An Obama Arrest a Day Keeps the Epstein Files Away

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hi there it's andy richter and i'm here to tell you about my podcast the three questions with andy richter each week i invite friends comedians actors and musicians to discuss these three questions where do you come from where are you going and what have you learned new episodes are out every tuesday with guests like julie bow and ted danson tig nataro will arnett Phoebe Bridgers, and more.

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Welcome to Pod Save America.

I'm John Favreau.

I'm John Lovett.

Tom Nevitor.

Love it.

Welcome back.

It's good to be back.

Missed a slow couple weeks.

Slow couple weeks.

We'll talk about it.

How black was your news blackout?

It was, so the only, all I saw was every day you were filming a new video about the Epstein files.

And beyond that, I really didn't click in to learn more.

I really tried to stay out of the news.

I was like, what the fuck happened?

This is Pod Save Epstein now.

Yeah, you guys went wall to wall.

We sure did.

You got to cover the news.

Well, we have a big show in honor of your return.

We're going to talk about the Venezuelans who Trump disappeared to Seacot, who have now been released in a prisoner exchange.

We're going to talk about that, and you'll hear Lovett's interview with the lawyer who represents the now freed Andri Hernandez Ramiro, Lindsay Teslowski.

We're also going to talk about Trump's continued crackdown on free speech with his new lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal, his fight with Harvard, and Paramount's decision to cancel the late show with Stephen Colbert.

Then at the very end of the show, we'll respond to some fan mail from friend of the pod, Hunter Biden.

But let's start with Trump and his old friend, Jeff.

Two enigmas with wonderful secrets.

Love it, I think the most succinct way to explain what you missed these last two weeks is that

Pam Bondi, right when you left, Pam Bondi said they won't be releasing any more Epstein files.

And now Trump is posting AI videos of the FBI arresting Barack Obama.

So you're all caught up.

A bunch of stuff happened in between.

But it's like the little, it's the domino meme.

Right, right.

Well, I just,

you can't say that something's on your desk for review and then say it doesn't exist.

Right, it's tough.

Because what was on your desk?

Files.

Files.

But not the files that we can see.

But she said they were there.

She was going to put them in.

She and she looked at them and said, mm-mm, no.

Just says Trump all over.

Yeah, right.

So Trump's latest attempt to change the Epstein narrative involved a posting spree on Truth Social, as it often does.

Posted more than 20 times on Sunday night alone.

That included saying Adam Schiff should go to jail.

That's a whole nother story you missed.

He also threatened to tank the Washington Commander Stadium deal if they don't change their name back to the Redskins.

He also wants the Cleveland Guardians to go back to being the Indians.

Didn't want to leave them out.

By the way, I found, I didn't know that.

I didn't know that name team of the Guardians.

No, yeah, they changed their name from the Indians to the Guardians.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

A couple years ago.

Wow.

he also posted a three-minute video of various stunts that began with a woman in a bikini throwing a snake.

That one was just like, you know, when people sometimes post like best vine compilation, yeah, it was just like that.

There were no captions, no, no compliments, just like weird.

I don't know what was going on there.

He posted an AI photo of Barack Obama and various Obama officials, including our own Ben Rhodes, in jail.

And then he posted this AI-generated video of Obama being arrested by the FBI in the the Oval Office.

No one,

especially the president, is above the law.

No one is above the law.

No one is above the law.

No one is above the law.

Oh, son of a bitch.

AI is absolutely.

So for those of you who are just listening, That was Donald Trump and Barack Obama sitting in the Oval Office, and then the FBI comes in and they arrest Barack Obama, of course, while village people is playing in the background.

And yeah, that's what's happening there.

I was in the Duomo.

That's the big, big cathedral in Milan.

It's a lot of Duomos.

There were these kind of ancient inscriptions of Latins, like that were hard to see in the wall.

And so I used ChatGPT.

I said, what does this say?

And it gave me these amazing translations of these Renaissance-era Latin phrases, which helped me appreciate more what I was seeing.

Were you surprised that they said Epstein didn't kill himself?

Yes, on this day, St.

Bartholomew made clear that Epstein didn't kill himself.

All I'm saying is, man,

there are some pretty bad uses of AI too.

Yeah, that was one of them.

Tough one.

So, this Obama conspiracy actually launched on Friday when Tulsi Gabbard, who is for some reason our director of national intelligence, unspooled a bunch of red string to allege that Obama and his administration engaged in a, quote, treasonous conspiracy to, quote, subvert the will of the American people, end quote, by telling the public that Russia tried to interfere in the 2016 election, by disseminating hacked emails, and they also conducted an influence campaign to undermine Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump.

A conclusion reached by everyone who's ever investigated this for the last 10 years, including the special prosecutor Trump appointed and the guy who's currently serving as his Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, Marco Rubio.

But here's Tulsi Gabbard trying to explain this conspiracy, which she alleges is new, to Maria Bartiromo on Sunday.

Now, Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, revealing what this audience has known all along.

Creating this piece of manufactured intelligence that

claims that Russia had helped Donald Trump get elected contradicted every other assessment that had been made previously.

So the effect of what President Obama and his senior national security team did was subvert the will of the American people, undermining our democratic republic and enacting what would be essentially a years-long coup against President Trump, accountability, action, prosecution, indictments for those who are responsible.

Anyone want to

unpack?

why this allegation is completely fucking insane?

Sure.

So if you, I went and looked at the Gabbard, the report that they put out.

And having seen all these stories about what she's alleging, and what is shocking when you look at what's actually laid out and what makes it such a hard story to explain to people is there's nothing to it.

There's nothing to it.

What she walks through in actually pretty good detail is a good process.

A process by which the intelligence community looked at what happened in the 2016 election and came to the conclusion that Russia did did try to influence the outcome, that it wasn't just to undermine democracy, but to help Donald Trump win, that it did this through means of a mix of covert and public efforts, but that while it did steal voter registration information from certain places, it didn't ultimately hack any voting systems or affect any voting tallies.

And the intelligent community reaches this conclusion and the Obama administration puts that conclusion forward and actually does something far more responsible than Donald Trump ever did, which is not say what would have been the most fun and easy political point, which is actually the election was stolen and Russia stole the election, but was very careful, right?

She lays that out in great detail, but then claims somehow that because the intelligence community didn't conclude that the voting systems were hacked, therefore this has all been a conspiracy by Barack Obama to commit some kind of a coup after the fact, even though Donald Trump became president.

I don't, I don't, like, it doesn't mean, it doesn't make any fucking sense.

We all keep having a version of this conversation, which, which is like, am I missing something?

Because I just feel like this doesn't make any sense at all.

It'd be like, they're saying that, yeah, they're releasing new intelligence that shows Russia didn't launch a cyber attack on our election infrastructure that altered the outcome, which is

what the Obama administration has said.

What they said.

And they're trying to make it sound like that's a smoking gun that proves that the Russians didn't interfere in the 2016 election.

But as you mentioned at the top, we know that they did in part because the Senate Intelligence Committee, then led by Marco Rubio, now the Secretary of State, conducted a three-year investigation that determined Russia waged an aggressive effort to interfere in our election.

They said that Russia didn't change vote totals, but they probed

voter infrastructure in all 50 states, including voter registration databases, election websites, and they did a social media campaign to influence public opinion.

And we also know that in 2022, Yevgeny Progozhin, a now-dead Russian oligarch, because Putin put like a grenade on his plane or something.

It's like being an Iranian nuclear scientist.

Yeah.

he confirmed on the record that they interfered.

He said, gentlemen, we have interfered.

We are interfering and we will interfere.

And he was indicted in 2018 by the Trump administration.

And Progozin was sanctioned in 2018 by the Trump administration.

Was Manoukin, was Stephen Manoukin, the Treasury Secretary at the time, in on this?

It's crazy.

The weird thing is...

I feel like a moron even getting into the details right now.

But if you read Tulsi's report, which I encourage everyone to do, the report doesn't refute the idea that Russia interfered with the election.

Basically, what happens is, so the election happens right after the election.

The intelligence community assesses that Russia was involved in hacking the DNC and hacking those emails and sending them to WikiLeaks as a carve-out to disseminate the hacked emails, right?

And they also, by the way,

they say right after the election, no, we don't think the election was hacked in any way, right?

Then, being responsible, being responsible,

but then around in December, they're gonna have like a P and a briefing with Obama, right?

Where they tell him, okay, well, we don't think Russia hacked the actual election, we've determined this, but they have this meeting, and then after the meeting, they're like, Well, but they did conduct these influence operations, right?

Which is the hacking and dumping of the DNC mails and the social media campaign, which comes a little bit later.

And so, then Obama orders an intelligence assessment, right, that to figure out how Russia went about conducting this influence campaign.

And this is the January 2017 intelligence community assessment, that this is the basis for Tulsi's whole thesis.

She thinks that this intelligence assessment was made of manipulated intelligence.

So

for some reason we don't know, even though this intelligence assessment was called coherent and well-constructed with no political bias and by Marco Rubio and his committee.

And then it also said there was specific intelligence reporting confirming that Putin directed the operation to help Trump.

This is like what Marco Rubio found of this intelligence assessment that they're now saying is the basis for the treasonous coup.

Two other points from that Republican assessment of the intelligence committee's findings.

