.

But then there's actually the practical effect operationally of this.

You know, the man does not know what he's doing.

You know, the majority of his leadership at the Pentagon have resigned in protest to his lack of leadership.

And he lied about them.

Right.

He said that they were disgruntled employees.

I'm like, you hired them six weeks ago, right?

You are disgruntling people at an unbelievable pace, right?

And you can't run an organization of over 2 million people that day in and day out conducts hundreds of extremely risky operations that is dealing with our adversaries around the world that daily are doing things to put our soldiers and Americans at risk.

You can't run an organization of that complexity with such cavalier and sloppiness and not eventually have something really bad happen.

And that's what I'm worried about the most right now.

Yeah, me too.

Okay, so like I said at the top, you are co-chair for recruitment of the DCCC,

the campaign arm for the Democrats.

How's it going?

And how does this, there's a redistricting push happening in Texas, maybe a retaliation in in California.

There's other states that's kind of talking about that.

How does that impact your job?

Yeah.

Well, I'm worried about this redistricting, right?

I mean, they have for a long time are saying the quiet part out loud now, you know, Trump and the Republicans.

They just don't care.

They're just doing whatever they want to do to consolidate power and certainly going to make our job harder.

But our recruitment is going very well.

You know, my job, among others, is to go out and find those candidates to flip seats, right?

And I always try to explain to folks: the task of flipping a seat is a unique political challenge.

I flipped a seat in 2018.

I'm the first Democrat ever to hold my seat in Congress, actually.

It was 40 years of Republican seat.

And when you're trying to convince people to change their minds, to switch their vote, and to go Republican to Democrat in this environment, and it's gotten worse since I was first elected in 2018, that is an extremely hard thing to do.

So there's no factor that's more important than the quality of the candidate.

Oh, yeah.

Right?

I mean, you can have all the time people are like, well, you know, who is the main leader of the Democratic Party?

What is our slogan?

What's our bumper sticker?

What's our unifying message?

All important things and all things that we have to refine.

And I'm happy to talk about that process as well.

But in these districts, you know, these 35 targeted seats that we've targeted at this point, what you're trying to do is convince somebody who voted for Donald Trump or who voted for a Republican who supports Donald Trump to change their vote.

And

what you're getting is, you know, a woman or a man who is deeply rooted in that community, who has an independent streak, who's trusted by people, who has a great bio, usually outside of politics, because they're being voted to be a change maker, to perpetuate the system, right?

So it's not a lot of people with political experience.

And

that's who we're looking for.

That's the tried and tested formula.

But it actually takes some work, right?

Because I'm having to go and sit in front of these folks and be like, I have a great deal for you.

I want you to to leave your thriving business.

Make less money.

Make less trash your family.

Yeah,

leave your kids half the time.

And you're going to, people are going to say terrible things about you.

There's going to be tens of millions of dollars of ads that lie about you.

What do you say?

Right.

Right.

So

it's kind of the job.

Well,

I imagine you're like a college football coach going into a living room.

You're like a coach O from LSU and you're trying to recruit him.

Is it kind of like that?

It is kind of like that, right?

I mean, but

first of all, I'm just honest, right?

I'm not trying to feed people bullshit, bullshit, right?

I'm just not.

I'm honest with them because I'm not doing anybody any favors if I'm not honest about how challenging these races and how tough it is to be in politics right now.

But, you know, the appeal is pretty simple, actually.

I say how hard it's going to be.

I say how excruciating it's going to be.

I talk about the impact on everybody around them.

And then I say, you know what?

Your country needs you.

We right now are at one of the inflection points.

There have been just a handful of them that will absolutely determine the future of this country.

And none of us wanted to live in this moment.

None of us woke up saying, oh, I want to be in a moment of political extremism where what happens is going to determine the course of the country, where the very foundations of our democracy are at risk.

No, we didn't ask for it, but we are here.

And your country needs you, A, and B, because I'm not asking.

for a lifetime commitment.

I'm asking for a minimum of a couple of years of your life.

And after those couple of years, you say this is not for you, or if it's not working out, you can go back and do what you're doing.

But right now, we need you.

It's a pretty good pitch.

I think so.

I'll take it.

I'm a cornerback.

I'm feeling like I might be a Democrat or never mind.

So the House went into recess early because Speaker Johnson was so worried about a vote on releasing the Epstein files.

