Protests Rain on Trump's Parade

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Terms apply. Welcome to Pod Save America.
I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett.
I'm Tommy Vitor. On today's show, we'll talk about the deranged right-wing reaction to the political assassinations in Minnesota, the gigantic No Kings protests, and Trump's not-so-gigantic military parade, the president directing ICE to focus their raids on blue cities, and the latest grift from the first family, a shitty gold phone that's probably made in China.
Then later, you'll hear my interview with Maryland Governor Wes Moore about his reaction to the latest news, the Democratic Party's future, and his own. But let's start with Israel's preemptive war against Iran, a war that Bibi Netanyahu very much wants America to join.
And Trump says, quote, it's possible that we get more involved. Israel's surprise attack has not only targeted Iran's nuclear infrastructure, but the regime itself.
Missile and drone attacks have so far left more than 200 Iranians dead, including at least nine nuclear scientists, the chief of staff of Iran's military, and the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Iranian retaliatory strikes have so far killed more than 20 Israelis.
The U.S. military has participated in trying to shoot down Iranian missiles, and we're moving a second carrier group to the area.
But that's all we know so far about our involvement.

It's also been reported that Trump refused to give Israel permission to assassinate

Iran's supreme leader over the weekend.

Nuclear talks between Iran and the U.S. were called off on Sunday.

Can't imagine why.

But Iran is now reportedly signaling through intermediaries that it wants to ramp down

the conflict and resume negotiations with the U.S. if the U.S.
will agree to stay out of the conflict. And that's the major fault line here.
You have some crusty Newt Gingrich Bush era neocon types saying we need to push for regime change, while the isolationist MAGA crowd says we should stay the hell away from yet another war in the Middle East. Trump took a question about this at the G7 in Canada on Monday.
Here's what he said. What have you heard? What have you heard from the Iranians? They'd like to talk, but they should have done that before.
I had 60 days and they had 60 days. And on the 61st day, I said, we don't have a deal.
They have to make a deal. And it's painful for both parties, but I'd say Iran is not winning this war.
And they should talk, and they should talk immediately before it's too late. A new war on Trump's watch.
I thought we were supposed to have no more wars. Well, yeah, they never would have happened if he was president when it comes to October 7th or the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Yeah. And now I guess Iran and Israel.
Tommy, can you walk us through the intra-MAGA debate on this? So you got it right. They're the crusty neocons.
John Bolton, Trump's former national security advisor, is one of them. Fox News guys like Mark Levin, a radio host, they want the U.S.
to get directly involved in offensive military operations. I say offensive military options because we're helping with defense we're shooting down missiles and the reason that's important though is because most of the um most important iranian nuclear infrastructure is buried deep underground or to the side of a mountain and the conventional wisdom is that to take out that infrastructure like at fordo you need a need a weapon called the MOP, the Massive Ordnance Penetrator.
This like 30,000 pound bomb that only US planes can carry because it's so big with a B-2 stealth bomber is the only thing that can drop it, like the Israeli Air Force is mostly fighter jets. So that's why those neocons want the US to get involved.
The folks they're fighting against are like Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who I think on the merits- Our best friends. I mean, on the merits and on the politics, like I'm team Tucker, Steve, MTG here, fellas.
So on the merits, I think they have correctly identified, and they did so before this week, that this wasn't really just about weapons of mass destruction. This was a regime change war, which has been confirmed by all these reports that Trump is vetoing plans to kill the Iranian Supreme Leader.
So check for Tucker there. And then the politics, I just think that like Tucker and Bannon and MTG are way more in tune with the MAGA base than like the gang at National Review.
And no one wants another war in the Middle East. And no one is going to believe another intelligence-based, trust me, worthy experts pitch about why we need to go decapitate the leaders of another Middle Eastern country.
Yeah, there was reports today that Trump has been sending signals to get to the Iranians that, hey, as long as you do not harm U.S. service members, we are not going to get more involved.
Doesn't mean they're kind of getting that to Iran to keep them from bombing U.S. bases or to go after U.S.
ships. It seems like Trump gets the politics of not wanting to be dragged into this, but it's also, you know, first of all, it's not clear that he's, it's not clear what they're, what they're posturing versus what they're actually planning to do versus what he's saying in hindsight to justify what Israel did after the discussions last week.
It's just like, I'm very hard to understand what's really going on. I feel like we have, you know, this started saying, okay, the, the Iranians were so, so close to getting a nuclear weapon.

It could have been any day. So really, this is a preemptive strike to protect Israel from them getting a nuclear weapons.
Then it was like, well, maybe they're like a couple months away, but they were got to get nuclear weapons, so whatever. And now Netanyahu said in an interview with John Carl on Monday that killing the Supreme Leader would, quote, end the conflict, not escalate it.
Is regime change now like an acceptable justification for preemptive war? Because I thought like we had this like international community, international law, got the United Nations. And I wasn't aware that if you think a regime may get nuclear weapons at some point, you can actually eliminate the entire regime.
You just go bomb them. I will say also the timeline for how quickly Iran could get a nuclear weapon has been kind of jumping around when it comes out in Niyah's mouth.
I mean, the Trump administration's timeline, as articulated by Tulsi Gabbard, was that it would take a year for Iran to get a nuclear weapon. There's a bunch of different phases of this.
There's the enrichment phase where you have to enrich enough uranium to get it to weapons grade, and then you weaponize it, and then you need a delivery mechanism. So it's a little bit technical and wonky, but I don't think this was like a this weekend problem.
You know what I mean? Yeah, it's, yes. Like how close they are to it versus what is the actual rationale for doing this when Netanyahu says often their goal is to talk while continuing to develop their program no matter what.
So is this because they were imminently on the break of getting a nuclear weapon or is it because they saw an opportunity to degrade Iran's capability and took it and are using ad hoc justifications after the fact? Yeah, but to your point, I mean, like the idea that killing a Supreme Leader changes everything or like fixes the problem is crazy. There's not some pro-Western, pro-Israel opposition group sitting in Iran, waiting to march towards Tehran and announce their commitment to democracy and pluralism.
Like that's just not what's going to happen here. You kill the Supreme leader, guess what happens? They replace the Supreme leader.
And that replacement decision is made by a bunch of hardline clerics and IRGC and the political elites. And you get someone who is basically the same, or maybe the IRGC stages a coup and they take power.
And I think recent history suggests that the guys with the guns end up in charge. And so that's why Tucker was saying on his show, or Tucker wrote this like kind of op-ed length screed on Twitter where he said, so why is Mark Levin once again hyperventilating about weapons of mass destruction to distract you from the real goal, which is regime change.
Young Americans heading back to the Middle East to topple yet another government. He also said that a war with Iran would amount to a profound betrayal of Trump supporters.
It would end his presidency. I just really think like, Tucker's making some good points here.
I noticed someone retweeting a video of Bibi Netanyahu in 2002 telling America, quote, if you take out Saddam, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region. Do we think that a new regime in Iran will have enormous positive reverberations on the region? Worked great in Iraq, worked great in Libya.
What could possibly go wrong? It's really worth looking up Netanyahu's testimony before Congress where he was advocating for the invasion of Iraq. That's what that was.
He could not have been more wrong. What's also just sort of confusing is, okay, the rationale is based around degrading the nuclear capability.
Then why are you going after state television? Now, you can make an argument, I'm sure they would, that that's a mouthpiece for a dictatorial murderous terrorist regime, but it's not a means to degrade their nuclear capability. So what is this going to...
Because on the other side of it, it's, oh, this stops the second they stop having a nuclear program. But that has nothing to do with having a nuclear program.
I mean, is there an example in the Middle East in recent history of a nation where. It's coming from this.
Of a nation where there was a repressive regime like there is in Iran and the regime fell. It was either ousted or fell on its own like, you know, Assad.
And it was replaced by some stable government. I mean, the only example right now could possibly be Syria with the guys who just took over, who are former ISIS al-Qaeda guys.
But, you know, time will tell. A little too early to...
Time will tell. But it's really been fascinating, not only watching the intramaga debate, but also kind of like the attempts by the White House to spin it both ways.
You know what I mean? Like it was Trump sincerely trying to have Steve Whitcoff do these talks with the Iranians and cut a nuclear deal, or was this whole thing subterfuge the whole time and it was all in bad faith? Either way, if you're Iran, like what is going to bring you to the table now? That Donald Trump was too weak to control Netanyahu and prevent him from bombing you, or that he was lying to you all along and the talks were a ruse to somehow facilitate this Israeli bombing campaign? Yeah. And then on Trump's domestic politics, right? He wants to be on the side of the Tom Cottons of the world who are all cheering Israel on.
He wants to be seen as the ally Israel needs to those kind of pro-war, pro-Israel hawks, while at the same time signaling that he doesn't want to be more involved, that he's not interested in the U.S. becoming kind of an offensive participant in this for the kind of more dovish isolationist parts of his party.
Trump wants to be for what's happening. Whatever, you know, he's always like, this thing goes south.