In all the interviews of those who drafted and prepared the intelligence committee assessment, the committee heard consistently that analysts were under no politically motivated pressure to reach specific conclusions.

All analysts expressed that they were free to debate, object to content, and assess confidence levels as is normal and proper for the analytic process.

The other part of this that I think is important is the reason the administration put out this report was not because they were trying to undermine Trump as he becomes president.

It was because this is an ongoing threat.

They were worried about Russia using these tactics in elections around the world.

They were worried about what would happen in future American elections.

They were worried about the fact that, yes, in this case, Russia hadn't

altered vote totals or they didn't find evidence of that, but they did, as Tommy pointed out, hack a bunch of systems to get a bunch of information and voter registration data.

It was dangerous.

It's an ongoing threat.

Like, if anything, having a review and having a meeting is like literally the bare minimum.

If anything, I might argue that Obama didn't do enough to sound the alarm in advance of the election and maybe prevent or like make people more aware of this.

But then the election happens.

They want to assess what's out there.

Clearly, they're having to talk to confidential sources within the Russian government.

That's not like an easy thing.

You know, it's just like lob in a call.

So it takes some time.

So they created a record of it, both classified and unclassified.

And there were tons of interests from Congress.

So they had to speak to that too.

But like, this is a pattern.

We've also seen Trump go after the security clearances of, you know, officials he doesn't like.

They ordered, he ordered DOJ to investigate Christopher Krebs, who is the guy who ran his Trump cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency during the 2020 election because Krebs said it was secure.

So this is just, you know, they're just trying to rewrite history.

Yeah, I hate making people go back to season one here, but,

you know, the theory that the right and the Trump people have pushed for a long time now is, you know, this whole Mueller investigation came from the Steele dossier and the Steele dossier was cooked up by the Clintons and the DNC and then Obama is now part of it too.

If we remember, the Mueller investigation wasn't triggered by the Steele dossier.

The Mueller investigation was triggered by George Papadopoulos talking about how Russia had a bunch of emails from Hillary Clinton that it was willing to disseminate for free to help the Trump campaign.

So when you get that intelligence, maybe you launch an investigation.

And that's how the whole thing started.

The other part of this, too, is this is signed off on by every member of the every Republican and Democratic member of the intelligence committee at the time, as you said, including Mark Arubia, but also some even more pro-Trump people at the time, who saw not just the public reports that we saw, but a ton of classified material that proved this and made it.

Obviously, these guys would love to throw cold water on this.

Even at the time, they wanted to

say that there was no evidence here.

They couldn't do it.

It was so clear that even the Republicans on the committee had to say this body of evidence supports the substance and judgments of the ICA.

You know what I was hoping for today, guys?

I was hoping for one of those oval office pool sprays where it's Trump and some poor world leader and then J.D.

Vance is next to him, Mark Orubio is next to him, and some reporter gets the question to mark or rubio about this

because he's already sort of melting into the couch anyway like do you think he would have had to just what would he have had to do

maybe maybe or maybe trump would have had him right there you know that's it i i

86 him right there i do aversion the treason's coming from inside the white house they have spent years attacking this president they've claimed you know they have came years claiming uh that his election was illegitimate they refused to say that he was a legitimate president but here we are all these years later and blah blah blah i noticed j.d.

vance the chief intellectual Zamboni, he hasn't had anything on this one.

I'm wondering if he's workshop and his long tweet on this one.

I saw though.

You had to

figure this shit out, guys.

You were in the White House for four years.

Like, you could have done this then.

You appointed your own prosecutor to look at this.

You didn't find anything.

Anyway, thoughts on the video?

How seriously should we take the threat to indict and arrest Obama?

I mean, my first reaction to it was, Jesus Christ, he must have just gotten a really bad briefing on all the times he's in the Epstein files.

You know, that is clearly like the genesis of all of this.

Like, they have been talking openly about how Trump needs to go on offense.

They need some chum in the water for the right wing.

Steve Bannon said as much.

But, you know, so for Obama himself, like for everyone involved, this is actually very scary.

Like, it's not the AI video.

It's like this idea that Tulsi Gabber, she wouldn't say what the crime she's alleging was committed was, but she's saying there's a referral to DOJ to the FBI.

And these things can take on a life of their own, especially now in Trump 2.0, because you have Cash Patel and Pam Bondi who are just in those jobs because they're Trump sycophants.

The FBI and the DOJ have been purged for loyalty of all the kind of people down below them.

And so who knows?

Who knows what will happen?

Like, I don't think there's any legal risk for Obama.

Clearly, no crime was committed.

And also, the Supreme Court has told us that presidents are kings now and they can do whatever they want if it's an official duty.

So he's fine.

But for everybody else, like they get swept into an expensive, time-consuming, scary investigation.

It sucks.

Mike Davis says no.

He says because Obama is covering up a criminal conspiracy that doesn't count.

That's what he said.

I don't put anything past them in terms of intent, what they want to do or are willing to do.

I just think that in addition to the FBI and the Justice Department, you need to get a judge to sign off somewhere on warrants, on indictments.

You need to have a grand jury doing a, like, I don't, I think these allegations would be laughed out of every fucking court in the country.

I'm not even sure what an indictment would look like, what it would say, what DOJ would argue to a grand jury here.

Like, I don't, I just,

I know, I, what I'm, what I'm more scared about, though, I should say, is when you run around saying that the former president and his his staff are guilty of treason or treasonous conspiracy, there's a bunch of fucking violent nut cases out there who

I'd be very scared of.

General Flynn today was saying that how the FBI should raid Obama's house and was like talking about the neighborhood in D.C.

where he lives and stuff like that.

And I know this is the first time, but like

it's that kind of shit that worries me more than the actual legal stuff.

Yeah, I mean, these are short-term thinkers, Pam Bondi.

That's why I shall say the list's on my desk and there's no list.

They're all kids that ate the marshmallow, you know.

But, like, that's a weakness, right?

It means that you don't actually ultimately worry that they'll be able to put together anything that would stand up in court, but that's also been their danger.

And so, you end up in a situation which, just to get to the next day, they put out videos to try to throw Chum in the water, but they don't know what the charges are.

But then the next day, they know what the charges are, but they can't substantiate it.

Oh, well, the next day, yeah, the grand jury signed off, but obviously, it'll never pass muster with a judge.

And the next day, all of a sudden, a jury is impaneled.

And maybe this ultimately leads to nothing because there's nothing there.

Even if, oh, they did what

Tulsi is claiming they did.

It's not clear to Tommy's point what you'd ever charge people with.

But regardless, they didn't.

The evidence is pretty clear.

But that doesn't mean you can't ruin people's lives.

And because they only think one day ahead, they'll deal with the consequences later.

Like, that's what worries me about how they've done basically everything over the last six months.

They view it all as payback.

Yeah.

That's the other part of it, which is on some level, Donald Trump was indicted.

He was a president who was indicted.

That is an ego wound to him that can't close unless he also figures out some way to go after Barack Obama or Joe Biden or their families or Bill Clinton or whoever.

And that will never stop.

I think from their point of view, they think that Trump being indicted was just completely manufactured, based on absolutely nothing.

And that if you could get Trump indicted for absolutely nothing, of course they can get Obama indicted for absolutely nothing.

But I think what they're going to find out, just like the EOs banning the law firms and other stuff, is some of the stuff they've tried to do is so fucking ridiculous that it has been laughed out of it.

But this is like the, like over years, right?

Most of this shit maybe ultimately gets shut down, but enough of it gets through, right?

And in the intermediate.

That's all.

It's just, that's the thing.

But I'm saying some of their legal cases are stronger.

Oh, yes, yes, for sure.

So obviously this is Trump's attempt to distract from Epstein, which got kicked up again late last week after the Wall Street Journal published Trump's 2003 birthday note to Epstein, complete with a doodle of a naked woman, where the president's squiggly signature doubles as pubic hair.

Lovely.

Trump has called the whole thing fake, saying, I never wrote a picture in my life.

What a quote.

What a quote.

I never wrote a picture in my life.

I looked.

I never wrote a picture in my life.

He's now suing Rupert Murdoch's journal for $10 billion.

That's it.

That's it.

Whatever number.

It doesn't matter.

Like, such a funny amount.

Quadrillion.

$10 billion.

Not to be outdone, the New York Times ran two big Epstein stories this weekend, one chronicling Trump's friendship with Epstein over the years that includes plenty of creepy details, details, and another about the publicly known instances of Trump's name appearing in the legal record of Epstein's crimes.

Before we get into it all, Love It,

you know, we haven't had a chance to talk to you about really any of the Epstein scandal, but especially the Wonderful Secrets letter.

How much were you following all this?

And what do you think of this whole thing?

Now that you've been able to catch up, yeah, so a couple things.

One,

Epstein didn't kill himself.

Epstein did not kill himself.

No,

it is amazing how much, in every aspect, no matter what the issue is, Donald Trump represents the absolute worst of the thing his base claims he's there to fight, right?

Whether it's the swamp or corruption, or in this case, the fact that he is more intertwined with Epstein than we even knew before.

We had seen the pictures and it was always a joke.

But the amount of detail that has just come out in the last two weeks about Donald Trump's relationship, this incredible, disgusting and weird letter from Donald Trump in this bound book, which they're claiming is fake.