Can you help listeners understand how weird that is, what happened?

And won't they just have to deal with this problem in like five or six weeks when you get back?

Yeah, I mean, that's exactly what happened, actually, is we were supposed to be in session to the end of the week last week.

And Johnson knew that there was going to be a vote forced on releasing the files.

He knew Republicans were going to vote for it.

There'd be a bipartisan vote and they would lose it.

He knew that Donald Trump absolutely do not want these files released.

So he sent us home.

He literally recessed Congress and sent us home instead of actually holding this vote, which is pretty telling.

I mean, it is is crazy.

I would like to say, though, that that's surprising, but the things that I have seen in my six years, six and a half years now in Congress,

you know,

this Congress and prior Congresses, but Republicans in particular do,

it's pretty unbelievable stuff.

I've gone from feeling like the conspiracy was hiding in plain sight with Jeffrey Epstein, that he was a rich, well-connected, terrible, pedophile, awful human being who uses connections to get away with doing evil things to

over the last month, watching Trump

try to shut down conversations about Epstein, to learning about all the

factual discrepancies in the administration's story, the video missing a minute.

I'm completely red-pilled on this thing now.

I'm just like wondering.

Well, watching the mega world's head explode.

Like, wait a minute.

Like, whose side am I supposed to be on here right now?

Minecraft just exploding, huh?

How do you make sense of this last month?

Well,

let's not, I think it's important that we not lose sight of the actual substance of this, that you had a longtime sexual predator that was preying on women and girls, and that there have presumably been hundreds of perpetrators and accomplices that have not been brought to justice.

DOJ said a thousand victims in the memory.

Yeah, hundreds of thousands.

Maybe over, you know, God knows how many accomplices, right?

Right.

Shocking.

So that in and of itself

should be enough for anybody to say, let's release the files and let's have justice, right?

It's never too late to name the names and to call people out.

That's really important.

That's the most important thing.

And then on top of that, you have the corruption and yet another cover-up by this administration, right, that doesn't want to be transparent, that's clearly hiding something.

I mean, Donald Trump's, you know, constant true social posts trying to get us to

move on are damn telling.

Yeah, not going so well either.

No, it's not.

On Wednesday of this week, 27 Senate Democrats voted to cut off weapons shipments to Israel.

That is a reaction to the horrific images we've seen recently out of Gaza, you know, starved to death children, emaciated children, just massive crowds of people just desperately trying to get food.

And so that vote tally, 27 Democrats voting to cut off weapons to Israel, that's unimaginable four or five years ago.

Like Ben Rhodes and I did this event with J Street in 2019, did a bunch of the presidential candidates.

We tried to get them all to commit to conditioning aid if it were to be used, U.S.

military aid, if it were to be used in the West Bank.

And we basically only got like Bernie on board with that.

And now, you know, you see this vote.

It's obviously not enough, right?

It's not going to stop these weapon shipments.

Are you seeing a similar political shift in the House?

And how are you thinking about whether we should cut off or condition military aid to Israel around the war?

You know, you can't look at those images and see what's happening, not just in the last couple of weeks, but for a year plus now.

The starving children, the sheer desperation of the folks in Gaza, and the settler violence in the West Bank, too.

Let's not forget about that and how terrible that is, and that there was just a Palestinian killed a couple of days ago by a settler in the West Bank, and say that this is horrible stuff and that it doesn't need to happen, right?

And

that's not mutually exclusive from also saying that Hamas is a terrible organization and a terrible terrorist organization and needs to be destroyed because I also believe that, right?

But

my own experience at war, I went to war three times for this country, three times in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And I was in the position of leading troops in combat where there were civilians everywhere, right?

Where I had to go after our adversary, the insurgents, but there were civilians all around us.

And we constantly had to make decisions about whether to engage or not engage or how to target and to avoid the collateral damage, to avoid killing civilians.

And that is why I actually formed, I was one of the founding members of the Protection of Civilians and Conflict Caucus.

And I have focused a lot of my efforts on protecting civilians.

And that is why I know that it didn't have to be this way.

You didn't have to choose between security and going after Hamas and protecting civilians and ensuring that tens of thousands haven't died, that there was a better way.

And that's why I pushed the administration, Biden administration, to actually just uphold our own standards.

Our standards are pretty clear.