We're going to hear from him that he tried to stop this.

And he told Bibi that this was a horrible idea.

And why is Netanyahu? He'll turn on Bibi so fast if this goes south. And if it goes well, then it's, you know, he'll probably admit that it was that they lied all along, that they didn't really want to deal, that this was a whole thing to get Bibi.
He's just's just, he's just going to be for whatever's popular. That's like, that's his whole foreign policy.
Yeah, I mean, Trump basically attacked Netanyahu after October 7th and like was just talking shit about them in the immediate wake of this horrific existential attack on Israel. He was like, ah, never would have happened.
He blamed Netanyahu for failing to prevent it. All things that are true, but to your point, he will turn on him in a second if his operation

goes south. And remember, his problem with Gaza was not the fact that so many civilians were dying.

It's that like, it's too public. Netanyahu's got to finish it and he got to keep it behind

closed doors. I don't want to see so much of it, right? I don't care about the people.
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Big story in this country over the weekend was the assassination of Minnesota State Representative Melissa Hortman, a former speaker of the Minnesota House, along with her husband by a man named Vance Bolter, who arrived at their front door in the middle of the night dressed as a police officer. Bolter had just done the same thing at the nearby home of State Senator John Hoffman and his wife, both of whom miraculously survived the shooting.
The killer also had a notebook in his car listing more than 45 other potential targets, all of whom were Democrats, including Governor Tim Walz and Senator Tina Smith. There were also Democratic politicians in other states, other members of Congress, other governors, abortion providers.
There were also papers in his car that suggest he may have been planning to target one of the No Kings protests on Saturday. Police finally apprehended Bolter on Sunday, but not before a 24-hour period where Republican senators and Trump influencers tried to spread the completely fabricated story that the killer was a left-wing extremist who targeted Democrats for voting against the party on immigration.
Mike Chernovich and others even suggested that Tim Walz might have, quote, ordered the hit. Tim Walz ordered the hit himself.
Sick stuff. What did you guys make of the reaction to this tragedy and the tragedy itself? So there's an unrelated story about Elon Musk and Doge and about how they came to start saying that 40% of calls to Social Security were scammers.
It was just made up, just made up, but it was useful. And so there's this consternation inside of the Social Security Administration.
The staff want to put out a statement saying it's not true. Katie Miller, who now works for Elon Musk, but was then at the White House, picks up the phone, calls Social Security, and says the number is 40%.
Don't contradict Elon. Don't contradict the president.
They cannot, if there is information that does not comport with their perfect, comfortable expectations, worldview that doesn't help their political project, it is dismissed. That is true for every kind of policy question.
That is true for every political debate. And it is even true in the middle of an unfolding assassination plot that is taking place in real time before this guy is even caught, right? You know, somebody I went to college with,

they were on the list and they get woken up in the middle of the night saying, you got to get out of your house. You got to get out.
It's not safe, right? Like these are real, this is unfolding. It is really happening.
And it's a real event affecting real people. But because this exists online and it is immediately a political project, they go right to what is useful, what helps me in this moment, right? Even if it is a lie, even if it is disgusting, even if genuine lives are at risk in the moment when they're doing it.
Yeah. I watched it unfold on Twitter.
And at first I was like, you know what, Mike Chernovich, Pizzagate guy. Worst of the worst.
Alex Jones. I was like, do we really need to make a big deal of these crazies doing what they always do, which is spread lies and garbage and filth? Then you see Mike Lee, Senator from Utah.
What happened to that guy? Who is fucking crazy. But this is maybe some of the worst shit that he's pushed pushed around he still has a pinned tweet up on his twitter feed saying that like oh nightmare on wall street uh and a picture of the shooter and also like this is marxism uh is a is a mental illness and this was marxism this is what happens when marxists don't get their way there were three different tweets from him bernie moreno senator from ohio also said said that it was left wing extremists that caused this.
Elon Musk. Elon Musk said it as well, that it's left wing extremism.
I mean, there's this whole thing that happens now when there's political violence in this country where everyone rush. And it's very sad.
We all rush to see like, OK, whose side was the person on? Is it a left wing-wing person is the right-wing person and then what happens is if it's not your side then it's mental illness right the person all person was just mentally mentally ill uh and if it's if it's the other side then it's oh see and like that's sad and that's like awful that we got to that point but for everyone like tweeting that shit moreno mike lee all the rest of them what you are doing is just making life more dangerous for elected officials and people in politics by tweeting that you're just doing you're just making stuff more dangerous and like there is no reason to do it there's no reason to start lying there's no there's no reason to jump to conclusions before the police conduct an investigation there's just no reason to do that yeah my general expectations for political decency are rock bottom but remember after trump was shot in butler there's a lot of these reports about how he's more spiritual now it changed him in some way right i mean obviously it does bullshit at the time but you would look getting shot you would think would would trigger in him like a modicum of empathy when he hears about an incident like this. And he would just maybe lob in a call to Tim Walsh and or the families of the victims and just say something decent.
But instead, he was asked if he was going to call Tim Walsh. And he was like, nope, he's a terrible governor, incompetent person, because maybe I'll call him.
You know, it's like nothing has changed in this man. And the, the, the conspiracy theory stuff from Mike Lee and the worst people on Twitter, it just, it like makes you completely hopeless about the information environment on social media in the wake of any tragedy, any real problem, like any crisis.
Yeah. We're just cooked.
It also used to be that when they throw conspiracies, they were, we were pretty sure that they were wrong. That we were, they were wrong, right? But there was like, you know, maybe a 2% chance that someone could possibly believe the conspiracy was right.
This is so dumb, the shit that they were putting out there. This makes sense.
Like, oh, they, Tim Walls ordered an assassination because this person voted against Tim Walz on making sure that undocumented immigrants do not get Medicaid. That's the theory.
And then the list is out and it's like, oh yeah, Keith Ellison, the attorney general, and also Tim Walz and a U.S. senator, and a bunch of other Democratic politicians in other states were also on the list, like had nothing to do with that vote.

So that doesn't match up at all.

But none of this stuff changes the conspiracy.

They just they just to your point about the Katie Miller thing, they just go forward.

Well, that the thing is all the facts are showing like definitively, definitively that they're wrong and they just keep going.

Well, so Mike Lee posts something more sensible on his official account.