The journal knew they'd get sued.

Yes.

This thing is completely fucking buttoned up.

And like, what, somebody went back in a time machine and stuck it in there?

What they put lemon juice on it in the toaster to make it look old?

Like, what are you talking about?

Yeah, I was saying this to Lovett this morning, but I was like...

You can say that

the card doesn't sound like Donald Trump, but also try to imagine the other scenario where it was completely made up.

Who makes up

a weird

one-act play like that between

Trump and Epstein in the Casey becomes

president?

It's just too weird to have been made up.

It's not damning enough to have been made up.

Rupert Murdoch doesn't want to deal with this.

It's the last thing the Murdoch family wants to deal with.

That's a goal.

They didn't want to publish this.

They were so pissed they had to publish this.

Yeah, he wants to be on a yacht.

Yes.

The other part of it, too, is just the, like, the kind of

being in a situation where it's like,

hey, like, yeah.

This guy was fucking heinous.

I want to know whatever documentation the government has.

We should get out as much information as possible.

But like a lot of the people, like a lot of it has been reported.

We know a lot of information.

And a lot of the people that know what happened are alive and around and can be asked.

Like the proof isn't in paper.

Like the proof is in the stories told by women and girls about what happened.

Like it exists.

Their word matters.

It exists in the world.

Like the proof isn't in a government document.

The stories are out there and gettable.

The other part of it, too, just when you see that book of letters and, you know, know, I guess

Trump has a letter in there, Bill Clinton apparently has a letter in there, a bunch of people have letters in there.

You go back to like Acosta, who ultimately became Trump's labor secretary, doing this kind of sweetheart deal for Epstein, or the fact that Pam Bondi didn't prosecute him in the years when she was attorney general of Florida, and many say that she could have.

And the fact that even after those pleas that Epstein originally, those pleas to lesser charges that Epstein ultimately

made when he was in Florida to get out of federal prosecution.

Even in the years after, he was still treated as a kind of acceptable person by so many people.

And you do see that like underneath the conspiracy is a truth, which is that like rich people, people who achieve this level of wealth, the wealth itself is seen as validating.

That how can this person be unacceptable?

They have so much money.

They've accessed the boat next to mine.

They're in the suite next to mine.

They're on the island next to mine.

They must be legitimate.

The money makes it so.

But like over and over again, we have seen that that money, whether it's Epstein or Bill Cosby or Harvey Weinstein or so many others, like that was just not true.

They were monsters.

That's all.

That's what I had.

That's what I have on that.

Yeah.

Our bet for most of last week was that Trump's name is

more likely than not in the Epstein files.

And there's a letter from Dick Durbin's office to Cash Patel claiming they were told that huge numbers of FBI personnel were tasked with reviewing the files and flagging any mention of Trump.

Tommy, what's your sense of where the story is right now?

Do you think Trump's base keeps up the pressure and demands more info?

Or has the journal story and the new Obama conspiracy reunited MAGA and reminded them of their true enemies?

This sort of post-journal story narrative that, aha, maybe this will be good for Trump.

It's like, we just spent two weeks talking about this man's connections with the most vile pedophile in public life in America.

Like, what the fuck are you talking about?

Yeah, I like Trump, right?

We don't like Trump to stipulate it, but where he's brilliant as a politician is like marketing and media and controlling a narrative and also like the constant feedback loop with his base.

And I think on both counts, we've never had him seen him do a worse job since January 6th, I would argue.

And I've gone from thinking that Epstein was a cynical thing that people like Cash Patel and Dan Bongino talked to because it got people mad and got them to click into their shows and that the real conspiracy was what Lovitt just talked about, that was like hiding in plain sight, to thinking Trump is absolutely covering something up because they were friends for two decades.

They ran in the same social circles, both in New York and Palm Beach.

They were photographed together constantly.

There's video of them ogling women together.

There's testimonials from Epstein's victims about incredibly creepy behavior of like Epstein walking in Manhattan with a woman, stopping by Trump's office.

acting disgusting around these young women.

Trump flew on Epstein's plane.

One of Epstein's victims was recruited while working at at Mar-a-Lago.

There's the quote that I feel like I have to read every time we talk about this from New York magazine in 2002, where Trump said, I've known Jeff for 15 years, terrific guy.

He's a lot of fun to be with.

It's even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.

No doubt about it.

The New York Times reported over the weekend that Trump hosted a calendar curl competition in 1992, and the only other guest was Jeffrey Epstein.

That is the strangest of the world's

calendar girl competition, but only one other guest trick.

Yeah.

So like, yeah, it's like insane.

When you say it out loud, it's insane.

And so like, you're seeing these kind of narratives like, oh, well, the polling's not moving from his base.

And like, would I love to see his base running from him in huge numbers, sure.

But I think it's far more likely that the people who are disgusted by this are like the first-time voters, the low-propensity voters, the people that decided to vote for Trump because they heard about Theo Vaughan and Joe Rogan, and they thought they'd be their guy who fought the corrupt establishment and now he's covering up for them.

Like that is the whole ballgame.

We've been at this for 10 years, guys.

There is no one thing that's going to bring down Trump.

And looking at this through that prism is just a mistake anyway.

But like, is it damaging in some ways?

Has he lost the trust of some of the influencers who helped get him elected and maybe some of the voters?

Very possible.

No doubt.

Are others back on board?

Yeah, for sure.

Will some of them be more skeptical going forward, even if privately of trusting Trump?

Yeah, perhaps.

And then there's others who, you know, are just, we're just looking for an excuse to get back on the Trump train because they do hate media and Democrats more and they want to be team players.

Like that's just how it's going to be.

Donald Trump is very good at claiming victory and blaming other people for failures.

And he is currently the president, right?

And so, and he promised things, right?

And he promises to deliver things.

And sometimes like he can claim he's done it, even if he hasn't.

He claims great successes.

Other times,

during his first term and after, he was able to blame the deep state or Democrats or what have you, right?

But now he's the president again.

And he kind of asserted that he was going to make up for all the mistakes or kind of lack of progress during the first time.

That now he's got the right team.

There's no deep staters in the cabinet now, right?

They're all loyalists in the cabinet now.

There's no old guard trying to hold him accountable anymore.

And yet, he's not able to deliver for them on this.

And he doesn't really have an answer as to why.

That's the problem.

He can't tell them why.

Because it's Pam Bondi at DOJ, right?

It's Cash Patel at the FBI.

Like, these are the loyalists.

He did it.

He got the team he wanted.

He like took over the Republican Party.

And like, nobody's getting there.

Nobody's getting there.

Nobody's getting finished.

There's always a deep state somewhere.

There's a deeper state.

It's always a deep state of clutch.

There's always a deeper state.

It's deep states all the way down.

Kind of just like double-stamped plumbing you said, John, which is, according to this Dick Durban letter, Pam Bondi ordered the FBI to put a thousand personnel on reviewing Epstein files 24-7 for like months.

Good thing nothing else is going on.

The FBI New York field office got sucked into this.

You're like, yeah, exactly.

We don't talk about the opportunity cost for a thousand FBI analysts working on this.

Like, they're not digging into white-collar crime or extremist groups or espionage or whatever.

Like, someday some shit is going to happen.

And we are going to learn that people working on that task force or whatever it was were prol off the case to flag Donald Trump's name in a set of files that they then didn't release.

And then our government will say that that's a fake story,

and that actually it was the Democrats that did it.

Here's what I has no one told Pam Bondi about Control F?

I don't understand what the going through the document is.

I don't understand that story.

I don't understand it.

I don't either.

Well, I'm sure the FBI will be prompt in their reply to Dick Durbin.

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Hi there, it's Andy Richter, and I'm here to tell you about my podcast, The Three Questions with Andy Richter.

Each week, I invite friends, comedians, actors, and musicians to discuss these three questions: Where do you come from?

Where are you going?

And what have you learned?

New episodes are out every Tuesday with guests like Julie Bow and Ted Danson, Tig Natara, Will Arnett, Phoebe Bridgers, and more.

You can also tune in for my weekly Andy Richter call-in show episodes, where me and a special guest invite callers to weigh in on topics like dating disasters, bad teachers, and lots more.

Listen to the three questions with Andy Richter wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, let's talk about our president's mission to defend free speech in an age of cancel culture.

The Justice Department was in court on Monday to defend Trump's attempt to terminate $2 billion worth of contracts with Harvard for scientific and medical research because the White House doesn't care for the political views expressed by the faculty and students.

It did not go well for the Trump administration.

The DOJ lawyer tried to argue that the government is simply choosing not to, quote, fund research at institutions that fail to address anti-Semitism to its satisfaction, end quote.

But the judge asked what the relationship is between anti-Semitism and cutting off cancer funding and said, quote, you're saying you can terminate a contract even if the reason you're giving is a violation of the Constitution.

I don't think you can justify a contract action based on impermissible suppression of speech.

So

the judge didn't issue a ruling.

It sounds like she tipped her hand there.

Obviously a long way to go.

Possibly this gets

adjudicated by the Supreme Court at some point.

But do you guys think this will at least stiffen the spines of what Bloomberg News is calling, quote, an increasingly vocal group of professors who say Harvard should reach a deal with Trump?

And do you at least understand or sympathize with their argument?