You know, we have a conventional arms transfer policy.

We had something called NSM 20, National Security Memorandum 20, which is the way that we actually enforced the conventional arms transfer policy.

And I led efforts to say, do the analysis.

Apply the facts to our own laws and standards, and then make the determination.

They unfortunately never went through that process and did that.

Because my belief is let's just apply our own standards like we would to any ally, like we would to ourselves.

You know, hold others to the same standards that we hold ourselves to.

So, you know, that ship has sailed, or it did under the Biden administration.

Right now, what needs to happen is a massive surge of humanitarian aid to Gaza.

The distribution system has failed terribly, terribly, in every way.

That system needs to be completely revamped.

The UN and independent aid organizations need to be put in charge because they know how to do this.

And there needs to be a massive surge of aid.

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: But I totally agree with that.

But I think that there's a concern that there might be this surge of aid and then Netanyahu will continue the war for political purposes because he has this right-wing part of his coalition that has basically said we'll dissolve the government if you don't.

continue the war in perpetuity or adopt the Trump plan, which is

the full ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip and then the Israelis taking control.

So I think there is a hope among a lot of Democrats, like Cards on the Table, myself included, that this might be a moment where the United States government, hopefully led by the Democratic Party, although I understand that we're not in power anywhere, will try to push Netanyahu to permanently end the war or try to force it.

And I think a lot of people think that

a broad support for cutting off weapons shipments is part of that.

Yeah.

Netanyahu is not going to end this on his own.

He just won't, as you've pointed out.

Netanyahu hasn't even pushed hard and done what's necessary to get the release of the hostages.

And he has repeatedly throughout history undermined opportunities to achieve peace and to dismantle Hamas.

Let's not forget that years ago, he was actually the one that helped facilitate and prompt up

what became the foundation for Hamas, right?

So he's not going to do that on his own.

He's only going to do that if there is external pressure from this administration.

And that's why people speaking up.

That's why Republicans too, right?

I mean, Donald Trump probably doesn't care that much what we have to say, to be honest with you.

But that's why Republicans and others who are starting to wake up to this, some of them are.

Marjorie Taylor Greene referred to it as a genocide.

There are people who are pushing votes to cut off aid.

And I don't agree with her on anything, but I think she has spoken pretty

movingly and compellingly about her desire to get out of conflicts overseas.

You know, when you are trying to build a coalition, when you are trying to increase support for something,

it's not enough just to double down on language and on things that people who already agree with you like and agree with, right?

We have to be willing to broaden our aperture here and pull other people into the coalition who know that this is not going the right way and this doesn't serve anyone's interests.

It doesn't serve Israel's long-term interest.

It doesn't serve the Palestinian interests and is certainly not going to deliver a two-state solution.

Not even starting on the path towards a two-state solution.

And the only way to do that is if we broaden our coalition and pull people in who we may not agree with all the time on all issues, but we have to be willing to do it.

Also, I'm sort of hoping there's going to be a structural change around this issue or just the way we're thinking about it.

Like, for example, a lot of Democrats, myself included, Ben Rhodes, who you know well,

have said Democrats should stop taking money from APAC.

And that is in part because I think their view their policy on Gaza has been indefensible.

But also because you see APAC

saying some pretty disgraceful things, like the Twitter account accused Bernie Sanders of blood libel, the 80-year-old Jewish man whose family died in the Holocaust of blood libel for raising concern about the starvation of civilians in Gaza.

Do you think Democrats should stop taking money from APAC?

I think people should be pushed on their policies, right?

You should look hard at what they have said about this issue and whether or not they want to show leadership on the humanitarian crisis, whether they have a track record of pushing for a two-state solution and making sure that Palestinians have the right to dignity and a future just like the Israelis do, right?

And that is the ultimate goal and that's where we need to be.

And people need to be pressured for that.

And people need to hear from their constituents on that.

Yeah, I think my concern is APAC is doing counterpressure, right?

I mean, they are basically endorsing Republicans.

They're intervening in Democratic primaries and taking out progressives.

And it just feels like they're supporting January 6th truthers.

It just seems like that it's an organization that is not

Democratic in nature right now.

Yeah,

I think that people need to feel pressure from their constituents to do the right thing here and to push back more than any other organization,

regardless of what that organization is.

And I don't agree with these organizations a lot and on all issues, but they need to fuel the pressure on

the specific crisis that we have right now, and they need to be pushed.