But this post stays up. I think he pinned it for a while, even after it was like he doesn't delete it he doesn't apologize doesn't take it back amy klobuchar who is friends with melissa hortman told msnbc uh that she was going to confront mike lee directly about it and i hope she does yeah me because because like she should you know it's all fun and games on the internet people should make floor speeches uh they just go down to the senate floor and and and yell at mike lee i think they already have i think they already have started doing that great tina smith uh apparently confronted mike lee good and was asked about her talk with it with him and she said i think that honestly he seems a little surprised to be confronted awesome great good for you tina smith i love.
These people have to defend their bullshit like live and in person on television. Like you hide behind your Twitter account and you send out your bullshit tweets and then you just like slink away as everyone starts believing it.
Like, no, you need to defend this in front of an audience. It's all, it's just the Trump assassination attempt, the arson attack on Josh Shapiro, the shooting at the D.C.
Jewish Museum, the firebombing of people in Colorado, January 6th, Gabby Gifford, Steve Scalise. Like there's just a lot of this and there is so little to protect politicians.
I mean, like president gets secret service, but like Mitt Romney, remember that exit interview he did? he talked about one of the reasons he was quitting politics was he was worried about attacks from i mean i think he specifically named like trump super fans on him or his family and he talked about the massive cost of security and like he's a rich guy he can afford it but like a state representative in minnesota they've got no resources well there's no way to protect yourself you're not doing this job like you don't you're not gonna be to protect yourself. And also what upside is there for people to get into politics? If a Minnesota state rep is getting targeted.
That's, that's what really worries me. I mean, the, the, the times did a story on just, you know, elected officials all across the country being very scared about this based on this episode of political violence and all the other ones that you just mentioned.
And, you know, one Ohio state senator posted on Facebook, honestly, I'm struggling with this news. I'm worried for my family.
I worry I'm putting them in harm's way by being in office. It's a terrible feeling.
Like, that's just, that is. Yeah, it's awful.
The part of this too is, so in the sort of whatever, the uncovered list that this person had. There's also a bunch of like people finder websites for finding people's home addresses.
And, you know, we, for a long time, we just, there was just an assumption that the homes of the addresses of public officials would one way or another be public, whether it's on a filing document or their voter registration, or simply just through the fact that so much of this information is already public. But we do not have to accept that.
Yeah, it's hard to put the toothpaste back in the tube, but we should have privacy laws to protect addresses for people. That's a small step that is hard to make work, but it could at least help over the long run to kind of make it possible to get this information off of the internet.
We need a national privacy law. That feels like a hard thing to do, but like we have to make it harder for this kind of homes, like for where people live needs to be harder to get at.
And that's just like making people now, part of the problem there, right. It's like, there's some amount of public accountability for where people live, right.
They have to live in the district. It matters if, you know, when, uh, uh name? When Dr.
Oz was campaigning and it was like, what's his actual address? This big home, is it that big home? Like it's a part of politics, but like there's just like compromises that need to happen there. The other part of this too is, you know, as you were saying this, John, that like we, you know, you kind of in this bleak moment, it's a cycle.
All right, what were the motivations? Were they good? Were they on our side or their side, right? And it's like, we don't step back and look at the kind of underlying conditions that would lead somebody regardless of their ideology. The ideology is just an ultimately a rationale for whatever kind of active kind of political violence, which is rooted in whatever feeling of powerlessness, a desire to kind of get revenge, whatever it may be.
And like social media is a part of that, right? Like we see growing support polling wise for political violence, polling wise for just the justification for assassinations, justifications for the killing of the CEO of United Healthcare. I was out there over the weekend, a lot of people with very ironic Luigi signs, right? And like, that all contributes to a sense that we live in a violent society where violence is part of politics, where the other side may use it, so you should use it before they do.
And in sort of a broad way, right, it leads people to feel both powerless and radicalized, but also in acute ways, right? Well, these people that pop up, like they are being radicalized in acute ways by these same kinds of mechanisms. And I just like, we need to be honest about that.
We need to think about that. We need to figure out ways for leaders to kind of attack that culturally and also like the underlying problem of what happens to people when they radicalize online yeah and that's why you that's why you got to condemn violence and extrajudicial violence where in political violence wherever it happens whoever commits it whoever it's against and doing so does not like stop that violence from happening but not doing so creates an environment where it starts to be a little more likely and maybe someone else thinks it's okay and who's who's not doing well and it's just that's you you just you gotta condemn it when it happens and and politicians and leaders in both parties need to do that a little gun control would be good too yeah a little more gun control the other the other thing too though is like there's a political scientist who's an expert in political violence talked about this in the times about how actually what might be most useful is for Democrats and Republicans to make statements together.
But one big fucking problem is that Donald Trump just pardoned all the insurrectionists and sent a signal that there's a certain kind of political violence that he's a huge, huge fan of. Right.
And is one of the biggest stokers of political violence in our country and are constantly calling his enemies vermin and all the rest. And so like the the kind of it's a- And when Trump was shot, literally everyone condemned it.
Every single Democrat. Every single Democrat.
Every Republican, former presidents. Like, you know, it was like, it was everywhere.
Everyone did. And in this case, like we can't get Trump to say, yeah, I'm going to call Tim Walz.
I'm going to wish him well. It's completely embarrassing.
Yeah. The news about the shootings broke on the day of the No Kings protests, which continued as planned.
Even in Minnesota, where Governor Walz tried to warn people away from participating because of the No Kings flyers found in the killer's car. Across the country, an estimated 5 million people showed up, which makes it one of the single largest protests in American history.
Overwhelmingly peaceful. Very few arrests.
The protests were planned to coincide with Trump's military parade in Washington, D.C., which turned out to be fairly subdued and sparsely attended. One guy in attendance told The Guardian he thought Trump was politicizing the army and that the parade was, quote, just kind of lame.
Trump himself may have briefly fallen asleep. What did you guys make of the No Kings events? Well, Tommy, you were with me.
Yeah, they were fun. Love it.
You were downtown. Went to West Hollywood so we could bring my daughter, Lizette.
As we were parking, we walked up. A bunch of people jogged by, ripped and shirtless, and she kept saying, why is he Nicky Nicky? Why is he Nicky Nicky? I was like, we were in WeHo.
Welcome to West Hollywood. Had a good time in WeHo.
I went downhill., I went downhill. You guys went, you guys went and hung out with the fans.
It was fun though. It was like joyful, you know, people singing songs, good speeches.
I don't know. Every protest I've ever gone to is, it's a joyful affair.
It's people happy to be together, especially in person, especially after COVID. I don't know, it was good.
Yeah, like we went downtown and we were in front of City Hall. And at first it didn't seem like it was just sort of gathered right on the steps of City Hall.
But then as we were there, more and more people started coming. And there were these sort of marches coming from all directions, kind of filling the park.
And then we kind of followed that. And first of all, it was interesting, right? Because you saw what looked like what I would say is sort of like a women's march adjacent group of people, right? There was a lot of, there was kind of like the no kings, kind of resistance, libs.
They were out in force, but there were also tons of anti-ice, pro-immigrant protests that have been sort of showing up at downtown for the last couple of days. And it all kind of blended together into what looked to me as like the most adverse protest I've ever been to in Los Angeles or ever.
And we walked down just sort of seeing where all the different protests were going. And we ended up wandering down to the federal building where a lot of the kind of confrontations and sort of the sort of more kind of the vandalism has happened happened some of the violence and kind of back and forth with the police have happened and we went to the federal building and there were the marines standing in front of the federal building just fucking standing there there was there was a police officer with them and so when somebody would kind of walk to kind of press the line a little the cop would talk to them the marines really didn't at least that i i saw but uh, you know, some people were shouting at the Marines

angrily, some people kind of more forlornly being like, you shouldn't be here, right? You saw like

everything there. But what I felt seeing them, the Marines, God, like, in the same way, like,

Trump forcing like, the military kind of march in front of him on his birthday, sending these

fucking guys to a federal building. And you're like, why are they guarding the federal building

to protect them from the protesters? Why are the protesters there to be because they're angry about