Look, the case was always ludicrous.

This goes to what we're talking about earlier.

The case is fucking ludicrous.

It is such an obvious violation of the First Amendment, not just according to liberal judges, but according to conservative and moderate judges.

You can't use the money you're giving an institution as a kind of a cudgel to get people to say things you want them to say or not say things you don't want them to say that have nothing to do with the researchers' hand.

Cancer research and student protest have nothing to do with one another.

It is brazenly unconstitutional.

If they settle, they are conceding in some way that there was a case there.

That's what will happen.

Trump will say he won and then he won't give up.

There is no justification justification for settling with Donald Trump.

You have to fight.

Why do you exist?

You've been here for 400 years, you've been here for 375 some odd years.

You got to stick around and fight.

You can't make it through four years of Donald Trump.

It's ridiculous.

Well, I think what they're worried about and why they asked the judge again to like at least make the ruling by September is that's when they have to like reapply for the con like there's some of the people the professors that are worried are the ones who are like in engineering and medical sciences and stuff because they're like, we will at some point run out of funding and we won't be able to make the decisions to continue the research research we're doing if they just drag this out on and on and on and on and on.

Totally.

But like, if Harvard can't fight this fight, no one can.

If Harvard can't fill the financial gap with some funds from a gigantic endowment, then no one can.

And so I'm sorry, guys, this sucks.

It's a travesty if this research is cut off.

But you guys have to fight this fight.

And because you're our nerd champion right now.

We just need to

battle for the rest of the

nerd champion.

It stinks.

Well, and I saw they, remember there was a story like a month ago that, you know, they were thinking about making a deal and the Trump administration like went after them again.

And some people then were saying, like, actually, Harvard's going to make it.

They're going to do a deal, but they're going to make it look like they want, you know, they want and not Trump.

And I'm like, I just think once you're getting into who's got the biggest megaphone and ability to shape the story of what the settlement would look like, like you're losing because Donald Trump's going to always win that fight.

The biggest corporate law firms thought they could do that.

They thought they could make that.

Look, no, we actually got one over on Trump.

You look like fucking idiots after Columbia makes a deal, right?

They think it's a good deal, got the best they could.

What does Trump say next?

I'm going to put you in receivership.

No, why about the deal?

And then lie about the deal.

And then lie about the deal.

It's lies.

Like, we're not getting through the Trump era without some pain.

It's just, that's how we have to fight these things.

There's no, you can't capitulate.

If they do, then everybody else will fall next.

So

one place that's quite eager to do whatever it takes to make Trump happy, Paramount Global, the parent company of CBS, which desperately wants the no longer independent FCC to approve its merger with Skydance.

So when CBS announced the shocking decision that it's canceling the late show with Stephen Colbert in May of next year, people were understandably skeptical of the company's explanation that the decision was purely a financial one and not related to, quote, the show's performance, content, or other matters happening at Paramount.

The announcement also came a few days after Colbert said this about Paramount settling Trump's 60-minutes lawsuit for $16 million.

As someone who has always been a proud employee of this network, I am offended.

And I don't know if anything will ever repair my trust in this company.

But just taking a stab at it, I'd say $16 million would help.

Now, I believe that this kind of complicated financial settlement with a sitting government official has a technical name in legal circles.

It's Big Fat Bribe.

And some of the TV typers out there are blogging that once Skydance gets CBS, the new owner's desire to please Trump could put pressure on late-night host and frequent Trump critic Stephen Colbert.

Okay, okay.

But how are they going to put pressure on Stephen Colbert

if they can't find him?

As for Trump, he posted on Truth Social, I absolutely love that Colbert got fired, adding, I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next.

What do you guys think of the cancellation and the precedent it's setting?

I mean, we are obviously very biased.

Like Stephen Colbert was unbelievably generous to us.

And also, I just think he's like a truly good person in a media landscape where that is often not the case.

And I think I'm guessing that the worst part about this for him is not just that he's losing his job, it's that the show is going away.

Like his team that he loves is all going to lose their jobs.

And this is a guy who like paid for them to kept them on payroll during COVID and stuff.

Right.

So it's like it's devastating.

He's got the best team.

Amazing.

Staff is amazing.

They're so talented.

Yeah.

And like, look, obviously, yes, there's, of course, some truth to the financial argument CBS is making.

Like consumption habits are changing.

Everyone's cutting the cord.

They're moving to streaming.

Ad revenue is plummeting for these shows.

But I'm not pretending, like, I'm not naive about how tough it is in media right now, but the show led the ratings and the time slot.

Like if you wanted to save it, you'd find ways to cut costs.

You don't just kill off the show.

And they just didn't.

And so I don't believe for a second that it wasn't connected to quotes like what we just heard, connected to trying to make Trump happy

as this paramount merger with Skydance maybe happens.

And we can't view this in a vacuum.

Like Facebook caved, ABC caved, CBS caved.

Like our heroes are now Rupert Murdoch's lawyers over News Corp.

And like that's not a good place to be.

Yeah.

What do you think, Levitt?

It's very sad.

You know, this is, to me, like a signal example of these multiple pressure points.

One is from the right kind of undermining and attacking these institutions.

One is the business and economics of television

disintegrating before our eyes.

And that is real.

And then the other is the fact that like these networks were slowly gobbled up by big corporations

because they saw it as a good complementary business.

They saw it at prestige play, they saw it as a way to promote other parts of their business.

And there weren't a lot of downsides because, as much as people talked about the danger of corporate ownership of the media, that was long before someone like Donald Trump actually made good use of his power to kind of put his thumb on mergers and

lawsuit threats and all the rest.

And so, and so so now you're in a situation where all these kind of pressures are hitting at the same moment.

And so like

is

Paramount is a $30 billion

a year company.

They're saying that the late show is losing $30 million.

$30 million is a lot of money.

But it is like a tiny amount of money compared to the overall revenue of this corporation.

They don't make institutions like the late show anymore.

You don't make a brand like that anymore.

And so even if you can defend it on business grounds, and maybe you can, and even if you can somehow say, well, you can't prove that they did it because of the Skydance merger, it's still an indictment of a corporation unable to

see the long-term value of an institution like this.

And so it just makes me sad because, look, the world will be fine without a late-night show.

There's a lot of places to get the news, a lot of places to get late-night jokes, whatever.

A lot of places to make fun of Trump, fine, and you can get away with it.

Of course, of course.

And so, but it is just one more

right here.

But it is just one more kind of shared institution crumbling

three of these

forces.

And

yes, you're right.

The streaming has changed things.

Paramount has a streamer, right?

It has a huge, the late show is huge.

The guy's the face of the network.

He is the face.

You could figure it out.

The fact that they chose not to figure it out, I think, lends credence to the fact that this was, because you can lose money on something that is valuable to you, but you're not going to lose money on something that you view as a pain in the ass.

And if you don't have the values or or stomach for a fight,

you'll give up.

Like I buy all the financial explanations and sort of the larger direction of where the industry's going.

But I'm willing to believe that the Colbert's politics and the politics of the show were like a tiebreaker for Farana, right?

Which is like, we're losing money on this.

But if it was someone who never pissed Trump off, if it was someone who was making the right laugh a lot at something, then maybe they're like, yeah, we'll lose the money and it's not a big deal.

Or look,

this thing is down 30 this year.

It'll be down 50 next year.

We're going to kill it.

Do it now.

It'll help us.

Whatever.

We have no idea what happens behind this.

And like, look, I mean, you know, how long is we've already seen ABC settle for the Stephanopoulos thing?

How long is Disney, how much do they care about Jimmy Kimball's show, right?

That Disney owns that, right?

Like, what happens with NBC?

You know, like, you can do this with all of these different shows.

And look, this is, it's harder for live shows like this because a lot of the other content on on the networks can at least be repurposed for streaming or like there can be like a back catalog of shows that you re-watch.

You're not going to re-watch live shows.

It's another sad indicator that we are just like losing the monoculture.

Yes.

Right.

It's basically now just sports and Taylor Swift

is like what we're down to.

And, you know, late night shows were a big part of the one thing that people were watching and coming together on.

And now that you don't have that, it just fucking sucks.

I was reading Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman, which is an old book, but incredibly, it's still relevant, like shockingly relevant.

But he talks about how sometimes the focus on censorship misses that really the ongoing challenge is noise, right?

So it's not, it is wrong that the fact that Trump doesn't like Stephen Colbert would have an impact on a decision Paramount would make.

That is wrong and bad, and we should call it out and they should be ashamed.

But the problem isn't the censorship of one show.

The problem is

the kind of noise that fills in behind.

And that to me is what makes this, like it's just a, it's a small blow at our collective ability to have places where there's like us a shared culture, a shared sense of history.

Like the late show is an institution.

It ties parents and their kids and like it's just another one gone.

And, you know, Stephen Colbert is like one of the best.

entertainers and humans we have in the country.

And I just want him to be able to, like, I feel good about his chances.

Like he's going to be fine, but I just really hope he does something else that is like big and entertaining Yeah, he should either run for president or he should launch his own production company and figure out a better version of the show for the digital

Yeah, for sure so because I don't want to those are the two options I don't want to see Stephen Colbert go in a way.

That's my okay.