Next month is the four-year anniversary of the U.S.

withdrawal from Afghanistan.

I know Republicans have made this a push to revisit the final stages of the withdrawal, but that's about it, I think.

Looking back and knowing that you've served in multiple theaters, do you think that we are doing the right kind of accounting of the the mistakes we've made since 9-11 and the war on terror, or even asking the right questions?

I think we are undoubtedly going through that process.

And this is something that a lot of people don't know is that we actually created, I helped create, along with Tammy Duckworth and others, an Afghanistan War Commission, which has been a multi-year process.

It's going to wrap up in another year and a half, but it is going to do a comprehensive look.

It's very similar to the 9-11 Commission, actually.

They are doing a comprehensive look of every facet of this war.

They're looking back over the 20-year history,

every administration, Republican and Democrat, every Congress, Republican and Democrat, the civilian leadership, the military leadership, and looking at all of the missed steps, all of the missed opportunities in what went wrong every step of the way.

Because interviews, like, how does that work?

What do you, you guys, like talking to the generals who are in charge of various.

Yeah, well, this is an independent congressionally created commission.

So a uh it's not members of congress that are serving sorry i mean the commission right yeah the commissioners talking to the guy running rce they are they're doing hundreds of interviews civilian leadership military leadership um they're they're doing hearings around the country because you know ultimately i mean this is something that i feel very passionate about we we spent 20 years trillions of dollars thousands of lost lives you know tens of thousands of lost afghan lives uh lost credibility and it ended poorly by every metric

So we just can't do this again.

We can't.

And what we need to know is, you know, why did it happen?

What were the missed opportunities?

And again, I will say this happened under just as many Democratic administrations as Republican ones and just as many Democrat-controlled Congresses as Republican ones.

And I actually believe one of the biggest problems behind both Iraq and Afghanistan is the fact that Congress gave up its authority.

We have stepped out of our congressionally mandated war powers authority, and we have written a blank check to administration after administration through these authorizations for use of military force, these AUMFs, that basically have allowed president after president to continue military operations in dozens of different countries now without any more debate, without any more votes, and largely financed by additional debt.

Aaron Powell, is there any way to require that an AUMF sunsets every year or has to be be reauthorized or just something?

Because you're right.

Look, in hand up, work for Barack Obama.

We surged troops in Afghanistan.

That's something that, with the benefit of hindsight, I think was a mistake.

I think that it's fair to say that

the AUMF was stretched and strained beyond all recognition to justify

bombing places.

where it's impossible to argue that al-Qaeda proper was there, right?

Some sort of affiliate group.

Right.

These affiliate organizations is the language, right?

Like, they name groups in the AUMF and then they're like affiliates.

It's like a success.

So they morph.

I mean, the idea behind it is understandable, right?

They don't want a group just to change its name and rebrand and not be able to target it, but it has really been abused to spin off and be used in pretty abstract ways, right?

And I actually believe in sunsets.

This is actually a key component of this debate.

And I'm on that side of the debate, that no Congress should be able to debate and then take a vote and then wash its hands of it.

There has to be a sunset where both the administration is forced to come back and make the case and Congress has to be held accountable.

You have to have more votes and more debate because until that happens,

where's the pressure?

Where's the pressure to end it?

And the best way to have accountability is through members of Congress because we are weekly going home and we're holding town halls and auditoriums and rotary clubs.

And we have to stand in front of people and say, yeah, your taxpayer dollars, your sons and daughters should be going off and fighting this war and conflict.

And here's why.

And if we can't make that case,

then we shouldn't be taking the vote.

Yeah, absolutely.

And

it's so frustrating, I mean, just seeing how much inertia there is and how much easier it is to bomb a place, start a war, perpetuate a conflict than, you know, get votes on the JCPOA, the Iran nuclear agreement, which was an attempt to solve problems diplomatically.

And I'm really glad you guys are doing this review of sort of what happened in Afghanistan, but there's also kind of a just a political problem or incentive structure problem that I don't know how to solve in the United States to try to keep us out of these conflicts.

Well, this is where you're seeing a little bit of a convergence of, you know, the right and left, if you will, right?

Where people are like, no, why are we going to do another

war in the Middle East?

Why are we spending trillions of dollars?

Why?

And this is a damn good question.