Thank you. to kind of march in front of him on his birthday, sending these fucking guys to a federal building.
And you're like, why are they guarding the federal building to protect them from the protesters? Why are the protesters there to be, because they're angry about the Marines. And it just like, you felt, I just felt bad for them.
Yeah, like I just felt, yeah, exactly. I just felt bad for them.
Like the whole thing like felt combustible. Like you just felt like, oh, this is where later to, this is where it's going to happen.
Because as all these protesters that came for the main event start leaving that will just be left behind some of the more kind of uh like the people that have been kind of fucking throwing shit and making kind of uh trouble over the last couple days and sure enough that is what happens and and that that happened as the night wore on but like for the most part it was incredibly moving and inspiring to be down there i will just say too huge credit to our friends at indivisible and other groups who organize these protests that is i mean that is a very tough thing to organize and to pull off well and um from what i saw at our protest there was also like a discipline involved you know the first speaker was like it's going to be peaceful um we want to make sure that everyone can speak who's speaking also like turn to someone next to you who you don't know shake their hand like i didn't like that part of course don't touch me sweaty sweaty person um but i had i had a couple people some people go to we had to be touched not tommy i did have a couple of friends asked me like what so what's the point of these protests like trump's you can't beat trump again he's already president. It's year one.
And I get that. But I think building this capacity and sort of exercising the muscle right now of on a beautiful day in June, getting 5 million people out in the country to protest Donald Trump is going to be important in the coming years, especially if Trump continues to push us away from democracy and towards authoritarianism, because you're going to want to have this capacity.
And I think it is also very valuable for people to get out of their fucking houses and offline and actually see people in real life who are also feeling the same way you do about things. Yeah, definitely.
Also, It nice to the poor military guys who are deployed in California. I know, I really felt that.
Especially the active duty guys, the Marines, I bet they were like, what, 18 to 20? They look so young. The active duty guys are so young when you see them in person.
The National Guard, you tend to be older. People with other jobs are in their 30s.
They're from California. They're not happy either.
None of them want to be on those streets. It sucks for them just as much as for us, like having them here in our city.
And it just felt, you just feel how unnecessary it all was. Just like, they are there because Donald Trump doesn't give a fuck about them.
They are a prop to create the illusion of whatever. And that just sort of made me feel really sad about the whole situation.
But also like, you know what, like, yeah, millions of people are showing up and it is raising the, it raises the price for what they're trying to do. Even, even, even if it is not a specific response to a specific raid, like all these people showing up, it raises the price on, on whether they try to do mass deportations, they go to kind of farm country, whatever they're trying to do.
Speaking of the military, what'd you guys think of the parade in DC? The army turned 250 and Donald Trump decided to co-opt their birthday for his own. He got himself a little parade.
I did not like watch any of it unfold live. I saw clips on Twitter, but what did you guys think? I didn't watch one second of it.
And the clips I saw, I mean, obviously they were mostly clipped by people with partisan political agendas, right? As, as, uh, happens on Twitter. I don't know.
I maybe wonder if we all hyperventilated about it a little too much, uh, and whether the lead up was a little silly and made everyone involved look silly. And it was just a stupid parade.
It was a waste of time and money and whatnot. But yeah, I had the same feeling.
I couldn't tell. John and I talked about this on YouTube a little bit too, but like that, that like, uh, when I actually saw it, I was like, Oh my God, like, you know, America doesn't do authoritarian North Korea style military parades.
And so even when Trump tries to do one, it ends up just looking like Veterans Day, you know, and like, you know, just there are people in a park.

Some people, I think, because they're Trump supporters, some people because there's just

a thing happening.

It all looks very sort of unthreatening in the end.

Maybe that's also in part because the military does not want to participate in an authoritarian

display of military power on behalf of our autocrat.

So you end up seeing guys with fifes and the tri-corner hats. It's hard to get mad about that.
Hard to be sad when you see those guys. I always thought it was a wasteful, dumb thing to do.
And also that, you know, the idea here is to fulfill Trump's clearly authoritarian intentions, whether it was an actual threat. The threat seemed lessened by the fact that the week prior, there were actual federal troops, federalized National Guardsmen and Marines on the ground here in LA because of protests.
So that seemed like much more of a threat than the parade. Yeah.
And to be honest, sort of stole the spotlight from the parade being threatening. The LA deployment and us kind of like living in that kind of upped my anxiety about the military parade which ultimately it would i agree with you it was the reverse yeah it was just like who cares yeah and i think the i think the five million people peacefully protesting also helped too like that was an outlet for people's anxiety over the parade and the fact that they smartly did not hold one in dc which i think was a you know i didn't totally get that and i once i saw how it all unfolded it was really really smart every it took the microphone from him and by the way just a lesson of protest over the last decade we are now at the 10-year mark of fucking trump coming down the escalator protests take the microphone away from donald trump like his parade was not the big story the protests were a much bigger story because it was more interesting, exciting, and newsworthy.
Except on Fox News.

Except on Fox. Cut to the protests

any time in their three-hour broadcast.

The protests,

they weren't talking about

Iran and Israel

most of that time.

They weren't talking about

the political assassinations

in Minnesota.

It was just like

the most important thing

in the world right now

is this fucking parade.

Look at the treads on that tank.

It was all that kind of crap.

It was so wild.

Ridiculous.

They're embarrassing. Pod Save America is brought to you by ZipRecruiter.
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OnDeck does not lend to North Dakota all loans and amounts subject to lender approval. One of the big issues that brought people out to protest is Trump's mass deportations, which have become very unpopular very quickly.

Late last week, Trump even acknowledged that his immigration raids were hurting farmers in the hospitality industry. And the administration issued new guidance to ICE, telling them to pause raids and arrests in the agricultural, hotel and restaurant industries.
But then on Sunday, Trump made it clear that his deportation policy isn't really about targeting criminals and protecting farmers and hospitality workers.

It's about targeting immigrants in blue states and protecting them in red states.

He directed ICE via Truth Social to, quote,

expand efforts to detain and deport illegal aliens in America's largest cities,

such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, because, quote, these and other such cities are the core of the Democrat power center, where sanctuary cities play such a big role. You don't hear about sanctuary cities in our heartland.
At the G7 on Monday, Trump responded to a reporter's question about his post. You did a post last night where you said you want ICE to really target Democrats? I want them to focus on the cities because the cities are where you really have what's called sanctuary cities.
And that's where the people are. I look at New York.
I look at Chicago. Look at L.A.
L.A. Those people weren't from L.A.
They weren't from California, most of those people. All blue cities, all Democrat run cities.
And they think they're going to use them to vote. It's not going to happen.
I mean, it's been reported that Trump only changed his mind on the farm workers after lobbying by his agriculture secretary, who was getting help from some of the big farmers and producers, many of whom in red states, also business owners. What do you make of Trump's back and forth on this? Yeah, I mean, it feels like it's policy in progress.
You know, I'd like farm farms, construction sites, restaurants, meatpacking plants. They will all shut down if ICE deports every undocumented person who works there.
And so I'm sure he's getting calls from CEOs and business interests and business lobbying groups to tell him that much and tell him to dial it down a little bit. But on the political front, we've been saying this all for the past week.
Like Trump wants a fight with liberal cities. They think it's good politics.
His staff is giddy when he starts a fight with California or Gavin Newsom. They run to the, you know, DC tip sheets to tell them how great it's going for them.
And then the polling comes out and it shows the opposite. But I did find like what was remarkable about that true social statement was trump not kind of like dropping the pretext that it was about safety and security and just saying that democrats quote use illegal aliens to expand their voter base cheat in elections and grow the welfare state while real americans are cheering ice on like that that's just not a compelling rationale i think for most people to explain an ice raid undocumented immigrants don't vote how vote.
How many times are we fucking going to do this again? It's so stupid. This whole theory, the whole replacement theory is so ridiculous.
They don't vote. And by the way, Trump won naturalized immigrants in the last election.
So stupid. Saying that he's not going to go after farm workers or hospitality workers, those are two of the three big categories.

Tommy mentioned the third construction.

It's interesting he hasn't mentioned that yet.

I'm sure people will, his fucking real estate developer buddies will get him on the phone.

And the next thing you'll know is that we're not going to go after, we need the construction workers.

Because by the way, there are already shortages of construction workers.

But it's like, what does Trump want?

He wants to declare victory.