I don't think I don't think he will two quick things before we go to break

Reminder love it or leave it will be at just for laughs in Montreal on Thursday July 24th.

Jesus, you're leaving the country again already.

I know.

I'm out again to I'm going to Canada.

I'm scouting on new places to live.

I'm not.

I'm not.

They're very mad.

You should do a field piece about all the ways that U.S.

products are being replaced by Canadian stuff.

There's an app you can download.

Oh, really?

It's like Maple Leaf Themed.

Yeah, don't make fun of them too much up there.

No, they're going through some tough stuff.

They're real pissed off.

Hey,

we all have the same

problems.

Catherine Cohen, Mary Beth Barone, Zach Zucker, Roy Wood Jr., Jean-Marco Serazis.

We have an amazingly packed show at the Just for Last Comedy Festival.

Go to crooked.com/slash events.

We just put out this full lineup.

So there's a lot of stuff.

It's called Maple Scan, the Maple Scan app.

You need that to know how Canadian a product is.

Okay.

Here's what the script says here.

It says, Tommy, we didn't want you to feel left out.

We've got brand new Dodgers-inspired pod save the world tees and stickers in the crooked store now.

Well, now I just feel like I got picked lack to recess.

This is the worst.

Tommy,

nothing is about me.

John, John, nothing.

One time I was.

One time.

John, just read the rest of the script and shut the fuck up.

Do your job.

When in, I think, third grade, we were picking teams for the Color War at the end of the year, and

the two, you know, the two sports kids were somehow captain, of course.

I don't know.

It's an old,

maybe that wasn't happening.

I assume that doesn't happen anymore to children, but maybe they still do allow the kids to rank each other.

But we went back and forth.

And then it was down to me and one other boy, whose name I remember, but I'm not going to say, because I don't know what his life is now.

Jeff.

Jeff Epp.

Nope.

There's Jeff.

Yeah.

No, so, but we're, but anyway, it's down to the two of us.

It's down to the two of us.

And he looks over and realizes that he's about to be picked last for a team and just bursts out crying.

And I was like, Why are you crying?

I'm not crying.

Now you're making me feel bad.

I felt fine about it.

I knew I was.

Why did hey man, you play the clarinet, Scott?

You don't think you were going to be last?

I knew I was going to be last.

What are you surprised?

Have you seen yourself?

Your glasses are an inch thick.

That hits close to home for me.

I'm a tiny, fat little fag.

Definitely fat.

I'm out of dribble.

Okay.

Well, now we're.

Anyway, the merch purchases go a long way to supporting what we do here at Crooked, which I guess is that.

Shop now at crooked.com slash store.

Sweet girl.

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Hi there, it's Andy Richter, and I'm here to tell you about my podcast, The Three Questions with Andy Richter.

Each week I invite friends, comedians, actors, and musicians to discuss these three questions.

Where do you come from?

Where are you going?

And what have you learned?

New episodes are out every Tuesday with guests like Julie Bow and Ted Danson, Tig Nataro, Will Arnett, Phoebe Bridgers, and more.

You can also tune in for my weekly Andy Richter call-in show episodes, where me and a special guest invite callers to weigh in on topics like dating disasters, bad teachers, and lots more.

Listen to the three questions with Andy Richter wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, as usual, we get a lot of immigration news.

In just a minute, you'll hear Lovett's conversation with Lindsay Toslewski from Immigrant Defenders Law Center, who's been representing Andri Hernandez-Ramiro.

If you don't remember, Andri is the Venezuelan hairstylist who was kidnapped by the Trump administration and sent to Seacot without due process.

But after 125 days in captivity, he's free.

Over the weekend, there was a three-country prisoner swap between the Maduro regime in Venezuela and the Trump regime in the U.S.

Venezuela released 10 Americans being held there.

And in exchange, the Venezuelans like Andri, whom the Trump administration had disappeared to El Salvador, were released from Seacot and put on a plane to the country they fled.

We'll get into Andri's case in more detail with Lindsay, but how are you guys feeling about the prisoner swap?

I mean, on a human level, I'm just, I'm happy that he's out of this hellhole, but I just,

the man was fleeing Venezuela because he was persecuted there.

I mean, he sought asylum in the U.S., Andri specifically sought asylum in the U.S.

because of credible threats or what were deemed to be credible threats by, I assume, some immigration official in the U.S.

of persecution because of his sexual orientation and political beliefs.

And now he's back in the custody of the Venezuelan government.

And we don't know how they will treat him.

Hopefully, Maduro thinks, okay, I'm the best PR for me is being

treating these men well.

but Maduro is a fucking idiot and a bad guy, and I don't trust him.

I don't trust Bukele and El Salvador.

I don't trust the Trump administration.

And so three authoritarians.

Three awful, awful, awful governments.

And so,

you know, it's enraging.

Like, this didn't have to happen.

These men did not have to be sent to Sakot.

It never made sense.

It doesn't make sense.

It's a stain on our history.

It also shows what a lie it was when the Trump administration was saying, oh, send them down there.

We don't control them anymore.

You know, it's government El Salvador now is their custody.

We can't control them.

That was obviously bullshit when they said they couldn't get Kilmar Abreco-Garcia back.

And, you know, it's just, it's, it's just horrific.

But the lies really bugged me the most.

It's like they lied about them all being Trende Aragua, lied about the tattoos, lied about their criminal records, lied about whether they were in this country legally, lied to the courts, defied the courts, and then sent them to a fucking

dictator's foreign gulag to be tortured.

Yeah.

Lied about that, too.

I mean, even the reports even that Bukayli was like, hey, you told me you you were sending the worst.

Yeah.

The worst.

Yep.

He was.

And now,

so

they've now been sent to Venezuela.

You know, I talked to Lindsay about it, and she's getting harrowing reports about what Andre experienced when he was in Seacot.

He's now a tool of the Maduro regime.

And you can hear this in the interview, but she talks about the fact that he has, as of our conversation, she had not.

yet been able to make contact with Andre.

Andre had not yet been able to speak with his family, but had been made to sit for a propaganda video on behalf of Maduro to release about his horrible treatment at Seacot.

So he is still a pawn for these three governments.

And, you know,

the Trump administration then says, we, as part of this arrangement, which actually is not, we're just, it was between El Salvador and Venezuela.

We're still not in control of anything.

But we have assurances that we can bring anyone back from Venezuela to the U.S.

for court proceedings, which is strange because are those criminal proceedings?

Are those asylum proceedings?

Which means, are you now saying you have a deal with Maduro that if that he'll send someone back to the United States because they need to escape from Maduro, which is just a kind of like brain-bending, fucked-up situation that maybe even undermines their case for asylum, which I'm not sure would necessarily be lost on any of these people, though who knows?

And so it's just this Kafka-esque, ridiculous situation where these people were tortured.

And to what we talked about earlier, because they had a

fucking idea and then wanted to execute it, didn't think about the consequences, rounded up people at random to hit some artificial deadline and quota, and then lied about it for fucking months.

And by the way, it's not over

in terms of like what the Trump administration is doing with detainees and people that they deport.

Like they, you know, they're looking for the go-ahead, and so far the Supreme Court has given it to them to send more people to third-party countries, to third countries, and not third countries like past administrations did, third countries like fucking South Sudan and all kinds of horrible war-torn places where they could be tortured like in El Salvador.

So

it's still a very, very troubling issue.

Also, the Wall Street Journal has a pretty chilling look at how ICE is rushing to spend the extra $45 billion they just got from Congress, which includes what internal documents call hardened, soft-sided facilities.

That euphemism just reminded me why I hated working in government so much.

Like tent camps.

Yeah, like when they would call, like, they talk about hard landings.

Like, no, no, you're talking about crashing.

Crashing a helicopter.

Hardened soft side facility.

Tents, yeah.

Yeah, hardened.

At military bases and next to existing ice facilities, they're hoping to get detention capacity up to 100,000 from 40,000.

Apparently, this is even causing concern internally because of how vulnerable they are to flooding and high winds.

Even worse news, Human Rights Watch put out a report on Monday alleging abuse at three Florida detention centers since Trump re-entered office.

At one Miami facility, people were denied food for hours.

When the food finally came, one detainee said they were forced to eat with their hands shackled behind their backs while kneeling like dogs.

Others described getting slapped in the face, retaliation for seeking medical care, and crowded cells where detainees routinely have their hands zip-tied and their faces shoved to the floor.

DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin reacted to Journal Story by saying that everyone in detention centers like these is there by choice because they chose not to self-deport.

So you don't self-deport.

You are forced to the ground to to kneel with your hands shackled and eat like a dog.

A reminder that Trump's immigration policy is becoming more unpopular by the day.

The new CNN poll shows 55% of people think Trump has gone too far in his deportations.

That's 10 points higher than back in February.

57% oppose building more detention facilities.

And 53% oppose increasing ICE budget.

Too late for that.

A CBS poll from over the weekend basically echoed those same results.

Back in June, more people thought Trump was prioritizing dangerous criminals.

Now those numbers are flipped.

So there's been a few stories lately about some Republican politicians starting to push the administration to exempt undocumented immigrants in agriculture and hospitality.

We've talked about that a little bit.

Notice just ran a piece about Republicans advocating for immigrants in their districts who've been detained.

I think even Chip Roy was like, oh no, I got a guy who's a good guy.