Because our track record is not really good.

You just can't point to these and be like, oh,

we're having great success here.

We're not.

And that actually should be pretty telling.

And we get pulled into these quagmires.

And then

on the flip side, Ukraine, which is actually doing its own fighting and is doing a remarkable job,

we're not supporting them in the way that we should.

So

the incentive structures into politics, to your point, are completely out of whack on this.

Yeah.

I know last Sunday you were denied entry trying to get into an ICE detention facility in Aurora.

And I think believe it's a facility you've been visiting repeatedly since, what, like 2019?

Since 2019, yeah.

I think you guys filed suit yesterday against the Trump administration alleging that ICE officials violated federal law by turning you away.

Can you just tell us about what happened and

what should have happened and where the lawsuit stands?

Yeah, so I mean, this is something, as you point out, I've been doing for over six years now.

So when I first came in as a member of Congress in 2019, this ICE detention center is in my district, in the center of my district, about a mile from where I live.

And we immediately started to get reports of disease outbreaks and abuses and problems at this facility.

So I literally just showed up.

I did an unannounced visit in February of 19.

and said, hey, I'm a member of Congress.

I'm here to do an inspection.

They turned me away.

So it took numerous attempts before they finally let me in.

My team and I looked at the law and they're like, well, there's no actual law that requires us to have access.

So we actually worked with members and we pushed and we passed a law.

So we created this law that now says members of Congress have to be provided immediate access to any facility that's run by the DHS that receives

congressional funding.

So any federal money that flows through DHS that detains migrants.

And it doesn't matter whether that's ICE, CBP, HHS, those are the three agencies that run facilities of various types.

And that it doesn't need to be announced.

It can be unannounced visits because that's actually really important oversight, right?

You don't want to show up and it's all spiffied up.

It's all spiffy, it's Lysol and Fresh Paint and the Dog and Pony Show, right?

You need to get a real look and you need to see what's actually happening.

So we passed this law.

It's been on the books for years.

I've continued to do oversight.

I've visited this facility at least nine times.

My staff has been dozens of times.

So I show up a couple of weeks ago and they say no.

Who's they?

In this case, it was ICE.

Like the person who runs the facility or something?

Yeah, well, GEO, so this is a privately run detention center.

And there's no distinction in the law between private and

not private.

In this case, this is run by the GEO Corporation, which runs all sorts of these facilities around the country.

And as a separate issue, I've actually been pushing for years, along with Pramila Jayapal and others, to end the private for-profit detention

system because

it's just gross and perverse that there's a profit motivation to incarceration.

And more people longer is more money.

Yeah, I mean, you get all these abuses because

it's a profit-motivated system, right?

And then

you see all these companies and lobbying for the expansion of these.

It's really just a really perverse system.

So we've been trying to close

these facilities overall.

But notwithstanding, and that's actually another point of disagreement I have with the Biden administration, because they issued an order ending private detention centers for federal detention, but they exempted and carved out immigration detention facilities.

So we battled them on that.

We weren't successful.

So these facilities still exist.

So I was denied entry, which is a violation, just a straight up, very clear violation of the law.

So yesterday we filed a lawsuit in federal court.

What's the timeframe on that resolving?

We don't know.

I mean, we just filed it yesterday.

There's 12 members total, all of whom were denied access to facilities around the country because this is a feature, not a bug.

My denial was not uncommon, unfortunately.

I mean,

they are denying access.

They are impeding oversight.

They are obstructing all over the country repeatedly on a mass scale, actually, not just with visits, but all oversight.

So we are asserting our rights to try to end

this obstruction.

And what they say is they've implemented a new policy, they being the Trump administration, that they've implemented a new policy that requires seven days' notice for a visit, which of course guts effective oversight.

It's not the law, right?

Yeah, and it's not the law, right?

They can't just be like, nope, we're going to do something different, right?

That's not how it works.

Congress makes the laws.

The president's supposed to follow it.

They can't by executive order or fiat or just, their opinion, change it.

Well, we wish you the best of luck with that.

Congressman Crow, thank you so much for coming in.

And great days.

Thanks, Tommy.

Good day.

Thanks.

Appreciate it.

That's our show for today.

Thanks to Congressman Jason Crowe for coming on.

Tommy Lovett and I will be back with a new show on Tuesday.

Bye, everyone.

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