He wants images of mass deportations. But he doesn't want the mass deportations to impact the economy.
So it's like almost what he wants is deportations without deportees, right? He wants to be claimed to be successfully doing the thing of kind of this kind of campaign against immigrants, but then he doesn't want the economic consequences. So California, we're a so-called sanctuary state.
The population of undocumented immigrants in California has been going down. It has gone down.
It went down by 100,000 from 2019 to 2022. Texas passes a law banning sanctuary cities in 2017.
Undocumented immigrants living and working in Texas goes up. Florida passes a law in 2019.
In the three years since passing that law, Florida's population of undocumented immigrants goes up by 400,000. Why? It is not because of the politics.
It is despite the politics because people go to where they can afford to work and to live. California is too fucking expensive.
So for the same reason that Florida and Texas brags about their economy all the time, they are drawing all these undocumented immigrants. And so what has happened? They have created a situation where the most hostile places actually have a growing economy built on the backs of a growing population of undocumented labor.
And so then you have now Trump saying, I'm going to go after what the blue cities, that's where the immigrants are. It's just not true, right? There are no sanctuary cities in Florida.
There are no sanctuary cities in Texas. The politics of the cruelty of of what they're doing to immigrants or immigrants feeling less safe in those places has had no impact on this.
Right. Because this is an economic problem.
It is not a kind of you can try to enforce your way out of it without hurting the economy. It's just not possible.
I mean, so Trump acknowledges that these undocumented immigrants are vital to our economy, and he thinks that they should be protected. And he also just wants to make sure that people who are here illegally, who've committed crimes, get deported.
So one idea for him is the people who are here who are undocumented, perhaps if they're working, we can give them some kind of a, where they can then become fully citizens. And then folks who commit crimes, we can deport them back.
And then we can have a sort of tough security at the border to make sure we don't have more illegal crossings. That's one idea.
Now, the reason that we don't have that is because Stephen Miller, who's actually running most of Trump's policy, is telling him that they're all criminals. And because Stephen Miller actually wants every undocumented immigrant and most documented immigrants out of the country.
And he's been very clear on that. He doesn't want legal immigration.
They just added another, they're thinking of adding another 36 countries to the travel ban list. It used to be Muslim majority countries.
Now it's just, you know, a lot of countries in Africa, people of color, right? Stephen Miller just doesn't, he just doesn't want immigrants here because he hates immigrants because he's hated immigrants since he was in fucking high school in Santa Monica and he would, you know, shout racial slurs at them. So, like, that's the kind of dynamic here and Trump's thinking to himself like, I want the good ones and I don't want the bad ones and he's just too stupid to realize what the fucking difference is.
Well, he's even said that, right? He's even said some version of, like, they should be able to stay. There should be some sort of a way for them to stay.
He's describing comprehensive immigration reform. But then, you know, Stephen Miller then says, go to Home Depot.
They start going to the Home Depots. What does that do? That terrifies people to go to work.
It makes it so that people don't show up to do their jobs because they're afraid. And it shuts down construction.
It shuts down businesses. Politically, he should just take the win.
Like you shut down the border, go to the border once a week and brag about it in states where the local law enforcement will work with ICE, deport people who are arrested, deport actual criminals in the sanctuary cities where they won't work with you. Let the governor deal with it.
You know, like there's just an obvious like smart political win for him that doesn't involve picking a fight with Los Angeles and New new york but clearly they just want the fight they want the news cycle miller wants the fight miller wants them all gone i mean ice's own figures cnn just had a report on this today this is from ice less than 10 percent of the roughly 185 000 people booked into ice custody from october through may 31st have been convicted of serious crimes like murder, rape, assault, or ruby. Less than 10%.
So this whole idea that they're going after the worst of the worst and, you know, DHS put out another statement this morning saying, we're only going after the worst of the worst. We know exactly who we're going after.
That's not true because the Wall Street Journal reported last week that Miller said, you don't have to have lists of people that you're targeting anymore. Just go out and make a bunch of arrests, 3,000 arrests a day.
That's it. And then they start signaling, a homeowner is signaling this, that, oh, don't worry, we're going to go after the employers next.
Don't worry, we're going after the employers. That'll help us pick up the deportations or the self-deportations.
And then you say, well, okay, you're going after employers, but the president just said to leave agriculture alone. And the president just said to leave hotels and restaurants alone.
That's the two biggest sectors or two of the three biggest sectors. So then you're only gonna- Unless you're a hotel or a restaurant in a blue city.
Then I'm sure he doesn't want to leave you alone. It's just because it's not, because it's all just being made up, but they're making it up as they go.
Yeah.

All right.

Before we get to my interview with Wes Moore, I do want to touch on an exciting new product launch from our friends in Trump World. On Monday, Eric Trump announced that his family is getting into the mobile phone business.
That's right. For just $500, you'll be able to get yourself a shiny gold T1 phone from Trump Mobile.
and for a monthly fee of just $47.45,

you can sign up for the 47 plan that includes unlimited talk, text, data, and so much more. Tech journalists are pointing out that the America First phone looks an awful lot like a model already made by the Chinese company Wing Tech and available on T-Mobile.
But it is gold. It is gold.
A reporter at 404 Media tried to pre-order the T1 smartphone and said the website failed went to an error page and charged in the wrong amount for the down payment were were you guys able to put in your pre-orders yet that's so funny charging in the wrong amount is such a nice little shit because i mean these things are so stupid first of all there's not going to be a real trump cell phone network it's a virtual mobile network remember remember um patriot mobile they were selling like anti-woke cell service and then when you really dig into the details they just buy like they license in bulk access to at&t t-mobile all the so-called woke providers that you're they're railing against in their ads so you're just getting played and then there's just literally no way the trump team can build these phones in the US unless this rollout is like five years too early. Like there's just no infrastructure to build a smartphone in the United States right now.
And so if you look at the website, it says Trump Mobile, its products and services are not designed, developed, manufactured, distributed, or sold by the Trump organization or any other respective affiliates or principals. So they're clearly just like licensing out some Chinese phone and then pretending they have their own network.
And then in practice, Trump is now like a fake telecom phone operator, but also oversees the FCC, which is- Which is no longer independent. Totally ethical and normal.
Where he's like, he's taken away the independence of the FCC. He's got a Trump stooge in charge of it.
And now he's in the mobile phone business.

I just, yeah,

I saw the announcement. I did not think he was building a 5G network of his own.

And I did not think he was making a phone in the United States

because nobody does that. We don't do that.

So I was like, yeah, okay. So he's doing like

a kind of whatever. He's not building a 5G

network of his own because RFK Jr. is like,

don't do that. That's a good point.

Those are bad. It's going to mess with your boop you know you wanna makes you gay makes the frogs gay 5g makes the frogs gay but the uh uh but uh yeah but the the like what are you guys doing you guys you're gonna you're buying maybe they're assembling them or doing something to make it made in america or assembled in america at some point which i don't even think they figured this of it out yet.
It doesn't totally seem like, by the way, everyone's like, oh, this is definitely the phone. Are you sure that's the phone? Or did somebody grab a picture of a phone off the Internet and put a fucking gold thing on it? And they have no idea what the phone's going to be yet.
So like this whole thing is so stupid. I don't even understand who this grift is for.
It's more expensive than some of the cheaper, like similar kind of fake phone brands. So it's like, so this is for like some small subset of Trump super fans.
Like- I think it's like licensing too, because I read that they're working with some of the carriers. So it's not like they're inventing their own Verizon or T-Mobile.
They're like working with some of these companies to license the mobile carriers. Yeah, it's just a white label on a, just another service.
It's just ridiculous. And I just don't know, like, I i just truly like i don't know like i'm a pretty big barack obama fan but i wouldn't buy a phone from the guy uh remember the obama phones remember that scandal yeah this is now this is now a real obama phone thing those are allegedly given out free to people yeah the whole grift is i think they partner with some idiotic provider someone who's gonna like buy these phones in bulk they bulk.
They slap their name on it and they take like a 20% rip on whatever the sales are. Right.
That's right. There is a company that says they can do this, right? There's a company that says they can do that.
That company pays a fee to them. That company charges something on top of what it costs to get the service.
And then Trump and the family charges a service on top of that. And so whatever the Delta is between the cost of like whatever, T-Mobile or whatever,

Boost Mobile or whatever,

they'll just,

that's the profit they make

off the backs of like

some dumb fuck,

MAGA dumbass

buying this phone

off of the internet.

So anyway,

exciting announcement from us.

Buy your own crooked phone.

We gotta do this.

God, what a stupid time.