He's a legal resident.

He's just trying to get legal status.

I just got caught up in this.

We know.

Yeah.

Do you think these stories and poll numbers have the potential to move Trump on this issue at all?

Or is the best we can hope for just trying to keep these stories in the headlines?

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Trump, no, voters, yes.

I mean, the farmer's market Hannah and I go to on the weekends, one of the vendors there is a relative who died during an ice raid because he was trying to escape and he fell off a 30-foot roof and is dead now.

This is the farm.

Yeah, it fell 30 feet off the roof of a building.

So, I mean, we knew, look, obviously, a lot of the Sakot transfer and

sending people to a gulag in El Salvador, that was Stephen Miller and these Sickos trying to deter people from coming to the U.S.

by by scaring them and making them think it would be hell.

What Trisha's quote tells us is the next step is treating people in U.S.

custody so horribly that they give up their asylum cases and just leave, you know, even when they have credible claims.

And so I think like a lot of these stories kind of shock the conscience.

Like the Republicans seem to think Alligator Alcatraz is some big win for them, kind of think it's just sickening and gross.

And there are the practical matters of what happens when there's a hurricane, you know, when you have a bunch of people in a swamp in a tent, like what are you going to do about it?

They can just die.

You're going to leave them there.

Just on the polling, I mean, his approval on immigration is down 10 points from March.

Almost 60% of independents oppose the deportations.

58% oppose the way he's using detention facilities.

And then there's just like 70% of the people in that poll say Trump is not focused enough on lowering costs.

And I do think part of that is like.

Alligator Alcatraz is the kind of stuff they want to talk about.

That and tariffs.

60% oppose tariffs.

Like it's just that there is a bit of a meta thing happening where it just feels like he's focused on the wrong stuff and the underlying economic circumstances are not really improving.

Yeah, I think they're also now suffering

the administration, public relations-wise, from the fact that there's all these viral videos of people who are clearly not criminals or people who are just like American citizens, legal residents getting swept up in all these raids.

And all the Trump administration is doing is like putting out their fucking, you know,

deportation porn videos of the worst of the worst, you know, getting arrested.

And there's not enough of those because there's not enough dangerous criminals getting arrested versus all the videos that are circulating on TikTok, on Twitter, on everywhere about all and on people's local news stations too, about all these people getting swept up who are in their community who they know are legal residents or people who've been here for decades.

Yeah, the other part of this too is so they're they're ramping up the construction of these facilities.

They are firing immigration judges.

As we know, Trump stopped a bill that would have increased the number of immigration judges to help deal with the backlog.

And so they're not only putting people in these terrible circumstances, they're trying to build a system where the strain becomes, they can weaponize the strain on the system so that people are held for weeks, even if it's unjustly, right?

Where a lawyer can't find where their clients are because it was done in such a rapid way and there are so many cases.

And so, like, that is part of this.

They are trying to weaponize the strain they're putting on the system.

Yeah, the

like, oh, we're going to exempt hospitality.

Oh, oh, well, we'll exempt

farm workers.

Like, Trump can move on this because he did.

He got the call and he said, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Like, we were not supposed to go after.

We're not trying to shut down the farms.

Like, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Like, that's not what this is about the hardened criminals.

These people have been here for a long time.

And then, of course, so that comes slapped on the wrist by Stephen Miller.

And then all of a sudden, it's everything is back on.

Like, He is responsive to pressure on this.

These are all, you know,

deporting a bunch of people that work in agriculture, work at construction, work in hospitality, that will cause jobs to not be done, costs to go up, businesses to suffer, the economy to suffer.

Like that will have consequences.

Donald Trump is allergic to those consequences.

He is aware of the pressure he's under to deliver on some of these

prices.

He can lie about it.

He can claim he's doing it.

He can blame Joe Biden all he wants, but ultimately he will be held responsible.

So I do think he is

he is like kind of beholden to pressure on these issues.

But at the same time, like, you know, there's Stephen Miller waiting in the wings to walk it back.

And despite the fact that this administration is filled with some of the biggest buffoons you'll ever meet, Stephen Miller is quite smart and knows exactly what he's doing and has been spending a couple years trying to learn from his mistakes in the first term, and mistakes being they didn't deport enough people.

And so tough

yeah, and so when like the agriculture secretary or, you know, Joe Rogan in a dinner with Trump is like, hey, exempt the hospitality workers, that's fine in the moment, but Steve Miller's going to like come in later and figure out how to get what he wants.

Well, so I think that's the question, right?

Yes, I totally agree with that.

But like, this is the beginning.

They are right now

starting to ramp up deportations at the exact moment the country is turning on this precise policy and when the economic consequences will make worse his biggest political liability.

And so, yes, you know, the ag secretary calls, says, I'm hearing from all these businesses, you got to do something.

Trump sends out a post.

Stephen Miller walks it back.

Steve Miller and Noam can go meet with the ICE people, whatever.

But eventually, like at some point, right, like that pressure starts to maybe out, that wave can crest and cover Stephen Miller, too.

Maybe.

Yeah.

Only if it goes to Trump directly, though.

I dig that as the interesting part, which is that like he is clearly like the lead staffer out of all of them.

And so like if the ag secretary is like going through him to get to Trump to try to make his case, I'm sure Stephen Miller's like, yeah, yeah, we'll get back to you on that.

You know, yeah,

you know, if Trump starts seeing footage on television of like people being really upset about this PR, yeah, right, bad PR he doesn't like.

So that's, that's a key.

Okay, when we come back, Lovett's interview with Lindsey Toslowski of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center.

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Joining us now is is Lindsay Teslowski, attorney at the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, which represents Andre Romero, among others who were kidnapped by the Trump administration.

We now know Andre was among the hostages who were freed from Sakant in El Salvador and sent to Venezuela.

Lindsay, the last time we spoke, the Trump administration had refused to even provide proof of life.

That's where we were up until Friday.

I know you were not informed that Andre was part of this exchange, but were able to ID him from photographs of Andre coming off the plane based on his tattoos, the same tattoos for which he was seemingly kidnapped.

But what have you learned about Andre's circumstances since the transfer Friday and how are you feeling?

So,

yeah, a lot has happened even just in the last few minutes.

We learned of his return to Venezuela through media reports and then saw him disembarking that plane.

Since then, we have not been able to speak with him.

I know his family has briefly heard from him in a quick phone call, letting them know that he should be released either later today or tomorrow.

And then, in the last few minutes, I was sent a video from Venezuelan state TV

that has Andri

doing a testimonial

on camera.

And I will just say that, you know, some of what he describes as what happened to him in El Salvador is absolutely horrific, describing torture and sexual abuse.

But what is also horrific is that he hasn't spoken to his lawyers yet.

He hasn't been able to reunite with his family yet.

And the authoritarian regime that he was returned to has him making a video speaking about extremely sensitive and horrible things that have happened to him while in custody in El Salvador

before he's had a chance to even comprehend what has happened to him.

And it's just an ongoing,

it's the reason that we were fighting for him not to be returned to Venezuela.

We of course are glad that he is out of that torture hellhole in El Salvador, but you know, his safety and his freedom is still very questionable.

So we haven't spoken to him, so I can't say too much, but

what has happened is really just another chapter in this ongoing travesty of justice.

So you now have

Andre in the custody of the Maduro regime due to a deal between Trump, Bukele, and Maduro.

The exchange agreement, at least publicly, seems to allow for Venezuelans to come back to the U.S.

if ordered by a court.

That's, of course, like deeply strange because in some cases it would be ordered by a court for asylum proceedings due to fears of the Maduro regime, which is now saying it wouldn't stand in the way of that kind of a transfer.

There's a lot of like contradictions inside of this.

How do you even begin to figure out how to represent your client in this moment?

Like, what are you, what are you trying to figure out?

Like, what are your questions?

Yeah, I mean, our number one question when we are for the first time in 128 days able to speak with Andre is is what does he want now and what is possible?

Because while the Maduro regime may have agreed that part of this exchange, if that is even true, we don't know, we haven't seen any of this, but if they did agree that if a court orders that

some of these men can come back to the United States, that they will let them go, we have no idea whether that is actually true, whether the Maduro regime would allow that, and we have no idea whether Andri would want to come back to a place that sent him to four months of torture in El Salvador.

So there are a lot of questions.

Once we are able to speak with him, we're going to start with, for the first time, being able to ask him, what do you want and how can we help you get what you want?

Because for 128 days, he has been incommunicado.

We have no idea.

what he wants to do at this point and you know we're really going to start there but in terms of legally this situation is beyond an unchartered territory.

There has been an agreement between essentially

three strong men who have come up with a prisoner swap that involved our client that he did not consent to, we're assuming, that has landed him back in the place where he fled from initially.

He fled Venezuela back in 2024 because of persecution that he suffered at the hands of the Maduro regime, because of his sexual orientation, orientation and because of his political beliefs.

He came to the United States to seek protection.

He was denied due process.

He was not given a day in court to make his asylum claim.

And he was essentially sent back to the very place he fled with a stopover to be tortured for four months in El Salvador.

This is just beyond a travesty of justice at this point.

It's something that as the facts come out, I think will be a shame on our asylum system, on our government.

And what happened to him in El Salvador and what happens to him next falls squarely at the feet of President Trump and Secretary Noam for everything that they had to do with sending him back there.