What a stupid dangerous time. Look, you know, You gotta have a phone That aligns with your values Sometimes the news is That's what Eric Trump said We need a phone That aligns with our values Woke phones What does that mean? I know I don't See it's like Yeah like the phone I don't need my phone To agree with me The phone's gonna like Raid a Phone policy What's the phone gonna do? Stop a trans swimmer? My phone doesn't have an agenda.
What are you talking about? This phone stops trans swimmers. This machine stops DEI hiring policies.
I do want to get our hands on one, one of the Trump phones, if it does come to pass, just to see what it looks like. They did the watches.
They did the NFTs. It's like they're just skimming off the top of their stupid political organization.
Well, he's making a lot I think his last disclosure was like he's made like 600 million dollars so far as president he's finally a billionaire he's finally a billionaire it's unbelievable my note to them I'm not a business guy but I would just say stick to the crypto you're selling vaporware you're selling nothing getting paid all that don't stick to that either maybe try to be. Maybe try to make money the real way.
All right, Jimmy Carter. Yeah, fucking Jimmy Carter over here.
Yeah, let's get this guy. I'm going to go sell my peanut farm.
When we come back, you'll hear my conversation with Maryland Governor Wes Moore about how governors should be responding to this moment. But one quick thing before we do that, check out the latest episode of Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams.
Stacey's joined by political commentators Aaron Parnas and Khalil Green to talk about why Democrats are losing

young voters. They dig into how the right has figured out platforms like TikTok and YouTube and how Democrats are still playing catch-up.
Listen to Assembly Required wherever you get your podcasts or on YouTube. When we come back, Wes Moore.
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Go to unrefugees.org slash donation to make your gift. Governor Westmore, welcome to the pod.
It's great to be back. Great to be back.
So Trump had a military parade over the weekend. It was held in your backyard.
I saw that instead of attending, you went for a run with service members at Fort Meade. Having served in the military yourself, how'd you feel watching whatever coverage you saw of the parade? Yeah, I mean, honestly, I didn't watch any coverage of the parade.
I'm not sure I really, really missed much. You know, and it looked like not many people watch it there in person either.
You know, but it is one of these things where, you know, I have a deep love for the United States Army because this is an organization that really helped to save my life. Um, you know, I joined the army when I was 17 years old.
Um, I joined the army. I wasn't young enough to, I wasn't old enough to sign the paperwork.
My mom signed the paperwork for me, but this was an organization that didn't just change the trajectory of my life. I think everything I learned, everything that I, that I gained from serving in the military, um, have been things that I still use to this day.
These are my brothers and sisters for life, the people who I serve with in Afghanistan. And so I took the 250th as something that was very deeply personal, where it's a, you know, the fact that we could be out there and enjoy the freedoms we enjoy, someone had to fight for those, right? Someone had to protect those freedoms.
And oftentimes it was the people who were wearing are the uniforms that I wore, the uniforms of the people, you know, who we celebrate wore and also as a celebration of those who died in those uniforms. And so I just thought that there was a much better way for us to be able to remember the importance of the United States Army.
There was a much better way for us to be able to remember the importance of the United States Army.

There was a much better way for us to be able to remember the importance of those men and women who raised their hands to serve in an organization that has helped to make this country as strong as it is. There's a much better way to remember those.
And frankly, when you're watching an administration who's doing things like cutting the budget for the Department of Veterans Affairs, cutting benefits for veterans, that is firing federal workers at just this breakneck speed, regardless of the fact that one in three federal workers are military veterans themselves, but then you think that a celebration of the Army is throwing a parade on your birthday. I just find it to be, you know, just deeply tone deaf and frankly, deeply offensive.
Yeah, I was saying to a friend earlier that I sort of felt for the troops watching the parade. And I wonder having, you know, served yourself and, you know, received the training you did, you know, not asking you to put yourself in the minds of every service member, but how do you think it feels in the armed services right now? You have, you know, federal troops in the streets of LA or Federalized Guard.
You have Marines here as well. There was that speech at Fort Bragg the other week where Trump, they screened participants for loyalty to Trump and you had some service members behind him who were more pro-Trump and they were booing names of Democratic officials when Trump was attacking them and cheering when he was making fun of others.
How do you think it feels to be serving in the military right now, considering the political backdrop? It's sad and I do feel for them. I think your description is right.
I just feel horrible for them because that's not why we signed up. I had the honor of serving with some of the most amazing men and women that I've ever met.
And there was one question I never asked a single one of them. What's your political party? I never asked one of them how they voted in the last election.
I never asked one of them what your voter registration is. Never.
The men and women who I led, the men and women who I served with, the only thing that we had in our minds was our ability to take care of each other and to do everything in our power to make sure that we were bringing the other one home. You know, that no matter what, that we would do everything in our power to make sure that you got back home to your family.
And, and, and I, and I think about just how different an experience this is for these men and women who are, who are serving in some cases, again, you know, I have members of the 82nd airborne division. Thatnd Airborne Division, that was my unit in Afghanistan.
And it's just kind of unimaginable to think that that's something that they're being asked now about their political loyalties, whether or not they're gonna get a chance to be seen on television or not. I just think that the work is too serious for that.
The consequences are too dire for that.

And that these are people who have put their hands on a Bible and pledged allegiance, not to an individual. Now, I never took a pledge.
I never took an oath to the president of the United States. My oath was to the Constitution, right? My oath was to the values.
My oath was to protect this country, to to fight and win our nation's war to protect our country against all enemies foreign and domestic that was the oath that i took it was never to an individual no matter who the commander-in-chief was at the time and um and i just think it's really important that the way we honor the the service of these individuals who are part of the less than one percent to have raised their hand of this country to be able to protect it and defend it and to give their lives if necessary. The way you honor their service is by respecting the oath that they took.
And I just felt like that was a, and the things that we've seen, it wasn't just one incident, it's just now kind of repeated a series of incidents, just seemed to be a real deviation of the oath that we all took. So also this weekend, it seems like an estimated 5 million or so people came out to protest Donald Trump, one of the single largest protests in American history.
I've had a couple of people ask me, what's the actual goal of these protests and where do they go from here? What do you think? You know, I respect people's First Amendment rights. And I think that we all have a right to the freedom of assembly, of a freedom of speech.
And I think that people should pay attention, that there is a very real frustration to what's happening with this administration. And it's not, the really interesting thing about the protest is it's not a frustration to an individual incident, right? It's not a frustration saying, oh, it's the policy around immigration or, oh, this is a policy around the potential cuts to Medicaid or, oh, this is a protest to the way that we are firing federal workers because the motivations for so many people who are out there marching is varied, and it's different.
But it's all tied up in one theme. And that is this idea that no one is above the law, and everyone has an obligation to defend it, protect it, and follow it.
That's the whole idea of no kings, right? And so that's the thing that I think is really powerful in some ways about the protests is there's not a single

political issue that got people out there. But it is just on this idea that we believe that the

president of the United States should actually follow the law. And we believe that the people

collectively, that our voice is much bigger and much stronger than just an individual or even a individual political party that's involved. Because I think even out there, you didn't just see Democrats, right? There were Democrats, independents, Republicans, you know, agnostics out there, but they're all protesting the idea of protecting a value and something that we, as we, as Americans take very seriously and very personally.
And so I think the thing that we've got to remember in all this, though, and the question of where do we take it from here? We have to remember that that this energy and this push is not about a singular day. It's we have to keep the intensity up.
And we also have to remember that the results that people are hoping for and hoping to see

in their own lives that that's something that we're not willing to compromise on either like how we're going to be remembered in this moment 10 years from now is not how loud we yelled right it's not how many how many people showed up to our protest it was the fact that were we able to deliver on the hopes that people actually have for what their government can provide. And I think if we do that, then we can turn this thing from just a, from a, from a moment to a much larger, to a much larger movement.
So I'm sure you were horrified by the news of the political assassinations in Minnesota over the weekend. I didn't think it could get any worse until I saw the reaction from prominent right-wing figures who spread obviously false conspiracies about the shooter's politics.
U.S. Senator Mike Lee said this is what happens when Marxists don't get their way.
Senator Bernie Moreno, Elon Musk both said it shows how the leftists become violent. Trump influencers like Mike Chernovich and Alex Jones even suggested that Tim Waltz was behind the assassination.
You had tweeted how saddened you were by it, and you also said that we need a renewed commitment to civil discourse. How do we even begin to do that when that's the reaction from some of the most influential people in the Republican Party.
Yeah, it's tough.

It's tough when something so horrific happens to two people.

And frankly, I don't care what your political affiliation is.

I don't care if you agree or disagree.