Is there any more that you can tell us about what you've just seen from Andre?

I know it's all

I know you need to be careful about even accepting it at face value because it is coming via Maduro's regime.

But what have you learned about Andre's treatment?

What have you learned about his current condition and mental health?

What I can say about the video that I saw, which was on Venezuelan state TV,

it's essentially a propaganda video, but Andre does confirm our worst fears, which is that he was tortured in El Salvador, that he was sexually abused in El Salvador.

And, you know, in terms of his mental health, I can say that he does not look well in that video.

And it's clear that the Maduro regime prioritized not reuniting him with his mother, not allowing him to speak to his lawyers that have been vocally advocating for him nationally and internationally for four months.

But they prioritized making that video, which I cannot imagine would be in the

you know, in the best interest of anybody who has just gone through what has to be one of the most traumatizing experiences I could ever imagine.

Why do you think this exchange happened at all?

How much do you think the Trump administration felt like this had become both a political problem and a consuming legal problem?

I think it's because of the pressure that all three governments, frankly, were probably feeling.

The Trump administration, because we were able to lay bare what what they did.

They sent innocent men with no due process to a place that is notorious for torture.

They sent them to a gulag in El Salvador without giving them their day in court.

And even the courts here in the United States recognized that their due process was violated when that happened.

Their human rights have been violated, we now know, by these stories of torture that are coming out.

So I think the Trump administration was feeling that pressure.

I think the Bukele administration was feeling pressure to be rid of this problem because they probably initially were told that they were receiving people who were members of Tren de Aragua and assumed that

they would be able to sell that to the Salvadoran public as a furtherance of their

strongman policies.

But ultimately,

by Andri's story and by so many other stories that came out, that many of these men had absolutely no criminal history, the vast majority of them, that they were not given their day in court, that no court ever said they were members of Trende Aragua.

As that became clear, I think this was a problem for certainly President Trump and President Bukele.

And, you know, of course, being an authoritarian regime, the Maduro government is going to use this to further their,

you know, his personal ambitions, to further the fact that he can play the hero in this story.

But the fact is that many of these men were in the middle of seeking asylum, fleeing the very country they were just returned to.

Is there hope, like a dark hope, that this attention, the fact that they view Andri and others as politically useful as part of a kind of propaganda effort, that that will afford some protection?

There's definitely a hope that the millions of people that have come to know Andre's story who are continuing to follow it.

We have received so many inquiries from around the world about his well-being just since Friday, since he disembarked from that plane.

We hope that the continued pressure for his safety and for justice for Andri will provide some mechanism to keep him safe.

And we will continue to fight for justice for Andri because being returned to the place that you fled initially with no due process is not justice.

And we committed to fight for justice from the moment we took his case, and we will continue to fight for justice for him, for our seven other clients who also were returned to El Salvador, and for all of the men who were put through this absolutely horrific experience that really

is a shame on our government, on our ability to help people who are seeking protection.

404 reported last week that there were dozens of people on those flights to CCONT that were not included in the list of names put out by DHS.

What was your reaction to that report and how does it comport with your experience in representing these men?

Our experience in representing these men has been chaotic.

They, in the immigration courts where we are representing them, their cases have gone into all different sorts of postures.

It seemed at times that ICE wasn't even able to confirm that some of our clients were in El Salvador to this day.

They never would admit in court where they went when they left ICE custody.

We had other cases like Andres, where they admitted right away that he was in El Salvador and then moved to dismiss his case saying he was no longer in the United States.

And we even had a case where a judge removed someone because they were not present in court, ordered them deported knowing that they had been sent to El Salvador.

What, you know, the 404 report and all of these people who we didn't even know were there is you know, furthers our knowledge that this was a chaotic operation, that this was not taken by the Trump administration in the way that you would expect

something that has human beings' lives hanging in the balance to be taken.

It was done rashly.

There was not a legal basis to invoke the Alien Enemies Act, and certainly not, you know, one, because we are in a peacetime, so it's not a lawful use of this of the Alien Enemies Act, but also because none of these men were, it appears, were members of Trende Aragua to begin with.

So, you know, to me, it just shows how much chaos is happening within ICE and that due process and fundamental fairness is something that the Trump administration sees as

an impediment to their plans for mass deportation.

And unfortunately, people like Andri and stories that we may never know of others who were in the same predicament are examples of that.

So you have the Wall Street Journal reporting that temporary detention facilities are being ramped up by ICE because it just received all this money.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is firing immigration judges.

Trump stood in the way of a bill that would have increased the number of judges to help with the backlog they claim to want to resolve.

They are weaponizing the strain they're putting on the system.

They are trying to overwhelm the system.

What does that mean for

how you need to represent clients?

What does that mean for getting people due process or even finding out what happened to people?

Well, I can add a few other examples to that list that you just said.

One of them is that we have started receiving cases that we had closed in 2009 and 2010 are being recalendered in the immigration courts.

So these are cases that were dismissed by the government as not priorities for prosecution over a decade ago.

And the Trump administration is recalendaring them, which to me indicates that not only

do they, you know, not care about the backlog because they are firing immigration judges, but they are trying to add to it.

They are trying to break the system.

They are trying to make it so that it is impossible to give people due process.

As deportation defense lawyers, we will continue to show up in court.

We will continue to file habeas motions to get these cases out of the immigration courts, which are not truly independent, and into federal court, so that we can make sure we get justice for our clients.

Another example of this is arresting people who are coming and showing up for their immigration court hearings.

People who are already in proceedings, people who have already filed for asylum, people who are waiting for that case to be adjudicated in court are being arrested and put into expedited removal, which is essentially a way to remove them from the United States with little to no due process at all.

The Trump administration, over and over, in all of these examples, finds giving people the ability to be heard in court, which is not just something that we do to be nice, but is a fundamental constitutional right.

They find that inconvenient.

And they are looking for ways, whether it's firing judges, whether it's making the system so backlogged that it can't possibly work, to deny people that due process right across the board.

And as lawyers, it's why we are

filing lawsuits.

We have a lawsuit around the LA raids here in collaboration with many partners that is really saying we will hold you accountable.

If you violate people's constitutional rights as way of your plans for mass deportation, we will hold you accountable and we will make sure that we see you in court.

And we're going to continue to do that in immigration courts and federal courts because the level of unlawfulness by the Trump administration as they try and carry out these plans is stunning.

And it should be something that does not just impact immigrant communities.

It shouldn't just be something that strikes fear in our communities here in Los Angeles.

It should be something that every single American is worried about.

Because if they can do this here, if they can do something like this here, they can violate the constitutional rights of all of us across the country.

And everyone should be worried.

So public opinion to that point has turned on the Trump administration's crackdown, just as it's now ramping up.

What would you like to see our audience do to help, to support what you're doing, to be helpful just in their communities, whether it's through raising awareness or actually trying to do

like get involved in preventing raids and all these other actions?

Well, I think it's really important that people understand their rights to document what is happening in their own communities.

We've seen a lot of this in Los Angeles where people are actually recording when ICE goes out and conducts raids.

That is vitally important.

That actually can become evidence in lawsuits where we show here in Los Angeles, we have been able to get a temporary restraining order because we were able to show rampant racial profiling happening when they would go into Home Depot parking lots and literally just sweep up every single person who is brown, people who are speaking Spanish.

That is, you know, an absolute example of racial profiling.

And some of the information that we have from those lawsuits comes, yes, from the people who are arrested, but also from the bystanders who stand witness to what is going on.

We also remind people that, you know, recording is legal and you should do it from a safe distance.

There are lots of mutual aid organizations that are helping and organizing people to do this in their communities.

We're part of the LA RAIDS Rapid Response Network that does this work.

And we rely on volunteers to help us to go out when we receive calls that something, that there is ICE enforcement activity happening.

They can go out and respond to that.

So people should certainly be getting involved with those efforts in their communities and also supporting legal defense organizations around the country.

You know, immigrant defenders, we operate here in Southern California, but there are many amazing organizations across the country that do this same work.

It's so important to support these organizations, support bond funds so that we can get people out of ICE prisons and back with their families.

And really, once we're able to get people out of ICE prisons

and they're fighting their case from the community, they have a much better chance of finding representation and also of being able to be successful in their case.

So I would say all of those things and

really talking about these stories.

Andre's story particularly touched the hearts of so many people because they could see themselves in him.

They knew that if it could happen to Andre, it could happen to any of us.

There are so many stories like that.

Follow organizations that are sharing these stories on social media and share them because shining a light on the injustice is going to help us to fight back.

It's going to inspire others in your communities to do the same.

And it's just so important for us to lift up those stories of our neighbors, our friends, our families who are being directly impacted.

And I do think it's fair to say that the attention on Andre and others who have been so

mistreated has been part of why public opinion has turned.

Lindsay, I know this is still an

ongoing and harrowing situation for Andre, and it sounds like you're just beginning to learn just how much he's been through.

But I just want to say thank you for everything that you've done.

Because if people hadn't paid attention, there'd be no reason for this exchange to have happened.

And these people could have been lost forever.

And

I hope it's heartening when Andre ultimately learns how many people were

fighting to make sure that that he got free?

And he is right now yet to learn how much attention his case has gotten.