When you have two public servants who were taken out, I mean, literally, targeted assassinations and then targeted assassination attempts because of a political ideology. I, you know, you cannot tell me that the attempts that we saw, that we saw on Franklin and President Trump, that that should break your heart any more or any less than what we saw in Minnesota.
And I think it says a whole lot about people who think that somehow that politics was behind one of the danger of this political violence is more dangerous from one than the other. We have to remember that in this time, it is important for us to be able to both turn down the language and the rhetoric and to know that being a public servant should not mean risking your life.
And we've, we've passed legislation here in the state of Maryland that's focused on things like protecting our judges and protecting our election workers because we've had election workers attacked. We've had, we had a judge recently in the state of Maryland over in Western Maryland assassinated, killed in, killed in front of his own home.
So we've been very clear that this level of political violence and political vitriol is not just dangerous, it must be stopped, but we have to be able to have the courage to be able to call it out, no matter what it looks like, and no matter who's doing it. Is it something you've worried about for yourself, your own family? I mean, listen, I think it's something that for each and every one of us, we worry about.
I mean, I, I, I, I, unfortunately, you know, I, I get FBI and intelligence reports every single week. I know how the level of threats have increased since, since I've been the governor, right? As the first black governor in the history of the state of Maryland,

as long as the third African-American ever elected as a governor in this

country's history. You know, I, I, I, I have,

I've seen the data about the increase in threats that have come.

I also know this,

that the thing we're asking of our public servants and the, the,

and the promise we make to our public servants is for people who are willing to raise their hands, for people who are willing to serve something bigger than themselves, for people who are willing to go into this work understanding the difficulties that it presents to you and your family members, at least that we can do, is to make sure that you can feel safe

in your own home, in your own communities,

in your own skin,

that your families can feel safe.

And that it's not just the obligation, frankly,

of law enforcement to be able to provide that.

For us, it's up to the citizens,

whether they are supporters of us or not,

to be able to say that we can, even if we disagree with what a person is saying, it should never get to a point that we are then threatening them or their families or their family's safety. So we still have American troops deployed here in Los Angeles, and Trump just directed ICE to expand operations in blue state cities.
How are you planning to handle a potential expansion of immigration raids in a city like Baltimore, or even a deployment of troops in your state, or Trump trying to federalize the Maryland National Guard? There was a Washington Post story last week that said Trump wants the National Guard to play a bigger role in immigration enforcement going forward. Yeah, you know, I as as both the the commander in chief of Maryland's National Guard and as someone who's worn the uniform, you know, truthfully, I take I take that role very seriously.
In fact, just this past weekend, I was with the members of our National Guard as we as as we were as they were training up to be able to help protect our citizens if we called out orders for them to do so. And I'm a big believer that the people on the ground have the best understanding about what's happening.
There's a reason that we have an escalation of resources that we can deploy, that I know how many local law enforcement officers we have. I know how many state law enforcement officers have.
I know what we have in terms of our national guard. And so that's why I think for the people on the ground, we have the best understanding of what's needed and what's required in situations to make sure that our people are safe, which for me is the number one priority, to make sure that the people in my state are safe.
And I take that responsibility very seriously. But when it comes to immigration, I also know that this is a very personal issue.
I was raised by an immigrant single mom, and our immigration system is functionally broken. And there's one group who can solve it, and that's Congress.
And the truth is, the President of the United States could fix the immigration problem right now if he chose to. He could just simply go to the Speaker of the House and say, I need a comprehensive immigration bill on my desk next week.
And it would be on his desk next week because he has the votes. He has the House.
He has the Senate. He has the White House.
And he's not doing it. He's just simply choosing to use executive actions, many of which illegal, to be able to deal with an issue because he has no interest in dealing with the issue.
And so it is very, very frustrating as the chief executive of a state, and frankly, as a commander-in-chief of a National Guard in the fact that we do have a broken system. But the commander-in-chief of the United States Army does not seem to have an interest in actually fixing it, just has an interest in weaponizing it.
Yeah, and not just weaponizing it, but it does seem like his policy is, okay, if you're a farmer or you're in the hospitality industry and you're in red states or places that voted for me, maybe we can back off on immigration enforcement and we'll just target blue states. That's been the case on many of his policies and many of the institutions he's targeted since becoming president.
How do you see this as a governor of a blue state in terms of just sort of Trump using the office to sort of declare war on blue America? Yeah, the way that I see it is none of this is terribly shocking. None of this is terribly surprising.
We've been we've been we've been battleboarding for this type of scenario for a very long time. So the thing that we do is, you know, we control the things that we can control.
And one of the great things about being a governor, honestly, John, is that, you know, we're able to show what an alternative looks like. Where, you know, we tell our people where, you know, we have a we have a president of the United States who right now is is with his wholege project, is now actively just firing federal workers.
And we have a greater level of exposure in the state of Maryland than anyone else because I have over 260,000 federal employees in my state. And while he is arbitrarily firing federal workers, we're spending our time making sure that our federal workers are supported by actually streamlining them into available state and private sector jobs and making sure that if I have a person who is qualified and interested, I want to get them as quickly as possible, get them in classrooms, right? Get them in hospitals, get them in places where we have a shortage to know that their skills are necessary and know that we have a society that is going to benefit from their continued service.
When we have a president of the United States who is spending their time being able to use a budget to be able to shrink the economy. We saw a contraction of the U.S.
economy in the first quarter for the first time that we've seen in years. And in our state, we've actually gone from 43rd in the country in unemployment to now being amongst the lowest amongst the lowest unemployment rates in the entire country by being able to focus on things like apprenticeship programs, by making Maryland the first state in the country to have a service year option for all of our high school graduates, by doing the largest mass pardon in the history of the United States of America and getting people back into the workforce, particularly people who've been excluded for the workforce for things like a misdemeanor cannabis conviction

from the 1980s.

And so I think the thing that we've really focused on

in our state is that this binary,

this us versus them,

that the only way that I can win is if you lose,

that we're just showing in the state of Maryland

that we think differently,

that we actually think that part of the goal is that we can build a society where, as I learned in the military when I was 17 years old, where we leave no one behind. And that is the kind of society that shows that we don't have to just fall in line with what the president of the United States is doing, that we can actually provide an alternative.
And I think the people of our state are responding well to it. When Governor Newsom spoke about the raise in the troop deployment last week, he said, quote, democracy is under assault right before our eyes.
This moment we have feared has arrived. Trump is taking a wrecking ball to our founding father's historic project.
Do you agree with all that? Are you at the same level of alarm? Well, I think you can't look at what's happening right now and think that this is normal.

These are very abnormal times.

And these are times when we're watching just not just an overreach of executive authority, but in many ways, an illegal reach of executive authority.

The thing I would also say about that, though, is this, is I'm also very honest about our country's history. I'm also very honest about our founding fathers and what their intent was.
And I'm not sure if I was part of their full intent when our founding fathers first put together the documents of this country and first put together the foundation of this country. I think this country is a constant evolution.
I think this country has had a deeply uneven history. But that's actually the thing that also gives me hope, is that I don't, you know, I don't, you know, sit there and act like the country's history doesn't exist.
I think the country's history is real and it matters. And this country has had a very brutal history for a lot of groups.
I also know that the reason that I can stand here as the governor of Maryland is because there were Marylanders like Harriet Tubman and Marylanders like Fredericklass, and Marylanders like Thurgood Marshall,

who, when they saw this type of breakage, when they saw this type of unevenness, when they saw

these type of illegal activities taking place, that they fought. And they're willing to fight

for, they didn't know me by name, but they fought for the hope of me. And that's the responsibility

that I very much take on right now, is that this country has seen these type of behaviors before.

This country is a country that is a country that is a country that's the responsibility that I very much take on right now is that this country has seen these type of behaviors before. This country has had these type of behaviors as part of its core foundation before.
But I think understanding that history is also the thing that gives me a real sense of realism and frankly, hope that joy does come in the morning, but you got to fight for it. And that's exactly what we've chosen to do here in Maryland.
Speaking of our country's history, back in May, you vetoed legislation that would have created a commission to study the issue of reparations for slavery in Maryland. Your basic reasoning has been, we don't need another study.
And it's time to focus on the work itself of tackling racial disparities. Obviously, you know, you've got some heat for that.
Studies aside, though, do you believe reparations are justified? Yeah, you know, when I looked at the bill, and the language of the bill literally lays out that we're going to do this study, this commission. And then in two years, they'd bring the recommendation to the governor.
My point is this. I am the governor.
I don't need two years. Let's get to work.
And I think about the work that we have done in the state of Maryland. No state has been as aggressive in these past two years on this work of repair that we've seen in the state of Maryland, that in the past two years, we've invested over $1.3 billion going towards our HBCUs, which is a 60% increase than we saw from our predecessor.
And we've gotten it done in two years. That we have created over 1,600 new Black homeowners in the state of Maryland by making sure we're prioritizing investments to first-time homebuyers.
That we have been able to invest over $800 million going towards Black-owned businesses. And by being able to do things from procurement reform, expungement reform, sign the largest mass pardon in the history of the United States of America, there is nobody who is questioning my commitment to this work or my commitment to the work of repair.
But what I am saying is this, is that there's been a whole series of scholarship on this issue. There's been a whole series of reports.
There have been four others in just the past 25 years in Maryland that have been along these lines, right? And my only point is this, is this is the time, and I'm excited to do that work with the members of our General Assembly, with the members of the Black Caucus, who have done really good work on this, and a lot of stuff we've done together. And this is the time for continued action, that I don't need two years.
I'm ready to go right now. And that's the focus that I want to be able to take, because the truth is, is that I know how much time I have left.
In fact, a clock sits on my desk that I now have 500, I believe now 21 days left in my first term. I'm not wasting one of them.
And I'm ready to be able to continue the work of repair that our state needs because the truth is that the history of racism is littered throughout every single aspect of the state of Maryland, and people know this. It's time for us to be able to do action on it.
It also sounds like you believe that the work of reparations can more effectively be done with some of the policies and some of the steps you've taken in Maryland to help target racial disparities as opposed to reparations, which is a politically loaded controversial word that may not have the political support necessary in comparison to some of the policies that you've taken on in Maryland. Is that right? Yeah.
I mean, I think racism is not an act. Right? Because I think it actually lets people off the hook too easy.
because I think racism is not an act, right?

Because I think it actually lets people off the hook too easy.

Because I think it's like, you know, a person's like, well, I don't wear a hood.

I don't say the N-word, so I'm not racist.

Racism is not an act.

Racism is a system.

Racism is a system that allows an 8-to-1 racial wealth gap in the state of Maryland. And we have an eight to one racial wealth gap, not because one group is working eight times harder.
It's a system that is put in place, that racism, that it's not an act that cause historical redlining. It's not an act that cause unfair appraisal values in historically redlined neighborhoods.
It's not an act that caused business creation to be so dispersed and to be so divided. It's not an act that caused access to capital to be so limited, particularly in black communities, that this is a system that has created that.
And so I believe deeply, deeply that the work of repair is about repairing systems. Because you could have a conversation about how are we addressing individual acts all you want.
If the people still exist in a system, that doesn't work. If people still exist in a system that is broken.
If people still exist in a system that allows children not to get the education that they need, for racism to show itself in the air that people are breathing, in the water that people are drinking, in the homes that people are living in, in the way that they are policed, in the transportation assets they have and do not have, then the work of repair is not going to be done by addressing an act. The work of repair is only done when you're addressing systems.
And that's why I think the focus that we've had in the state of Maryland over these past two years, where we collectively have moved on these issues faster and more aggressively than anyone else in the country. And I don't think there's anyone who can claim anything different.
Focusing on this issue of work, wages, and wealth, that I'm deeply aware of our history. That's why I'm so aggressive on it.
But I also know I'm not going to let people off the hook by simply saying we're going to address it by addressing individual acts. I am attacking systems, because I think that's the only way that we're going to be able to address this in a longstanding fashion.
So you've been very clear that you are not currently running for president. You've talked about focusing on the urgency of 2025 before we get to 2028.
Fair enough. Your recent travel schedule has also included events in South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan in a few weeks.
Fair to assume also that you're at least thinking about it? No, I'm not running. It's not fair to assume.
Because honestly, if you look at where- So you will not run. No, no, no.
I'm not, no. And here's actually, I think, the important thing for people to remember with this is I will go anywhere and everywhere to be able to not just talk about the good things that our state is doing, but also make sure that more people are coming to my state.
You know, the states that you mentioned are important, but also it doesn't mention the other places that we've also gone that might not be quote unquote battleground states. But you know what I was doing? I was talking to businesses to try to get them to come to the state of Maryland, just like I was doing in those states.
And when I say I'm not running and why I feel so confident and very secure in that is I'm also very much a person who I, you know, when I, you know, I remember when I have a mentor of mine, the great Elijah Cummings, who was a congressman out of Baltimore, who was not just a dear friend, but a mentor. And when he passed away, there were a lot of people who came up and said, you know, you should really consider running for his seat.
And it was very humbling to include people who were close to him. And it was very humbling.
And but I knew in my heart that's not what I wanted to do. So there was nothing that anyone could tell me to make me do it.
I remember when I was getting ready, when I said to myself and I thought I was like, I want to run for governor. There are a lot of people who tell me I shouldn't run for governor.
They're like, you can't win. I don't know why you're doing this.
This is going to end really, really badly for you. And I knew there was nothing that anyone could tell me to make me not run.
So I am very comfortable with and confident with and thankful for the fact that, you know, I'm a kid who literally, you know, had handcuffs on my wrist when I was 11 years old, whose mother didn't get her first job that gave her benefits until I was 14. And I'm now serving as the chief executive of my state.
Like I am like, I'm playing with house money right now. And I'm loving the work that we're doing in Maryland, because I think Maryland is just leading the country in so many different things in terms of raising wages, in terms of driving historically low unemployment rates, driving historic drops in violent crime, being able to actually create wealth and wealth opportunities for everyone in our communities.
I love my job and I love what I'm doing. And I'm also very clear that when I decided something, no one can tell me different.
and I know I'm not running for anything else except I'm running for re-election next year. And I hope the people in my state give me an opportunity to have another four years.
Well, then, last question for you. We need good presidential candidates in this party.
In general, how do you think the National Democratic Party is meeting meeting this moment um it's a hard question because i don't um honestly i don't i don't focus on it that much i mean you know and not just being just being totally honest like i want i remember when i ran for for governor um we ran against there's like 12 there's like 11 other people running for governor they had We had statewide elected officials. We had two Obama cabinet secretaries.
We had a former head of the DNC, literally had a former head of the Democratic Party who ran for governor. And then me, the guy who had never run for office before in my life, who was now saying, hey, I want to run for governor.
And I ended up getting more individual votes than anyone who'd ever run for governor in the history of the state of Maryland. So I guess kind of my point is, is that I was never the party's choice before.
The party didn't ask me to run. The party didn't come in and say, you're the guy who we want to be the next governor of Maryland.
The people did. And so I've decided I'm not the best person to give the party advice as to what they should do because I was never the party's choice in the first place.
But I do think that what does become really important in this moment is if you're not delivering results for people, and if people don't find you to be authentic, they're never going to support you. You know what I mean? Like the reason that we are doing really nation leading work around young men and boys here in the state of Maryland is not because we lost them as a voting block in 2024.
And what are we now going to like now? The reason we've been doing this work since day one of our administration is because it was a core part of why I decided to get in this race in the first place. And I think when you're looking at who voted for us and the fact that we did, we've done very well with young men and boys in our elections is because they know it's real and it's authentic, right? The reason that we had, the reason that we, that we focused on having a service year option, making Maryland the first state in this country that has a service year option for every one of our high school graduates is not because it polled well.
In fact, when I first moved first, it didn't poll well at all, but it's because it's authentic. And I believe in it.
I believe in this time of this political divisiveness and political vitriol that service will save us. And so I think that the, I don't know, the best, the best advice I guess I can give.
And again, I don't get my talking points from, from the party. But the thing that I would suggest that people do is be authentic.
And don't forget why you got in this business in the first place. And if you do that, I think the people will respond.
Because I think they'll see that you care about them, you care about their families, you care about their legacy, and that you are doing everything in your power to be able to make sure that that's going to be protected.

And I guess like we saw in our campaign, in our race, that the people will reward you for it.

That's good advice.

You should be giving more to the party.

Governor Westmore, thank you so much for joining Plays Save America.

I appreciate it.

Of course, man.

Great to talk to you again.

Thank you so much for joining Pod Save America. I appreciate it.
Of course, man. Great to talk to you again.
Thank you. That's our show for today.
Dan and I will be back with a new episode on Friday. Bye, everyone.
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