And so I know he may have a long road ahead, but he's only in a better circumstance, is still a dangerous one because of

you and immigrant defenders and all the others.

So thank you so much and keep us posted and we'll try to keep in contact about Andre's case and so many others.

Thank you, Lindsay.

Thank you so much.

All right, last thing before we go.

We're recording this on Monday, July 21st, the one-year anniversary of Joe Biden dropping out of the presidential race.

Happy anniversary, guys.

Thanks.

Seems like there are, you know, still some feelings out there, people working through some feelings.

Here's a selection from a three-hour interview the internet outlet Channel 5 conducted with Hunter Biden.

You know what George Clinton did?

Because he sat down, I guess, because he was given the blessing by the Obama team or the Obama people and whoever else and and David Axelrod and whoever the fuck else is to go, okay, yeah, you know what?

We're gonna, we are going to insert our

judgment over yours.

We, me, and James Carville, who hasn't run a race in 40 fucking years, and David Axelrod, who had one success in his political life, and that was Barack Obama.

And that was because of Barack Obama, not because of fucking David Axelrod.

And David Plough, and all of these guys, and the Pod Save America guys, who were junior fucking speech writers in, you know, on Barack Obama's Senate staff, who have been dining out on the relationship with him for years.

First of all, that's insulting.

John, you were chief speechwriter.

I was chief speechwriter.

I was the only one in the Senate office.

And imagine, and imagine,

it must be just so hard for Hunter Biden to watch all these people dining out on somebody's name.

It's tough.

It's tough.

Tommy, you listened to all three hours.

What did you find?

Yeah, I listened to all three hours.

I don't know why I did that.

I have a lot of feelings about it.

In part because I interviewed Hunter on this show, and I think 2021 about his book.

And I, you know, I kind of feel like I got duped now.

Like, I have a lot of empathy for anyone who's who's dealt with addiction issues.

But

let's just go to the starting with this interview.

Like, I get why he's mad.

If my dad went through that, I'd be mad too.

He gets to air his grievances when he wants.

He found a very credulous partner to give him three hours.

The guy literally says to him at one point, I'm on your team.

That's a quote.

Oh, wow.

And at one point, the guy also says, nothing wrong with making some money here and there when they're talking about his business dealings.

Like, Hunter's also rightly.

Yeah, there's not enough.

Like, one interesting point Hunter makes, there is not enough scrutiny of like the origins of the laptop story.

Like, this laptop gets to this technician to Rudy Giuliani, and no one kind of questions that, right?

Some fair points, okay?

But mostly it's.

Yeah, I guess.

I mean, sure.

I know, I know.

But mostly it is three hours of Hunter.

playing the victim and he like rages at us and he rages at Axelrod and Clooney.

But the problem was the voters.

I know.

And they never addressed that.

The voters thought Joe Biden was too old.

And when it comes to the attacks on Hunter himself, like, okay, let's just, what if we just stipulate for the hypothetical?

Like, yes, okay, all your business dealings were above board and legal.

All your paintings were purchased by art lovers who loved the product and didn't know your name.

Trump is worse.

You were on the board of Burisma because of who your dad is.

And that is what people hate about Washington.

And it was part of the problem.

And like, there's some other weird shit.

Like, he said, he blames the debate on his the

biden's staff saying they gave him ambien on his foreign trip but like biden got back from the g7 on june 14th the debate with june 27th a lot of ambien if ambien was the issue like i i don't think it's ambient it's age also it's like he was tired so they gave him ambien

also like just like allow me to rent one more second like his big beef is that republicans stick together and democrats are are united but he's obsessed with this show obsessed with george calooney they don't talk about gaza until two hours and 50 minutes into the interview.

I'm guessing that that was the bigger threat to party unity than a George Clooney op-ed.

You know what I mean?

It's just this sense of entitlement that like

from Biden, from his family, from the inner circle, that he was like owed the presidency, owed a second term.

It's just very fucking grading.

The whole premise of 2024.

was,

yes, voters are saying that Joe Biden's age is his biggest liability,

but don't worry because Joe Biden's the closer.

And when you see him campaign, he's going to put those worries to rest.

He had a good state of the union, and then he had the worst debate any of us had ever seen, and it became insurmountable.

And so at long last,

he didn't put the concerns to rest, he put his campaign to rest.

Right.

And at long last, the Democratic establishment decided to listen to the voters.

And it was very hard to get the establishment to do that, but ultimately they did that.

And everybody kind of collectively

ultimately were able to get Joe Biden to step aside and do the right thing for the country.

Now, we don't live in the world where Joe Biden ran that race all the way to the end.

But one thing we know is that Hunter Biden,

throughout Joe Biden's presidency, was a terrible liability for him.

And put the addiction aside, it is because he was on barisma, because he became an artist, because he was part of a kind of like sleazy Washington that, as Tommy said, people hated.

You were a liability.

You should be ashamed of the ways in which you made your father's political life worse.

And like the idea that we're going to listen to you now, like, give me a fucking break.

It's ridiculous.

My reaction was, first of all, I wish you all the best, Hunter.

Like, forget about it.

I like the art.

I like the art.

I think the art had a lot of pathos.

Like,

you know, attack us, attack George Clinton.

I don't fucking care.

But, like,

listening to Hunter Biden interview post-election, especially the Hunter Biden one, but also Jill Biden, also Mike Donnellin, when I think that these are basically the only people by the end who Joe Biden was listening to, you're like, no wonder he didn't fucking drop out.

He wasn't getting, we know now that there were a whole bunch of pollsters who their information was not getting to Joe Biden.

And because Mike Donnellin wasn't letting it get in.

There's a whole staff that was working for Joe Biden, some of their whole lives.

And they were kind of shut out too.

The only people in the circle at the end was the family, was Hunter, this person in the interview, and Jill and Mike Donnellin, who just had this faith that Joe Biden was going to win the election that wasn't based on any kind of measurement or data at all.

Like the New York Times poll in February, 61% of Biden 2020 voters said he was too old to be effective.

And that concern cut across generations, gender, race, education.

Hunter does a whole thing in here about like, you know, we didn't know what the black voters of South Carolina, it was everyone who thought he was too fucking old.

20% of Biden 2020 voters in that poll said he was no longer capable of handling the job.

This, 20% of his own voters in a poll in February, on the eve of the debate, 86% of Americans said Biden's age was a major or moderate concern.

That was before the debate.

86%.

And then Trump had a slight lead heading into the debate.

He had a slight lead into the battleground debate.

So it's like, what are you, I just, it's, I just don't like the rewriting history.

and I hate fucking getting back into this and re-litigating and doing the fight and dragging it out.

But, you know, Hunter's on a fucking tour right now.

And just going forward, I think the lesson to learn is because hopefully we're not going to have an 80-something-year-old geriatric candidate again.

But going forward, the lesson is like, look,

you just can't listen to your small little circle, have a bubble, and then like be impervious to any fucking outside criticism or data that is saying otherwise.

Forget about Washington, forget about the pundits, listen to the fucking voters.

Also, like, just on the age thing, I mean, they're talking about it.

And Hunter talks about the debate performance, and he says, like, that we need to grapple as a society with, quote, how we handle people that age in front of our eyes and recognize that they may have lost a physical step, but that does not mean that they don't have the mental capacity to do their job.

We're not talking about like whether a loved one can live alone anymore.

We're talking about running the country.

Like, what are you talking about?

What about the capacity to communicate what you're going to do as president?

Also, like, just

seeing this today, I guess what I wanted, if I was in a room with him and able to talk rationally, I would just be like, hey, man, look around the world.

Look at what's happening in this country right now.

Like, I know you're angry personally, but you're not the fucking victim here.

We're all living with what happened in this election.

You've got a pardon.

You're fine.

It's just

utter lack of self-awareness.

It's the shamelessness that really, that really gets you in the end.

Well, I saw one quote he said, we all talk about the incredible popularity of Barack Obama.

Barack Obama never got more than 69 million votes.

My dad got 81 million votes.

Like, dude, now you sound like fucking Donald Trump, who can't figure out that as the years go on, the population increases and more people vote in a tight turnout election.

Come on, man, you turn like Trump.

George Clooney's not an actor, the low-rated Jake Toward.

It's amazing to watch people become the thing that they claim to be

the savior from.

It's wild.

It's wild.

Maybe that's the last time we hear from the Biden family on the election, fingers crossed, for a while.

I mean, maybe just not during the worst two-week news cycle of Trump's administration either.

Well, that's important to get into the Epstein cycle.

You want to pop your head up at the opportune time.

Here's some good news.

Stephen Golbert doesn't have to figure out how to do an interview with Joe Biden about his book in a year and a half.

Stephen Golbert has 10 months to do whatever the fuck he wants.

I know.

I hope he's not.

That's the other thing with

real political pressure, they maybe would have yanked him.

But he's got 10 months.

And he should.

He should fucking use it.

Yeah, I bet he will.

I bet he will.

That's exciting.

All right.

That's our show for today.

Thanks to Lindsay Toslewski for coming on and to everyone at MDEF for the incredible work they do.

If you want to donate, highly recommend it.

They do fantastic work for immigrants, heroic work.

So go donate if you can to the Immigrant Defenders Law Center.

Dan and I will be back with a new show on Friday.

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